A39669:1995
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.
viz. 1. The thing to be tried, our Union with Christ. 2. The trial of it, by the giving of his Spirit to us. 3. The certainty of the trial this way: hereby we know.
First, The thing to be tried, which indeed is the greatest 1and weightiest matter that can be brought to trial in this world or in that to come, namely our union with Christ, expressed here by his abiding in us, a phrase clearly expressing the difference betwixt those that by profession and common estimation pass for Christians among men, though they have no other union with Christ, but by an external adhesion to him in the outside duties of Religion: and those whose union with Christ is real, vital and permanent, by the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ in their souls. Joh. 15. 5, 6. opens the force and importance of this phrase, I am the vine, ye are the branches; he that abideth in me, and I in him; the same bringeth forth much fruit: if a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered: the thing then to be tried, is whether we stand in Christ as dead branches in a living stock, which are only bound to it by external ligatures or bonds that hold them for a while together: or whether our souls have a vital union and coalition with Christ by the participation of the living sap of that blessed root.
First, The thing to be tried, which indeed is the greatest 1and weightiest matter that can be brought to tryal in this world or in that to come, namely our union with Christ, expressed here by his abiding in us, a phrase clearly expressing the difference betwixt those that by profession and common estimation pass for Christians among men, though they have no other union with Christ, but by an external adhesion to him in the outside duties of Religion: and those whose union with Christ is real, vital and permanent, by the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ in their souls.