Top 100 Samuel Rutherford Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin, and offend your Lord, in your sufferings.”

— Samuel Rutherford

52. “Many are friends to the success of reformation, not to reformation.”

— Samuel Rutherford

53. “Take Christ in with you under your yoke, and let patience have her perfect work.”

— Samuel Rutherford

54. “When we shall come home and enter to the possession of our Brother’s fair kingdom, and when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, and when we shall look back to pains and sufferings; then shall we see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to glory; and that our little inch of time-suffering is not worthy of our first night’s welcome home to heaven.”

— Samuel Rutherford

55. “To believe Christ’s cross to be a friend, as he himself is a friend, is also a special act of faith.”

— Samuel Rutherford

56. “If so be that freewill were our tutor, and we had our heaven in our own keeping, then we would lose all. But because we have Christ for our tutor, and He has our heaven in His hand, therefore the covenant it must be perpetual.”

— Samuel Rutherford

57. “Christ has no velvet crosses.”

— Samuel Rutherford

58. “If ye never had a sick night and a pained soul for sin, ye have not yet lighted upon Christ.”

— Samuel Rutherford

59. “Heaven is a house full of miracles; yea, of spectacles and images of free grace.”

— Samuel Rutherford

60. “It is certain that this is not only good which the Almighty has done, but that it is best; He hath reckoned all your steps to heaven.”

— Samuel Rutherford

61. “Christ seeketh your help in your place; give Him your hand.”

— Samuel Rutherford

62. “I am in as sweet communion with Christ as a poor sinner can be; and am only pained that He hath much beauty and fairness, and I little love; He great power and mercy, and I little faith; He much light, and I bleared eyes.”

— Samuel Rutherford

63. “Make not Christ a liar in distrusting His promise.”

— Samuel Rutherford

64. “Set no time to the Lord the creator of time, for His time is always best.”

— Samuel Rutherford

65. “I wonder many times that ever a child of God should have a sad heart, considering what the Lord is preparing for him.”

— Samuel Rutherford

66. “Faith’s speculations to the worst and hardest, in point of resolution, are sweet.”

— Samuel Rutherford

67. “My dear friend, venture to take the wind on your face for Christ.”

— Samuel Rutherford

68. “Jesus Christ came into my prison cell last night, and every stone flashed like a ruby.”

— Samuel Rutherford

69. “Show yourself a Christian by suffering without murmuring. In patience possess your soul – they lose nothing who gain Christ.”

— Samuel Rutherford

70. “The devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints.-.”

— Samuel Rutherford

71. “Whenever I find myself in the cellar of affliction, I always look about for the wine.”

— Samuel Rutherford

72. “Welcome, welcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it.”

— Samuel Rutherford

73. “It is no small comfort that God hath written some Scriptures to you which He hath not to others. Read these, and think God is like a friend who sendeth a letter to a whole house and family, but who speaketh in His letter to some by name that are dearest to Him in the house.”

— Samuel Rutherford

74. “Christ and His cross are not separable in this life, howbeit Christ and His cross part at heaven’s door, for there is no house-room for crosses in heaven. One tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble cannot find lodging there.”

— Samuel Rutherford

75. “When the supreme magistrate will not execute the judgment of the Lord, those who made him supreme magistrate, under God, who have under God, sovereighn liberty to dispose of crowns and kingdoms, are to execute the judgment of the Lord, when wicked men make the law of God of none effect.”

— Samuel Rutherford

76. “Our pride must have winter weather to rot it.”

— Samuel Rutherford

77. “Consider, it is impossible that your idol sins and you can go to heaven together; and that those who will not part with these do not indeed love Christ at the bottom, but only in word and show, which will not do the business.”

— Samuel Rutherford

78. “When the race is ended, and the play is either won or lost, and ye are in the utmost circle and border of time, and shall put your foot within the march of eternity, all the good things of your short nightdream shall seem to you like ashes of a blaze of thorns or straw.”

— Samuel Rutherford

79. “I know no sweeter way to heaven, than through free grace and hard trials together, and one of these cannot well want another.”

— Samuel Rutherford

80. “Set not your heart upon the world, since God hath not made it your portion.”

— Samuel Rutherford

81. “Heaven is but a company of noble venturers for Christ. They are not worthy of Him who will not take a blow for the Master’s sake.”

— Samuel Rutherford

82. “We are as near to heaven as we are far from self, and far from the love of a sinful world.”

— Samuel Rutherford

83. “Every man by nature is a freeman born; by nature no man cometh out of the womb under any civil subjection to king, prince, or judge.”

— Samuel Rutherford

84. “The bloom fell off my branches and joy did cast off its flower.”

— Samuel Rutherford

85. “I find my Lord Jesus cometh not in the precise way that I lay wait for Him. He hath a manner of His own. Oh, how high are His ways above my ways.”

— Samuel Rutherford

86. “Millions of hells of sinners cannot come near to exhaust infinite grace.”

— Samuel Rutherford

87. “We would either have a silent, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood, mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ’s cross did not smile on him, his cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.”

— Samuel Rutherford

88. “Those who can take that crabbed tree handsomely upon their back, and fasten it on cannily, shall find it such a burden as wings unto a bird, or sails to a ship.”

— Samuel Rutherford

89. “If contentment were here, heaven were not heaven.”

— Samuel Rutherford

90. “I think it is possible on earth to build a young, new Jerusalem, a little, new heaven of this surpassing love. God, either send me more of this love, or take me quickly over the water, where I may be filled with his love.”

— Samuel Rutherford

91. “It is in some respect greater love in Jesus to sanctify than to justify, for He maketh us most like Himself, in His own essential portraiture and image in sanctifying us.”

— Samuel Rutherford

92. “Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will.”

— Samuel Rutherford

93. “What is warranted by the direction of nature’s light is warranted by the law of nature, and consequently by a divine law; for who can deny the law of nature to be a divine law?”

— Samuel Rutherford

94. “Well’s them who are under crosses, and Christ says to them, “Half Mine.””

— Samuel Rutherford

95. “She is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star, which, going out of your sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere: ye see her not yet, she doth shine in another country.”

— Samuel Rutherford

96. “Christ and His cross together are sweet company, and a blessed couple. My prison is my palace, my losses are rich losses, my pain easy pain, my heavy days are holy and happy days.”

— Samuel Rutherford

97. “Grace tried is better than grace, and more than grace; it is glory in its infancy.”

— Samuel Rutherford

98. “The thorn is one of the most cursed, and angry, and crabbed weeds that the earth yieldeth, and yet out of it springeth the rose, one of the sweetest-smelled flowers, and most delightful to the eye, that the earth hath. Your Lord shall make joy and gladness out of your afflictions; for all His roses have a fragrant smell. Wait for the time when His own holy hand shall hold them to your nose...”

— Samuel Rutherford

99. “Desires going before conversion are not such as can calm a storming conscience.”

— Samuel Rutherford

100. “There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.”

— Samuel Rutherford