Inspirational Quotes by Richard Sibbes
“In the godly, holy truths are conveyed by way of a taste; gracious men have a spiritual palate as well as a spiritual eye. Grace alters the spiritual taste.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“God knows that, as we are prone to sin, so, when conscience is thoroughly awaked, we are as prone to despair for sin; and therefore he would have us know, that he setteth himself in the covenant of grace to triumph in Christ over the greatest evils and enemies we fear, and that his thoughts are not as our thoughts are, Isa. v. 8; that he is God, and not man, Hos. xi. 9; that there are heights, and depths, and breadths of mercy in him above all the depths of our sin and misery, Eph. iii. 18; that we should never be in such a forlorn condition, wherein there should be ground of despair, considering our sins be the sins of men, his mercy the mercy of an infinite God.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“He "binds up the broken-hearted" (Isa. 61:1). As a mother is tenderest toward the most diseased and weakest child, so does Christ most mercifully incline to the weakest. Likewise he puts an instinct into the weakest things to rely upon something stronger than themselves for support. The vine steadies itself upon the elm, and the weakest creatures often have the strongest shelters. The consciousness of the church's weakness makes her willing to lean on her Beloved and to hide herself under his wing.”
“Every creature thinks itself best in its own element, that is the place it thrives in, and enjoys its happiness in; now Christ is the element of a Christian.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from Christ Is Best
“Here see the opposite disposition between the holy nature of Christ, and the impure nature of man. Man for a little smoke will quench the light; Christ ever we see cherisheth even the least beginnings. How bare he with the many imperfections of his poor disciples. If he did sharply check them, it was in love, and that they might shine the brighter. Can we have a better pattern to follow than this of him by whom we hope to be saved?”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“beauty. We must know for our comfort that Christ was not anointed to this great work of Mediator for lesser sins only, but for the greatest,”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“We must neither bind where God looseth, nor loose where God bindeth, nor open where God shutteth, nor shut where God openeth; the right use of the keys is always successful.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“Think what great love Christ has showed unto us, and how little we have deserved, and this will make our hearts to melt and be as pliable as wax before the sun.”
topics: christian-heart
“God has decreed it so, that where tenderness of heart is, there mercy shall follow...”
topics: christian-heart
“Where Christ’s Spirit is, it will bring men from their altitudes and excellencies, and make them to stoop to serve the church, and account it an honour to be an instrument to do good.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from Christ Is Best
“What do the Scriptures speak but Christ’s love and tender care over those that are humbled?”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“It cannot but cheer the heart of the spouse, to consider, in all her infirmities and miseries she is subject to, that she hath a husband of a kind disposition, that knows how to give the honour of mild usage to the weaker vessel, that will be so far from rejecting her, because she is weak, that he will pity her the more. And as he is kind at all times, so especially when it is most seasonable; he will speak to her heart, ‘especially in the wilderness,’ Hos. ii. 24.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“The more we see the grace of God in Christ, the spirit of fear is diminished and replaced by a spirit of love and boldness.”
“only God’s Spirit can raise the conscience with comfort above guilt, because he only is greater than the conscience.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“It is love in duties that God regards, more than duties themselves.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“Proud men are the devil’s pipes, and flatterers the musicians to blow these pipes.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from Josiah's Reformation
“nothing in the world of so good use, as the least dram of grace.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“The eye being a tender part, and soonest hurt, how watchful is man by nature over that, that it take no hurt. So the heart, being a tender thing, let us preserve it by all watchfulness to keep blows from off it. It is a terrible thing to keep a wound of some great sin upon the conscience, for it makes a way for a new breach; because when the conscience once begins to be hardened with some great sin, then there is no stop, but we run on to commit sin with all greediness. 9.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Tender Heart
“For where God intends to do any good, he first works in them a gracious disposition: after which he looks upon his own work as upon a lovely object, and so doth give them other blessings. God crowns grace with grace. By”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Tender Heart
“THE SECOND OBSERVATION CONCERNING the weak and small beginnings of grace is that Christ will not quench the smoking flax. This is so for two principal reasons. First, because this spark is from heaven: it is his own, it is kindled by his own Spirit. And secondly, it tends to the glory of his powerful grace in his children that he preserves light in the midst of darkness, a spark in the midst of the swelling waters of corruption. THE”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
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Richard Sibbes was an English theologian. He is known as a Biblical exegete, and as a representative, with William Perkins and John Preston, of what has been called "main-line" Puritanism.
He attended St John's College, Cambridge from 1595. He was lecturer at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1610 or 1611 to 1615 or 1616. It is erroneously held by 18th and 19th century scholars that Sibbes was deprived of his various academic posts on account of his Puritanism. In fact he was never deprived of any of his posts, due to his ingenuity of the system.
He was then preacher at Gray's Inn, London, from 1617, returning to Cambridge as Master of Catherine Hall in 1626, without giving up the London position.
He was the author of several devotional works expressing intense religious feeling -- The Saint's Cordial (1629), The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax (1631, exegesis of Isaiah 42:3), The Soules Conflict (1635), etc.