Though Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, after having “abolished death,” is declared by Paul to have “brought life and immortality to light,” shining upon us “through the gospel,”[600] whence also in believing we are said to have “passed from death unto life,”[601] being “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God,”[602] who “hath made us sit together in heavenly places” with his only begotten Son,[603] that nothing may be wanting to our complete felicity,—yet, lest we should find it grievous to be still exercised with a severe warfare, as though we derived no benefit from the victory gained by Christ, we must remember what is stated in another place concerning the nature of hope. For “since we hope for that we see not,”[604] and, according to another text, “faith is the evidence of things not seen;”[605] as long as we are confined in the prison of the flesh, “we are absent from the Lord.”[606] Wherefore the same apostle says, “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God;” and “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”[607] This, then, is our condition, “that we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world, looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”[608] Here we have need of more than common patience, lest, being wearied, we pursue a retrograde course, or desert the station assigned us. All that has hitherto been stated, therefore, concerning our salvation, requires minds elevated towards heaven, that, according to the suggestion of Peter, we may love Christ, whom we have not seen, and, believing in him, may “rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory,” till we receive “the end of our faith.”[609] For which reason, Paul represents the faith and hope of believers as having respect to “the hope that is laid up in heaven.”[610] When we are thus looking towards heaven, with our eyes fixed upon Christ, and nothing detains them on earth from carrying us forward to the promised blessedness, we realize the fulfilment of that declaration, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”[611] Hence it is, that faith is so scarce in the world; because to our sluggishness nothing is more difficult than to ascend through innumerable obstacles, “pressing toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling.”[612] To the accumulation of miseries which generally oppress us, are added the mockeries of the profane, with which our simplicity is assailed; while voluntarily renouncing the allurements of present advantage or pleasure, we seem to pursue happiness, which is concealed from our view, like a shadow that continually eludes our grasp. In a word, above and below, before and behind, we are beset by violent temptations, which our minds would long ago have been incapable of sustaining, if they had not been