The path of the scissors!

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 an another.
It is therefore only the free 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 breasts 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 free 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