Backsliding

“The heart of a Christian, like the moon, commonly suffers an eclipse when it is at the full, and that by the interposition of the earth.”

“Two sorts of peace are more to be dreaded than all the troubles in the world, peace with sin, and peace in sin.”

“There is a great difference between a sheep which falls into the mire and a swine which delights to wallow in it.”

“He who has no love in his heart to God, you may set him down for an apostate.”

“Slavish fear brings not back the backslider to God, but the sweet wooings of love allure him to Jesus' bosom.”

“None sink so far into hell as those that come nearest heaven, because they fall from the greatest height.”

“Some utterly forsake the assemblies; some come with great indifferency,—using their liberty, off and on, at their pleasure.”

“To leave God and return to sin is tacitly to asperse the Deity.”

“So also will the warmth of prosperity cause one to shed the graces he held tightly in times of adversity.”

“To return to sin gives the devil more power over a man that ever.”

“Our hearts, like lute-strings, are changed with every change of weather, with every appearance of a temptation; scarce one motion of God in a thousand prevails with us for a settled abode.”

“Do not men go backward in religion, as those that shake off the ways of God?”

“They turn from swearing to slandering, from profuseness to covetousness, like a sick man that turns from a tertian ague13 to a quartan.”

“Like epileptics, before they were in a paroxysm, or hot fit of zeal; but now that the cold fit has taken them, they are formal and frozen in piety.”

“I do not see that life and vigour in returning unto God, either in our persons or in our church relation, as I could desire.”

“The field of the sluggard is overgrown with thistles. you grow barren, raw, sapless, and lose the choiceness of your spirits, and the savouriness of your thoughts, when you are seldom with God.”

“Sometimes Satan makes use of a good man's bad ways, to spoil and harden the heart of them that come after.”

“If a town or castle hath cost blood, the blood of many soldiers to win it, and he to whom it is betrusted should yield it up, how heinous would the action be!”

“It reproves those whose turning is as good as no turning, who expel one devil and welcome another.”

“Some who are washing themselves in the Thames River go a little way at first, and then venture a little further and further, and at length, they are over their heads and ears.”

“But he alone knows the innumerable backsliding, and the great perverseness of my heart.”

“If Christ has something against this church for leaving her first love, then no doubt He has something against the Church of England and against us at this day.”

“You will say, you are not able to come away; but if you were willing, you would not be allowed to remain in your captive state.”

“But all this time you may be slowly drifting downward into hell.”

“Another form of "estranging ourselves, and aposta tizing from God" is to give up real Christianity and become a member of a false religion or cult.”

“It is to the point of departure and of variance that God brings the sinner back.”