A Lifting Up For The Downcast
Thirteen sermons on Psalm 42:11 in which Bridge, a seasoned physician of souls, diagnoses the many causes of spiritual discouragement, great sins, weak grace, failed duties, lost assurance, temptation, desertion, and affliction, and directs the cast-down believer back to faith in Christ. A classic Puritan treatment of what is now often called spiritual depression.
Based on A Lifting Up for the Downcast, thirteen sermons on Psalm 42:11 (1648), by William Bridge
Puritan quotes
Quotes by William Bridge
“The more you see Christ walking in the sweet shades of divine love toward poor sinners, the sooner will your faith revive, and your comforts be restored.”
“In the time of His presence we have the sense of His love to us. But in the time of His absence then He sees, and we ourselves have the sense of, our love to Him.”
“God doth never more graciously appear to his people, than when there is the greatest matter for their discouragement.”
“God hath provided promises of comfort, succour and relief, suitable to all conditions: I dare boldly challenge all men, to shew me any one condition, which God hath not provided a promise of comfort, mercy and succour suitable unto it.”
“Thus doth God, with whom are reserves of mercies, reserve his sweetest consolations, for the time of our sourest afflictions, and doth temper the one with the other in most fit proportion.”
“never lay your comforts upon your condition, nor be in love with any condition for itself; let not your condition itself be the cause or bottom of your encouragements.”
“It stands not with the justice of God to exact the payment of one debt twice.”
“It is my duty, and I have reason to be humbled for my sin, although it be never so small; but I have no reason to be discouraged under my sin, though it be never so great.”
“We do not live by feeling, but by faith: it is the duty of a Christian to begin with faith, and so to rise up to feeling: you would begin with feeling, and so come down to faith; but you must begin with faith, and so rise up to feeling.”
“When a man is truly humbled and grieved for sin, the object of his grief is sin, as a dishonour done unto God: when a man is discouraged and not humbled, then his trouble is all about his condition, and what will become of him.”