B36604:295
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. Mark them for most dangerous Temptations, that are ad•pted and suited to your proper sin, or constitution evil: For certainly, that is the most dangerous Nick and Crisis of Temptation when it tries a man there. Now if he be not truly gracious, he falls by the Root irrecoverably, Luke 22.5, 6. Or if sincere, yet without special assistance, and extraordinary vigilance, he falls scandalously, 2 Sam. 11.2. compared with 1 Sam. 16.12.
3. When it is a Spiritual Temptation, which rises undiscernably out of a Christians Duties. This is the less suspected, because Temptations usually come from the strength and liveliness of Corruptions; but this, from the Slaughter and Conquests we make of them. Duties, and enlargements in them, which are the Poison of other Lusts, proves the Food and Fuel of this, 1 Cor. 4.7, 8. And how much the more covert and close any Temptation is, by so much the more dangerous it is.
3. When it is a Spiritual Temptation, which rises undiscernably out of a Christians Duties. This is the less suspected, because Temptations usually come from the strength and liveliness of Corruptions; but this, from the Slaughter and Conquests we make of them. Duties, and enlargements in them, which are the Poyson of other Lusts, proves the Food and Fewel of this, 1 Cor. 4.7, 8. And how much the more covert and close any Temptation is, by so much the more dangerous it is.