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How sad and strange soever thy condition may seem to be, thou art not the first nor art like to be the last of the friends and saints of God whose condition this hath been or may be. Read but over the book of the Psalms. How often do you find there the saints complaining of God's hiding His face from them; casting them out, casting them off, forsaking, forgetting them; shutting out their prayers, and the like? Now this may be some comfort to thee, as it is to a man that is in a wilderness, to find the tract and footsteps of men that have gone that way before.
There may be a time when God will not be found, but no time wherein He must not be trusted.
My Lord and Savior, whom I do love unfeignedly and above all other things, having in my sense and feeling withdrawn Himself from me, I fought earnestly and labored to recover my comfort in by serious meditations and trial of mine own heart and crying unto Him upon my bed in the night, when I was most free from all other distractions.
By divine withdrawings, the soul is put upon hanging upon a naked God, a naked Christ, a naked promise. Now the soul is put upon the highest and the purest acts of faith (Isa. 63:15–16)—namely, to cleave to God, to hang upon God, and to carry it sweetly and obediently toward God—though He frowns, though He chides, though He strikes, yea, though He kills (Job 13:15).
God is said to harden men when He removes not from them the incentives to sin, curbs not those principles which are ready to comply with those incentives, withdraws the common assistances of His grace, concurs not with counsels and admonitions to make them effectual, flashes not in the convincing light which He darted upon them before. If hardness follows upon God's withholding His softening grace, it is not by any positive act of God but from the natural hardness of man.
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1. Thomas Watson (166)
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6. John Piper (87)
7. Thomas Brooks (82)
8. George Swinnock (80)
9. John Flavel (76)
10. A.W. Pink (68)
11. John Owen (68)
12. Louis Berkhof (63)
13. Thomas Manton (60)
14. C.S. Lewis (59)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
16. B.B. Warfield (58)
17. R.C. Sproul (55)
18. William Gurnall (55)
19. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
20. Matthew Henry (51)
2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. John Calvin (107)
5. J.I. Packer (93)
6. John Piper (87)
7. Thomas Brooks (82)
8. George Swinnock (80)
9. John Flavel (76)
10. A.W. Pink (68)
11. John Owen (68)
12. Louis Berkhof (63)
13. Thomas Manton (60)
14. C.S. Lewis (59)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
16. B.B. Warfield (58)
17. R.C. Sproul (55)
18. William Gurnall (55)
19. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
20. Matthew Henry (51)
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