Meditation is a help to knowledge; thereby your knowledge is raised. Thereby your memory is strengthened. Thereby your hearts are warmed. Thereby you will be freed from sinful thoughts. Thereby your hearts will be tuned to every duty. Thereby you will grow in grace. Thereby you will fill up all the chinks and crevices of your lives, and know how to spend your spare time, and improve that for God. Thereby you will draw good out of evil. And thereby you will converse with God, have communion with God, and enjoy God. And I pray, is not here profit enough to sweeten the voyage of your thoughts in meditation?

William Bridge (1600–1670), Puritanischer Prediger, Theologe und Mitglied der Westminster Assembly

Topics: The Bible & the Word of God, Prayer & Silence, Growth & Character

Occasions: For Reflection

William Bridge

William Bridge (1600–1670) war ein englischer puritanischer Geistlicher und Theologe, der nach zeitweisem Exil in Rotterdam in England predigte und Mitglied der Westminster-Synode war. Bekannt wurde er als Vertreter der kongregationalistischen Minderheit für die Autonomie der Ortsgemeinden sowie als Autor seelsorgerlicher Schriften über geistliche Anfechtungen. Heutigen Bibellesern begegnet er als puritanischer Seelsorgetheologe, der den Umgang mit Schuldgefühlen, Depression und Glaubenszweifeln anhand biblischer Gnadenzusagen behandelte.

All quotes by William Bridge (7)

More on this topic

[The Bible is] shallow enough for a child not to drown, yet deep enough for an elephant to swim.

Augustine of Hippo

A Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.

Unknown

The Bible in the pulpit must never supersede the Bible at home.

John Charles Ryle

The Bible is almost bursting with good news for bad people.

Corrie ten Boom

I read the Bible the way I harvest my apple tree: I shake it, and what falls down and is ripe, I take. The rest I leave hanging for now.

Martin Luther

The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

Martin Luther

The law is divine and holy. Let the law have its glory, but yet no law, be it never so divine and holy, ought to teach me that I am justified, and shall live through it. I grant it may teach me that I ought to love God and my neighbor; also to live in love, soberness, patience, etc., but it ought not to show me how I should be delivered from sin, the devil, death, and hell. Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me, not what I ought to do but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.

Martin Luther

Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.

Madeleine L'Engle

All quotes · lumen.bible

lumen.bible