B36604:166
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.
1. You will readily grant that the Christians love to God hath a mighty influence into all his ⟨p. 63⟩sufferings for God. This Grace of love enables him victoriously to break through all difficulties and discouragements. The Floods cannot drown it, nor the Waters quench it, Cant. 8.6, 7. It facilitates the greatest hardships, 1 John 5.3. And whatever a man suffer, if it be not from this Principle, it is neither acceptable to God, nor available to himself, 1 Cor. 13.3.
But now nothing more inflames and quickens the Christians love to God, than the knowledge of his interest in him, and the sensible perception and taste of his love to the Soul. Our love to God is but a reflection of his own love; and the more powerful the stroke of the direct Beam is, the more is that of the reflex Beam also. Never doth that Flame of Jah burn with a more vehement heat, than when the Soul hath the most clear manifestations of its interest in Christ and his benefits, Luke 7.47.
But now nothing more inflames and quickens the Christians love to God, than the knowledge of his interest in him, and the sensible perception and taste of his love to the Soul. Our love to God is but a reflection of his own love; and the more powerful the stroak of the direct Beam is, the more is that of the reflex Beam also. Never doth that Flame of Jah burn with a more vehement heat, than when the Soul hath the most clear manifestations of its interest in Christ and his benefits, Luke 7.47.