settled, they are prepared for helping others, and are great comforts
unto them. Their great sins give great encouragement to the devil to
assault them; and by these temptations Christ takes advantage to make
them the more helpful to the churches.

The biggest sinner, when he is converted, and comes into the church,
says to them all, by his very coming in, Behold me, all you that are
men and women of a low and timorous spirit, you whose hearts are
narrow, for that you never had the advantage to know, because your
sins are few, the largeness of the grace of God. Behold, I say, in
me, the exceeding riches of his grace! I am a pattern set forth
before your faces, on whom you may look and take heart. This, I say,
the great sinner can say, to the exceeding comfort of all the rest.

Wherefore, as I have hinted before, when God intends to stock a place
with saints, and to make that place excellently to flourish with the
riches of his grace, he usually begins with the conversion of some of
the most notorious thereabouts, and lays them as an example to allure
others, and to build up when they are converted.

It was Paul that must go to the Gentiles, because Paul was the most
outrageous of all the apostles, in the time of his unregeneracy.
Yea, Peter must be he, that after his horrible fall, was thought
fittest, when recovered again, to comfort and strengthen his
brethren. See Luke xxii. 31, 32.

Some must be pillars in God's house; and if they be pillars of cedar,
they must stand while they are stout and sturdy sticks in the forest,
before they are cut down, and planted or placed there.