• li Cor. xii. 8.
OF TEMPTATION:
THE NATURE AND POWER OE IT; THE DANGER OF ENTERING INTO IT; AND THE MEANS OF PREVENTING THAT DANGER:
A RESOLUTION OF SUNDRY CASES THEREUNTO BELONGING.
' Bocauae thou hast hept the word of my patience, I nlso will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which Miall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth."— Ke v. iii. 10,
PREFATORY NOTE.
Tnis small work of Dv Owen on "Temptation" appeared in 1658. He had been urged to publish it by tliG solicitations of friends to whose opinion he paid de- ference. The probability is, that they had already heard the substance of it in discourses from tlie pulpit; and, from an expression in the closintr exhortation (see p. 150), the discourses must have been delivered in Oxford. The motives of the autlior in committing it to the press are still farther evinced in some allusions to the character of the times, which will be found both in the preface and in the treatise itself. The vigilant eye of Owen detected certain mischievous effects accruing from the eminent success which had attended hitherto the efforts of the party with wliom he acted. Tlie fear of a common danger had formerly kept them united in tiieir views and movements, while it led them to depend upon tlie true source of all strength and hope. They were now sinking into those strifes and divisions which paved tlie way for the restoration of monarchy; and Owen speaks of "a visible declension from reformation seizing upon the professing party of these nations." There is a tone of indignant and yet pathetic faithfiriuess in his language, as he recurs to the subject of this declension in the body of the treatise : " He that should see the prevailing party of these nations, many of them in rule, power, and favour, with all their adliereuts, and remember that they M'ere a colony of Puritans, whose habitation was in a 'low place,' as the prophet speaks of the city of God, translated by a high hand to tlie mountains they now possess, cannot but wonder how soon they have forgot the customs, manners, ways, of their own old people, and are cast into the mould of them that went be- fore them in the places whereunto they are translated." Owen may have feared the issue of prevailing divisions, and anticipated the revival of the intolerant sys- tem whicli the patriotism of the Long Parliament and the military genius of Cromwell overthrew. Under the impression that an hour of temptation had come, and that the best security for religious piinciples was the advancement of personal godliness, he published the following treatise.
Wiiatever motives incited him to the preparation of it, the whole work, with the exception of a few paragraphs, might have been written, with set purpose, lor the people of (jod in every age. In no work is the sound judgment of our author more conspicuous, lie avoids all fanciful speculations into the mysteries of Satanic agency, such as were too common on this theme. He is too much in earnest that his readers should be brought into a condition of safety against the wiles of the devil, to break the force of his warnings and entreaties by ingenious speculations and irrelevant learning. Not mei'ely in the warm appeals inter- spersed with his expositions, but in the patient care with which no nook of the heart is left unsearched, does the deep solicitude of Owen for the spiritual wel- fare of his readers ai>pear. To one who reads the treatise in the spirit with which the author wrote it, — simply that he may judge his own heart, and know what temptation means, and be fully on his guard against it, — the effi'ct is far beyond what the mere wealth of fancy or the arts of rhetoric could produce.
From the text, Matt. xxvi. 41, the author considers in succession three topics educed from it : — temptation, the means by which it prevails, and the way of pre- venting it. The most of the treatise is occupied with the last topic, — the means of i)revention. It is subdivided into inquiries, — as to the evidence by which a man may know that he has entered into temi)tation, the directions requisite to prevent him entering into it, and the seasons when temptation may be appre- hended. The discussion of this last inquiry merges very much into an illustra- tion of the Christian duty of watchfulness, and the treatise is closed by a general exhortation to this duty. Slight defects in tiie arrangement, the renewed discus- sion of a point after it had been quitted, and the disproportionate space accorded to some parts of the subject, are explained, perhaps, by the circumstance that the treatise was originally a series of discourses. — Ed.
TO THE READER.
Christian Reader, If thou ai't in any measure awake in these days wherein we live, and hast taken notice of the manifold, great, and various temptations wherewith all sorts of per- sons that know the Lord and profess his name are beset, and whereunto they are continually exposed, with what success those temptations have obtained, to the un- speakable scandal of the gospel, with the wounding and ruin of innumerable souls, I supj^ose thou wilt not inquire any farther after other reasons of the publishing of the ensuing warnings and directions, being suited to the times that pass over us, and thine own concernment in them. This I shall only say to those who think meet to persist in any such inquiry, that though my first engagement for the ex- posing of these meditations unto public view did arise from the desires of some, whose avouching the interest of Christ in the world by personal holiness and con- stant adhering to every thing that is made precious by its relation to him, have given them power over me to require at any time services of greater importance ; yet I dare not lay my doing of it so upon that account, as in the least to intimate that, with respect to the general state of things mentioned, I did not myself esteem it seasonable and necessary. The variety of outward providences and dis- pensations wherewith I have myself been exercised in this world, with the inward trials they have been attended withal, added to the observation that I have had advantages to make of the ways and walkings of others, — their beginnings, pro- gresses, and endings, their risings and falls, in profession and conversation, in darkness and hght, — have left such a constant sense and impression of the power and danger of temptations upon my mind and spirit, that, without other pleas and pretences, I cannot but own a serious call unto men to beware, with a discovery of some of the most eminent ways and means of the prevalency of present tempta- tions, to have been, in my own judgment, in this season needful.