"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

" He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool." -Proverbs 28:26 [KJV] We all do so naturally: therefore, we are all natural fools. But, through our blindness, we are ignorant of it; through pride, we will not own it. How many continue in this awful state of folly, ignorance, and pride! Among the many who are made wise unto salvation, how doth this folly of self-confidence cleave to them! Say some, “To be sure, it is the greatest folly for natural men to trust in their own hearts; for they are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: but God hath given me a new heart, a clean heart, and a good heart; and surely I may trust in it .”  This is the natural language of folly; not the judgment of a new creature in Christ. Hear the Lord: “I will give them an heart to know that I am the L ORD ; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto Me with their whole heart” (Jereremiah ch. 24.) So that the new heart, the clean hear...

"After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst ." -John 19:28 [KJV] After this, that is, I conceive, (though I do not presume to mark the very order in which the Lord Jesus uttered His loud cries upon the cross,) after His complaint of desertion: for whether this was the fourth or fifth of the seven last words of the Redeemer, I dare not determine: yet the words themselves were highly important, and significant of great things, in reference to Jesus and His people. Jesus thus cried, That the scriptures might be fulfilled, it is said; for it had been prophesied of Him, that gall was given Him to eat—and, when thirsty, vinegar to drink, Psalm 69:21 . And the soldiers, unconscious of what they did in fulfilling this very prophecy, gave Him sponge dipped in vinegar. But, my soul, was it the thirst of the body thy Jesus complained of? I think not. He had before declared, at His last supper, th...