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

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.

That he doth convince all [I speak of persons adult] first or last, yea, and that early also, I doubt not of it, but to say he doth it in the very first stroke of Conversion, this I dare not defend. Mr. Shepherd moves the question, ¹Whether the Lord convinceth all the elect at first of the sin of their nature, and shows them their original sin in and about this first stroke of Conviction? He answers, I doubt not of it. Paul would have been alive and a proud Pharisee still, if the Lord had not let him by the Law see this sin, Rom. 7.9. To what he saith after, I readily agree, that he doth first or last, in a lesser or greater measure, &c. but this doth not seem to agree with the former, As to his instance of Paul, because he was so convinced, ergo, All are and must be convinced of it in this first stroke, I am not satisfied in the consequence: yet it may be Paul's persecution was a sin more set home at first; this I grant, if the state of a person be as Paul's was, one that rests in himself, hath good thoughts of his own righteousness, duties, and doings, and upon these bears up himself, then no doubt, if God works upon such a one, in the first stroke, he sets home original sin. It is hard to prove that those Converts in the second of Acts were convinced of their original sin, at that time when they were pricked at their hearts: the sin that Peter charged them with, was their crucifying of Jesus, who was both Lord and Christ, ver. 36. and upon this they were pricked in their hearts, ver. 37. That the Jailer,