Re: POINTER: ALL THESE NET-ABUSE GROUPS! WHICH ONE SHOULD I USE?

way to that humiliation before the Sovereign Disposer
of life and death, whereby God is wont to prepare them for His
consolations. And yet those who have been under awakenings have
oftentimes plainly stood in need of being encouraged, by being told of
the infinite and all-sufficient mercy of God in Christ; and that it is
God's manner to succeed diligence, and to bless His own means, that so
awakenings and encouragements, fear and hope, may be duly mixed and
proportioned to preserve their minds in a just medium between the two
extremes of self-flattery and despondence, both which tend to slackness
and negligence, and in the end to security. I think I have found that no
discourses have been more remarkably blessed, than those in which the
doctrine of God's absolute sovereignty with regard to the salvation of
sinners, and His just liberty with regard to answering the prayers, or
succeeding the pains, of natural men, continuing such, have been
insisted on. I never found so much immediate saving fruit, in any
measure, of any discourses I have offered to my congregation, as some
from these words, Rom. iii. 19. "That every mouth may be stopped;"
endeavoring to show from thence that it would be just with God for ever
to reject and cast off mere natural men.

As to those in whom awakenings seem to have a saving issue, commonly the
first thing that appears after their legal troubles, is a conviction of
the justice of God in their condemnation, appearing in a sense of their
own exceeding sinfulness, and the vileness of all their performances. In
giving an account of this, they expressed themselves very variously;
some, that they saw God was sovere