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Quotes (666)

Puritans We cannot prescribe how God should be glorified. . . . How have men fooled themselves and dishonored God in the matter of worship! They invent and prescribe forms and modes, when they have no ground to believe that He will accept them. . . . We must not determine these things ourselves, as to how, when, where, whom we please, for this would dishonor rather than credit the cause of God, because this matter wholly depends upon His pleasure. Now anything of our will would . . . subtract from that divine symmetry and concord which encompasses the wisdom, holiness, power, and sovereign grace of God. And we might as well teach Him how He should govern the world, as how He should dispose of us. . . . God is not glorified but in His own way.

– Dr. John Singleton
Died – 1706

5 thoughts on “Quotes (666)”

  1. This is so true! Too often we try to tell God how to do things and tell each other how He will be glorified! If it doesn’t match up with Scripture then we are wrong!

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  2. Hmmmm. I need reminding that Driscoll is not a new problem. Man has always fallen into doing things his own way – whether it’s Abram pleading with God to use Ismael or Peter’s attempt to prevent Christ from His mission. Yet all of these – and modern examples as well – reveal to us that sin is sin and none are exempt and we CANNOT blithely accept it, even it comes in a hip and cool presentation.

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  4. Dear Shonn:

    John Singleton was a puritan of which I can find very little about him on the internet (hence the absence of the dates of his birth and death under his quote).

    As for the source, I got it from the book Puritan Daily Devotional Chronicles. A book I highly recommend in a world full of sappy, sugary devotionals that leave readers no better off (and maybe even worse off) for having read them.

    – The Pilgrim

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  5. Shonn and The Pilgrim,

    Here is some information I found on Dr. John Singleton.

    Dr. John Singleton was a student in the University of Oxford; from whence, after he had been there eight years, he was turned out by the commissioners in 1660. He then went to Holland, and studied physic, but never practised it any farther than to give his advice to particular friends. His settlements were various. Residing some time with Lady Scott in Hertfordshire, he preached then to some Dissenters at Hertford. He was afterward pastor to a congregation in London. When the meetings were generally suppressed, he went into Warwickshire, and lived with his wife’s brother, Dr. Timothy Gibbons, a physician. Upon King James giving liberty, he preached first at Stretton, a small hamlet, eight miles from Coventry, and then became pastor to the Independent congregation in that city. From whence he was again called to London, to succeed Mr. T. Cole.—Palmer’s Nonconformists’ Memorial, vol i., p. 170. There is a sermon of Dr. Singleton’s in the Morning Exercises.

    And another site states this:

    John Singleton, pastor at Stretton-under-Fosse, who preached in Coventry from 1688 onwards, (fn. 52) succeeded Bunn there later in 1690 but moved to London in 1698.

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