N00747:126
Spiritual desertions discovered and remedied. Being the substance of divers sermons preached for the…
Spiritual desertions discovered and remedied. Being the substance of divers sermons preached for the help of dark souls, labouring under divine withdrawings. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Four lines from Isaiah]
printed by B. Green for Michael Perry and Benjamin Eliot, 1699
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.
2. It falls them with fear; there is a filial, and there is a slavish fear; the one proceeds from the Spirit of Adoption, and the other from a Spirit of Bondage: ⟨p. 60⟩and as there are the beginnings of the one, so the remains of the other in the Children of God: the operation of these is divers, and oftentimes very much mixed in them at such a time; the Psalmist saith, Psal. 119.120. My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy Judgments; and never more so, then when under Desertion• ; inasmuch as these afford occasions for this fear to be stirred: this night when it comes, brings its terrors along with it.
2. It falls them with fear; there is a filial, and there is a slavish fear; the one proceeds from the Spirit of Adoption, and the other from a Spirit of Bondage: ⟨p. 60⟩and as there are the beginnings of the one, so the remains of the other in the Children of God: the operation of these is divers, and oftentimes very much mixt in them at such a time; the Psalmist saith, Psal. 119.120. My flesh trembleth for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy Judgments; and never more so, then when under Desertion• ; inasmuch as these afford occasions for this fear to be stirred: this night when it comes, brings its terrours along with it.
3. It makes them restless till the desertion be removed, and God reveals his face again to them. There will indeed be the stirring of corruption as well as grace in this disquietment of mind; but in the whole they cannot abide quiet under these withdrawings; nor can any thing in the world give them satisfaction in the room of that presence of his: the Spouse, in