A39669:383
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.
What shall we do? is the doleful cry of men at their wits end: the voice of one in deepest distress, and such outcries have been no rarities under the preaching of the word: its power hath been felt by persons of all orders and conditions: the great and honourable of the earth, as well as the poor and despicable. The learned and the ignorant, the civil and profane, ⟨p. 55⟩the young and the old, all have felt the heart-piercing efficacy of the Gospel.
If you ask whence hath the word preached this mighty power? The answer must be, Neither from it self, nor him that preaches it, but from the spirit of God whose instrument it is, by whose blessing and concurrence with it, it produceth its blessed effects upon the hearts of men.
First, This Efficacy and wonderful power is not from the 1word it self: take it in an abstract notion, separated from the spirit, it can do nothing: it is called the foolishness of preaching, 1 Cor. 1. 21. foolishness not only because the world so accounts it, but because in it self it is a weak and unsuitable, and therefore a very improbable way to reconcile the world to God: that the stony heart of one man should be broken by the words of another man, that one poor sinful Creature should be used to breath spiritual life into another, this could never be if this sword were not managed by an omnipotent hand.
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