The application of redemption

Through Meditation of sins applied, is a special ¹means to break the heart of a sinner.

1. 1Doct.

As men that are stoned and pressed to death, while the stones are few that are cast, and the weight not great, may be they are troubled and wounded in some measure but their bones are not broken nor yet their lives hazarded, but while they still continue flinging and adding to the number and weight, their bones break and their lives fail under the overbearing pressure that is put upon them. A serious thought and right apprehension and application of a sin, toucheth and troubleth the sinner; but daily meditation flings in one terror after another, and follows the soul with fresh consideration of yet more sin, and yet more evil, and that more heinous and yet more dangerous beyond all pprehension and imagination; so that a sinner is stoned to death as it were and breaks under the burden of it. Thus the repenting Church Lam. 3. 19. 20. In remembering mine affliction, the wormwood and the gall my soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me, in remembering I remembered, they were daily musing and continually poring and that made them pierce inwardly; look as it is in the body it is so in the soul; meat minced if never […] and digested, it never nourisheth; A potion prepared and given if not retained and kept in the stomach it never purgeth or worketh kindly for cure, So here in the soul, Application carves out a fit potion of truth to the sinner, but Meditation ⟨p. 209⟩is that which digests it and makes good blood of it. Application compounds the potion, a particular reproof which is keen in the working brings it home, but meditation retains it, that so it may work kindly & put forth the […] powerful effect for the loosening of those loathsome lusts; which are like noisome and corrupt humours, which threaten the death and ruin of the soul. This is one thing which is undoubtedly implied in that place by the consent of all interpreters that I know