Beloved, it is a great thing to stand in near relations to God; and then it is a good thing to plead by them with God, for so much as nearer relations have strongest force with all. The servant can do more than a stranger, and the child than a servant, and the wife than a child.
Secret sins are more dangerous to the person in some respects than open sins. For a man doth, by his art of sinning, deprive himself of the help of his sinfulness. Like him who will carry his wound covered, or who bleeds inwardly, help comes not in because the danger is not descried or known. If a man’s sin breaks out there is a minister at hand, a friend near, and others to reprove, to warn or direct; but when he is the artificer of his lusts, he bars himself of all public remedy.
A renewed heart is a very Heaven in our little world, and faith is the only Sun in that Heaven. The sinner never comes to be precious, till he comes to be pious, and the value of that piety still advanceth according to the quanity of true faith, as the ring is the more considerable with the diamond. I cannot concieve of a more compendious way for any Christians full and constant revenues, than this, to get faith, and still to use it; the sum or product of which would be this: Grace and glory, Heaven and earth are ours.
Beloved, the main battle of a Christian is not in the open field. His quarrels are mostly within and his enemies are in his own breast. When he has re-formed an ill life, yet it shall cost him infinitely much more to reform an ill heart. He may receive so much power from grace at the beginning, as in a short time, to draw off from most of the former gross acts of sinning, but it will be a work all of his days to get a thorough conquest of secret corruptions.
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