B36604:167
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.
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.
It must needs be of singular use to a suffering Saint, Dem. 2 because it takes out the sinking weight of affliction. That which sinks and breaks the Spirit, is the conjunction and meeting of inward and outward troubles together; then if the Lord do not strangely and extraordinarily support the Soul, it's wrecked and overwhelmed as the Ship in which Paul sailed was, when it fell into a place where two Seas met, Act. 27.41. Oh how tempestuous a Sea doth that Soul sail in, that hath fightings without, and fears within! How must that poor Christians heart tremble and meditate terror, that when he retires from troubles without, for some comfort and support within, shall find a sad addition to his troubles from whence he expected relief against them! Hence it was that Jeremiah so earnestly ⟨p. 64⟩deprecates such a misery, Be not thou a terror to me, thou art my hope in the day of evil,