The excellency of holy courage in evil times by Jeremiah Burroughs

Reason. 2.

The second Reason is in regard of the differences of their presentations of a truth, though when we are indisposed let the truths come never so powerfully it is all one, but if the heart be fit in any reasonable manner to receive a truth, there may be a great deal of difference in the manner of the representation of a truth, sometimes the truth comes more clearly, and with more evidences, more particularly, more powerfully: Sometimes it comes with greater evidence of the spirit of God then at other times, there is not only a little gloss of a truth of God, but the shine of it, that a man cannot shut his eyes against it: sometime the truth comes more particularly to the heart, God doth not only present a truth in the general to him that this is a duty Christians must do: but it shall come to the particular frame of the heart, and shall meet with every objection, and he shall find the secrets of his thoughts to be discovered and answered, so that the truth shall come like a key that is fitted to a lock; if you bring a key to the lock though it may be like the right key and as strong a key as the right is, yet if it be not indeed the right, if it miss but in one ward of the lock, never so little, you may spoil both the lock and the key, but you cannot open the lock though you have never so much strength, but come with a key suited to that lock and do but turn it, and it opens presently: So when it pleaseth God to come with his truth to our souls, we were backward and we heard many truths, but they did not meet with all our objections, and therefore it was stopped with some one or other, but afterward it pleased God so to dispose of things, and to bring the truth so fully to the heart, as it meets with every objection, and then the heart quietly yields, and therefore it is said God opened Lydias heart, Paul preached to others and had much wringing with them and could not prevail, ⟨p. 104⟩but Saint Paul came to Lydia, and he prevailed presently, because God did so dispose of Lydias heart as it was fitted to the truth Saint Paul spoke of: as many when they come to hear the word, cannot but say the truth of God hath met with me in every particular, and I have no secret object on in my heart, but it is answered, sometimes the truth comes more powerfully then at other times: as in