A39695:258
The touchstone of sincerity, or, The signs of grace and symptoms of hypocrisy opened…The touchstone of sincerity, or, The signs of grace and symptomes of hypocrisie opened…
The touchstone of sincerity, or, The signs of grace and symptoms of hypocrisy opened in a practical treatise upon Revelations III 17, 18 being the second part of the Saint indeed / by John Flavell ...The touchstone of sincerity, or, The signs of grace and symptomes of hypocrisie opened in a practical treatise upon Revelations III 17, 18 being the second part of the Saint indeed / by John Flavell ...
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1698
Title page typeset from the transcription.
THE Touchstone of Sincerity: OR, THE SIGNS Of GRACE, AND Symptoms o… › Chapter 5 › Section 2
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.
2. Secondly, Both the godly and ungodly may entertain afflictions with regret and unwillingness when they come: afflictions and troubles are Wormwood and Gall, Lam. 3. 19. and that goes not down pleasantly with flesh and blood, Heb. 12. 11. No affliction for• the present seemeth joyous, but grievous; he means to God's own People. They are in beaviness through manifold temptations or trials by the rod: 1 Pet. 1. 6. When God gives the cup of affliction into the hands of the wicked, how do they reluctate and loath it? How do their stomachs rise at it? And though the portion of the Saints cup be much sweeter ⟨p. 70⟩than theirs, (for that bitter ingredient of Gods vindictive wrath is not in it) yet even they shrink from it, and loth they are to taste it.
3. Thirdly, Both the one and other may be impatient and fretful in adversity: it's the very nature of flesh and blood to be so▪ The wicked are like the troubled sea which cannot rest▪ whose waters cast forth mire and dirt, Isa. 57. 20. It's an allusion to the unstable and stormy Ocean: You know there is naturally an estuation, and working in the Sea, whether it be incensed by the wind or no; but if a violent wind blow upon the unquiet Ocean, Oh what raging and foaming is there! what abundance of trash and filth doth it at such times cast out!
3. Thirldly, Both the one and other may be impatient and fretful in adversity: it's the very nature of flesh and blood to be so▪ The wicked are like the troubled sea which cannot rest whose waters cast forth mire and dirt,