Mortification

And so what our Lord sends us really is very minimal.

Mortification lightens the weight of our soul and makes it easier to be lifted up.

And while this spirit is something that is meant to pervade our whole existence, There are certain periods in the year which the church gives us where she encourages us to practice a little more penance and Lent and Advent.

We start Lent with the ceremony of the Yashas, reminding us that we are dust, we're nothing.

PREFATORY NOTE PREFACE AND CHAPTER I OF ON TEMPTATION AND THE MORTIFICATION OF SIN IN BELIEVERS THE NECESSITY, NATURE, AND MEANS OF IT WITH THE RESOLUTION OF SUNDARY CASES OF CONSCIENCE THEREUNTO BELONGING OR THE MORTIFICATION OF SIN This is a LibriVox recording.

All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Stephen Escalera The Mortification of Sin by John Owen Prefatory Note Preface and Chapter 1 Prefatory Note by the Rev.

W. H. Gould, Edinburgh It sheds interesting light on the character and resources of Owen if the circumstances in which the following treatise was composed are borne in mind.

it was published in sixteen fifty six and its author was at the time dean of christ church and vice-chancellor of the university of oxford restoring it by a course of mingled kindliness and decision from the ruinous condition into which it had lapsed during the civil wars and raising it to such prosperity as to extort the praises of clarendon he was preaching each alternate sabbath those sermons which lingered in the memory and strengthened the piety of philip henry he was frequently summoned to london on momentous consultations respecting public affairs and to preach before the parliament as if this amount of toil were not sufficient to occupy him toil so great that in his noble address on resigning the vice-chancellorship of the university he describes himself as having been sapius The Council of State had imposed on him the task of replying to Biddle the Socinian, and he fulfilled it by the production of his elaborate and masterly work, Venditiae Evangelice, a bulwark of the faith so solid in its foundation, and so massy in its proportions, that the entire phalanx of Socinian authorship has shrunk from the attempt to assail it.

All other ways of mortification are vain.

All helps leave us helpless.

it must be done by the spirit men as the apostle intimates romans nine thirty three thirty two may attempt this work on other principles by means and advantages administered on other accounts as they always have done and do but saith he this is the work of the spirit by him alone is it to be wrought and by no other power is it to be brought about Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world, and this is a second principle of my ensuing discourse.