The door of salvation opened by the key of regeneration

Fourthly, The old sinner is not easily converted, but (like an old maid, when married) hath harder labour then ordinary. The longer the ground of mans heart lieth fallow, bringing forth nothing but weeds, unploughed up by repentance, the harder it ⟨p. 126⟩groweth, and with the more difficulty is broken up. 'Twas hard to cast out the Devil who had for a long time possessed the man; the Apostles could not do it, and when Christ himself did it, 'twas not without much renting and raging, Mark 9.21, 26.

Common experience telleth us, that a ship the longer it leaketh, the harder it is to be emptied. An house the longer it goeth to ruin, the worse to repair; a nail the farther it is driven in, the harder to get out; Christ raised two to life in the Gospel (besides others) one was a maid newly dead, Luk. 8.54. to whom Christ spake but little, Maid, I say unto thee arise, and the work was quickly done; the other was one who had been dead so long till he stunk; now mark what work there was to enliven him, Joh. 11.41. Christ weepeth, groaneth in spirit, prayeth to his Father, then turneth to Lazarus, and crieth with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth. (I only allude to it) When the sinner hath been but few years dead in sin, a low voice of Christ can raise him up, but when a man hath been not four days, but forty or fifty years rotting in the grave of corruption that he stinks in the nostrils of others, it must be a loud voice indeed which must quicken him. How hard is it to turn the old swine, the old drunkard, to temperance; and the old goat, the old adulterer to chastity! though they be so old that their ⟨p. 127⟩bodies cannot act them, yet their hellish hearts affect them; when they have nothing left but the dog-days of their age, their bodies full of sores, yet their souls are fuller of sins.