"The grace thou hast will soon be less, if thou addest not more to it"
About this Quote
Grace, for Gurnall, is not a medal you pin on and keep; it is more like a fire you either feed or watch dim. The line is a Puritan warning disguised as spiritual arithmetic: whatever holiness you think you possess is already on the clock. If you are not actively adding, you are functionally subtracting. That’s the intent - to kill complacency. Not dramatic backsliding, not scandal, but the quieter sin of coasting.
The subtext is psychologically shrewd. It assumes the self is porous: habits decay, attention wanders, temptations don’t take weekends off. In that world, “having” grace can’t be separated from practicing it. Gurnall also smuggles in an anxiety that powered much 17th-century English Protestantism: salvation is a lived struggle, and signs of spiritual life must be continually renewed. The sentence pushes readers into disciplined action - prayer, repentance, vigilance - not as self-improvement but as proof of being spiritually awake.
Context matters. Gurnall is best known for The Christian in Complete Armour, a long meditation on spiritual warfare. This aphorism fits that martial theology: grace is armor that rusts if you stop maintaining it. It works because it frames faith as dynamic rather than decorative, and because it makes decline feel normal, even inevitable, unless you resist it. The threat isn’t God’s stinginess; it’s the slow leak in the human soul.
The subtext is psychologically shrewd. It assumes the self is porous: habits decay, attention wanders, temptations don’t take weekends off. In that world, “having” grace can’t be separated from practicing it. Gurnall also smuggles in an anxiety that powered much 17th-century English Protestantism: salvation is a lived struggle, and signs of spiritual life must be continually renewed. The sentence pushes readers into disciplined action - prayer, repentance, vigilance - not as self-improvement but as proof of being spiritually awake.
Context matters. Gurnall is best known for The Christian in Complete Armour, a long meditation on spiritual warfare. This aphorism fits that martial theology: grace is armor that rusts if you stop maintaining it. It works because it frames faith as dynamic rather than decorative, and because it makes decline feel normal, even inevitable, unless you resist it. The threat isn’t God’s stinginess; it’s the slow leak in the human soul.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|---|
| Source | William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armor (17th century). Line attributed to Gurnall in his devotional exposition on Ephesians; exact edition and page vary by printing. |
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