A39669:2500
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.
Thirdly, how it appears that all unregenerate men are in this sad state. And then apply it.
First, In what sense are Christless and unregenerate men 1said to be dead men.
- 11.
To open this, we must know there is a threefold death, viz.
Death 1. Natural. 2. Spiritual. 3. Eternal.
Natural death is nothing else but the privation of the principle of natural life, or the separation of the soul from the body, James 2. 26. The body without the spirit is dead. Spiritual death is the privation of the principle of spiritual life, or the want and absence of the quickening spirit of God in the foul: the soul is the life of the body, and Christ is the life of the soul: the absence of the foul is death to the body, and the absence or want of Christ is death to the soul. Eternal death is the separation both of body and soul from God, which is the misery of the damned. Now Christless and unregenerate men are not dead in the first sense: they are naturally alive, though they are dead while they live: Nor are they yet dead in the last sense, eternally separated from God, by an irrevocable sentence as the damned are: but they are dead in the second sense, they are spiritually dead, whilst they are naturally alive, and this spiritual death is the fore-runner of eternal death. Now spiritual death is put in scripture in opposition to a two-fold spiritual life.