Patience.  “And he stayed yet other seven days.”  This staying shows us that lie exercised patience, waiting God’s leisure till the flood should be taken away.  This grace, therefore, has yet seven days’ work to do, before he obtained any further testimony that the waters were decreasing.  O this staying work is hard work.  Alas, sometimes patience is accompanied with so much heat and feverishness, that every hour seems seven until the end of the trial, and the blessing promised be possessed by the waiting soul.  It may be, Noah might not be altogether herein a stranger.  I am sure the psalmist was not, in that he often under affliction cries, But how long, O Lord; for ever?  Make haste.  O Lord, how long?

Love.

Love is the very quintessence of all the graces of the gospel.

Fear.

It seems to me as if this grace of fear was the darling grace, the grace that God sets his heart upon at the highest rate.  As it were, he embraces and lays in his bosom the man that hath and grows strong in this grace of the fear of God.

This grace of fear is the softest and most tender of God’s honor of all the graces.  It is that tender, sensible, and trembling grace, that keepeth the soul upon its continual watch.  To keep a good watch is, you know, a wonderful safety to a place that is in continual danger because of the enemy.  Why, this is the grace that setteth the watch, and that keepeth the watchman awake.

A man cannot watch as he should, if he be destitute of fear:  let him be confident, and he sleeps; he unadvisedly lets into the garrison those that should not come there.

This fear of the Lord is the pulse of the soul; and as some pulses heat stronger, some weaker, so is this grace of fear in the soul.  They that beat best are a sign of best life; but they that beat worst, show that life is present.  As long as the pulse beats, we count not that the man is dead, though weak; and this fear, where it is, preserves to everlasting life.  Pulses there are also that are intermitting; to wit, such as have their times of beating for a little, a little time to stop, and beat again:  true, these are dangerous pulses, which, nevertheless, are a sign of life.  This fear of God also is sometimes like this intermitting pulse; there are times when it forbears to work, and then it works again.  David had an intermitting pulse; Peter had an intermitting pulse, as also many other of the saints of God.  I call that an intermitting pulse, with reference to the fear we speak of, when there is some obstruction by the workings of corruption in the soul:  I say, some obstruction from and hinderance of the continual motion of this fear of God; yet none of these—­though they are various, and some of them signs of weakness—­are signs of death, but life.  “I will put my fear in their heart, and they shall not depart from me.”

Where the fear of the Lord and sin are, it will be with the soul as it was with Israel when Amri and Tibni strove to reign among them both at once.  One of them must be put to death, they cannot live together.  Sin must down, for the fear of the Lord begetteth in the soul a hatred against it, an abhorrence of it; therefore sin must die, that is, as to the affections and lusts of it.