N00747:163
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.
USE. I. For INFORMATION in a few particulars.
1. Learn hence what a foolish thing it is for the Children of God, to nourish in themselves carnal confidence, & security. We ought indeed to live in the exercise of Faith, and labour always to strengthen and establish it; but there is a Presumption which the best are in hazard of, and if they reckon it to be a strong faith, they grievously mistake themselves. For a believer, when he finds his heart engaged, to think himself Temptation proof, and be thereupon adventurous beyond a Call; or because he now stands in the light of Gods countenance, to conclude that he shall never be beclouded again, is carnal confidence: and the Doctrine before us will discover the folly of it, if we consider;
1. That there is a vast difference, between this and faith in exercise. And to ⟨p. 78⟩make this evident we have need to take notice only of this, viz. That faith it always accompanied, in its exercise with holy fear: a Child of God dares indeed to ••ust in him; but he knows that this •aith is to be found in the use of means, and not to indulge a neglect of them: hence that,