The application of redemption

It's matter of comfort to such […] are friends and well wishers §2to those burdened and distressed creatures; Mourn for them you should, but yet be comforted with them you ought. For if you desire their good in truth and in earnest, its certain they are now, and never were before in the road of mercy, in ready way, yea the only way to attain favour and everlasting compassions¹ from the hand of the Lord. It's now the day of Gods visitation, the Lord seemed to pass by as a stranger before, as though he cared neither for them, nor the welfare and comfort of their souls, but suffered them to live and dye in their sins not so much as looking after them: behold now is the day of their visitation, wherein the Lord comes to visit the sinner, and to enquire touching the eternal prosperity of the soul, to loosen him from the power of his lusts, and to free him from the prevailing power of those corruptions, that would certainly ruinate his happiness, Yea now the spirit seems to travel upon the soul until the Lord Jesus be formed in him, when as formerly he bore the image of sin and Satan, so the Father of the Prodigal when his heart had been pinched under the pressures and miseries of his baseness brought upon him, and constrained him to take thoughts of forsaking his former course, see what² solace it was to his Father. For this my son was dead but is alive again, he was secure, he is now affected with the sight and sense of his sin, he was hard-hearted and perverse in his way, now he is pliable and yielding to any impression. I speak it the rather because carnal persons conceive that this broken heartedness is a kind of curse, and that which makes men unsuitable to their Places, and unserviceable wholly for any employment; the profane Husband, the unjust Master, the loose Companion, curse the day that ever the Minister came amongst them; the wife was vain and frothy to suit ⟨p. 445⟩[…] folly; but now the former […] is turned into mourning, she grows mopish and melancholy, there is no content in her: The Apprentice that was as the Glove to the Hand, fitted his turn at all times, at all assays, would lye for his humour, cozen for his profit, but now forsooth is grown so tender and conscientious, he dare do nothing, there is no service in him;