A53712:327
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, That the Will is the Principle, the next seat and cause of obedience and disobedience. Moral actions are unto us, or in us, so far good or evil as they partake of the consent of the Will. He spake truth of old who said, Omne peccatum est adeò voluntarium, ut non •it peccatum nisi sit voluntarium. Every sin is so voluntary, that if it be not voluntary▪ it is not sin. It is most true of actual sins. The formality of their iniquity ariseth from the acts of the will in them, and concerning them, I mean, as to the persons that commit them; otherwise in it self the formal reason of sin is its aberration from the Law of God.
Secondly, There is a two-fold consent of the will unto sin.
First, That which is full, absolute, complete, and upon deliberation. A prevailing consent, the convictions of the mind being conquered, and no principle of grace in the will to weaken it. With this consent the soul goes into sin, as a Ship before the wind with all its sails displayed, without any check or stop. It rusheth into sin like the horse into the battle. Men thereby, as the Apostle speaks, giving themselves over to sin with greediness, Ephes. 4. 19. Thus Ahab's will was in the murdering of Naboth, he did it upon deliberation, by contrivance, with a full consent; the doing of it gave him such satisfaction, as that it cured his malady or the distemper of his mind. This is that consent of the will which is acted in the finishing and completing of sin, in unregenerate persons, and is not required to the single bringing forth of sin, whereof we speak.
First, That which is full, absolute, complete, and upon deliberation. A prevailing consent, the convictions of the mind being conquered, and no principle of grace in the will to weaken it. With this consent the soul goes into sin, as a Ship before the wind with all its sails displayed, without any check or stop. It rusheth into sin like the horse into the battel. Men thereby, as the Apostle speaks, giving themselves over to sin with greediness,