There is naturally in men an exceeding insensibility of their dependence on God and a great disposition to ascribe those things that they enjoy to themselves or to second causes. This disposition reigns in natural men. They are wholly under the power of it. Therefore they need to be taught their own helplessness, utter insufficiency, and utter unworthiness. Otherwise, if hope and comfort should be bestowed upon them, they would surely ascribe all to themselves, or the creature, and so would be lifted up by it and would not give God the glory. Therefore it is God’s manner first to humble sinners before He comforts them. And all this self-confident disposition is not extirpated out of the hearts of the godly, and especially when they get into ill frames does it prevail. And it is very requisite that, before any remarkable comfort is bestowed upon them, they should be the subjects of renewed humbling. They need renewably to see what helpless creatures they are, that so, when light is bestowed, they may be sensible how it is owing to God, and not to themselves or any other; and that they may, by their troubles and humblings, be prepared the more to admire God’s power and mercy and free and rich grace to them. While men are continued in fullness in a fruitful land, they will not learn their own helplessness, and therefore God will cast them out of this fullness into a wilderness.

From “Hope and Comfort Usually Follow Genuine Humiliation and Repentance,” p. 845