B36604:389
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 many Calls which God hath given you to this work. Mot. 1 The Lord hath uttered his voice, and called from Heaven unto you; will you be deaf to his Calls? He hath called upon you (1) By the Word: God would have it cry to you first, because he would give the first honour to his Word. He hath given all his Prophets one mouth, Luke 1.70. and they have warned you faithfully. (2.) By the Rod: This also hath a loud voice, Micah 6.9. Psal. 2.5. Men of understanding will hear this voice; and those that will not hear it, shall be lashed by it even till they are sick with smiting, vers. 13. (3) By prodigious and portentous signs in the Heavens and Earth, such as no Age can parallel, these have a loud voice to all that regard the works of the Lord, or the operations of his hands. Eusebius ⟨p. 131⟩calls them Gods Sermons to the World. 1Oh that we were wise to consider what Gods Ends are in these things! One observes, That as they are the plainest and most obvious to sense, so they are commonly the last Sermons which God intends to preach to Nations, before he inflicts his punishments on them, if they repent not. O let not God, speaking in ordinary and extraordinary ways to you, still speak in vain.
- 1[Greek or Hebrew], Euseb. Hist. lib. 3. cap. 8.〈non-Latin alphabet〉, Euseb. Hist. lib. 3. cap. 8.
Your preparation for sufferings, Mot. 2 is the most probable means of preventing your fall and ruin by those sufferings. Sufferings prove fatal and destructive to some; but it is to secure and careless ones: such as are diligent and faithful in the use of Gods means, are secured from the danger. Christ lays our constancy and perseverance very much upon our fore-casting the worst that may fall out,