The Soul's Conflict with Itself

But to return to the drawing out of our trust by waiting. Our estate in this world is still to wait, and happy it is that we have so great things to wait for; but our comfort is, that we have not only a furniture of graces, one ¹strengthening another as stones in an arch, but likewise GOD vouchsafeth some drops of the sweetness of the ⟨p. 549⟩things we wait for, both to increase our desire of those good things, as likewise to enable us more comfortably to wait for them. And though we should die waiting, only cleaving to the promise with little or no taste of the good promised; yet this might comfort us, that there is a life to come, that is a life of sight and sense, and not only of taste but of fullness, and that for evermore. ²Our condition here is to live by faith and not by sight, only to make our living by faith more lively, it pleaseth God when he sees fit, to increase our earnest of that we look for. Even here God waits to be gracious to those that wait for him. And in heaven Christ ³waits for us, we art part of his fullness; ⁴it is part of his joy that we shall be where he is, he will not therefore be long without us. The blessed Angels and Saints in heaven wait for us. Therefore let us be content as strangers, to wait a while till we come home, and then we shall be for ever with the Lord; there is our eternal rest, where we shall enjoy both our God and our selves in