An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

They are not of the same condition or qualifications, that God calleth; neither are they brought home in the same manner. This Doctrine hath its great usefulness, as will appear.

But let us consider the various conditions, and then the different manner of their conversion.

First, Some are great and notorious sinners: Others again, are of a more civil and sober life. Some have from their youth up been kept from all gross sin, as Joseph, Daniel, Obadiah, and our Timothy in the Text. Others again have been very foul and scandalous, as Paul, Mary Magdalen, and divers of the Corinthians. Thus God cutteth down sometimes crooked trees, and sometimes straight, and makes his spiritual building of them. God can turn a barren wilderness into a pleasant spring, He can raise up children to Abraham out of stones. God is free in the work of grace, and so takes sometimes a great sinner, and sometimes such as are unspotted in their ways.

First, Some are great and notorious sinners: Others again, are of a more civil and sober life. Some have from their youth up been kept from all gross sinne, as Joseph, Daniel, Obadiah, and our Timothy in the Text. Others again have been very foul and scandalous, as Paul, Mary Magdalen, and divers of the Corinthians. Thus God cutteth down sometimes crooked trees, and sometimes straight, and makes his spiritual building of them. God can turn a barren wilderness into a pleasant spring, He can raise up children to Abraham out of stones. God is free in the work of grace, and so takes sometimes a great sinner, and sometimes such as are unspotted in their wayes.