That God's Grace May Be All

Isaac Ambrose, The Christian Warrior, pp. 140-141:

The Christian Warrior's Duty

1. Trust nothing in yourself, for all is of grace. Whatsoever good you have done or however holy your life has been, it was not of yourself but of the free gift and grace of God in Christ Jesus. What have we that we have not received; and, if we have received it, why do we glory as if we have not received it?

It is related of Mr. [John] Knox that, the night before his death, he slept some hours with great unquietness, often sighing and groaning. When he awoke, the bystanders asked him why he mourned so heavily. He answered, "In my lifetime, I have been assaulted with temptations from Satan, and he has often cast my sins in my teeth, to drive me to despair; yet God gave me strength to overcome all his temptations. But now the subtle serpent takes another course, and seeks to persuade me that all my labors in the ministry, and my fidelity in that service, have merited heaven and immortality. But blessed be God who has brought to my mind these Scriptures: "What hast thou that thou hast not received? Not I, but the grace of God in me, with which he is gone away ashamed, and shall no more return. And now I am sure that the battle is at an end, and that without pain of body or trouble of mind I shall shortly change this mortal and miserable life for a glorious immortality."

Oh, that thus it may be with us, that God's grace may be all, and we nothing. We are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God.