A53712:408
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, Consider the fearful Eruptions of actual sins that have been in the Lives of Believers, and we shall find our Position evidenced. Should I ⟨p. 221⟩go through at large with this Consideration, I must recount all the sad and scandalous failings of the Saints that are left on record in the holy Scripture. But the particulars of them are known to all; so that I shall not need to mention them, no• the many aggravations that in their circumstances they are attended with: Only some few things tending to the rendering of our present consideration of them useful, may be remarked. As,
First, Consider the fearful Eruptions of actual sins that have been in the Lives of Believers, and we shall find our Position evidenced. Should I ⟨p. 221⟩go through at large with this Consideration, I must recount all the sad and scandalous failings of the Saints that are left on record in the holy Scripture. But the particulars of them are known to all; so that I shall not need to mention them, no• the many aggravations that in their circumstances they are attended with: Only some few things tending to the rendring of our present consideration of them useful, may be remarked. As,
First, They are most of them in the Lives of men that were not of the lowest form or ordinary sort of Believers, but of men that had a peculiar eminency in them on the account of their walking with God in their Generation. Such were Noah, Lot, David, Hezekiah, and others. They were not men of an ordinary size, but higher than their Brethren by the shoulders and upwards in Profession, yea in real Holiness. And surely that must needs be of a mighty efficacy that could hurry such Giants in the ways of God into such abominable sins as they fell into. An ordinary Engine could never have turned them out of the course of their obedience. It was a poison that no Athletic constitution of spiritual health, no Antidote could withstand.