Satan will be ready to help forward such thoughts as a fit medium to lift thee up , and slacken thy care in duty for the future. Such discoveries do indeed bear witness to the truth of thy grace, but not to the degree and measure of it. The weak child may be, yea, is, oftener in the lap than the strong.

Compare not thyself with those that have less than thyself, but look on those that have far exceeded thee.

Let thy hope of heaven master thy fear of death. Why shouldst thou be afraid to die, who hopest to live by dying!

Truly, hope is the saint's covering, wherein he wraps himself, when he lays his body down to sleep in the grave: "My flesh," saith David, "shall rest in hope."

Cease to pray and thou will begin to sin. Prayer is not only a means to prevail for mercy but also to prevent sin.

We live by faith, and faith lives by exercise.

God, to prevent all escape, hath sown the seeds of death in our very constitution and nature, so that we can as soon run from ourselves, as run from death. We need no feller to come with a hand of violence and hew us down; there is in the tree a worm, which grows out of its own substance, that will destroy it; so in us, those infirmities of nature that will bring us down to the dust.