Post-Reformation · 1648

A Lifting Up for the Downcast

William Bridge (1600-1671)

Thirteen sermons on Psalm 42:11, preached to believers weighed down by spiritual discouragement and unable to find rest in their own souls. Bridge moves case by case through the particular grounds of a sunk and disquieted spirit: great sins, weak grace, failed duties, lost assurance, temptation, desertion, affliction, and unserviceableness, turning each back toward hope in God. A member of the Westminster Assembly and one of the dissenting brethren who pressed for Congregational order, Bridge wrote in the 1640s for a generation shaken by civil war and uncertain of its standing before God.

10 hrs total · 13 chapters