B36604:183
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.
CHAP. VIII.
Discovering the necessity of an improved faith for the right management of sufferings, and directing to some special means for the improvement thereof.
THE next thing conducing to our actual readiness for Sufferings, is the improvement of Faith to some considerable degree of strength. This is the Grace that must do the main service in such an hour, and hath the principal hand in supporting the Christian under every burden. This is the Grace that crowns our heads with Victory in the day of battle, Ephes. 6.16. Above all taking the Shield of Faith. Its true every Grace is of use, and contributes assistance: suffering Saints have heen beholding to them all. But of this we may say, as Solomon of the Virtuous Woman; Though many Graces have done excellently, yet this excels them all. In this Grace ready Paul was eminent. It was the life he daily lived, Gal. 2.20. Oh it is a precious grace, 2 Pet. 1.1. so precious that Christ, who seldom admired at any thing, yet wondered at this, Mat. 8.10. A victorious Grace it is that overcomes all difficulties, ⟨p. 70⟩Mark 9.23. By this Sword it was that all those famous Heroes, Heb. 11. achieved all those glorious Conquests: and in every distress it may say to the Soul, as Christ to the Disciples,