B36604:238
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.
The need of this will be evinced by these five Considerations.
1. Unless the Heart be mortified to all Earthly enjoyments, they will appear great and glorious things in your eye and estimation: and if so, judge what a Task you will have, to deny and leave them all in a suffering hour. It is Corruption within, that puts the Lustre and Glory upon things without: It's the Carnal Eye only that gazes admiringly after them, 2 Cor. 5.16. And hence the Lust is put, to express the Affection, 1 John 2.16. because all that inordinate affection we have to them, arises from our high estimation of them, and that estimation from our Lusts, that represent them as great and glorious: Therefore certainly, it will be difficult (if not impossible) to deny them, till they have lost their glory in your Eye; and that they will never do, till those Lusts within you, that put that Beauty and Necessity upon them, be first crucified. As for instance, What a Glory and Necessity doth the Pride of Men put upon the Honour and Credit of the World, so that they will rather choose to die, than survive it! but to a mortified Soul it's a small matter, 1 Cor. 4.3. So for Riches, how much are they adored, till our Lusts be mortified, and then they are esteemed but Dung and Dross, Phil. 3.8. 'Tis our Corruption that paints and gilds over these ⟨p. 89⟩things: When these are crucified, those will be lightly esteemed.