Quesnel: Moral Reflections on the Gospels Vol 1

CHAPTER XIII. 207
men improves so much by the others' wickedness, that
they proceed from one degree of grace and piety to
another, until their consummation. These two dif-
ferent effects depend upon the justice and mercy of
God: upon his justice, which permits and punishes
all the evil in the one; upon his mercy, which works
and rewards all the good in the other. Do men
sufficiently apprehend, what it is to be violently
plucked from the earth to which they cleave, to be
bound up like a bundle of tares, and cast into eternal
fire? And yet to this the temporal felicity of the
wicked comes at last. The garner of God is heaven,
it is the bosom of God himself. Thither his elect,
who are his wheat, are carried, after having been
bruised and ground by persecutions in this world, in
order to become his bread in eternity, as he will be
also eternally theirs.
Sect. IV". The Parables of the Mustard Seed, and
Leaven.
" 31. 51 Another parable put he forth unto them,
saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of
mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his
field :"
This parable is a representation of the progress of
the gospel in the world, of the growth of grace in
the soul, and of the establishment of the church,
which is founded upon the humility of a God stoop-
ing to the form of a servant. This humiliation is
the proper mark and character of all his works, ever
since his incarnation, as also that of true piety : and
it is this virtue, which the ministers, and all the sons
of the church, ought to study with the greatest care.