B36604:85
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.
Philosophers tell us, that immediately before an Earthquake, the Air is very quiet and serene, and before the great Rain falls, the Wind usually lies: Were the aspect of second causes much more favourable and encouraging than it is; yet there were cause enough for all that are wise in heart to fear and tremble, under the consideration of that National guilt which is treasured up, and will certainly produce distress and trouble.
O Christians look out for days of Visitation, prepare for a Storm, and provide you an Ark, an hiding place in Christ and the Promises, as ever you expect rest and peace in your own spirits, when the Earth shall be full of Tumults, Uproars and Desolations.
Secondly, Our preparations for sufferings is an excellent argument of the honesty and sincerity of our hearts in the matters of Religion: He that makes account of sufferings, and is daily at work with his own heart, mortifying its corruptions, weaning its worldly affections, exciting and making ready its suffering Graces, resolving in the strength of God to take his Lot with Christ, where-ever and howsoever it shall fall; this is the man that hath deliberately closed with Christ upon his own terms, and is like to be the durable and victorious Christian.