A39669:1006
The Method of Grace
The method of grace, in bringing home the eternal redemption contrived by the Father, and accomplished by the Son through the effectual application of the spirit unto God's elect, being the second part of Gospel redemption : wherein the great mystery of our union and communion with Christ is opened and applied, unbelievers invited, false pretenders convicted, every mans claim to Christ examined, and the misery of Christless persons discovered and bewailed / by John Flavell ...The method of grace, in bringing home the eternal redemption contrived by the Father, and accomplished by the Son through the effectual application of the spirit unto God's elect, being the second part of Gospel redemption : wherein the great mysterie of our union and communion with Christ is opened and applied, unbelievers invited, false pretenders convicted, every mans claim to Christ examined, and the misery of Christless persons discovered and bewailed / by John Flavell ...
London: printed by M. White for Francis Tyton, 1681
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.
Secondly, The Lord doth this, to make Jesus Christ most welcome and desirable to the soul. Christ is not sweet, till sin be made bitter to us. Matth. 9. 12. They that be whole need not a Physician, but they that be sick. If once God wound the heart of a sinner with the stinging sense of sin, then nothing in the world is so precious, so necessary, so vehemently desired, and panted for, as Jesus Christ. O that I had Christ, if I did go in rags, if I did feed upon no other food all my days, but the bread and water of affliction! This is the language of a soul filled with the sense of the evil of sin.
Secondly, The Lord doth this, to make Jesus Christ most welcome and desirable to the soul. Christ is not sweet, till sin be made bitter to us. Matth. 9. 12. They that be whole need not a Physician, but they that be sick. If once God wound the heart of a sinner with the stinging sense of sin, then nothing in the world is so precious, so necessary, so vehemently desired, and panted for, as Jesus Christ. O that I had Christ, if I did go in raggs, if I did feed upon no other food all my dayes, but the bread and water of affliction! This is the language of a soul filled with the sense of the evil of sin.
Thirdly, The Lord doth this to advance the riches of his free grace in the eyes of sinners. Grace never appears Grace, till sin appear to be sin. The deeper our sense of the evil of sin is, the deeper our apprehensions of the free grace of God in Christ will be. The louder our groans have been under the burden of sin, the louder will our acclamations and praises be for our salvation from it by Jesus Christ. To me (saith Paul) the chiefest of sinners was this grace given, 1 Tim. 1. 15. Never doth the grace of a Prince melt the heart of a Traitor, as when Trial, Sentence, and all preparations for his execution have past, before his unexpected pardon comes.