A53712:365
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, This also flows from the former, that whereas conceived sin contains the whole nature of it, as our Saviour at large declares, Matth. 5. And to be cut off under the guilt of it, to prevent its farther progress, argues a continuance in the purpose of it without repentance; it cannot be but they must perish for ever who are so judicially cut off. But God deals not so with his, he casts not off the people whom he did fore-know. And thence David prays for the patience of God before-mentioned, that it might not be so with him, Psa. 39. 13. O spare me that I may recover strength, before I go hence and be no more. But yet,
Secondly, There are some cases wherein God may, and doth take away the lives of his own to ⟨p. 192⟩prevent the guilt that otherwise they would be involved in; As,
First, In the coming of some great temptation and trial upon the world. God knowing that such and such of his would not be able to withstand it, and hold out against it, but would dishonour him, and defile themselves, he may, and doubtless often doth take them out of the world, to take them out of the way of it. Isa. 57. 1. The righteous is taken away from the evil to come; not only the evil of punishment and judgement, but the evil of temptations and trials, which oftentimes proves much the worse of the two. Thus a Captain in war will call off a soldier from his watch and guard, when he knows that he is not able, through some infirmity to bear the stress and force of the enemy that is coming upon him.