The Lord does not measure our afflictions according to our faults, but according to our strength, and looks not what we have deserved, but what we are able to bear.
— George Downame
Priorities
Let us use worldly things as wise pilgrims do their staves and other necessaries convenient for their journey. So long as they help us forward in our way, let us make use of them, and accordingly esteem them. But if they become troublesome hindrances and cumbersome burdens, let us leave them behind us, or cast them away.
— George Downame
God’s Chastening
God gives gifts that we may love him, and stripes that we may fear him. Yea, oftentimes he mixes frowns with his favors.
— George Downame
Temptations of Prosperity
Afflictions, like bills and pikes, make a terrible show when they cannot reach us; but the temptations of prosperity, like unseen bullets, wound and kill us before they are discerned.
— George Downame
Watchfulness
The Christian soldier must avoid two evils — he must not faint or yield in the time of fight, and after a victory he must not wax insolent and secure. When he has overcome, he is so to behave himself as though he were presently again to be assaulted. For Satan’s temptations, like the waves of the sea, do follow one in the neck of the other.
— George Downame