N00747:265
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.
3. Are there not in you restless longings for Christ? you are afraid whether he will come any more to you, but there are in you craving desires after him; your Soul cannot rest in this condition; nothing can content you whiles he is withdrawn, there is neither person nor thing that can fill up his room, or be to you in his stead: you can say as he, Psal. 73.25. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is nothing on earth that I desire in comparison of thee. And as, Isa. ⟨p. 139⟩26.9. With my soul have I desired thee • the night.
4. Is there not in you a love to Holiness? though you find that your strength fails you, and you can do nothing as you should, yet holiness is the thing you would fain have: the sin that is in you is burdensome, and you hate it, and are vile in your own eyes by reason of it. Can you say as he? Rom. 7.15. What I would, I do not, and what I hate that do I.
5. Do you not find something in you that resists this unbelief? would you not fain, if you dared, cry out as he, Matth. 9.24. I believe, Lord help mine unbelief? Would you not give a world, if you had i•, that you could trust in him, and wait for him? Something in you, that when you are ready to give up all for gone, will not suffer you, but giveth you some check? and what is this but, at least, some faint stirring of faith; an effect of it, though under grievous oppression?