A39680:384
Sacramental meditations upon divers select places of scripture
Sacramental meditations upon divers select places of scripture wherein believers are assisted in preparing their hearts, and exciting their affections and graces, when they draw nigh to God in that most awful and solemn ordinance of the Lords Supper / by Jo. Flavel ...
London: printed for Jacob Sampson, 1679
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.
There be divers kinds of mercy in God; there is in him, preventing mercy, delivering mercy, and sparing mercy. Now sparing mercy (as one well ⟨p. 114⟩observes) is the lowest mercy of all the 1three. 'Tis less mercy to be spared or abated some degree or circumstance of misery, than to have misery prevented by mercies stepping in betwixt us and it. It's less also than to be wholly delivered out of the hand of misery. Either of these are greater acts of mercy than to abate a degree, or shorten an hour of our trouble; the least abatement of any one circumstance of misery had been sparing mercy, though it had been but the least and lowest act of mercy; and yet even this was denied to Christ, he was not abated one minute of time, or the least degree of sorrow God spared not.
There be divers kinds of mercy in God; there is in him, preventing mercy, delivering mercy, and sparing mercy. Now sparing mercy (as one well ⟨p. 114⟩observes) is the lowest mercy of all the 1three. 'Tis less mercy to be spared or abated some degree or circumstance of misery, than to have misery prevented by mercies stepping in betwixt us and it. It's less also than to be wholly delivered out of the hand of misery. Either of these are greater acts of mercy than to abate a degree, or shorten an hour of our trouble; the least abatement of any one circumstance of misery had been sparing mercy, though it had been but the least and lowest act of mercy; and yet even this was denyed to Christ, he was not abated one minute of time, or the least degree of sorrow God spared not.
- 1Caryl on Job.
Thirdly: He spared not his own Son,