A29709:160
A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse…
A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse about the favourable, signal and eminent presence of the Lord with his people in their greatest troubles, deepest distresses, and most deadly dangers : with the resolution of several questions, concerning the divine presence, as also the reasons and improvements of this great and glorious truth ... / by Thomas Brooks ...A word in season to this present generation, or, A sober and serious discourse about the favorable, signal and eminent presence of the Lord with his people in their greatest troubles, deepest distresses, and most deadly dangers : with the resolution of several questions, concerning the divine presence, as also the reasons and improvements of this great and glorious truth ... / by Thomas Brooks ...
London: printed for Dorman Newman, 1675
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Seventeenthly and lastly [If God be with us, who can be against us?] I answer, none, so as to hinder our growth in grace, or the thriving and flourishing estate of our precious and immortal souls. The troubles, afflictions, persecutions, and sufferings that the Saints meet with in a ⟨p. 109⟩way of holiness, shall but further the increase and growth of their graces; grace never rises to so great a height as it does in times of persecution; Suffering times are a Christians harvest times. Let me instance in that grace of 1of zeal: I remember Moulin, speaking of the French Protestants, saith, When Papists hurt us, and persecute us for reading the Scripture, we burn with zeal to be reading of them, but now persecution is over, our Bibles are like old Almanacs. Michal's scoffing at David 2did but inflame and raise his zeal; If this be to be vile, I will be more vile. Look as fire in the Winter burns the hotter (by an Antiperistasis) because of the coldness of the air, so in the winter of persecution, that Divine fire, the zeal of a Christian, burns so much the hotter, and flames forth so much the more vehemently and strongly. When one desired to know, what kind of man Basil was, there was presented to him in a dream (saith the Historian) a pillar of fire, with this Motto (Talis est Basilius) Basil is such a one, he is all on a light fire for God. Warm persecutions will but set Christians all on a light fire for God, as you may see among the Apostles, primitive Christians, & the Martyrs of a later date. Grace usually is in the greatest flourish, when the Saints are under the greatest trials; the snuffing of the candle makes it burn the brighter: God suffers wicked men to beat & bruise his links, to make them burn the brighter; and to pound & bruise his spi•cs, to make them send forth the greater aromatical savour; fiery trials are like the Teasel, which though it be sharp and scratching, it is to make the cloth more pure and fine. Stars shine brightest in the darkest nights, and so do the graces of the Saints shine brightest in the darkest nights of affliction and tribulation. God does sometimes more carry on the growth of grace by a Cross than by an ordinance; yea the Lord will first or last turn all fiery Trials into Ordinances, for the helping of grace in his Peoples souls.