They mourn after God

3. The mourners of whom our Lord here speaks, are those that mourn on quite another account: they that mourn after God, after him in whom they did rejoice, with joy unspeakable, when he gave them to taste the good, the pardoning word, and the powers of the world to come. But he now hides his face and they are troubled; they cannot see him through the dark cloud. But they see temptation and sin, which they fondly supposed were gone never to return, arising again, following after them amain, and holding them in on every side. It is not strange if their soul is now disquieted within them, and trouble and heaviness take hold upon them. Nor will their great enemy fail to improve the occasion; to ask, “Where is now thy God? Where is now the blessedness whereof thou spakest? The beginning of the kingdom of heaven? Yea, hath God said, Thy sins are forgiven thee? Surely God hath not said it. It was only a dream, a mere delusion, a creature of thy own imagination. If thy sins are forgiven, why art thou thus? Can a pardoned sinner be thus unholy?”――And if then, instead of immediately crying to God, they reason with him that is wiser than they, they will be in heaviness indeed, in sorrow of heart, in anguish not to be exprest. Nay even when God shines again upon the soul, and takes away all doubt of his past mercy, still he that is weak in faith may be tempted and troubled, on account of what is to come: especially, when inward sin revives, and thrusts sore at him that he may fall. Then may he again cry out,

“I have a sin of fear, that when I’ve spun My last thread, I shall perish on the shore!”

Lest I should make shipwreck of the faith, and my last state be worse than the first:

“Lest all my bread of life should fail And I sink down unchang’d to hell.”