B36604:10
Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity,…
Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity, excellency, and means of our readiness for sufferings are evinced and prescribed; our call to suffering cleared, and the great unreadiness of many professors bewailed. By John Flavel minister of Christ in Devon.Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity, excellency, and means of our readiness for sufferings are evinced and prescribed; our call to suffering cleared, and the great unreadiness of many profesours bewailed. By John Flavel minister of Christ in Devon.
London: printed for Robert Boulter, 1681
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.
THE EPISTLE TO THE READER.
IT was the observation of the Learned Gerson (when the world was not so old by many years as now it is) that Mundus senescens patitur Phantasias: ⟨image 3⟩The aged world, like aged persons, dotes and grows whimsical in its old age; the truth of which observation is confirmed by no one thing more, than the fond and groundless dreams and phantasms of tranquility and continuing prosperity wherewith the multitude please themselves, even whilst the sins of the times are so great, and the signs of the times so sad and louring as they are.
IT was the observation of the Learned Gerson (when the world was not so old by many years as now it is) that Mundus senescens patitur Phantasias: ⟨image 3⟩The aged world, like aged persons, dotes and growes whimsical in its old age; the truth of which observation is confirmed by no one thing more, than the fond and groundless dreams and phantasmes of tranquility and continuing prosperity wherewith the multitude please themselves, even whilst the sins of the times are so great, and the signs of the times so sad and lowring as they are.
It is not the design of this Manual to scare and affright any man with imaginary dangers, much less to sow ⟨image 3⟩jealousies, and foment the discontents of the times: It being a just matter of lamentation, that all the tokens of Gods anger produce with many of us no better fruit, but bold Censures and loud Clamours, instead of humiliation for our own sins, and due preparation to take up our own Cross, and follow Christ in a suffering path, which is the only mark and aim of this Tract.