A41536:288
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 I add, that yet hence it cannot be infallibly inferred, that a man hath comparatively either to himself more corruption in him then he had twenty years afore, because more is stirred up; or that comparatively to others he hath more corruption then they, because more is now for a fit drawn forth: So that it follows not from hence, that others which are kept free from such a temptation, that they have less mortification, because they were never cast into so hot and burning a fit. One whose body is less full of humours, and naturally of a more moderate temper for heat, may yet through some accident or other, or disease, suppose the Plague, be cast into hotter fits of a burning Fever, then one whose temper is more fiery, and humours more abounding in him. To have recourse to the former instance. Hezekiah surely had more corruption twenty years before his recovery out of his sickness, then at that time, and yet it wrought not so, that we read of, as it did then; not that the barrel was then fuller, but that now it was broached ⟨p. 88⟩lower, and a greater vent given, and so it came more gushing out, dregs and all. That a man after he is grown up to his full strength, falls into so great a sickness, such an one as he never had when he was a child, which maketh him weaker then when he was ten or twelve years old, doth not argue but that he is a man grown for all that. David after a long growth, had a time of great sickness, whereby he lost the exercise, the lively vigorous use of his graces: enfeebled by that sickness, he lost his taste in Gods Ordinances by it, and the joy of Gods salvation, as appears by the 51. Psal.
Secondly,1 I adde, that yet hence it cannot be infallibly inferred, that a man hath comparatively either to himselfe more corruption in him then he had twenty yeeres afore, because more is stirred up; or that comparatively to others he hath more corruption then they, because more is now for a fit drawne forth: So that it follows not from hence, that others which are kept free from such a temptation, that they have lesse mortification, because they were never cast into so hot and burning a fit. One whose body is lesse full of humours, and naturally of a more moderate temper for heat, may yet through some accident or other, or disease, suppose the Plague, be cast into hotter fits of a burning Feaver, then one whose temper is more fiery, and humours more abounding in him. To have recourse to the former instance. Hezekiah surely had more corruption twenty yeeres before his recovery out of his sicknesse, then at that time, and yet it wrought not so, that we reade of, as it did then; not that the barrell was then fuller, but that now it was broached