“I shall never cease to be grateful to . . . Richard Sibbes who was balm to my soul at a period of my life when I was overworked and badly overtired, and therefore subject in an unusual manner to the onslaughts of the devil. . . . I found at that time that Richard Sibbes, who was known in London in the early seventeenth century as ‘The Heavenly Doctor Sibbes” was an unfailing remedy . . . The Bruised Reed . . . quietened, soothed, comforted, encouraged, and healed me.”
– Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“Sibbes never wastes the student’s time; he scatters pearls and diamonds with both hands.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
“Of this blest man, let this just praise be given: heaven was in him, before he was in heaven.”
– Izaak Walton (contemporary of Sibbes)
“No man that ever I was acquainted with got so far into my heart or lay so close therein.”
– Zachary Catlin (contemporary of Sibbes)
“His theology is thoroughly orthodox, of course, but it is like the fuel of some great combustion engine, always passing into flame and so being converted into energy thereby to serve God and, even more, to enjoy and relish God with the soul.”
– Maurice Roberts
“No writings in practical theology seem to have been so much read in the mid-seventeenth century among the pious English middle classes as those of Sibbes.”
– David Masson
“Sibbes sermons were the most brilliant and popular of all the utterances of the Puritan church militant.”
– William Haller
“Sibbes concentrated on exploring the love, power, and patience of Christ, and the riches of the promises of God. He was a pioneer in working out the devotional application of the doctrine of God’s covenant of grace.”
– J.I. Packer