1770s, Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)
Source: Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"
“Never dream of forcing men into the ways of God. Think yourself, and let think.”
Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"
Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)
Context: Beware you are not a fiery, persecuting enthusiast. Do not imagine that God has called you (just contrary to the spirit of Him you style your Master) to destroy men’s lives, and not to save them. Never dream of forcing men into the ways of God. Think yourself, and let think. Use no constraint in matters of religion. Even those who are farthest out of the way never compel to come in by any other means than reason, truth, and love.
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Do you have more details about the quote "Never dream of forcing men into the ways of God. Think yourself, and let think." by John Wesley?
John Wesley 77
Christian theologian 1703–1791Related quotes
V. 440–442 (tr. Samuel Butler).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: Don't let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America "you are too arrogant, and if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God. Men will beat their swords into plowshafts and their spears into pruning hooks, and nations shall not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore." I don't know about you, I ain't going to study war anymore.
“I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time.”
H.P. Lovecraft
(1890–1937) American author
Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 312
Non-Fiction, Letters
Context: I am no less impressed than you by the magnitude, complexity and essential beauty of the cosmos; nor am I less sensible to the veil which separates us from the grasping of ultimate reality. The great difference between us in these matters is that you like to colour your philosophical-scientific speculations with your aesthetic feelings; whilst I feel a great cleavage betwixt emotion and perceptive analysis, and never try to mix the two. Emotionally I stand breathless at the awe and loveliness and mystery of space with its ordered suns and worlds. In that mood I endorse religion, and people the fields and streams and groves with the Grecian deities and local spirits of old—for at heart I am a pantheistic pagan of the old tradition which Christianity has never reached. But when I start thinking I throw off emotion as excess baggage, and settle down to the prosaic and exact task of seeing simply what is, or probably is, and what isn't, or probably isn't. I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time.
“God thinks in the geniuses, dreams in the poets, and sleeps in the other people.”
Peter Altenberg
(1859–1919) Austrian writer and poet
Gott denkt in den Genies, träumt in den Dichtern und schläft in den übrigen Menschen.
Der Nachlass von Peter Altenberg, p. 20
