N00747:78
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.
4. Desertions belong to these Temptations. And indeed grace is never so put to the proof, as when God hides his face from us. To believe in a withdrawing God, to be following hard after him, when he seems to be going away from us; to hold him the faster, when he offers to knock our hands off; to resolve with him, Job 13.15. Though he slay me, I will put my trust in him. And him, Isa. 8.17. I will wait for the Lord, ⟨p. 39⟩who hideth his face from the house of Jacob; requires no small measure of faith: when it is with us, as it was with the Psalmist, then to say and do as he did, Psal. 22. begin ▪ argueth grace to have great vigour in it.
5. God hereby lets them know their own weakness, to humble them. When God withdraws, the corrupt part stirs: unbelief is ready to discover it self, impatience to break forth in unsuitable expressions, and carriages; the Christian who before thought, what he •ould do, if assailed, now finds himself to be at a loss, and ready to sink; see how David expresseth himself, in Psal. 77▪ begin. as if all were gone; and is made to confess that it was his infirmity, Verse 10.
6. And he lets them herein experience his own fidelity and power. When he gives them a full proof of their own weakness, and helpeth them to cry out to him for help: when with Peter,