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AND by this it is clearly shown that God's grace and mercy always work
in us what is good, and that when it forsakes us, the efforts of the worker
are useless, and that however earnestly a man may strive, he cannot regain
his former condition without His help, and that this saying is constantly
fulfilled in our case: that it is "not of him that willeth or runneth but
of God which hath mercy." And this grace on the other hand sometimes
does not refuse to visit with that holy inspiration of which you spoke, and
with an abundance of spiritual thoughts, even the careless and indifferent;
but inspires the unworthy, arouses the slumberers, and enlightens those who
are blinded by ignorance, and mercifully reproves us and chastens us,
shedding itself abroad in our hearts, that thus we may be stirred by the
compunction which He excites, and impelled to rise from the sleep of sloth.
Lastly we are often filled by His sudden visitation with sweet odours,
beyond the power of human composition--so that the soul is ravished with
these delights, and caught up, as it were, into an ecstasy of spirit, and
becomes oblivious of the fact that it is still in the flesh.
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