A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude

sometimes these terrors fall on a strong body as best able to bear it, sometimes on a weak, the Devil taking advantage of the weakness of the body to raise disturbances in the mind: Many times in hot and fiery natures their changes are sudden, and carried on in an extreme way; whereas soft natures, whose motions are slower, are gently and by degrees surprised, they take impressions of grace insensibly. Thus you see no certain Rules can be given; only in the general we may observe, That this different dispensation maketh the work of God in calling more or less sensible: those that are brought in by the violent way and roughly, must needs be sensible of that omnipotent pull by which their hearts are divorced from their corruptions, and can discourse of the time, the means, and the manner, and all the circumstances of their calling with exactness; as Paul, 2 Cor. 12. 2. I knew a man in Christ fourteen years ago, &c. Now every one cannot deliver a formal story, nor tell you the exact method and successive operations of grace in conversion. 5. Though there be a different dispensation used in calling, yet there is enough to distinguish the uncalled from the called; Partly because though Gods call be not discerned in the acts of it, yet it may be discerned in the effects of it: Conversion is evident, if not in feeling, yet in fruit: Many works of Nature are for the convoy of them insensible, but the effects appear: Eccles. 11. 5. We know not the ⟨p. 19⟩way of the spirit, nor how the bones grow in the womb; We know not the manner, point of time, but yet the birth followeth: They are not Christs that neither know how they are called, nor can give any proof that they are called. The blind man, Joh. 9. when they asked him, How did he come to open thine eyes? answered, How he did it I cannot tell; but this one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, I n•w see: Early or late the Soul will give this testimony, How I got him I cannot tell, but I am glad I find he is here. Partly because where conversion and calling is carried on more tacitly or silently, there will be something felt and found in them; there is at least an anxiousness about their everlasting estate: Every Soul doth not walk in the region of the shadow of death; but every Soul first or last is brought to What shall I do?