For the soul that shall come to heaven is so precious to God, and the place itself so glorious, that the goodness of God never allows the soul which will come there to sin without giving it a reward for suffering that sin. The sin suffered is made known without end, and the soul is blissfully restored by exceeding glories. In this sight my understanding was lifted up into heaven, and there God suggested to my mind David and others without number in the Old Law. In the New Law he brought to my mind first how Mary Magdalene, Peter, Paul, Thomas of India, Jude, Saint John of Beverley and others, also without number, are known in the Church on earth with their sins, and how these sins are no shame to them but have been transformed to their glory. By this honour, our courteous Lord shows for them here, in part, something similar to what is done for them in fullness there, for there the token of sin is transformed into glory.
Grace is a glorious property, which belongs to the royal lordship in the same love.
Mercy brings about preserving, suffering, bringing to life and helping, and all these come from the tenderness of love. Grace brings about raising and rewarding, endlessly surpassing what our loving and our bitter labour deserve, as it spreads abroad and shows the noble, abundant largess of God's royal lordship in his marvellous courtesy. This comes from the abundance of love. Grace transforms our failings full of dread into abundant, endless comfort our failings full of shame into a noble, glorious rising our dying full of sorrow into holy, blissful life. . And that shall be a property of blessed love, that we shall know in God, which we might never have known without first experiencing woe.