B36604:199
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. Improve well your Sacrament seasons, those ⟨p. 76⟩Harvest-days of Faith: This Ordinance hath a direct and peculiar tendency to the improvement and strengthening of Faith: It is a Pledge superadded to the Promise for Faiths sake: Heavenly and Sublime Mysteries do therein stoop down to your Senses, that you may have the clearer apprehensions of them; and the clearer the apprehensions are, the stronger the assent of Faith must needs be: By this Seal also the Promise comes to be more ratified to us; and the firmer the Promise appears to the Soul, the more bold and adventurous Faith is in casting it self upon it: Oh! how many poor doubting trembling Souls have in such a Season, gathered the full ripe Fruits of Assurance, from the Top-boughs of that Ordinance!
3. Frequent actings of Faith, are rare and special means of improving it: To him that hath (i. e.) that improves and uses what he hath, shall be given, Mat. 25.29. This was the way by which Paul thrived in Faith, and every other Grace so exceedingly, that he out-grew them that were in Christ before him, 1 Cor. 15.10. It's true, that its beginning in the Soul, is not after the manner of other Habits, either Moral or Natural: This is not of Natural acquisition, but by Divine Infusion; but yet its improvement is in the same manner. Oh then! if ever you would have a flourishing Faith, rouse it up out of the dull Habit, and live in the daily exercise of it.
3. Frequent actings of Faith, are rare and special means of improving it: To him that hath (i. e.) that improves and uses what he hath, shall be given, Mat. 25.29. This was the way by which Paul thrived in Faith, and every other Grace so exceedingly, that he out-grew them that were in Christ before him,