A53712:393
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, God doth it by an Argument taken ab incommodo, from the inconveniences, evils, and troubles that will befall men in the pursuit of sin. If they follow it, this or that inconvenience will ⟨p. 210⟩ensue; this trouble, this evil, temporal or eternal. And this Argument, as managed by the Spirit of God, is the great engine in his hand whereby he casts up banks, and gives bounds to the lusts of men, that they break not out to the confusion of all that order and beauty which yet remains in the works of his hands. Paul gives us the general import of this argument, Rom. 2. 14, 15. For when the Gentiles which have not the Law, do by nature the things contained in the Law, these having not the Law, are a Law unto themselves, which show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, or else excusing one another. If any men in the world may be thought to be given up to pursue and fulfil all the sins that their lusts can conceive, it is those that have not the Law, to whom the written Law of God doth not denounce the evil that attends it. But though they have it not, saith the Apostle, they show forth the work of it, they do many things which it requireth, and forbear or abstain from many things that it forbiddeth, and so show forth its work and efficacy. But whence is it that they so do? Why their thoughts accuse or excuse them. It is from the consideration and arguings that they have within themselves about sin, and its consequents, which prevail upon them to abstain from many things that their hearts would carry them out unto. For Conscience is a mans prejudging of himself, with respect unto the future judgement of God. Thus […] was staggered in his pursuit of sin, when he […] at Pauls preaching of righteousness and ⟨p. 211⟩judgement to come, Act. 24. 25. So Job tells us, that the consideration of punishment from God, hath a strong influence on the minds of men to keep them from sin, chap. 31. 1, 2, 3. How the Lord makes use of that consideration, even towards his own, when they have broken the cords of his love, and cast off the rule of his grace for a season, I have before declared.