136 THE NATURE AND POWER
divested of his power, whereby he thought to accomplish it. Some have their bodies smitten with diseases, that they can no more serve their lusts, nor accompany them in the per- petrating of folly. Some are deprived of the instruments whereby they would work. There hath been, for many days, sin enough conceived to root out the generation of the righteous from the face of the earth, had men strength and ability to their will, did not God cut oft and shorten their power, and the days of their prevalency. Psal. Ixiv. 6. ' They search out iniquities, they accomplish a diligent search: both the inward thought of every one of them, and the heart, is deep.' All things are in a readiness, the design is well laid, their counsels are deep and secret. What now shall hinder them from doing whatever they have imagined to do ? ver. 7, 8. ' But God shall shoot at them with an arrow, suddenly shall they be wounded : so they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves.' God meets with them, brings them down, that they shall not be able to accomplish their design. And this way of God's preventing sin, seems to be, at least ordinarily, peculiar to the men of the world ; God deals thus with them every day, and leaves them to pine away in their sins. They go all their days big with the iniquity they have conceived, and are greatly burdened that they cannot be delivered of it. The prophet tells us, that ' they practise iniquity that they had conceived, because it is in the power of their hand ;' INIicah ii. 1. If they have power for it, they will accomplish it ; Ezek. xxii. 6. ' To their power they shed blood.' This is the measure of their sinning, even their power. They do, many of them, no more evil, they commit no more sin, than they can. Their whole restraint lies in being cut short in power, in one kind or another. Their bodies will not serve them for their contrived uncleannesses, nor. their hands for their revenge and rapine, nor their in- struments for persecution ; but they go burdened with con- ceived sin, and are disquieted and tortured by it all their days. And hence they become in themselves, as well as unto others, 'a troubled sea that cannot rest;' Isa. Ivii. 20.
It may be also in some cases, under some violent tempt- ations, or in mistakes, God may thus obviate the accom- plislunent of conceived sin in his own. And there seems to be an instance of it in his dealing with Jehoshaphat, who had de-
OF INDWELLING SIN.
13f
signed, a:gainst the mind of God, to join in affinity with Ahab, and to send his ships with him to Tarshish ; but God breaks his ships by a wind, that he could not accomplish what he had designed. But in God's dealing with his in this way, there is a difference from the same dispensation towards others ; for,
[L] It is so only in cases of extraordinary temptation. When, through the violence of temptation and craft of Satan, they are hurried from under the conduct of the law of grace, God one way or other takes away their power, or may do so, that they shall not be able to execute what they had designed. But this is an ordinary way of dealing with wicked men. This hook of God is upon them in the whole course of their lives ; and they struggle with it, being as a wild bull in a net; Isa. li. 20. God's net is upon them, and they are filled with fury that they cannot do all the wickedness that they would.
[2.] God doth it not to leave them to wrestle with sin, and to attempt other ways of its accomplishment, upon the failure of that which they were engaged in ; but by their disappointment awakens them to think of their condition, and what they are doing, and so consumes sin in the womb by the ways that shall afterward be insisted on. Some men's deprivation of power for the committing of conceived contrived sin, hath been sanctified to the changing of their hearts from all dalliances with that or other sins.
(3.) God providentially hinders the bringing forth of con- ceived sin, by opposing an external hindering power unto sinners. He leaves them their lives, and leaves them power to do what they intend, only he raiseth up an opposite power to coerce, forbid, and restrain them. An instance hereof we have, 1 Sam. xiv. 45. Saul had sworn that Jonathan should be put to death, and, as far as appears, went on resolutely to have slain him ; God stirs up the spirit of the people, they oppose themselves to the wrath and fury of Saul, and Jona- than is delivered. So also, 2 Chron. xxvi. 17 — 19. when king Uzziah would have in his own person offered incense contrary to the law, eighty men of the priests resisted him, and drove him out of the temple. And to this head are to be referred all the assistances which God stirreth up for deliverance of his people against the fury of persecutors, lie raiseth up saviours or deliverers on Mount Sion, ' to judge the mount of