So may you do though God hath forsaken you, though you want the sense of his love, yea, and are under the sense of God's anger yet at the same time you may say, The Lord is my Father, and you may go to him as your Father: and if you can say, God is my Father, have you any reason for your discouragements?” And I pray tell me, is it not sufficient to be as our Master was? Did not Christ want the sense of God's love, when he said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Yea, had not Christ the sense of God's anger upon him when he did perform the greatest act of obedience that ever the sun saw: yet did he then say, I am not the child of God, because I want the sense of God's love, because I am under the sense of God's anger? No, but with the same breath that he said he was forsaken, he said, "My God, my God " and at the same time he called God Father, "Father, forgive them," &c.
Bridge spent his last years at Yarmouth and Clapham, Surrey, where he died in March 1670.“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. He laboured there until 1662, when he was ejected by the Act of Uniformity. That same year he accepted a position as town preacher at Yarmouth, where he organized an Independent church, and formally became its pastor in autumn 1643. Returning to England in 1641, the following year he was appointed a member of the Westminster Assembly, and proved himself a noted Independent. In 1636 he was forced to flee to Rotterdam in Holland, because of Bishop Matthew Wren's campaign against nonconformity, and co-pastored a church there with John Ward and then Jeremiah Burroughs.
He was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1627, and served in Saffron Walden and Colchester in Essex, then becoming rector of St. William Bridge (1600-70) entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1619, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1623 and a master's degree in 1626, before serving as a fellow at the college. The Cure of Discouragements by Faith In Jesus Christ A Lifting Up in the Case of Discouragements Drawn from the Condition Itselfġ3. A Lifting Up in the Case of Unserviceablenessġ2. A Lifting Up in the Case of Afflictionġ1. A Lifting Up in the Case of Temptationġ0. A Lifting Up in the Case of Miscarriage of DutiesĨ. Saints Should Not be Discouraged Whatever Their Condition BeĤ.
Downcast Christians of the twenty-first century can find help here as surely as did past generations.ģ. For example in dealing with 'great sins' he says, 'If you would be truly humbled and not be discouraged not be discouraged and yet be humbled then beat and drive up all your sin to your unbelief, and lay the stress and weight of all your sorrow upon that sin.' The general causes of spiritual depression are the same in every age. He gives directions for applying the remedy. A correct diagnosis is more than half the cure but Bridge does not leave his readers there. In dealing with believers suffering from spiritual depression, Bridge manifests great insight into the causes of the saints' discouragements such as great sins, weak grace, failure in duties, want of assurance, temptation, desertion and affliction. These thirteen sermons on Psalm 42:11, preached at Stepney, London, in the year 1648 are the work of a true physician of souls.
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