A53712:149
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.
Secondly, Its importunity and urgency seems to be noted in this expression of its warring. Enemies• in war are restless, pressing and importunate. So is the Law of sin. Doth it set upon the soul? cast off its motions, it returns again; rebuke them by the power of grace, they withdraw for a while, and return again. Set before them the Cross of Christ, they do as those that came to take him, at sight of him they went backwards, and fell unto the ground, but they arose again and laid hands on him. Sin gives places for a season, but returns and ⟨p. 77⟩presseth on the soul again. Mind it of the love of God in Christ, though it be stricken, yet it gives not over. Present Hell-fire unto it, it rusheth into the midst of those flames. Reproach it with its •olly and madness, it knows no shame, but presseth on still. Let the thoughts of the mind strive to fly from it, it follows as on the wings of the wind. And by this importunity it wearies and wars out •he soul, and if the great remedy, Rom 8. 13. come not timely, it prevails to a conquest. There is no•hing more marvellous nor dreadful in the working of sin, than this of its importunity. The soul knows not what to make of it; it dislikes, abhors, abominates the evil it tends unto, it despiseth the thoughts of it, hates them as hell, and yet is by •t self imposed on with them, as if it were another person, an express enemy got within him. All this the Apostle discovers, Rom. 7. 15, 17. The things that I do I hate; it is not of outward actions, but the inward risings of the mind that he •reats. I hate them, saith he, I abominate them. But why then will he have any thing more to do with them? If he hate them, and abhor himself for them, let them alone, have no more to do with them, and so end the matter. Alas, saith he, verse 17. It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I have one within me that is my enemy, that with endless restless importunity puts these things upon me, even the things that I hate and abominate; I cannot be rid of them, I am weary of my self, I cannot fly from them; O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me? I do not say that this is the ordinary condition of Believers, but thus it is