A53712:225
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, It doth it by an horrible abuse of Gospel grace. There is in the Gospel a remedy provided against the whole evil of sin, the filth, the guilt of it, with all its dangerous consequents. It is the Doctrine of the deliverance of the souls of men from sin and death. A discovery of the gracious will of God towards sinners by Jesus Christ. What now is the genuine tendency of this doctrine, of this discovery of grace, and what ought we to use it and improve it unto? This the Apostle declares, Tit. 2. 11, 12. The grace of God that bringeth salvation, hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. This it teacheth, this we ought to learn of it, and by it. Hence Universal holiness is called a conversation that becometh the Gospel, Phil. 1. 27. It becomes it as that which is answerable unto its end, aim, and design, as that which it requires, and which it ought to be improved unto. And accordingly it doth produce this effect where the word of it is received and preserved ⟨p. 113⟩in a saving light, Rom. 12. 2. Ephes. 4. 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. But herein doth the deceit of sin interpose it self. It separates between the Doctrine of Grace, and the use and end of it. It stays upon its notions, and intercepts its influences in its proper application. From the Doctrine of the assured pardon of sin, it insinuates a regardlessness of sin. God in Christ makes the proposition, and Satan and Sin make the conclusion. For that the deceitfulness of sin is apt to plead unto a regardlessness of it from the grace of God whereby it is pardoned, the Apostle declares in his reproof and detestation of such an insinuation, Rom. 6. 1. What shall we say then, shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. Mens deceitful hearts, saith he, are apt to make that conclusion; but far be it from us, that we should give any entertainment unto it. But yet that some have evidently improved that deceit unto their own eternal ruin, Jude declares, ver. 4. Ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. And we have had dreadful instances of it in the days of temptation wherein we have lived.