A39682:185
A Saint Indeed
A saint indeed: or The great work of a Christian, opened and pressed; from Prov. 4. 23 Being a seasonable and proper expedient for the recovery of the much decayed power of godliness, among the professors of these times. By John Flavell M. of the Gospel.
London: printed by W.R., 1668
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.
Your condition is not singular, though you have hitherto been strangers to wants, other Saints have daily conversed, and been familiarly acquainted with them. Hear what blessed Paul speaks, not of himself only, but in the names of other Saints reduced to like exigencies, I Cor. 4. 11. Even to this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked and buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place. To see such a man as Paul going up and down the World with a naked back, and empty belly, and not a ⟨p. 90⟩house to put his head in, one that was so far above thee in Grace and Holiness, one that did more service for God in a day, than perhaps thou hast done him all thy days, and yet thou repine as if hardly dealt with! Have you forgot what necessities and straits even a David hath suffered? how great were his straits and necessities? I Sam. 25. 8. Give I pray thee, (saith he to Nabal) whatsoever cometh to thy hand, to thy Servants and to thy Son David. Renowned Musculus was forced to dig in the Town-ditch for a maintenance. Famous Ainsworth (as I have been credibly informed) forced to sell the bed he lay on to buy bread. But what speak I of these: behold a greater than any of them, even the Son of God. who is the heir of all things, and by whom the worlds were made: yet sometime would have been glad of any thing, having nothing to eat, Mark 11. 12. And on the morrow when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry; and seeing a Fig-tree a far off having leaves, he came if happily he might find [any thing] thereon.
Your condition is not singular, though you have hitherto been strangers to wants, other Saints have daily conversed, and been familiarly acquainted with them. Hear what blessed Paul speaks, not of himself only, but in the names of other Saints reduced to like exigencies, I Cor. 4. 11. Even to this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked and buffetted, and have no certain dwelling place. To see such a man as Paul going up and down the World with a naked back, and empty belly, and not a ⟨p. 90⟩