If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him they are firmly established.
God will not suffer man to have a knowledge of things to come for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless and if understanding of his adversity, he would be despairing and senseless
Do you who are a Christian desire to be revenged and vindicated, and the death of Jesus Christ has not yet been revenged, nor His innocence vindicated?
Love and do what you want. If you stop talking, you will stop talking with love; if you shout, you will shout with love; if you correct, you will correct with love.
It is indeed better (as no one ever could deny) that men should be led to worship God by teaching, than that they should be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but it does not follow that because the former course produces the better men, therefore those who do not yield to it should be neglected. For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily proving by actual experiment), in being first compelled by fear or pain, so that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching, or might follow out in act what they had already learned in word.
If you should ask me what are the ways of God, I would tell you that the first is humility, the second is humility, and the third is humility. Not that there are no other precepts to give, but if humility does not preceed all that we do, our efforts are fruitless.