The chains of love are stronger than the chains of fear.
– William Gurnall
Love | Fear
A minister, without boldness, is like a smooth file, a knife without an edge, a sentinel that is afraid to let off his gun. If men will be bold in sin, ministers must be bold to reprove.
– William Gurnall
Preaching | Apathy
God would not rub so hard if it were not to fetch out the dirt that is ingrained in our natures. God loves purity so well He had rather see a hole than a spot in His child’s garments.
– William Gurnall
Purity | Suffering
Hope fills the afflicted soul with such inward joy and consolation, that it can laugh while tears are in the eye, sigh and sing all in a breath; it is called “The rejoicing of hope.”
– William Gurnall
Hope | Joy | Laughter
Behold therefore thy God at work, and promise thyself that what he is about will be an excellent piece.
– William Gurnall
Grace | Excellence
Great comforts do, indeed, bear witness to the truth of thy grace, but not to the degree of it; the weak child is oftener in the lap than the strong one.
– William Gurnall
Grace | Comfort
He that loves the Word and the purity of its precepts cannot turn traitor.
– William Gurnall
Scripture | Purity
We are bid to take, not to make our cross.
– William Gurnall
Suffering | The Cross
Thou must be an attentive hearer; he that is awake, but wanders with his eye or heart, what doth he but sleep with his eyes open?
– William Gurnall
Hypocrisy
Love refuseth nothing that love sends.
– William Gurnall
Love
I do not bid thee try the truth of thy grace by such a power as is peculiar to stronger grace, but by that power which will distinguish it from false grace.
– William Gurnall
Grace | Power
A rent garment is catched by every nail, and the rent made wider. Renew therefore thy repentance speedily, whereby this breach may be made up, and worse prevented.
– William Gurnall
Repentance | Renewal
As you love your peace, Christian, be plain-hearted with God and man, and keep the king’s highway.
– William Gurnall
Peace
Let your hope of heaven master your fear of death.
– William Gurnall
Heaven | Death
Christ bears with the saints’ imperfections; well may the saints one with another.
– William Gurnall
Patience
Therefore tremble, O man, at any power thou hast, except thou usest it for God. Art thou strong in body; who hath thy strength? God, or thy lusts?
– William Gurnall
Lust | Power
If thou beest ever so exact in thy morals, and not a worshiper of God, then thou art an atheist.
– William Gurnall
Atheism
I had rather be a sober heathen than a drunken Christian.
– William Gurnall
Drunkenness
And when God comes to reckon with his workmen, the ploughman and the sower shall have his penny, as well as the harvest-man and the reaper.
– William Gurnall
Justice | Work
Least doers are the greatest boasters.
– William Gurnall
Boasting | Laziness
The proper seat of sin is the will, of comfort the conscience.
– William Gurnall
Conscience | Comfort
How can God stoop lower than to come and dwell with a poor humble soul? which is more than if he had said, such a one should dwell with him; for a beggar to live at court is not so much as the king to dwell with him in his cottage.
– William Gurnall
Humility
Praying is the same to the new creature as crying is to the natural. The child is not learned by art or example to cry, but instructed by nature; it comes into the world crying. Praying is not a lesson got by forms and rules of art, but flowing from principles of new life itself.
– William Gurnall
Prayer
None sink so far into hell as those that come nearest heaven, because they fall from the greatest heights.
– William Gurnall
Hell
O take heed of this squint eye to our profit, pleasure, honor, or anything beneath Christ and heaven; for they will take away your heart – that is, our love, and if our love be taken away, there will be little courage left for Christ.
– William Gurnall
Courage
Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed, or God’s Word formed into an argument, and retorted by faith upon God again.
– William Gurnall
Prayer
Cease to pray and thou will begin to sin. Prayer is not only a means to prevail for mercy but also to prevent sin.
– William Gurnall
Prayer | Sin
No, it is some noble enterprise I would have thee think upon, how thou mayst advance the name of Christ higher in thy heart, and [in the] world too, as much as in thee lies.
– William Gurnall
Evangelism
As a man, looking steadfastly on a dial, cannot perceive the shadow move at all, yet viewing it after a while, he shall perceive that it hath moved; so, in the hearing of the Word, but especially in the receiving of the Lord’s supper, a man may judge even his own faith, and other graces of God, to be little or nothing increased, neither can he perceive the motion of God’s Spirit in him at that time; yet by the fruits and effects thereof, he shall afterward perceive that God’s Spirit hath little by little wrought greater faith and other graces in him.
– William Gurnall
The Holy Spirit | Grace
Take heart therefore, O ye saints, and be strong; your cause is good, God himself espouseth your quarrel, who hath appointed you his own Son, General of the field, called ‘the Captain of our salvation.’
– William Gurnall
Service | Jesus
The grace thou hast will soon be less, if thou addest not more to it.
– William Gurnall
Grace
Grace is of a stirring nature, and not such a dead thing, like an image, which you may lock up in a chest, and none shall know what God you worship. No, grace will show itself; it will walk with you into all places and companies; it will buy with you, and sell for you; it will have a hand in all your enterprises.
– William Gurnall
Grace
It is no policy to let thy lusts have arms, which are sure to rise and declare against thee when thine enemy comes.
– William Gurnall
Lust | Enemies
Thou hast an art above God Himself, if thou canst fetch any true pleasure out of unholiness.
– William Gurnall
Rebellion
The hungry man needs no help to teach him how to beg.
– William Gurnall
Perseverance
His subject thou art whom thou crownest in thy heart, and not whom thou flatterest with thy lips.
– William Gurnall
Friendship
He cannot be a bold reprover that is not a conscientious liver; such a one must speak softly, for fear of waking his own guilty conscience.
– William Gurnall
Conscience
Job’s friends chose the right time to visit him, but took not the right course of improving their visit; had they spent the time in praying for him which they did in hot disputes with him, they would have profited him, and pleased God more.
– William Gurnall
Prayer
Say not that thou hast royal blood in thy veins and art born of God, unless thou canst prove thy pedigree by daring to be holy.
– William Gurnall
Holiness
Thou must be righteous and holy, before thou canst live righteously and holily.
– William Gurnall
Righteousness | Holiness
To tempt another is worse than to sin thyself. When you tempt, you do that which you cannot undo with your repentance.
– William Gurnall
Temptation
Sacrifice without obedience is sacrilege.
– William Gurnall
Sacrifice | Obedience
Love cannot think any evil of God, nor endure to hear any speak evil of him, but it must take God’s part.
– William Gurnall
Love | Endurance
Mercy should make us ashamed, wrath afraid to sin.
– William Gurnall
Mercy
Truth with self-denial is a better pennyworth, than error with all its flesh-pleasing.
– William Gurnall
Truth | Self-denial
Compare not thyself with those that have less than thyself, but look on those that have far exceeded thee.
– William Gurnall
Achievement
No, the Christian must stand fixed to his principles, and not change his habit; but freely show what countryman he is by his holy constancy in the truth.
– William Gurnall
Truth
Compare Scripture with Scripture. False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among themselves.
– William Gurnall
Scripture | Heresy | Doctrine
The minister’s work debilitates nature; like the candle, he wastes while he shines.
– William Gurnall
Evangelism
The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God.
– William Gurnall
Faith | Trust | Christians
It is as impossible to understand the Scriptures without the Spirit’s help as it is to read a sundial without the sun.
– William Gurnall
Scripture
The sins of teachers are the teachers of sin.
– William Gurnall
Teachers | Sin
Furnish thyself with arguments from the promises to enforce thy prayers, and make them prevalent with God. The promises are the ground of faith, and faith, when strengthened, will make thee fervent, and such fervency ever speeds and returns with victory out of the field of prayer. The mightier any is in the Word, the more mighty he will be in prayer.
– William Gurnall
Prayer | Faith | Victory
The want of a renewed heart is a hair on the moral man’s pen, that blurs and blots his copy when he writes fairest. His unrightness does others more good in this world than himself in the next.
– William Gurnall
Renewal
The Christian’s life should put his minister’s sermon in print.
– William Gurnall
Christians
Christ counts it his honor, that he is a king of a willing people, and not of slaves.
– William Gurnall
Christ | Obedience
It is not only our duty to pray for others, but also to desire the prayers of others for ourselves.
– William Gurnall
Prayer
All the plots of hell and commotions on earth have not so much as shaken God’s hand to spoil one letter or line he has been drawing.
– William Gurnall
Satan
We have peace with God as soon as we believe, but not always with ourselves. The pardon may be past the prince’s hand and seal, and yet not put into the prisoner’s hand.
– William Gurnall
Peace
Oh, it is sad for a poor Christian to stand at the door of the promise, in the dark night of affliction, afraid to draw the latch, whereas he should then come boldly for shelter as a child into his father’s house.
– William Gurnall
Apathy | Affliction
Satan cannot deny but that great wonders have been wrought by prayer. As the spirit of prayer goes up, so his kingdom goes down. Satan’s strategems against prayer are three. First, if he can, he will keep thee from prayer. If that be not feasible, secondly, he will strive to interrupt thee in prayer. And, thirdly, if that plot takes not, he will labor to hinder the success of thy prayer.
– William Gurnall
Prayer
It is true, Christian, the debt thou owest to God must be paid in good and lawful money, but, for thy comfort, here Christ is thy paymaster.
– William Gurnall
Atonement | Money
Pray often rather than very long at a time. It is hard to be very long in prayer, and not slacken in our affections.
– William Gurnall
Prayer
We must not confide in the armor of God, but in the God of this armor, because all our weapons are only ‘mighty through God.’
– William Gurnall
Perseverance
Few are made better by prosperity, whom afflictions make worse.
– William Gurnall
Prosperity | Affliction
Never was a faithful prayer lost. Some prayers have a longer voyage than others, but then they return with their richer lading at last, so that the praying soul is a gainer by waiting for an answer.
– William Gurnall
Prayer | Waiting
Let this encourage those of you who belong to Christ: the storm may be tempestuous, but it is only temporary. The clouds that are temporarily rolling over your head will pass, and then you will have fair weather, an eternal sunshine of glory. Can you not watch with Christ for one hour?
– William Gurnall
Encouragement
Sin disabled man to keep God’s law, but it doth not enfranchise or disoblige him that he need not keep it.
– William Gurnall
Sin | Obedience
Thus you see it is not armor as armor, but as armor of God, that makes the soul impregnable.
– William Gurnall
Grace
To forsake sin, is to leave it without any thought reserved of returning to it again.
– William Gurnall
Renewal
God hath made it a debt which one saint owes to another to carry their names to a throne of grace.
– William Gurnall
Encouragement
Humble souls are fearful of their own strength.
– William Gurnall
Humility | Strength
Bid faith look through the key-hole of the promise, and tell thee what it sees there laid up for him that overcomes; bid it listen and tell thee whether it cannot hear the shout of those crowned saints, as of those that are dividing the spoil, and receiving the reward of all their services and sufferings here on earth.
– William Gurnall
Holiness | Overcoming
And therefore you who think so basely of the Gospel and the professors of it, because at present their peace and comfort are not come, should know that it is on the way to them, and comes to stay everlastingly with them; whereas your peace is going from you every moment, and is sure to leave you without any hope of returning to you again. Look not how the Christian begins, but ends.
– William Gurnall
Rebellion
Paul was Nero’s prisoner, but Nero was much more God’s.
– William Gurnall
Suffering
Take heed thou makest not the least child thine enemy by offering wrong to him; God will right the wicked even upon the saint.
– William Gurnall
Children | Enemies
All his commands are acts of grace; it is a favor to be employed about them.
– William Gurnall
Grace
He that is impatient, and cannot wait on God for a mercy, will not easily submit to Him in a denial.
– William Gurnall
Mercy | Impatience
And doth not God deserve the best service thou canst do him in thy generation?
– William Gurnall
Service
Unholiness in a preacher’s life will either stop his mouth from reproving, or the people’s ears from receiving.
– William Gurnall
Preaching
While the Christian commits a sin he hates it; whereas the hypocrite loves it while he forbears it.
– William Gurnall
Hypocrisy | Sin
Justifying faith is not a naked assent to the truths of the gospel.
– William Gurnall
Faith | The Gospel | Justification
Thou hast no life to lose, because thou hast given it already to Christ, nor can man take away that without God’s leave.
– William Gurnall
Life
The longer a soul hath neglected duty, the more ado there is to get it taken up.
– William Gurnall
Laziness
The Christian is bred by the Word, and he must be fed by it.
– William Gurnall
Scripture
And while God had work for Paul, he found him friends both in court and prison. Let persecutors send saints to prison, God can provide a keeper for their turn.
– William Gurnall
Persecution
If thou dost not stumble at this stone, the devil hath another at hand to throw in the way. He is not so unskillful a fowler as to go with one single shot into the field; and therefore expect him, as soon as he hath discharged one, and missed thee, to let fly at thee with a second.
– William Gurnall
Struggles
O if once our hearts were but filled with zeal for God, and compassion to our people’s souls, we would up and be doing, though we could but lay a brick a day, and God would be with us.
– William Gurnall
Compassion | Zeal
Peace of conscience is nothing but the echo of pardoning mercy.
– William Gurnall
Conscience
We are justified, not by giving anything to God, – what we do, – but by receiving from God, what Christ hath done for us.”
– William Gurnall
GraceJustification
It is worse to live like a beast than to be a beast.
– William Gurnall
Sin
In heaven we shall appear, not in armor, but in robes of glory. But here these are to be worn night and day; we must walk, work, and sleep in them, or else we are not true soldiers of Christ.
– William Gurnall
HeavenWork
Humility is a necessary veil to all other graces.
– William Gurnall
Humility
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little. One fear cures another. When man’s terror scares you, turn your thoughts to the wrath of God.
– William Gurnall
Fear
When Satan finds the good man asleep, then he finds our good God awake; therefore thou art not consumed, because he changeth not.
– William Gurnall
Satan
Blind zeal is soon put to a shameful retreat, while holy resolution, built on fast principles, lifts up its head like a rock in the midst of the waves.
– William Gurnall
HolinessZeal
God’s wounds cure, sin’s kisses kill.
– William Gurnall
Sin
Godliness, as well as the doctrine of our faith, is a mystery.
– William Gurnall
Godliness | Faith | Doctrine
Christ will bear no equal, and Satan no superior; and therefore, hold in with both thou canst not.
– William Gurnall
Christ
Therefore it should be our care, if we would not yield to the sin, not to walk by, or sit at, the door of the occasion.
– William Gurnall
Sin