A39665:493
Husbandry spiritualized, or, The heavenly use of earthly things consisting of many pleasant observations,…
Husbandry spiritualized, or, The heavenly use of earthly things consisting of many pleasant observations, pertinent applications, and serious reflections and each chapter concluded with a divine and suitable poem : directing husband-men to the most excellent improvements of their common employments : whereunto is added ... several choice occasional meditations / by John Flavell.Husbandry spiritualized, or, The heavenly use of earthly things consisting of many pleasant observations, pertinent applications, and serious reflections and each chapter concluded with a divine and suitable poem : directing husband-men to the most excellent improvements of their common imployments : whereunto is added ... several choice occasional meditations / by John Flavell.
London : Printed and are to be sold by Robert Boulter, l674
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.
REFLECTIONS.
O this is my very case, saith many a poor Christian; thus my soul languishes and droops from day to day: 'tis good new indeed, that God both can and will restore my soul but sad that I should fall into such a state. How unlike am I to what once I was? Surely, as the old men wept, when they saw how short the second Temple came of the glory of the ⟨p. 50⟩first, so may I sit down and weep bitterly, to consider how much my first love, and first duties excelled the present▪ For.
Is my heart so much in heaven now, as it was wont to be? §1Say,1 O my soul! dost thou not remember, when like the beloved Disciple thou layest in Jesus bosom? how didst thou sweeten communion with him? how restless and impatient wast thou in his absence! Divine withdrawments were to thee as the hell of hell: What a burden was the world to me in those days! Had it not been for conscience of my duty, I could have been willing to let all lye, that communion with Christ might suffer no interruption. When I awaked in the night, how was the darkness enlightened by the heavenly glimpses of the countenance of my God upon me? How did his company shorten those hours, and beguile the tediousness of the night? O my soul, speak thy experience, is it now as it was then! No, no, those days are past and gone, and thou become much a stranger to that heavenly life. Art thou able with truth to deny this charge? When occasionally I pass by those places, which were once to me as Jacob's Bethel to him; I sigh at the remembrance of former passages betwixt me and heaven there; and say with Job, Chap. 29. O that it were with me as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me, when his candle shined upon my head, when by his light I walked through darkness, when the Almighty was yet with me, when I put on righteousness and it clothed me, when my glory was fresh in me! when I remember these things, my soul is poured out within me.