Ah! sinner, remember this, there is no way on earth effectually to be rid of the guilt, filth, and power of sin, but by believing in a Saviour. It is not resolving, it is not complaining, it is not mourning, but believing, that will make thee divinely victorious over that body of sin that to this day is too strong for thee, and that will certainly be thy ruin, if it be not ruined by a hand of faith.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that true liberation from sin is achieved through faith in a Savior rather than through one's own efforts or regrets.
Thomas Brooks conveys the notion that human efforts like resolution, complaining, or mourning cannot remove sin's hold over a person. Instead, he highlights the importance of placing faith in a Savior, suggesting that this belief is the key to overcoming one's sinful nature and achieving spiritual victory.
In practice
During a religious service, to emphasize the importance of faith over self-help.
Remember this-all the sighing, mourning, sobbing, and complaining in the world, does not so undeniably evidence a man to be humble, as his overlooking his own righteousness, and living really and purely upon the righteousness of Christ.
Grace and glory differ very little; the one is the seed, the other is the flower; grace is glory militant, glory is grace triumphant.
He is the best preacher, not that tickles the ear, but that breaks the heart.
Self is the only oil that makes the chariot-wheels of the hypocrite move in all religious concerns.
Humility can weep over other men's weaknesses, and joy and rejoice over their graces.
A Christian will part with anything rather than his hope; he knows that hope will keep the heart both from aching and breaking, from fainting and sinking; he knows that hope is a beam of God, a spark of glory, and that nothing shall extinguish it till the soul be filled with glory.
Then Morgoth stretching out his long arm towards Dor-lomin cursed Hurin and Morwen and their offspring, saying: 'Behold! The shadow of my thought shall lie upon them wherever they go, and my hate shall pursue them to the ends of the world.
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another.
Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all- disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report.
The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing. It receives but does not keep.
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