Spiritual desertions discovered and remedied. Being the substance of divers sermons preached for the…

2. Be humbled for all your unsuitable carriages under Gods hidings. It is now a proper time for you to be ashamed of your selves: and doubtless, if you will look back upon that hour of temptation, you will find enough to lay you low in the remembrance of it. David did so, Psal. 77. and it is very convenient, to let us know how little we did to procure this return. Now think how injuriously you murmured and fretted at the Providence of God, how wrongfully you charged him with forgetting his Covenant, and breaking his promise; how, without reason you voted your selves cast aways, and refused counsel or comfort; how foolishly impatient ⟨p. 106⟩you were, and short spirited, in that you could not wait for his salvation.

2. Be humbled for all your unsuitable carriages under Gods hidings. It is now a proper time for you to be ashamed of your selves: and doubtless, if you will look back upon that hour of temptation, you will find enough to lay you low in the remembrance of it. David did so, Psal. 77. and it is very convenient, to let us know how little we did to procure this return. Now think how injuriously you murmured and fretted at the Providence of God, how wrongfully you charged him with forgetting his Covenant, and breaking his promise; how, without reason you voted your selves cast aways, and refused counsel or comfort; how foolish•y impatient ⟨p. 106⟩you were, and short spirited, in that you could not wait for his salvation.

3. Beware of forgetting the former times, and falling into carnal frames. You have experienced the bitterness and temptation of a deserted condition, you have tasted the wormwood and the gall, and let your soul keep them in remembrance: there is an use to be made of them, and God expects it of you; and what is it, but to caution you how you carry it afterwards: and more peculiarly let it admonish you to take heed of such things as you have by such providences already felt the smart of: Possibly you can remember what it was that occasioned the former desertions which you have felt; let this remembrance be a monitor to you, to stand clear there, to look to your selves with a special circumspection, that you precipitate not your selves into the like folly afterward: if any temptation of this nature offer it self, have this in a readiness to quench it withal, this hath cost me too dear, ever to yield to it again.