Chapter 9 in John Owen’s Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers
Owen now begins to give practical guidance on how to mortify sin:
Consider what dangerous symptoms your lust has attending or accompanying it – whether it has any deadly mark on it or no; if it has, extraordinary remedies are to be used; an ordinary course of mortification will not do it (89).
Inverterateness [state of being hardened, habitual, deep-rooted]
When a lust has lain long in the heart, corrupting, festering, cankering, it brings the soul to a woeful condition. In such a case an ordinary course of humiliation will not do the work (90).
Secret pleas of the heart for the countenancing [approving] of itself, and keeping up its peace, notwithstanding the abiding of a lust, without a vigourous gospel attempt for its mortification (91).
When upon thoughts, perplexing thoughts about sin, instead of applying himself to the destruction of it, a man searches his heart to see what evidences he can find of a good condition, notwithstanding that sin and lust, so that it may go well with him (91).
