The application of redemption

They see and know more than formerly they did, ¹when happily the crooked counsels of others deceived them, and their own carnal reason cozened and deluded their own souls that they mis-judged the men and their doctrine also. As that they did not speak the truth, or else had some crooked and self-seeking ends in what they spake; As either to gratify other mens humours whom they would please or else to set up their own persons and praise and esteem in the apprehensions of others as singular men and more than of an ordinary frame; and therefore would wind men up to such a high pitch of holiness, and force them to such a singular care to fly the very appearance of all evil, when its more than needs ⟨p. 455⟩and more than God requires, and more than any man can do but now they find by proof and are forced out of their own sense and feeling to acknowledge the truth of what they have spoken, and what they have heard, & themselves also, to be the faithful ambassadors of the Lord Jesus, and therefore […] to be believed and attended in their dispensations and honoured of all. So Paul 2 Cor. 4. 3 We hope we are made manifest unto your consciences Thus the Woman of Samaria when our Saviour came home to the quick and met with the secrets of her heart, she then fell from her taunting and slighting of our Saviour to admiring of him, Come saith she behold the man that told me all that ever I did, is not be the Christ. John, 4. 29. Look as Nebuchadnezzar said, Dan. 4. last, now I know the God of Daniel is the true God, and now I praise the living God, so when they have been in the fire, and God hath had them upon the anvil, now I know what sin is, now I know what the danger is, now I know what necessity there is to part with sin; when the Patient hath found the relation and direction of the Physician hath proved real it makes him prize and honour his skill and counsel, for ever; and for ever to have his custom, […] the Pythonist was compelled from the power of Pauls administration to confess, these are ²