A53712:125
The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin
The nature, power, deceit, and prevalency of the remainders of indwelling-sin in believers together with the ways of its working and means of prevention opened, evinced, and applied with a resolution of sundry cases of conscience thereunto appertaining.The nature, power, deceit, and prevalency of the remainders of indwelling-sin in believers together with the wayes of its working and means of prevention opened, evinced, and applyed with a resolution of sundry cases of conscience thereunto appertaining.
London: printed for Thomas Cockerill, 1675
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
First▪ In an hidden close propensity unto all evil. This lies in it habitually. Whilst a man is in the state of nature, fully under the power and dominion of this Law of Sin, it is said, that every figment of his heart is evil, and that continually, Gen. 6. 5. It can frame, fashion, produce, or act nothing but what is evil: because this habitual propensity unto evil, that is in the Law of Sin, is absolutely predominant in such a one. It is in the heart like poison that hath nothing to allay its venomous qualities, and so infects whatever it touches. And where the power and dominion of it is broken, yet in its own nature it hath still an habitual propensity unto that which is evil, wherein its lusting doth consist.
First▪ In an hidden close propensity unto all evil. This lyes in it habitually. Whilest a man is in the state of nature, fully under the power and dominion of this Law of Sin, it is said, that every figment of his heart is evil, and that continually, Gen. 6. 5. It can frame, fashion, produce, or act nothing but what is evil: because this habitual propensity unto evil, that is in the Law of Sin, is absolutely predominant in such a one. It is in the heart like poison that hath nothing to allay its venemous qualities, and so infects whatever it touches. And where the power and dominion of it is broken, yet in its own nature it hath still an habitual propensity unto that which is evil, wherein its lusting doth consist.
But here we must distinguish between the habitual ⟨p. 62⟩frame of the heart, and the natural propensity or habitual inclination of the Law of Sin in the heart. The habitual inclination of the heart is denominated from the principle that bears Chief or Sovereign Rule in it; and therefore in Believers it is unto Good, unto God, unto holiness, unto obedience. The heart is not habitually inclined unto evil by the remainders of Indwelling Sin, but this Sin in the heart hath a constant habitual propensity unto evil in its self, or its own nature. This the Apostle intends by its being present with us; it is present with me, that is, always, and for its own end, which is to lust unto sin.