N00747:188
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.
1. Our felicity consists in our Communion with God: He is our Objective Happiness: nothing else can confer it upon us; and we enjoy no more of it, than we have of fellowship with him; the Church could say, Lam. 3.24 The Lord is my portion; and the Psalmist, Psal. ⟨p. 95⟩144. ult. happy is that people whose God is the Lord. They that have no interest in God, have no title to happiness▪ He only can save as from the Evil, which otherwise will undo us; and none but he can bestow upon us the good without which we must remain miserable.
2. Perfect happiness must consist in perfect communion with him: it must be full, it must be perpetual; so much as is short of this, so much we come behind of that which our very nature craves to make us completely blessed: Perfect happiness can consist in nothing short of the fruition of our object to that degree of the fullness of satisfaction that we can desire; so that we can receive no more. In whatsoever measures the Object communicates it self to us, that are short of this, they will leave a vacuity, which must be replenished, if ever we come to rest, and seek no farther: thus the Psalmist describes it, Psal. 63.5. my soul shall be satisfied as with-marrow and fatness: Psal. 16. ult. in thy presence is fullness of joys, and at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.
2. Perfect happiness must consist in perfect communion with him: it must be full, it must be perpetual; so much as is short of this, so much we come behind of that which our very nature craves to make us compleatly blessed: Perfect happiness can consist in nothing short of the fruition of our object to that degree of the fulness of satisfaction that we can desire; so that we can receive no more. In whatsoever measures the Object communicates it self to us, that are short of this, they will leave a vacuity, which must be replenished, if ever we come to rest, and seek no farther: thus the Psalmist describes it,