A28620:742
The dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in several treatisesThe dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in severall treatises
The dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in several treatises ... : never before published / by Samuel Bolton ...The dead saint speaking to saints and sinners living in severall treatises ... : never before published / by Samuel Bolton ...
London: printed by Robert Ibbitson for Thomas Parkhurst, 1657
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
For the clearer understanding of this Conclusion, you must know there is a threefold Presence of God 1. Quickening. 1. Comforting. 3. Supporting.
1. God may forsake a man in part, in respect of his Quickening presence, and leave a man to the barrenness, flatness, deadness of his own spirit for a time, that the soul cannot pray, hear, meditate, do any thing, as formerly it hath done. As it was with Sampson when his locks were cut, his strength was gone; and therefore though he thought to go out, and do as he did in former times, yet he found there was no such matter; he was become even as another man: so it is here; our strength lies, not in our hair, but in our head. When God is gone, our Locks are cut, our strength is gone. And though we may think to go upon duties, as at other times, and meet with those lively and vigorous workings of spirit in duty: yet we shall find no such matter; we are even become as other men.
1. God may forsake a man in part, in respect of his Quickening presence, and leave a man to the barrenness, flatness, deadness of his own spirit for a time, that the soul cannot pray, hear, meditate, do any thing, as formerly it hath done. As it was with Sampson when his locks were cut, his strength was gone; and therefore though hee thought to go out, and do as hee did in former times, yet hee found there was no such matter; hee was become even as another man: so it is here; our strength lyes, not in our hair, but in our head. When God is gone, our Locks are cut, our strength is gone. And though wee may think to go upon duties, as at other times, and meet with those lively and vigorous workings of spirit in duty: yet wee shall finde no such matter; wee are even become as other men.
Indeed so much of his Quickening Spirit God leaves in the worst of times, as usually, to keep up the heart to duty. The soul will pray, will read, &c. but he gives not so much, as to carry the soul through the duty, with that life and vigour of affection, which formerly it had.