The graces of the Spirit work for good. Grace is to the soul, as light to the eye, as health to the body. Grace does to the soul, as a virtuous wife to her husband, “She will do him good all the days of her life.” Prov. 31:12. How incomparably useful are the graces! Faith and fear go hand in hand; faith keeps the heart cheerful, fear keeps the heart serious; faith keeps the heart from sinking in despair, fear keeps it from floating in presumption; all the graces display themselves in their beauty: hope is the helmet, 1 Thess. 5:8. meekness “the ornament,” 1 Pet. 3:4. love “the bond of perfectness,” Col. 3:14. The saints’ graces are weapons to defend them, wings to elevate them, jewels to enrich them, spices to perfume them, stars to adorn them, cordials to refresh them: and does not all this work for good? The graces are our evidences for heaven; is it not good to have our evidences at the hour of death?

 Thomas Watson, A Divine Cordial; The Saint’s Spiritual Delight; The Holy Eucharist; and Other Treatises, The Writings of the Doctrinal Puritans and Divines of the Seventeenth Century (The Religious Tract Society, 1846), 17–18.