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

I went willingly; in my discourse with him he told me, that several times (not once) as he hath been going through the fields to see persons, he hath heard one call him by his Surname, and doubled his call, bidding him, Make haste, make haste, time is short: he could see no body, when he looked who it should be that spake; this did so affect him, as it troubled him: he told me, oftentimes when he was amongst his Companions, that he could not go on so freely in his lewd practises, but I wish I could say it had wrought to Conversion: his time was but short indeed, for he was cut off in the prime of his years, within a very few years after he told me of it.

I went willingly; in my discourse with him he told me, that several times (not once) as he hath been going through the fields to see persons, he hath heard one call him by his Sirname, and doubled his call, bidding him, Make haste, make haste, time is short: he could see no body, when he looked who it should be that spake; this did so affect him, as it troubled him: he told me, oftentimes when he was amongst his Companions, that he could not go on so freely in his lewd practises, but I wish I could say it had wrought to Conversion: his time was but short indeed, for he was cut off in the prime of his years, within a very few years after he told me of it.

Concerning these fears and sorrows, which men of the world, strangers to Conversion, call, melancholy, madness, and I know not what, send them to the Physicians, and Apothecaries shop for cure, I shall not insist upon them; what other Divines have at large written about the clearness, ⟨p. 75⟩greatness, permanency of these fears and sorrows, is well known; and to some so well known, that it hath caused great fears in them that their Conversion was never sound, because they have not experienced those great and permanent fears and sorrows, they preach and write of. Having spoken to Preparations more largely in my first Chapter, (to which I refer the Reader) I shall add but a few Positions here, and so come to the resolution of one Question about them, which I know those who have been troubled about these preparatory legal works, will be willing to read.