A39695:485
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 8 › Section 4
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.
4. Fourthly, Sincerity drives but one design, and that is to please and enjoy God; and what can more establish and fix the soul in the hour of temptations than this? The reason why the Hypocrite is unstable in all•his ways, is given us by the Apostle James 1. 8. he is a double minded man [Greek or Hebrew] a man of two souls in one body; as a profane wretch once boasted, that he had one soul for God, another for any thing: but all the designs of a gracious heart, are united in one: and so the entire stream of his affections runs strong.
4. Fourthly, Sincerity drives but one design, and that is to please and enjoy God; and what can more establish and fix the soul in the hour of temptations than this? The reason why the Hypocrite is unstable in all•his ways, is given us by the Apostle Iames 1. 8. he is a double minded man 〈non-Latin alphabet〉 a man of two souls in one body; as a prophane wretch once boasted, that he had one soul for God, another for any thing: but all the designs of a gracious heart, are united in one: and so the intire stream of his affections runs strong.
'Tis base by ends & self-interests, that like a great many ditches cut out of the bank of a River, draw away the stream out of its proper Chanel, and make its waters fail: but if the heart be united for God as the expression is, Psal. 86. 11. then we may say of such a Christian, as was said of a young Roman, quicquid vult, what he doth, is done with all his might. And this was the ground of valdè valt; that saying, liberet me Deus ab •omine ⟨p. 143⟩unius tantùm negotii: a man of one only design puts to all puts to all his strength to carry it: nothing can stand before him.