N00801:39
A remedy against despair. Or Brief discourse wherein great sinners are encouraged, and directed…
A remedy against despair. Or Brief discourse wherein great sinners are encouraged, and directed how to improve the consideration of the greatness of their sins in praying to God for pardon. Being the substance of two sermons preached at the lecture in Boston, 1699. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church there. ; [Four lines of Scripture texts]
Boston: printed by B. Green and J. Allen. Sold by S. Phillips, 1700
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.
DOCT. VII. The sense of Guilt should not discourage Gods People from seeking of him deliverance in times of trouble. It is indeed then an hour of Temptation; Satan, and a misgiving heart, at such a ⟨p. 23⟩time, offer to drive us to despondency, when sin and sorrow meet together. However the people of God ought not to be overwhelmed in their minds, when it is so, and think it in vain to hope and seek for deliverance of God, because he is justly provoked at them. David resolves against giving way to sinking fears in such a condition, Psal. 49.5. Wherefore should I fear in the day of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about? and that was the encouragement which that good man offered to the Jews at such a time, in Ezra 10.2. We have trespassed against our God, &c. yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing; and truly, both these are Gods works, and he is to be waited on to do them, both to put away the sin which hath provoked him to bring trouble upon us, and to remove the sorrow that hath been procured by our sin: the one therefore ought not to discourage us in regard of the other, but rather to excite us to make haste the faster to him.
USE. Let this then rebuke such as nourish despondencies and despair in them, by such reflections as these are. God indeed afflicts you, that he may thereby make your Sin bitter to you, and humble you to his feet, under the sense of it; but this is not to drive you from him, or to make you think that he will not hear and help you in your trouble, but to excite you the more earnestly to seek it of him. And truly, there is nothing that should make us more earnest in going to God for deliverance, when we are under his afflicting hand, then to consider that our Sins have procured this for us, and therefore there is none that can give us deliverance but he, inasmuch as he alone can take away the cause of our trouble, which is our Sin.
USE. Let this then rebuke such as nourish despondencies and despair in them, by such reflexions as these are. God indeed afflicts you, that he may thereby make your Sin bitter to you, and humble you to his feet, under the sense of it; but this is not to drive you from him, or to make you think that he will not hear and help you in your trouble, but to excite you the more earnestly to seek it of him. And truly, there is nothing that should make us more earnest in going to God for deliverance, when we are under his afflicting hand, then to consider that our Sins have procured this for us, and therefore there is none that can give us deliverance but he, inasmuch as he alone can take away the cause of our trouble, which is our Sin.