yielded up ourselves unto the power thereof, and were living and
breathing in this air, O! how sweet a life might we have! What a kindly
element would grace be to us! As sin had reigned unto death, even so
grace should reign, through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus
Christ our Lord, Rom. v. 21. Grace reigning within us through
righteousness, would frame and fit our souls for that eternal life that
is insured to all who come once under the commanding, enlivening,
strengthening, confirming, corroborating, and perfecting power of grace.
And seeking grace for grace, and so living, and walking, and spending
upon grace's costs and charges; O how lively, and thriving proficients
might we be! The more we spend of grace (if it could be spent) the
richer should we be in grace. O what an enriching trade must it be to
trade with free grace, where there is no loss, and all is gain, the
stock, and gain, and all is insured; yea, more, labouring in grace's
field would bring us in Isaac's blessing an hundred-fold. But, alas! it
is one thing to talk of grace, but a far other thing to trade with
grace. When we are so great strangers unto the life of grace, through
not breathing in the air of grace, how can the name of the Lord Jesus be
glorified in us, and we in him, according to the grace of our God, and
the Lord Jesus Christ, Thess. i. 12. Consider we, what an affront and
indignity it is unto the Lord dispensator of grace, that we look so lean
and ill-favoured, as if there were not enough of the fattening bread of
the grace of God in our Father's house, or as if the great Steward, who
is full of grace and truth, were unwilling to bestow it upon us, or
grudged us of our allowance, when the fault is in ourselves; we will not
follow the course that wise grace and gracious wisdom hath prescribed;
we will not open our mouth wide, that he might fill us; nor go to him
with our narrowed or closed mouths, that grace might make way for grace,
and widen the mouth for receiving of more grace; but lie by in our
leanness and weakness. And, alas! we love too well to be so. O but grace