This flesh can never do; it may affect stoical insensibility, but faith, while it increases our feeling, alone gives us to triumph.
In hoping for the glory of God, our boast is direct. It is not so with our tribulations. We should and do boast in them, but it is not immediate. It is the fruit of intelligent apprehension of God's gracious aim in these afflictions.
Tribulation works out endurance. Then endurance sustained in faith works out experience (that is, the proof of what is tested and stands), as this again, from what God is shown to be in gracious, present care, strengthens hope, and this does not put to shame by failure and disappointment, because the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God, who loved us when there was nothing lovable in us. [8]