and fulness of the grace of God. There is no fear of excess or
surfeiting here. Grace makes no man proud, no man wanton, no man
haughty, no man careless or negligent as to his duty that is
incumbent upon him, towards either God or man. No; grace keeps a man
low in his own eyes, humble, self-denying, penitent, watchful,
savory in good things, charitable: and makes him kindly affectioned
to the brethren, pitiful and courteous to all men.

True, there are men in the world that abuse the grace of God, as
some are said to turn it into wantonness and into lasciviousness.
But this is not because grace has any such tendency, but because
such men are themselves empty of grace, and have only done as death
and hell have done with wisdom, "heard the fame thereof with their
ears."

Some receive the rain of God and the droppings of his clouds,
because they continually sit under the means of grace. But alas,
they receive it as stones receive showers, or as dunghills receive
the rain: they either abide as hard as stones still, or else return
nothing to heaven for his mercy, hut as dunghills do, a company of
stinking fumes.

To slight grace, to do despite to the Spirit of grace, to prefer our
own works, thus derogating from grace---what is it but to contemn
God? to contemn him when he is on the throne, when he is on the
throne of his glory? I say again, it is to spit in his face, even
then when he commands thee to how before him, to be subject unto
him, and to glorify the grace of his glory, that proceeds from the
throne of his glory. If men in old time were damned because they
glorified him not as God, shall not they be more than damned, if