Puritan Thoughts on Patience

August 28, 2007

Patience to the soul is as bread to the body. . . . we eat bread with all our meats, both for health and relish; bread with flesh, bread with fish, bread with broths and fruits. Such is patience to every virtue; we must hope with patience, and pray in patience, and love with patience, and whatsoever good thing we do, let it be done in patience.  - THOMAS ADAMS

The patient man is merry indeed. . . . The jailers that watch him are but his pages of honor, and his very dungeon but the lower side of the vault of heaven. He kisseth the wheel that must kill him, and thinks the stairs of the scaffold of his martyrdom but so many degrees of his ascent to glory. The tormentors are weary of him, the beholders have pity on him, all men wonder at him; and while he seems below all men, below himself, he is above nature. He hath so overcome himself, that nothing can conquer him.  -THOMAS ADAMS

They who are wicked, although they cannot see the goodness of other virtues, yet can see the goodness of patience, and perceive when they see a patient man and an impatient man both sick of one disease; yet both are not troubled alike, but that he who has most patience has most ease, and he who is most impatient is most tormented, like a fish which strives with the hook.  - HENRY SMITH