A53712:388
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.
Thus then God dealt in the case of Esau and Jacob. Esau had long conceived his brothers death, he comforted himself with the thoughts of it, and resolutions about it, Gen. 27. 41. As is the manner of profligate sinners. Upon his first opportunity he comes forth to execute his intended rage, and Jacob concludes that he would smite the mother with the children, Gen. 32. 11. An opportunity is presented unto this wicked and profane person, to bring forth that sin that had laid in his heart now twenty years; he hath full power in his hand to perform his purpose. In the midst of this posture of things, God comes in upon his heart with some secret and effectual working of his Spirit and power, changeth him from his purpose, causeth his conceived sin to melt away, that he falls upon the neck of him with embraces, whom he thought to have slain.
Of the same nature, though the way of it was peculiar, was his dealing with Laban the Syrian, in reference to the same Jacob, Gen. 31. 24. By a dream, a vision in the night, God hinders him from so much as speaking roughly to him. It was with him as in Micah 2. 1. he had devised evil on his bed, and when he thought to have practised it in the morning, God interposed in a dream, and hides sin from him, as he speaks, Job ••, 15, 16, 17. To the same purpose is that of the Psalmist concerning the people of God, Psal. 106. 46. He made them to be pitied of all those who carried them captives. Men usually deal in rigour with ⟨p. 207⟩those whom they have taken captive in war. It was the way of old to rule captives with force and cruelty. Here God turns and changes their hearts, not in general unto himself, but to this particular of respect to his people. And this way in general doth God every day prevent the bringing forth of a world of sin. He sharpens arrows of conviction upon the spirits of men, as to the particular that they are engaged in. Their hearts are not changed as to sin, but their minds are altered as to this or that sin. They break, it may be, the vessel they had fashioned, and go to work upon some other. Now that we may a little see into the ways whereby God doth accomplish this work, we must premise the ensuing considerations.