A39669:990
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.
This is a fourth wound of conscience, and it makes way for a fifth, for here it is as in the pouring out of the vials, and the sounding of those woe-trumpets in the Revelation, one woe is past, and another cometh. After all these deadly blows of conscience upon the very heart of a sinner, comes another as dreadful as any that is yet named, and that is,
Fifthly, The fearful expectations of wrath to come which 1it begets in the soul of a guilty sinner: of this you read Heb. 10. 27. a fearful looking for of Judgement, and fiery indignation: and this makes the stoutest sinner quail and faint under the burden of sin. For the tongue of man cannot declare ⟨p. 188⟩what it is to lye down and rise with those fearful expectations: the case of such sinners is somewhat like that which is described in Deut. 28. 65, 66, 67. The Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind, and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have no assurance of thy life: in the morning thou shalt say Would God it were evening, and at even thou shalt say Would God it were morning, for the fear of thine heart, wherewith thou shalt fear, &c. Only in this it differs, in this Scripture you have the terrors of those described, whose temporal life hangs in doubtful suspense, but in the persons I am speaking of it is a trembling under the apprehensions and expectations of the vengeance of eternal fire.
Fifthly, The fearful expectations of wrath to come which 1it begets in the soul of a guilty sinner: of this you read