OBSTRUCTIONS TO CONCEIVED SIN. 275
from the least inclination to his temptation. " It is sin against God, to whom I owe all obedience, the God of my life and of all my mercies. I will not do it." The argument wherewith Abigail pre- vailed on David, 1 Sam. xxv. 31, to withhold him from self-revenge and murder, was of the same nature ; and he acknowledgeth that it was from the Lord, verse 32. I shall add no more; for all the Scrip- tui-e motives which we have to duty, made effectual by grace, are instances of this way of God's procedure.
Sometimes, I confess, God secretly works the hearts of men by his own finger, without the use and means of such arguments as those insisted on, to stop the progress of sin. So he tells Abimelech, Gen. XX. 6, " I have withheld thee from sinning against me." Now, this could not be done by any of the arguments which we have in- sisted on, because Abimelech knew not that the thing he intended was sin ; and therefore he pleads, that in the " integrity of his heart and innocency of his hands" he did it, verse 5. God turned about his will and thouglits, that he should not accomplish his intention; but by what ways or means is not revealed. Nor is it evident what course he took in the change of Esau's heart, when he came out against his brother to destroy him. Gen. xxxiii. 4. Whether he stiiTed up in him a fresh spring of natural affection, or caused him to con- sider what grief by this means he should bring to his aged father, who loved him so tenderly; or whether, being now grown great and wealthy, he more and more despised the matter of difference be- tween him and his brother, and so utterly slighted it, is not known. It may be God did it by an immediate, powerful act of his Spirit upon his heart, without any actual intervening of these or any of the like considerations. Now, though the things mentioned are in them- selves at other times feeble and v/eak, yet when they are managed by the Spirit of God to such an end and purpose, they certainly be- come effectual, and are the matter of his preventing gi-ace.
[2.] God prevents the bringing forth of conceived sin by real spiritual saving grace, and that either in the first conversion of sin- ners or in the following supplies of it: —
] St. This is one part of the mystery of his grace and love. He meets men sometimes, in their highest resolutions for sin, with the highest efficacy of his grace. Hereby he manifests the power of his own grace, and gives the soul a farther experience of the law of sin, when it takes sucli a farewell of it as to be changed in the midst of its resolutions to serve the lusts thereof By this he melts down the lusts of men, causeth them to wither at the root, that they shall no more strive to bring forth what they have conceived, but be filled with shame and sorrow at their conception. An example and instance of this proceeding of God, for the use and instruction of all genera-
27G THE NATURE AND POWER OF INDWELLING SIN.
tions, we have in Paul. His heart Avas full of wickedness, blasphemy, and persecution; his conception of them was come unto rage and madness, and a full purpose of exercising them all to the utmost : so the story relates it, Acts ix. ; so-himself declares the state to have been with him, Acts xxvi. 9-12, 1 Tim. i. 13. In the midst of all this violent pursuit of sin, a voice from heaven shuts up the womb and dries the breasts of it, and he cries, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Acts ix. 6. The same person seems to intimate that this is the way of God's procedure with others, even to meet them with his converting grace in the height of their sin and folly, 1 Tinx i. 1 G : for he himself, he says, was a pattern of God's dealing with others; as he dealt with him, so also would he do with some such-like sin- ners : " For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting." And we have not a few examples of it in our own days. Sundry persons on set purpose going to this or that place to deride and scoff at the dispensation of the word, have been met withal in the very place wherein they de- signed to serve their lusts and Satan, and have been cast down, at the foot of God. This way of God's dealing with sinners is at large set forth. Job xxxiii. 15-18. Dionysius the Areopagite is another in- stance of this work of God's grace and love. Paul is dragged either by him or before him, to plead for his life, as " a setter forth of strange gods," which at Athens was death by the law. In the midst of this frame of spirit God meets with him by converting grace, sin withers in the womb, and he cleaves to Paul and his doctrine, Acts xvii. 18-84. The like dispensation towards Israel we have, Hos. xi. 7-10. But there is no need to insist on more instances of this observation. God is pleased to leave no generation unconvinced of this truth, if they do but attend to their own experiences and the examples of this work of his mercy amongst them. Every day, one or other is taken in the fulness of the purpose of his heart to go on in sin, in this or that sin, and is stopped in his course by the power of converting grace. 2dlij. God doth it by the same grace in the reneiued communi- cations of it; that is, by special assisting grace. This is the com- mon way of his dealing with believers in this case. That they also, through the deceitfulness of sin, may be carried on to the conceiving of this or that sin, was before declared. God puts a stop to their progress, or rather to the pre valency of the law of sin in them, and that by giving in unto them special assistances needful for their pre- servation and deliverance. As David says of himself, Ps. Ixxiii. 2, " His feet were almost gone, his steps had well-nigh slipped," — he was at the very brink of unbelieving, desi^airing thoughts and con- clusions about God's providence in the government of the world,