A39695:345
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 6 › Section 5
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, They are troubled for the defilement of their own souls by sin: hence they are compared in Prov. 25. 26. to a troubled fountain; you know it's the property of a living spring when any filth falls into it, or that which lies in the bottom of its channel is raised and defiles its streams, never to ⟨p. 98⟩leave working till it have purged it self of it, and recovered its purity again.
2. Secondly, They are troubled for the defilement of their own souls by sin: hence they are compared in Prov. 25. 26. to a troubled fountain; you know it's the property of a living spring when any filth falls into it, or that which lies in the bottom of its chanel is raised and defiles its streams, never to ⟨p. 98⟩leave working till it have purged it self of it, and recovered its purity again.
So it is with a righteous man; he loves purity in the precept, Psal. 119. 140. and he loves it no less in the principle and practice: he thinks it is hell enough to lie under the pollution of sin, if he should never come under damnation for it.
3. Thirdly, They are troubled for the estrangements of God, and the hiding of his face from them because of their Sin. It would go close to an ingenuous spirit to see a dear and faithful friend whom he hath grieved, to look strange and shy upon him at the next meeting; as if he did not know him: much more doth it go to the heart of a gracious man to see the face of God turned from him, and not to be towards him as in times past. This went to Davids heart after his fall, as you may see,