Have we not experience of our weakness, our folly, the invincible power of temptation, Avhen once it is gotten within us? As for this duty that I have insisted on, take these considerations: —
1. If you neglect it, it being the only means prescribed by our Saviour, you Avill certainly enter into temptation, and as certainly fall into sin. Flatter not yourselves. Some of you are "old disciples;" have a great abhorrency of sin; you think it impossible you should ever be seduced so and so ; but, " Let him (whoever he be) that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." It is not any grace received, it is not any experience obtained, it is not any resolution improved, that will preserve you from any evil, unless you stand up- on your watch: " AVhat I say unto you," says Christ, " I say unto
GENERAL EXHORTATION. 151
all, Watch/' Perhaps you may have had some good success for a time iu your careless frame ; but awake, admu-e God's tenderness and pa- tience, or evil lies at the door. If jon will not perform this duty, whoever you are, one way or other, in one thing or other, spiritual or carnal wickedness, you will be tempted, you will be defiled ; and what will be the end thereof ? Remember Peter !
2. Consider that you are always under the eye of Christ, the great captain of our salvation, who hath enjoined us to watch thus, and jiray that we enter not into temptation. What think you are the thoughts and what the heart of Christ, when he sees a temptation hastening towards us, a storm rising about us, and we are fast asleep? Doth it not grieve him to see us expose ourselves so to danger, after he hath given us warning upon warning? Whilst he was in the days of his flesh he considered his temptation whilst it was yet coming, and armed himself against it. " The piince of this world cometh," says he, " but hfith no part in me." And shall we be negligent under his eye? Do but think that thou seest him coming to thee as he did to Peter, when he was asleep in the garden, with the same reproof: " What! canst thou not watch one hour?" AYould it not be a grief to thee to be so reproved, or to hear him thundering against thy neglect from heaven, as against the church of Sardis? Pev. iii. 2.
3. Consider that if thou neglect this duty, and so fall into tempta- tion,— which assuredly thou wilt do, — that when thou art entangled God may withal bring some heavy affliction or judgment upon thee, which, by reason of thy entanglement, thou shalt not be able to look on any otherwise than as an evidence of his anger and hatred; and then what wilt thovi do with thy temptation and affliction together? All thy bones will be broken, and thy peace and strength will be gone in a moment. This may seem but as a noise of words for the present ; but if ever it be thy condition, thou wilt find it to be full of woe and bitterness. Oh! then, let us strive to keep our spirits unen- tangled, avoiding all appearance of evil and all ways leading there- unto; especially all ways, businesses, societies, and employments that Ave have already found disadvantageous to us.
THE NATURE, POWER, DECEIT, AND PREVALENCY
EEMAINDERS OF INDWELLING SIN IN BELIEYERS;
TOGETHEE WITH
THE WAYS OF ITS WORKING AND MEANS OF PREVENTION, OPENED, EVINCED, AND APPLIED:
A RESOLUTION OF SUNDET CASES OF CONSCIENCE THEREUNTO APPERTAINING.
' O wretched man that I am I who shall deliver nie from the body of this death ? I thank Cod throug'a Jesus Christ our Lord."— Rum. vii. 21, 2.i.
TREFATORY NOTE.
While the Government Wtas enforcing stringent measures against Nonconformity, ■while Dissenting ministers if they Tentured to preach the gospel of salvation became liable to the penalties of the Conventicle or Five-mile Act, and when Owen himself on a visit to some old friends at Oxford narrowly escaped arrest and imprisomnent, our author did not abandon himself to inactivity, biit employed the leisure of the con- cealment into which the rigour of the times had driven him in the preparation of some of his most valuable works. In one year (1CG8) the two treatises which conclude this volume were published, together with the first volume of his colossal and elabo- rate work, the "Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews."
His treatise on " Indwelling Sin" has always ranked high among the productions of our author. The opinion which Dr Chalmers entertained of it will be seen in the " Life of Owen," vol. i. p. Ixxxiv. That siich a work should have been prepai-ed under the gloom of public trials, and the hardship of personal exposure to civil penalties, evinces not merely great industry, but a strength of religious principle with which no outward commotions were permitted to intermeddle. Temptations were strong at that time to merge all duty into a secular struggle for the rights of conscience and liberty of wor- ship. Owen issued various tracts which had some share in securing these blessings for his countiy. But he was intent, with engrossing zeal, on the advancement of vital piety ; and his treatise on " Indwelling Sin" is a specimen of the discourses which he preached whenever a safe opportunity occurred. It is avovi'edly designed for believers, to aid and guide them in the exercise of self-examination. There is uncommon subtilty of moral analysis in many of its statements, — an exposure, irksome it may be thought, in its fulness and variety, of the manifold deceitfulness of the human heart. A question may even be raised, if it be altogether a healthful process, for tlie mind to be conducted through this laborious and acute unvailing of the hidden mysteries of sin, and if it rnay not tend to exclude from the view the objective truths of the Word. But the process is in itself supremely needful, — essential to the life of faith and the growth of holiness ; and with no guide can we be safer than -with Owen. The reader is never suftcred to lose sight of the fact, amid the most searching investigation into human motives, that our acceptance with (iod cannot depend upon the results of any scrutiny into our internal condition, and that the guilt of all liu-king corruption which wo may detect is remitted only by the lilood of the cross.