B36604:193
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.
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.
4. By comparing our sufferings with the sufferings of others, which exceedingly diminisheth and shrinks them up: Sometimes the Believer compares his sufferings with Christs, and then he is ashamed that ever he should complain ⟨p. 74⟩and droop under them. Oh! saith he, What is this to that which the Lord Jesus suffered for me? he suffered in all his Members, Head, Hands, Side, Feet, from all hands, Friends and Enemies, in all his Offices: Yea, in his Soul, as well as in his Body: And indeed the sufferings of his Soul, were the very Soul of his sufferings: sometimes he compares them with the sufferings of others, of the Saints in former Ages: When he reads in Faith the History of their Persecutions, he is shamed out of his Complaints, and saith, Am I better than my Fathers? Sometimes he compares them with the sufferings of the Damned: Oh what is this to the everlasting burnings! What is a Prison to Hell? How light and easy is it to suffer for Christ, in comparison of those sufferings which are from Christ? And thus the Soul is quieted, and the terror of sufferings abated.
4. By comparing our sufferings with the sufferings of others, which exceedingly diminisheth and shrinks them up: Sometimes the Believer compares his sufferings with Christs, and then he is ashamed that ever he should complain