Thus you have the story. If I come short in any circumstance, I beg
pardon of those that can correct me. It is three or four and twenty
years since I saw the book: yet I have, as far as my memory will
admit, given you the relation of the matter. However Luke, as you
see, doth here present you with the substance of the whole.

Alas! Christ Jesus has but little thanks for the saving of little
sinners. "To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little." He
gets not water for his feet, by his saving of such sinners. There
are abundance of dry-eyed Christians in the world, and abundance of
dry-eyed duties too; duties that never were wetted with the tears of
contrition and repentance, nor ever sweetened with the great sinner's
box of ointment. And the reason is, such sinners have not great sins
to be saved from; or if they have, they look upon them in the
diminishing glass of the holy law of God. But I rather believe, that
the professors of our days want a due sense of what they are; for,
verily, for the generality of them, both before and since conversion,
they have been sinners of a lusty size. But if their eyes be holden,
if convictions are not shewn, if their knowledge of their sins is but
like to the eye-sight in twilight; the heart cannot be affected with
that grace that has laid hold on the man; and so Christ Jesus sows
much, and has little coming in.

Wherefore his way is ofttimes to step out of the way, to Jericho, to
Samaria, to the country of the Gadarenes, to the coasts of Tyre and
Sidon, and also to Mount Calvary, that he may lay hold of such kind
of sinners as will love him to his liking; Luke xix. 1-11; John iv.
3-11; Mark v. 1-21; Matt. xv. 21-29; Luke xxiii. 33-44.