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

Fourthly, The Law so follows on its sentence, that it disquiets and affrights the soul, and suffers in not to enjoy the least rest or quietness in harbouring its sinful inmate. When ever the soul hath indulged to its commands, made provision for it, immediately the Law flies upon it, with the wrath and terror of the Lord, makes it quake and tremble: It shall h•ve no rest, but is like a poor beast that ⟨p. 287⟩hath a deadly arrow sticking in its sides, that makes it restless where ever it is, and whatever it doth.

Fourthly, The Law so follows on its sentence, that it disquiets and affrights the soul, and suffers in not to enjoy the least rest or quietness in harbouring its sinful inmate. When ever the soul hath indulged to its commands, made provision for it, immediately the Law flies upon it, with the wrath and terrour of the Lord, makes it quake and tremble: It shall h•ve no rest, but is like a poor beast th•t ⟨p. 287⟩hath a deadly arrow sticking in its sides, that makes it restless where ever it is, and whatever it doth.

Fifthly, The Law stays not here, but also it slays the soul, Rom. 7. 3. that is, by its conviction of the nature, power, and desert of this indwelling-sin, it deprives him in whom it is of all that life of self-righteousness and hope, which formerly he sustained himself withal: It leaves him as a poor, dead, helpless, hopeless creature. And all this in the pursuit of that opposition that it makes against this sin. May we not now expect, that the power of it will be quelled, and its strength broken; that it will die away before these strokes of the Law of God; but the truth is, such is its power and strength, that it is quite otherwise; like him whom the Poets feign to be born of the Earth, when one thought to slay him by casting him on the ground, by every fall he recovered new strength, and was more vigorous than formerly: So is it with all the falls and repulses that are given to Indwelling-sin by the Law. For,