B36604:243
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.
5. Lastly, Mortification must be studied and plied with diligence; else you will find many Longings and Hankerings after Earthly Enjoyments and Comforts, which will prove a snare to you: What is sin, but the corrupt and vitiated appetite of the Creature, to things that are Earthly and sensual, relishing more sweetness and delight in them, than in the blessed God? And what is Sanctification, but the rectifying of these inordinate affections, and placing them on their proper Object? A regenerate and mortified Christian tastes not half that sweetness in forbidden fruits that another doth: Set but Money ⟨p. 91⟩before Judas, and see how eagerly he catches at it.—What will you give me, and I will betray him. Set but Life, Liberty, or any such Bait before an unmortified Heart, and how impotent is he to withstand them, as offered in a Temptation. Oh those unmortified Lusts! how do they make men hanker, long, and their Lips water (as we use to say) after these things? This makes them break Prison, decline sufferings, though upon the basest terms: Whereas a mortified Christian can see all these things set before him, yea offered to him, and refuse them, Heb. 10.35. It is with them much as it was with old Barzillai, 2 Sam. 19.35. when Nature is decayed, they find but little pleasure in natural actions. Eccles. 12.1. And look as the Body of sin decays and languishes, so do these Longings also: It weans the Soul from them all, and enables it to live very comfortably without them, Psal. 131.1. Phil 4.12. There needs no more to be said, to evince the necessity of Mortification, and discover what influence it hath into a Christians readiness for sufferings.
5. Lastly, Mortification must be studied and ply'd with diligence; else you will find many Longings and Hankerings after Earthly Enjoyments and Comforts, which will prove a snare to you: What is sin, but the corrupt and vitiated appetite of the Creature, to things that are Earthly and sensual, relishing more sweetness and delight in them, than in the blessed God? And what is Sanctification, but the rectifying of these inordinate affections, and placing them on their proper Object? A regenerate and mortified Christian tastes not half that sweetness in forbidden fruits that another doth: Set but Money