B36604:177
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. Call not your condition into question upon every failing, and involuntary lapse into sin. Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away, Psal. 65.3. In short, thou needest not call thy condition into question, provided thou find thy Spirit working as Paul's did under the surprisals of temptation: viz. If (1) thou do approve of, and delight in the Law, though thou fall short of it in thy practice, Rom. 7.12, 14. (2) If thy failings be involuntary, and against the resolution and bent of thy Soul, vers. 25, 18, 19. (3) If it be the load and burden of thy Soul, vers. 24. (4) If the thoughts of deliverance comfort thee, vers. 25.
1. Call not your condition into question upon every failing, and involuntary lapse into sin. Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away, Psal. 65.3. In short, thou needest not call thy condition into question, provided thou find thy Spirit working as Paul's did under the surprizals of temptation: viz. If (1) thou do approve of, and delight in the Law, though thou fall short of it in thy practice, Rom. 7.12, 14. (2) If thy failings be involuntary, and against the resolution and bent of thy Soul, vers. 25, 18, 19. (3) If it be the load and burden of thy Soul, vers. 24. (4) If the thoughts of deliverance comfort thee, vers. 25.
2. Question not the truth of thy Grace, because it was not wrought in the same way and manner in thee, as in others: For there is great variety, as to the circumstances of time and manner, betwixt the Spirits operations upon one and another. Compare the History of Paul's Conversion with that of the Jailer, Zacheus, or Lydia, and see the variety of circumstances.