The path of the scissors!

(Lewis Bayly, "The Practice of Piety" 1611)

"For who makes you to differ from another? And what do you have, that you did not receive?" 1 Corinthians 4:7

We are all . . .
  fashioned from the same mold,
  hewed out of the same rock,
  made as it were, of the same cloth
 - the path of the scissors making the only difference between one person and another. It is therefore only the sovereign love and grace of God, which makes all the difference between us.

No believer should ever insolently demean the unsaved, who, like miserable drudges, allow their corrupt nature to carry them to any villainy, lust, or lewd course; and who damn themselves in the devil's slavery!

Alas! our hearts should bleed within us at beholding so many around us imbruing their cruel hands in the blood of their own souls - by their ignorance, worldliness, drunkenness, lust, unbelief and scoffing at true religion.

What heart, except it be hewed out of the hardest rock, or has sucked the bosom of merciless tigers; but would yearn and weep to see a man made of the same mold with himself, willfully, as it were, against a thousand warnings, and God's many compassionate invitations - cast himself, body and soul, into the endless, easeless, and remediless miseries of Hell? We should the rather pity and pray for such a one who follows the bent of his own evil heart - to his own everlasting perdition!

It is only the sovereign mercy, goodness, and grace of God which has made the difference between them and us. If God should give us over to the unbridled current of our corrupt nature - we might be worse than them, and run riot in this world of wickedness. If the same God visits them in mercy - they may become every way as godly, or better than us!

"By the grace of God I am what I am!" 1 Corinthians 15:10