and we shall find our position evidenced. Should I go through at large
CHAPTER 14.
The power of sin demonstrated by the effects it has had in the lives of professors - First, in actual sins - Secondly, in habitual backsliding.
WE now proceed to other evidences of that sad truth. But as most of our work is done, I shall be more brief in discussing the rest.
So we here consider the demonstration which this law of sin has in all ages given of its power, by the woeful fruits that it has brought forth, even in believers. Now, these are of two sorts: -
1. The great eruptions of sin in their lives;
2. Their habitual backsliding from the condition of obedience and communion with God, which they had obtained; - both which, by the rule of James, are due to this law of sin, and belong to the fourth head of its progress, and are both convincing evidences of its power.
1. Consider the fearful eruptions of actual sin in the lives of believers, and we shall find our position evidenced. Should I go through at large with this consideration, I must recount all the sad failings of the saints that are left on record in the holy Scripture; but the details of them are known to all. Only some few things may be remarked; as, -
(1.) Most of them occur in the lives of men that were not of the ordinary sort of believers, but of men that had a peculiar eminence because they walked with God in their generation. Such were Noah, Lot, David, Hezekiah, and others. They were not men of an ordinary size, but higher than their brethren, by the shoulders and upwards, in faith and in real holiness. And surely it must be a mighty efficacy that could hurry such giants in the ways of God into such abominable sins as they fell into. An ordinary engine could never have turned them out of the course of their obedience. It was a poison that no athletic constitution of spiritual health, no antidote, could withstand.
(2.) These men did not fall into their great sins at the beginning of their life of faith, when they had had little experience of the goodness of God, of the sweetness of obedience, of the power and craft of sin, of its impulses, temptations, and assaults; but after a long course of walking with God, and acquaintance with all these things, together with innumerable motives to watchfulness. Noah, according to the lives of men in those days of the world, had walked uprightly with God some hundreds of years before he stumbled, Genesis 9. Righteous Lot seems to have been towards the end of his days ere he defiled himself with the abominations recorded. David, in a short life, had as much experience of grace and sin, and as much close, spiritual communion with God, as had any of the sons of men, before he was cast to the ground by this law of sin. So was it with Hezekiah, who was none of the meanest. Now, to set on such persons, so well acquainted with its power and deceit, so armed and provided against it, that had been conquerors over it for so many years, and to prevail against them, argues a power too mighty for anything but the Spirit of the Almighty to withstand. Who can look to have a greater stock of inherent grace than those men had; to have more experience of God and the excellency of his ways, the sweetness of his love and of communion with him, than they had? who has either better equipment to oppose sin with, or more obligation so to do, than they? and yet we see how fearfully they were prevailed against.
(3.) As if God had permitted their falls on purpose, that we might learn to be wary of this powerful enemy, they all of them fell out when they had newly received mercies from the hand of God, that ought to have kept them diligent and watchful in close obedience. Noah was newly come forth of that world of waters, where he saw the ungodly world perishing for their sins, and preserved by that miracle which all ages must admire. Whilst the world's desolation was an hourly reminder to him of his preservation by the hand of God, he falls into drunkenness. Lot had just seen what every one who thinks on trembles, he saw, as one speaks, "hell coming out of heaven" on unclean sinners; the greatest evidence, except the cross of Christ, that God ever gave of the judgment to come. He saw himself and children delivered by the