B36604:192
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.
2. By discovering much present good in our troubles; the more good Faith discovers in a trouble, the more supportable and easy it makes it to the Soul. Now Faith brings in a comfortable Report, that they are not only evils, as the troubles of the wicked are, Ezek. 7.5. but have an allay and mixture of much good, Heb. 12.10. Isa. 27.9.
2. By discovering much present good in our troubles; the more good Faith discovers in a trouble, the more supportable and easie it makes it to the Soul. Now Faith brings in a comfortable Report, that they are not only evils, as the troubles of the wicked are, Ezek. 7.5. but have an allay and mixture of much good, Heb. 12.10. Isa. 27.9.
3. By fore-seeing the end and final removal of them, and that near at hand, 2 Cor. 4.17. That which daunts and amazes men in times of trouble, is, that they can see no end of them. Hence the heart faints, and hands hang down through discouragement: But now Faith brings the joyful tidings of the end of troubles, and saith to the Soul, Why art thou cast down, O my Soul? and why so disquieted and discouraged within me? as if thy sufferings were like the sufferings of the Damned, endless and everlasting, whereas they are but for a moment. Yet a little, a very little while, and he that shall come, will come, and will not tarry, Heb. 10.37. Yet a little while, and then the days of thy mourning shall be over.