The difference is great in our natural life, in some persons
especially; that they who in infancy were so feeble, and wrapped up as
others in swaddling clothes, yet, afterwards come to excel in wisdom
and in the knowledge of sciences, or to be commanders of great armies,
or to be kings: but the distance is far greater and more admirable,
betwixt the small beginnings of grace, and our after perfection, that
fulness of knowledge that we look for, and that crown of immortality
which all they are born to who are born of God.
But as in the faces or actions of some children, characters and
presages of their after-greatness have appeared (as a singular beauty
in Moses's face, as they write of him, and as Cyrus was made king
among the shepherds' children with whom he was brought up, &c.) so
also, certainly, in these children of God, there be some characters
and evidences that they are born for Heaven by their new birth. That
holiness and meekness, that patience and faith which shine in the
actions and sufferings of the saints, are characters of their Father's
image, and show their high original, and foretell their glory to come;
such a glory as doth not only surpass the world's thoughts, but the
thoughts of the children of God themselves. 1 John iii. 2.