B36604:302
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. In tiring out Souls with the long continuance of temptations. What he cannot win by a sudden storm, he hopes to gain by a tedious siege. Forty days together he assaulted the Captain of our salvation, Mark 1.13. And truly it's a wonder the Soul yields not at last, that hath been tried long, Psal. 125.3. When the rod of the wicked lies long upon the back of the righteous, it is much if he put not forth his hand to iniquity.
5. In tiring out Souls with the long continuance of temptations. What he cannot win by a suddain storm, he hopes to gain by a tedious siege. Forty days together he assaulted the Captain of our salvation, Mark 1.13. And truly it's a wonder the Soul yields not at last, that hath been tried long, Psal. 125.3. When the rod of the wicked lies long upon the back of the righteous, it is much if he put not forth his hand to iniquity.
6. In falling most violently upon them, when they are lowest and most prostrate in their spirits and comforts: So he assaulted Job with a temptation to curse God and die, when he sate in that deplorable state upon the dunghill, Job 2.8, 9. He loves to fall upon us as Simeon and Levi did upon the Shechemi•es, when we are sore and wounded: And therefore ordinarily you find times of divine desertions, to be times of diabolical temptations. So that look as the wild Beasts of the Desert come out of their Dens in the night, and then roar after their prey, Psal. 104.20. so doth Satan when the Soul seems to be benighted and lost in the darkness of Spiritual troubles.