The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin

Secondly, God providentially hinders the bringing forth of conceived sin, by taking away, ⟨p. 193⟩and cutting short the power of them that had conceived it; so that though their lives continue, they shall not have that power, without which it is impossible for them to execute what they had intended, or to bring forth what they had conceived. Hereof also we have sundry instances. Thus was the case with the Builders of Babel, Gen. 11. What ever it were in particular that they aimed at, it was in the pursuit of a design of Apostasy from God. One thing requisite to the accomplishing of what they aimed at, was the oneness of their language; so God says, v. 6. They have all one language, and this they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them that they have imagined to do. In an ordinary way they will accomplish their wicked design. What course doth God now take to obviate their conceived sin? doth he bring a flood upon them to destroy them, as in the old world sometime before? Doth he send his Angel to cut them off, like the Army of Sennacherib afterwards? Doth he by any means take away their lives? No, their lives are continued, but he confounds their language, so that they cannot go on with their work, ver. 7. takes away that wherein their power consisted. In like manner did he proceed with the Sodomites, Gen. 19. 11. they were engaged in, and set upon the pursuit of their filthy lusts. God smites them with blindness, so that they could not find the door where they thought to have used violence for the compassing of their ends; their lives were continued, and their will of sinning, but their power is cut short and abridged. His dealing with Jeroboam, 1 King. 13. 4. was of the ⟨p. 194⟩same nature. He stretched out his hand to lay hold of the Prophet, and it withered and became useless. And this is an eminent way of the effectual acting of Gods providence in the world, for the stopping of that inundation of sin, which would overflow all the earth were every womb of it opened. He cuts men short of their moral power, whereby they should effect it. Many a wretch that hath conceived mischief against the Church of God, hath by this means been divested of his power, whereby he thought to accomplish it. Some have their bodies smitten with diseases, that they can no more serve their lusts, nor accompany them in the perpetrating of folly.