B36604:390
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.
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, Luke 14.28. Put on the whole Armour of God, that ye may be able to stand, Ephes. 6. He that hath first severed Christ in his thoughts from all worldly advantages, and put the case thus to his own Soul, O my Soul, canst thou embrace or love a naked Christ? Canst be content to be impoverished, imprisoned, and suffer the loss of all for him? He is most likely to cleave faithfully to him, when the case is really presented to him indeed. And can it seem light thing in your eyes, to be enabled to stand •n such an evil day? If you fall away from Christ, then all that you have wrought is lost, ezek. 33.13. Gideons one Bastard destroyed all is seventy Sons. This act renders all former actions and professions vain. If you fall, you ••all thereby be brought into a more perfect bondage to the Devil than ever, Matth. 12.23. •ea, ordinarily Apostates are judicially given ⟨p. 132⟩up to be Persecutors, Hos. 5.12. 1 Tim. 1.20. and are seldom or never recovered again by Grace, Heb. 6.4, 6. They that lick up their vomit, seldom cast it up any more. It is a fall, within a little as low as the unpardonable sin, whence never any rise again. In some cases the Judge will not allow the Offender his Book. And is it not then a choice and desirable mercy to escape and prevent such a fall as this? O good Souls, ply your Preparation-work close then; prepare, or you perish.