The application of redemption

1 When it recalls things formerly past, sets them §1in present view before our consideration and judgment Meditation sends a mans thoughts afar off, calls over and revives the fresh apprehension of things done long before, marshals them all in rank together, brings to mind such things which were happily quite out of memory, & gone from a man, which might be of great use and special help to […] our condition according to the quality of it; may be Conscience starts the consideration but of one sin, but meditation looks abroad, and brings to hand many of the same, and of the like kind and that many days past and long ago committed, This distemper now sticks upon a man and brings him under the arrest of Conscience and the condemnation thereof. But says meditation let me mind you of such and such sins at such and […] times, in such and such companies, committed and multiplied both more and worse than […] that now appear so […] and so troublesome to you; meditation is as it were the register and remembrancer, that looks over the records of our daily corruptions, and keeps them upon file, and brings them into court and fresh consideration […]. 13. 26. Thou ⟨p. 213⟩makest me to possess the sins of my youth: This makes a man to renew the sins of his youth, makes them fresh in out thoughts, as though new done before our eyes. This Interpreters make the meaning of that place Job. 14. 17. My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity, though God do thus, yet he doth it by this means in the way of his Providence, i. e. by recounting and recalling our corruptions to mind, by serious meditation we sew them all up together, we look back to the linage and pedigree of our lusts, and track the abominations of our lives, step by step, until we come to the very nest where they are hatched and bred, even of our original corruption, and body of death, where they had their first breath and being, links all our distempers together from our infancy to our youth, from youth to riper age, from thence to our declining days. So David, from the vileness of his present lusts is led to the wickedness in which he was warmed, Psal. 51. 5. This was typed out in the old Law by the chewing of the cud; Meditation calls over again those things that were past long before, and not within a mans view and consideration.