in my prayers; always pleading that somehow, by God’s will, I may now at last come to you.

Yet there was always the hope that at last the Creation itself would also be set free from the thraldom of decay so as to enjoy the liberty that will attend the glory of the children of God.

And what if God, though resolved to shew his displeasure at last, and to make known his power, yet bore with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?

Lord, they have put your prophets to death, and made waste your altars, and now I am the last, and they are searching for me to take away my life.

I do not want you, believers, to be unaware of this mystery [God’s previously hidden plan]—so that you will not be wise in your own opinion—that a partial hardening has [temporarily] happened to Israel [to last] until the full number of the Gentiles has come in;