B36604:344
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.
CHAP. XIII.
Wherein is showed the necessity of going out of our selves even when our habitual and actual Preparations are at the greatest height; and depending as constantly and entirely upon the Spirit, who is Lord of all gracious Influences, as if we had done nothing: Together with the means of working the Heart to such a frame.
Wherein is shewed the necessity of going out of our selves even when our habitual and actual Preparations are at the greatest height; and depending as constantly and intirely upon the Spirit, who is Lord of all gracious Influences, as if we had done nothing: Together with the means of working the Heart to such a frame.
Thus you have seen your habitual and actual readiness for Sufferings, and blessed is the Soul that gives diligence to this work: But now, lest all that I have said, and you have wrought, should be in vain, I must let you know, that all this will not secure you, unless you can by Humility, Faith, and Self-denial, go out of your selves to Christ, and live upon him daily for supply of Grace, as much as if you had none of all this Furniture and Provision for Sufferings. I confess, Grace is a very beautiful and lovely Creature, and it's hard for a man to look upon his own Graces, and not dote upon them. But yet know, that if you had all these excellent preparations that have been mentioned, yea, and all Angelical Perfections superadded, yet are you not complete without this dependence upon Christ, Col. 2.10. When ever you go forth to suffer for Christ, you should say in the Head of all your excellent Graces, Duties, and Preparations, as Jehoshaphat did, when in the head of a puissant and ⟨p. 116⟩