N00747:239
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. Suppose you never were Converted, this doth not say that you never shall. Though you have been mistaken, yet this doth not Seal-Reprobation upon you. There is Grace enough with God, virtue enough in the blood of Christ, power enough in the Spirit of Grace, and an opportunity and price still in your hands: So that put case your state be as you fear, yet you• case is not desperate.
2. Suppose you never were Converted, this doth not say that you never shall. Though you have been mistaken, yet this doth not Seal-Reprobation upon you. There is Grace enough with God, vertue enough in the blood of Christ, power enough in the Spirit of Grace, and an opportunity and price still in your hands: So that put case your state be as you fear, yet you• case is not desperate.
3. All the arguments that Unbelief & Satan furnish you withal for this conclusion, are precarious. Suppose you have made a great profession in hypocrisy, yet God can take away that false heart, and give you a true one. If you have had beginnings and lost them; doubtless God suffers his chosen many times to ⟨p. 126⟩out grow convictions, and legal purposes once and again, and yet in his time he returns, and doth the work effectually; what though you have lived a great while thus, yet it is not too late so long as God yet strives, and waits, & calls, as he doth: Nor is it of force, that now you find no disposition in you, nor efficacy of means and endeavours, but all seem to your apprehension to work contrary, & you think your selves forsaken: this may also be to break you off from your selves, and to make his grace the more admirable. So that on supposition that you were in such a condition, yet it is too much for you to conclude from •hence, that you are undone for ever.
3. All the arguments that Unbelief & Satan furnish you withal for this conclusion, are precaius. Suppose you have made a great prfession in hypocrisy, yet God can take away that false heart, and give you a true one. If you have had beginnings and lost them; doubtless God suffers his chosen many times to