B36604:174
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.
Mistake not the Rule, by which you are to try your selves, lest you give a false judgment upon your selves. Some are apt to make those things signs of Grace, which are not; and when the falseness of them is detected, how is that poor Soul plunged into doubts and fears, that leaned upon them? As now, If a man should conclude his sincerity from his diligence in attending on the Word preached; this is but a Paralogism (as the Apostle calls it) Jam. 1.22. by which a man deceiveth his own Soul: For that which is a note or mark, must be proper to the thing notified, and not common to any thing else. There are divers sorts of marks; some are exclusive, the principal use of which is to convince bold Pretenders, and discover Hypocrites: Such is that, 1 Cor. 9.9. It is a most certain sign where these are, there is no Grace; but yet it will not follow on the contrary, that where these are not, there is Grace. See Luke 18.11. Others are inclusive, the use of which is not so much for trying of the truth, as the strength and degrees of Grace. As now when Faith is described by the radiancy of it, or by some of its heroic acts, and promises made to some raised degrees and operations of it; as that, Ephes. 3.12. &c. Here a mistake is easily made. Besides these, or rather betwixt these, are another sort of marks, which are called positive marks; and these agreeing to the lowest degree of Grace, are for the trial of the truth and sincerity of it. Such are these, 1 John 4.13. 1 John 2.3. Matth. 5.3. Be sure to try by a proper mark.
Mistake not the Rule, by which you are to try your selves, lest you give a false judgment upon your selves. Some are apt to make those things signs of Grace, which are not; and when the falseness of them is detected, how is that poor Soul plunged into doubts and fears, that leaned upon them? As now, If a man should conclude his sincerity from his diligence in attending on the Word preached; this is but a Paralogism (as the Apostle calls it)