Author: DilbertDilbert
Date: Jan 15, 2008 15:46
temptations of one sort
or other, unprofitable and hurtful distresses, were soon helped over
former stumbling-blocks, that hindered their progress towards saving
good; convictions have wrought more kindly, and they have been
successfully carried on in the way to life. And thus Satan seemed to be
restrained, till towards the latter end of this wonderful time, when
God's Holy Spirit was about to withdraw.
Many times persons under great awakenings were concerned, because they
thought they were not awakened, but miserable, hard-hearted, senseless,
sottish creatures still, and sleeping upon the brink of hell. The sense
of the need they have to be awakened, and of their comparative hardness,
grows upon them with their awakenings; so that they seem to themselves
to be very senseless, when indeed most sensible. There have been some
instances of persons who have had as great a sense of their danger and
misery as their natures could well subsist under, so that a little more
would probably have destroyed them; and yet they have expressed
themselves much amazed at their own insensibility and sottishness at
such an extraordinary time.
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