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

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.

4. Labour to testify your resentment of this kindness by an answerable holy walking. How holily should they live ⟨p. 107⟩ever after, whom God hath brought out of the horrible pit, and set them upon a rock? if God hath now set you in the light of his countenance, let your light shine accordingly, so that it may appear that you have intimate converse with Jesus, that the influence of his favour is accompanied with the influence of his grace, exciting all the graces in you to a more vigorous exercise. How fast should Christians grow when they live under the refreshing beams of the Sun of Righteousness irradiating of them? the Psalmist saith, Psal. 92.13, 14. those that are planted in the house of the Lord, shall flourish in the courts of our God: they shall still bring forth fruit in their old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.