N00747:65
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. Yet this anger is managed by love, and shall work accordingly. Gods displeasure at his Children shall do nothing but what love directs; if then he hides away from them in anger, it is because he seeth it is best for them: it shall not extinguish, no, nor diminish, no, nor so much as intermit the operation of his love towards them, but shall always do loves work: when therefore he afflicts, it is in faithfulness, as Psal. 119.75.
4. That God may withdraw from his ⟨p. 33⟩people when he is not angry; they indeed have cause to be afraid of some provocation given, and accordingly to make diligent search: but God sometimes withdraws from them, when there is no special provocation given him▪ Job had great desertions, as hath been observed, and yet God himself testifieth of him, that there was none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, Job 1.8. and the Church could say, in Psal. 44.17. all this is come upon us, ye• have we not forgotten thee, nor dealt falsely in thy Covenant.
4. That God may withdraw from his ⟨p. 33⟩people when he is not angry; they indeed have cause to be afraid of some provocation given, and accordingly to make diligent search: but God sometimes withdraws from them, when there is no special provocation given him▪ Job had great desertions, as hath been observed, and yet God himself testifieth of him, that there was none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man,