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Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applied unto unconverted sinners, and saints…Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applyed unto unconverted sinners, and saints…
Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applied unto unconverted sinners, and saints under spiritual decays : in two chapters, from John XVII, xxiv / by the late Reverend John Owen ...Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applyed unto unconverted sinners, and saints under spiritual decayes : in two chapters, from John XVII, xxiv / by the late Reverend John Owen ...
London: printed by J.A. for William Marshall, 1691
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.
AN experience hereof, I mean of the thriving of Grace towards the end of our Course, is that alone which can support us under the Troubles and Temptations of Life, which we have to conflict withal. So the Apostle tells us, that this is our great Relief in all our Distresses and Afflictions, whereon me faint not, that as our outer man doth perish, so the inner man is renewed day by day, 2 Cor. 4. 16. If it be so, that in the daily Decays of the outward man, in all the Approaches of it's Dissolution, we have inward Spiritual Revivals and Renovation, we shall not faint in what we undergo. And without such continual Renovations, we shall faint in our Distresses, whatever other things we may have, or whatever we pretend unto the contrary.
AND ordinarily it is so in the Holy, Wise Providence of God, that Afflictions and Troubles ⟨p. 26⟩increase with Age. It is so in an especial manner with Ministers of the Gospel; they have many of them a share in the lot of Peter, which our Lord Jesus Christ declared unto him, John 21. 18. When thou wast young, thou girdedst thy self, and walkedst whither thou wouldst; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldst not. Besides those natural Distempers and Infirmities which accompany the decays of Life, Troubles of Life, and in their Affairs do usually grow upon them, when they look for nothing less, but were ready to say with Job, We shall dye in our nest, Job 29. 18. So was it with Jacob, after all his hard Labour and Travel to provide for his Family, such things fell out in it in his Old Age, as had almost broken his Heart: And oft times both Persecutions and Public Dangers do befall them at the same season. Whilst the outward man is thus perishing, we need great supportment that we faint not. And this is only to be had in an Experience of daily Spiritual Renovations in the inner man.