A39669:287
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.
When Satan smites Christ by a wicked man, he then wounds him with the hand of an enemy; but when his temptations prevail upon the Saints to sin, he wounds him as it were▪ with his own hand: as the Eagle and Tree in the Fable complained, the one that he was wounded by an Arrow winged with his own Feathers, the other, that it was rived asunder by a wedge hewen out of its own limbs.
When Satan smites Christ by a wicked man, he then wounds him with the hand of an enemy; but when his temptations prevail upon the Saints to sin, he wounds him as it were▪ with his own hand: as the Eagle and Tree in the Fable complain'd, the one that he was wounded by an Arrow winged with his own Feathers, the other, that it was rived asunder by a wedge hewen out of its own limbs.
Now the evil and disingenuity of such sins, is to be measured not only by the near relation Christ sustains to believers as their head, but more particularly, from the several benefits they receive from him as such: for in wounding Christ by their sins,
First, They wound their head of influence, through whom they live, and without whom they had still remained in the state of sin and death. Eph. 4. 16. Shall Christ send life to us, and we return that which is as death to him? O how absurd, how disingenuous is this!
First, They wound their head of influence, through whom they live, and without whom they had still remain'd in the state of sin and death. Eph. 4. 16. Shall Christ send life to us, and we return that which is as death to him? O how absurd, how disingenuous is this!