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…

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.

Secondly, There is a great difference sometimes in their constitutions; some are of a more fierce and choleric temper; others again of a more mild, ⟨p. 43⟩and meek temper. Moses, he is said to be the meekest man that was upon the earth: But Elijah seemed to be a man of more fire and passion. Among the Apostles, John discovers himself to be a man of much love, as he was also much beloved; but Peter appeareth to be a man of more zeal, and sometimes inordinate heat, as when he struck off Malchiu his ear. Thus all the godly are not of the same constitution and temperament; some are more passionate choleric; others more mild and temperate, yet God he chooseth of all sorts.