B36604:104
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.
8. When the Heart is prepared for the worst Sufferings, it's an Argument that your Will is subdued to the Will of God; for till this be done in a good measure, you cannot stand ready to suffer for him: But now, to have the Will subdued by Grace to the Will of God, is a very choice and excellent frame indeed; for in this the main power of Grace lieth: Look in what Faculty the chief Residence and strength of sin was, in the same, the chief Residence and power of Grace, after Conversion, is also: Now it ⟨p. 36⟩is in the Will, that the strength and power of sin (before Conversion) lay. See Joh. 5.40. Psal. 81.11. Jer. 44.16, 17. And indeed it was the Devils strong Hold, which in the Day of Christs Power, he storms and reduces to his Obedience, Psal. 110.3. Oh what a blessed thing is this! the Will rules the Man, it hath the Empire of the whole man, it commands the Faculties of the Soul, imperio politico; and it commands the Members of the Body, imperio despotico. Now to have Christ and Grace rule that, which rules and commands your inner and outer Man too, is no small Mercy: And a better Evidence that it is so cannot be given than this, that you stand ready, or do seriously prepare your selves to suffer the hardest things for Christ: If your Will can like that Work, it's an Argument Grace hath conquered and subdued your wills indeed.
9. This Preparation of Heart to Sufferings, is an excellent thing, because God is so abundantly pleased with it, that he often excuses them from sufferings in whom he finds it, and accepts it, as if the service had been actually done. So Abraham, Gen. 22.12