Riches of mercy to men in misery, or, Certain excellent treatises concerning the dignity…

And so spiritual love, it brings under, and eats up, and swallows all other loves: and spiritual fear brings under all other fears. True desire subjugates all other inordinate desires; whereas on the contrary, when grace is not true, you shall have a kind of faith, and a kind of knowledge, and some good purposes and desires, and some fear of God: but these, though they be in the heart, they are not commanding and prevailing objects that bring the heart into subjection, they lie there glowing as a coal in the dark, but they do not overcome the darkness, but still their foolish heart is full of darkness, as the Scripture saith, Rom. 1. So that you must remember, that it ¹so heals these diseases, that yet still it gets the victory over the disease, though it doth not altogether take away the disease: not that it dries up the fountain of these issues, so that they are no more, but the meaning is, that it gets the dominion over them, it masters them, and brings them down, that they have not the prevailing force as formerly; for it is the nature of sincerity that it gets the mastery. Sincerity is of that quality, that though it be the least of all graces in the beginning, yet it grows the strongest of all other. So I say grace heals after that manner; as for example, when a man is recovered out of his sickness, take the least degree of health, this least ²degree hath the victory over the whole disease, it hath overcome it. We say it hath not overcome it fully and totally, yet that little degree of health runs through the whole man, and it over comes the disease, and at length ⟨p. 195⟩grows stronger and stronger. So wheresoever these healing qualities of grace come, they have so much power as to get the mastery over corruption. Though the natural corruptions bias us, and draw us aside, yet I say they are healed. For mark that by the way, there is a great deal of difference between that unevenness and inconstancy that comes from the natural corruption of a man unsanctified, and that that proceeds from the remainder of those corruptions that are left in the soul after saving grace; In the one there is an unevenness of the kind, in the other, the unevennes• of degrees.