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sinful unkindness! Even this sorrow yields him joy. O what then will it be,<br />
when we shall know, and love, and rejoice, and praise in the highest<br />
perfection! Thine with thyself, "What a change was it to be taken from that<br />
state wherein I was born, and in which I was riveted by custom, when<br />
thousands of sins lay against me; and if I had so died, I have been damned<br />
for ever! What an astonishing change, to be justified from all these enormous<br />
crimes, and freed from all these fearful plagues, and made an heir of heaven!<br />
How often, when I have thought of my regeneration, have I cried out, O<br />
blessed day! and blessed be the Lord that ever I saw it! How, then, shall I cry<br />
out in heaven, O blessed eternity! and blessed be the Lord that brought me to<br />
it! Did the angels of God rejoice to see my conversion? surely they will<br />
congratulate my felicity in my salvation. Grace is but a spark raked up in the<br />
ashes, covered with flesh from the sight of the world, and sometimes covered<br />
with corruption from my own sight; but my everlasting glory will not be so<br />
clouded, nor my light be ‘under a bushel, but upon a hill,' even upon mount<br />
Sion, the mount of God."<br />
Once more, compare the joys which thou shalt have above, with those<br />
foretastes of it which the Spirit hath given thee here. Hath not God<br />
sometimes revealed himself extraordinarily to thy soul, and let a drop of<br />
glory fall upon it? Hast thou not been ready to say, "O that it might be thus<br />
with my soul continually!" Didst thou never cry out with the martyr, after thy<br />
long and mournful expectations, "He is come! he is come!" Didst thou never,<br />
under a lively sermon of heaven, or in thy retired contemplations on that<br />
blessed state, perceive thy drooping spirits revive, and thy dejected heart lift<br />
up thy head, and the light of heaven dawn on thy soul? Think with thyself,<br />
"What is this earnest to the full inheritance? Alas, all this light, that so<br />
amazeth and rejoiceth me, is but a candle lighted from heaven to lead me<br />
thither through this world of darkness! If some godly men have been<br />
overwhelmed with joy till they have cried out, ‘Hold, Lord, stay thy hand; I<br />
can bear no more!' what then will be my joys in heaven, when my soul shall<br />
be so capable of seeing and enjoying God, that though the light be ten<br />
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