B36604:96
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.
My friends, the World hath Eyes to see what you can do, as well as Ears to hear what you can say; and as long as they see you do no more than others, you may talk your hearts out, ere they will believe your way is better than others.
My friends, the World hath Eyes to see what you can do, as well as Ears to hear what you can say; and as long as they see you do no more than others, you may talk your hearts out, e're they will believe your way is better than others.
But now when Persecution ariseth, did they see you providing your selves for it, and putting on your Harness to enter the Lists, carry your dearest Enjoyments in your hands, and put on the Shoo of Preparation, to follow the Lord through the roughest ways of Sufferings: this would convince to purpose, and preach the Excellency of Christ, the vanity of the Creature, the rationality and certainty of Christian Principles, in a more intelligible and rousing Dialect to them, than all our cheap and easy Commendations of them did. And hence it is, that Noah was said to condemn the World, Heb. 11.7. By Faith Noah being warned of God, of things not seen as yet, (i. e.) of the Deluge that was coming, though no appearance of it yet, the Heavens being as clear as ever; yet believing the Threatening, he was moved with fear: the fear of God, an effect of his Faith in the Word of God, moved, (i. e.) impelled him to his Duty: ⟨p. 31⟩Set him about his Preparation-work, to provide an Ark; and this was it by which he condemned the World, left them excuseless: For they not only heard of an approaching Flood by his Ministry, but now saw he himself believed what he preached, by his daily preparations against it came. O consider this, how much it would tend to the Worlds Conviction. Now they will see that you are in good earnest, and that there is a reality in godliness. This will induce them to search into the matter more than ever, and remove those prejudices they have taken up against the good ways of God, as if they were but Phantasms and Conceits.