The real Christian, or, A treatise of effectual calling wherein the work of God…

Fourth Position. The Spirit in the first stroke doth not usually set home all a mans actual sins, but commonly two or three kinds of sin.

Enough to do his work. By degrees he gives the Soul a view of all his vile pranks: Sins forgotten, buried long ago, out of mind, he makes these revive, come out of their graves, and appear to men; but to have them all come in at the first, without a great support the Soul could not stand, but must utterly sink; it cannot stand (in one sense) by what he doth set home; but if all came in at once, it would be overwhelmed: My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sowest up mine iniquity, saith Job, ch. 14. v. 17. Did Job find it so? Yea, and so do others, they are sealed up, and sown up; and such things are to be brought forth again: So doth the Spirit bring them forth; sins committed twenty, thirty years since, come now as fresh to mind, with all the circumstances, as if yesterday committed; but not all in the first stroke.

Fifth Position. That the Spirit in the first stroke. convinceth all the elect of original sin, I dare not affirm it.