“(2.) This duty being a thing good in itself, in its proper place, a duty evidencing sincerity, bringing home peace to the conscience; a man finding himself really engaged in it, his mind and heart set against this or that sin, with purpose and resolution to have no more to do with it,—he is ready to conclude that his state and condition is good, and so to delude his own soul. For,—
[1.] When his conscience hath been made sick with sin, and he could find no rest, when he should go to the great Physician of souls, and get healing in his blood, the man by this engagement against sin pacifies and quiets his conscience, and sits down without going to Christ at all. Ah! how many poor souls are thusdeludedto eternity! ‘When Ephraim saw his sickness, he sent to king Jareb,’ Hos. 5:13; which kept him off from God. The whole bundle of the popish religion is made up of designs and contrivances to pacify conscience without Christ; all described by the apostle, Rom. 10:3.
[2.] By this means mensatisfythemselves that their state and condition is good, seeing they do that which is a work good in itself, and they do not do it to be seen. They know they would have the work done in sincerity, and so are hardened in a kind of self-righteousness.
(3.) When a man hath thus for a season been deluded, and hath deceived his own soul, and finds ina long courseof life that indeed his sin isnot mortified, or if he hath changed one he hath gotten another, he begins at length to think that all contending is in vain,—he shall never be able to prevail; he is making a dam against water that increaseth on him. Hereuponhe gives over, as one despairing of any success, and yields up himself to the power of sin and that habit of formality that he hath gotten.
And this is the usual issue with persons attempting the mortification of sin without an interest in Christ first obtained. Itdeludesthem,hardensthem,—destroysthem. And therefore we see that there are not usually more vile and desperate sinners in the world than such as, having by conviction been put on this course, have found it fruitless, and deserted it without a discovery of Christ. And this is the substance of the religion and godliness of the choicest formalists in the world, and of all those who in the Roman synagogue are drawn to mortification, as they drive Indians to baptism or cattle to water. I say, then, that mortification is the work of believers, and believers only. To kill sin is the work of living men; where men aredead(as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin isalive, and will live.”[1]
“(2.) This duty being a thing good in itself, in its proper place, a duty evidencing sincerity, bringing home peace to the conscience; a man finding himself really engaged in it, his mind and heart set against this or that sin, with purpose and resolution to have no more to do with it,—he is ready to conclude that his state and condition is good, and so to delude his own soul. For,—
[1.] When his conscience hath been made sick with sin, and he could find no rest, when he should go to the great Physician of souls, and get healing in his blood, the man by this engagement against sin pacifies and quiets his conscience, and sits down without going to Christ at all. Ah! how many poor souls are thusdeludedto eternity! ‘When Ephraim saw his sickness, he sent to king Jareb,’ Hos. 5:13; which kept him off from God. The whole bundle of the popish religion is made up of designs and contrivances to pacify conscience without Christ; all described by the apostle, Rom. 10:3.
[2.] By this means mensatisfythemselves that their state and condition is good, seeing they do that which is a work good in itself, and they do not do it to be seen. They know they would have the work done in sincerity, and so are hardened in a kind of self-righteousness.
(3.) When a man hath thus for a season been deluded, and hath deceived his own soul, and finds ina long courseof life that indeed his sin isnot mortified, or if he hath changed one he hath gotten another, he begins at length to think that all contending is in vain,—he shall never be able to prevail; he is making a dam against water that increaseth on him. Hereuponhe gives over, as one despairing of any success, and yields up himself to the power of sin and that habit of formality that he hath gotten.
And this is the usual issue with persons attempting the mortification of sin without an interest in Christ first obtained. Itdeludesthem,hardensthem,—destroysthem. And therefore we see that there are not usually more vile and desperate sinners in the world than such as, having by conviction been put on this course, have found it fruitless, and deserted it without a discovery of Christ. And this is the substance of the religion and godliness of the choicest formalists in the world, and of all those who in the Roman synagogue are drawn to mortification, as they drive Indians to baptism or cattle to water. I say, then, that mortification is the work of believers, and believers only. To kill sin is the work of living men; where men aredead(as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin isalive, and will live.”[1]
[1]John Owen,The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, n.d.), 37.
