of whose improvement or non-improvement they must, when a little love more is over, give an account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
302. This showed me, too, that gifts being alone were dangerous, not in themselves, but because of those evils that attend them that have them—to wit, pride, desire of vain-glory, self~conceit, etc, all. which were easily blown up at the applause and commendation of every unadvised Christian, to the endangering of a poor creature to fall into the condemnation of the devil.
303. I saw therefore that he that hath gifts had need to be let into a sight of the nature of them—into wit, that they come short of making of him to be in a truly saved condition, lest he rest to them, and so fall short of the grace of God.
304. He hath cause also to walk humbly with God, and be little: in his own eyes, and to remember withal that his gifts are not his own, but the church's, and that by them he is made a servant to the church; and he must give at last an account of his stewardship unto the Lord Jesus, and to give a good account will be a blessed thing.
305. Let all men therefore prize a little with the fear of the Lord. Gifts, indeed, are desirable, but yet great grace and small gifts are better than great gifts and no grace. It doth not say the Lord gives gifts and glory, but the Lord gives grace and glory; and blessed is such a one to whom the Lord gives grace, true grace, for that is a certain forerunner of glory.
306. But when Satan perceived that his thus tempting and assaulting of me would not answer his design—to wit to overthrow the ministry, and make it ineffectual as to the ends thereof—then he tried another way, which was to stir up ignorant and malicious to load me with slanders and reproaches. Now, therefore, I may say that what the devil could devise, and his instruments invent, was whirled up and down the country against me, thinking, as I said,
