N00747:256
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. From the occasion learn to acknowledge the Righteousness of God. Let it stop murmurings, & hard charges which are the most dangerous temptations under Desertions, the Psalmist resolutely maintains that under the most dismal withdrawing, Psal. 22.13. nevertheless thou art holy. When we can justify God in his dealings with us, that very frame will help us to a more believing waiting upon him; if we put off our controversy with God, & lay aside all our prejudices at him, we shall be the better persuaded to wait for him.
2. From the occasion learn to acknowledge the Righteousness of God. Let it stop murmurings, & hard charges which are the most dangerous temptations under Desertions, the Psalmist resolutely maintains that under the most dismal withdrawing, Psal. 22.13. nevertheless thou art holy. When we can justify God in his dealings with us, that very frame will help us to a more believing waiting upon him; if we put off our controversy with God, & lay aside all our prejudices at him, we shall be the better perswaded to wait for him.
3. Observe the operation of the Desertion; and be sure to do it, not only in this or that circumstance, or passage of it, but in the whole tract of Gods managing of it; if thus you do, you will find enough to humble you in your selves, and make you ashamed of the many violent efforts of sin and unbelief which you have laboured of: Let it help to mortify every carnal lust, & abase you the more, and bring you to take the greater heed to your selves: let it wean you from the world, and make you more heavenly in your conversation: and if this be the operation, you may thereby discover that ⟨p. 135⟩there i• the carrying on of the great design in you, and that God is still leading of you to heaven, though in the dark; and if for some while you cannot discern the operation to be any whit this way, by reason of the confusion & distraction there is in you, yet wait for it; and when you find any thing thereof, be sure to improve it as an earnest of his returning again shortly unto you.