OUR PRONENESS TO DEPART FROM GOD. Gil have beers made to know God in truth, may feel some such experiences as these are, for when he hides his face, who can behold him ? When he speaks trouble, who can give comfort ? I might add further, that these sorts of judgments are more certain tokens of God's displea- sure than any temporal corrections can be, for God may suffer us to lose much of our outward substance, and at the same time may communicate to us a most lively sense of his love and our interest in the unsearcheable riches of Christ; and then he can hardly be said to punish us much, or in reality to afflict us : but when he hides his face, then as Job saith, " He counts me for his enemy,' that looks so much like displeasure that it cannot be otherwise construed. The Fourth doctrine is this; the way, of man's own heart is to turn aside fromGod. " I hid me and was' wroth, " and he went on frowardly turning aside after the way of "'his own heart:" this is the nature of man, this is the temper of a fallen creature, and so far as sin prevails in the saints, this-is their temper too. To turn away from God our creator, is a turning from our life, in whom we live, move, and have our being : to turn away from God, who is our first cause, who is our last end ; to turn aside from the spirit of God as the guide of our ways ; to turn aside from the quickening grace of God, which is the life; and from his assisting power, which is the help of our souls. But the turnings aside of a saint have something of a more aggravated nature in them, for he doth not only turn aside from a creator, benefactor, lawgiver, or preserver, but he turns aside from God his father, from Jesus leis saviour, that has delivered him, from the wrath to come; he turns aside from the Spirit, the sanctifier that has begun agood work in his soul, and laid the foundation, of eternal happiness there ; and yet this is the very temper of a backsliding saint, for all sin is ours, all the holiness that is in us, in our hearts and lives is from God. The ways of man's heart are different from the ways of God's heart, and in this sense it may be said, " My thoughts," saith the Lord, " are not your " thoughts, nor my `ways your ways;" and we should say, O Lord, thy ways are holy, but our ways are unholy; thy ways are pure, just, and good, but our ways are pol- luted, defiled, and unrighteous. See here then what a 2xß r
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