A39695:522
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 10 › Section 1
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.
Before I offer you the proofs & evidences of this truth, it will be necessary to prevent some mistakes that may be occasioned by misunderstanding of it.
BEfore I offer you the proofs & evidences of this truth, it will be necessary to prevent some mistakes that may be occasioned by misunderstanding of it.
Caution 1. And in the first place, we are not to think assurance of our sincerity impossible to be had in this life, because as long as we live here we are in a state of trial; and how many trials soever have been made upon us already, yet still there are more to come; and we know not what we shall prove in future trials, though God hath kept us upright in former trials; no, no▪ this is none of my meaning; nor doth such a conclusion necessarily follow this assertion: ⟨p. 155⟩for a Christian that hath rightly closed with Christ at first, and been faithful in the duties of active and passive obedience hitherto, may be assured upon good grounds of a victory before he come to the fire of his remaining trials. So was the Apostle, Rom. 8. 35, &c. who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? nay in all these we are more than conquerors, through him that hath loved us: here's an assured triumph before the Combat. So Job 23. 10. but he knoweth the way that I take when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold, •he appeals to God for the sincerity of his heart, so far as he had hith •to gone in the way of Religion; and thence concludes •hat whatever trials God should bring him •o for time to come, he should come forth as gold, (i. e.) he should not lose one grain y the fire; and this confidence of a gracious soul, is built not only upon experience gained in former trials, but upon faith in the ower promises, and faithfulness of God which ae engaged for him in the Covenant of grace, to keep him in the greatest dangers hat befall him in this world.