N00747:213
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. Be much in stablishing your hope. ⟨p. 112⟩God hath given you a good hope; make much of it, and be always fortifying of it, and take heed of exposing it to be undermined: and in special, beware of that temptation which is sometimes urged to disquiet and disturb the minds of the Children of God, viz. to question the solidity of your hope, because you have not been entertained with those horrors that others have not met withal, nor those ravishings which some talk of. Know then that those are not essential, but arbitrary. Let your care be to see that the root of the matter is in you, and that your hope is built upon the Grace of God in Christ, revealed in you, and is such an hope as sets you upon the pursuit of Holiness, according to, 1 Joh. 3.3. He that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, as he is pure. And let this encourage you to be very faithful in Serving of God, and waiting to see his Salvation.
2. Be much in stablishing your hope. ⟨p. 112⟩God hath given you a good hope; make much of it, and be always fortifying of it, and take heed of exposing it to be undermined: and in special, beware of that temptation which is sometimes urged to disquiet and disturb the minds of the Children of God, viz. to question the solidity of your hope, because you have not been entertained with those horrours that others have not met withal, nor those ravishings which some talk of. Know then that those are not essential, but arbitrary. Let your care be to see that the root of the matter is in you, and that your hope is built upon the Grace of God in Christ, revealed in you, and is such an hope as sets you upon the pursuit of Holiness, according to, 1 Joh. 3.3. He that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, as he is pure. And let this encourage you to be very faithful in Serving of God, and waiting to see his Salvation.