B36604:141
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.
4. Lastly, You must know that by this change God prepares a man for choice and excellent services; and this indeed is the main thing designed in this Chapter, and is the result and issue of all that hath hitherto been said about this work of Grace.
Beloved, can you imagine that God would employ his infinite and glorious Power, to produce this new Creature in such an excellent nature, it being the Master-piece of all his Works of Wonder wrought upon man, and not aim at some singular use and excellent end? Every wise Agent designs some end; and what God aims at he hath told us, Isa. 43.21. Ephes. 2.20. ⟨p. 56⟩And accordingly he expects singular things from such persons, Mat. 5.47. If God had not aimed at some new service, he need not have made a new Creature: the old Creature was fit enough for the old use and service it was employed in. But God hath some choice service to be done, wherein he will be glorified. He will have his Name glorified, even in this world, by the active and passive obedience of his people. But this being far above all the power of Nature, God therefore brings them forth in a new and heavenly nature, endowed with rare supernatural and divine qualities, by which it is fitted and excellently prepared for any service of God by doing or by suffering, which before he had no fitness or ability for.
Beloved, can you imagine that God would imploy his infinite and glorious Power, to produce this new Creature in such an excellent nature, it being the Master-piece of all his Works of Wonder wrought upon man, and not aim at some singular use and excellent end? Every wise Agent designs some end; and what God aims at he hath told us, Isa. 43.21