B36604:75
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.
When such symptoms of Gods indignation do appear upon any people, the Lord by them, as by so many glazing Meteors and blazing Comets, forewarns the World that his Judgments are near, even at the door. These Signs all men ought to observe and behold with trembling. If you ask why doth God usually give such warnings of his indignation before it comes, the reasons are: 1. To prevent the execution. 2. To make them more tolerable. 3. To leave the incorrigible inexcusable.
When such symptoms of Gods indignation do appear upon any people, the Lord by them, as by so many glazing Meteors and blazing Comets, forewarns the World that his Judgments are near, even at the door. These Signs all men ought to observe and behold with trembling. If you ask why doth God usually give such warnings of his indignation before it comes, the reasons are: 1. To prevent the execution. 2. To make them more tollerable. 3. To leave the incorrigible inexcusable.
First, Warning is given with design to prevent the execution of Judgments, Amos 4.12. Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel; and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel; (i. e.) prepare thy self to meet me in the way of my Judgments, by Humiliation and Intercession, to prevent the execution: And what else was the design of God in sending Jonah to that great City Nineveh, but to excite them to repentance for the prevention of their ruin. This Jonah knew to be the Lords meaning, how positive soever the words of his Commission were, and therefore he declined the Message, to secure his Credit; knowing that if upon warning given they repented, the gracious Nature of God would soon melt into compassion over them, and Free Grace would make him appear as a Liar; for so we must expound his words, Jonah 4.2. Was not this my saying when I was yet in my Country? therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil; q. d. yea Lord, I knew before-hand it would come to this; thou sendest me positively to denounce thy Judgments to Nineveh, mean time desiring nothing more than that the execution of them might be prevented by their repentance: And thus thy Mercy hath exposed my Reputation in saving them from destruction.