A41536:285
The trial of a Christians growth in mortification, purging out corruption, or vivification, bringing…The tryall of a Christians growth in mortification, purging out corruption, or vivification, bringing…
The trial of a Christians growth in mortification, purging out corruption, or vivification, bringing forth more fruit a treatise handling this case, how to discern our growth in grace : affording some helps rightly to judge thereof by resolving some tentations, clearing some mistakes, answering some questions, about spiritual growth : together with other observations upon the Parable of the vine, John 15. 1, 2 verses / by Tho. Goodwin.The tryall of a Christians growth in mortification, purging out corruption, or vivification, bringing forth more fruit a treatise handling this case, how to discerne our growth in grace : affording some helps rightly to judge thereof by resolving some tentations, clearing some mistakes, answering some questions, about spiritual growth : together with other observations upon the Parable of the vine, John 15. 1, 2 verses / by Tho. Goodwin.
London: printed by J.G. for R. Dawlman, 1650
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.
Secondly,1 you must not judge of your Mortification, by extraordinary assistances or temptations: As you do not judge of the strength of a Kingdom by auxiliary foreign forces, that are at extraordinary times called in. A young Christian shall for his encouragement even in the heat of the battle, when he is ready to be overcome, and carried away captive, find the holy Ghost breaking in, and rescuing of him, (as Jehoshaphat was, (to allude to it) when he cried to the Lord) when as a Christian of much standing is left to fight it out hand to hand: Now it doth not follow that the other, because thus freed, hath the more strength. Again, on the other side, a man is not to judge of himself by his weakness in some one extraordinary temptation. A man that is very sick, and nigh unto death and dissolution, may through much heat, and stirring up of all his spirits, have the strength of five men in him, and much greater then when he was in health: And so a godly man, whose corruptions are weak, and more near to dissolution, yet in a fit may have all the corruption that is within him mustered up, and blown up by Satan, and so it may for the present appear to have more strength then ever in all his life, and yet he may be much mortified: Even as Sarah may by an extraordinary means have pleasure in her old age, and bring forth a child, when she had left child-bearing long, and yet her womb was dead, Rom. 4. 19. And as it may be true, that one of small grace may have that little grace drawn out, and wound up to a higher strain, for one fit, brunt and exercise; all the strings wound up to a higher note for some one lesson, then one haply of more grace ever felt, to higher acts of love to God, and of rejoicing in God, and purer strains of self-denial; yet take the constant strains of ones spirit that hath more grace, and the strings will ordinarily endure to stand higher, and continue so: So on the contrary, one of much mortification, may have ⟨p. 87⟩his lusts spurred on faster, and boiled up higher by Satan's fires, then one of less. The estimate of our growth must not therefore be taken by a step or two, but by a constant course; for as a mans sincerity is to be measured, so is his growth: even as a mans health is to be measured by the constant tenor of his temper.
Secondly,