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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
from
God. " 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 a
good 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
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