First, in your sermons, use your logic, and then your rhetoric; Rhetoric without logic, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with fine expressions when they understand not reason.
John SeldenPride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up dignity. In gluttony there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; 'tis not the eating, and 'tis not the drinking that must be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.
John SeldenMen say they are of the same religion, for quietness' sake; but if the matter were well examined, you would scarce find three anywhere of the same religion on all points.
John SeldenPrayer should be short, without giving God Almighty reasons why he should grant this, or that; he knows best what is good for us.
John SeldenAll things are God's already; we can give him no right, by consecrating any, that he had not before, only we set it apart to his service - just as a gardener brings his master a basket of apricots, and presents them; his lord thanks him, and perhaps gives him something for his pains, and yet the apricots were as much his lord's before as now.
John Selden