A39669:14
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.
Honoured and Worthy Friends,
IT was a comfortable expression which Ambrose used in his Funeral Oration at the death of Theodosius; athat though he were gone, yet he was not wholly gone; for he had left Honorius with others of his Children behind him, in whom Theodosius still lived. Your renowned and worthy Ancestors are gone, yet blessed be God, they are not wholly gone; whilst the prudence, piety and publicness of their Spirits ⟨image 3⟩still lives and flourishes in you, the top branch of a renowned and religious Family. 'Tis a great truth which Philo Judaeus recommends to the observation of all posterity bthat it is not a natural descent from the most honourable and illustrious progenitors, nor the greatest affluence of riches and pleasures that makes a man either honourable or happy; but the inhabitation of God in his soul, as in his Temple, though (saith he) those that never tasted Religion nor have seen its glory will not credit this assertion. The soul which is filled with God, saith cPlotinus, and brings forth the beautiful fruits of righteousness, this is the truly noble soul: our new birth makes us more honourable than our natural birth, let our birth-right dignities be what they will. The Children of Nobles are by nature the Children of wrath even as others: omnis sanguis concolor, all blood is of one colour; it is all tainted in Adam, and mingled together in his posterity: there is no King saith ⟨image 3⟩dSeneca, which rose not from a servant: there is no servant which rose not from a King: these things have been blended and tossed to and fro, by a long variety.