Dear Fred:<br><br>Thanks for the reply. I'm not exactly sure where all the men I mentioned stood on the issue either, but I have a pretty good idea and I believe it to be the traditional reformed view.<br><br>In one of his sermons on this subject, "So Then", Alexander Whyte quotes from Owens' writings on this traditional reformed view as follows:<br><br>====================================================================================<br><br>"For lessons in the doctrine of original and indwelling sin Paul had not sat at any man's feet: prophet, nor psalmist, nor apostle. Whether they all taught that doctrine or not he does not stop to say. But what he does say, and with all his might, is this: that indwelling sin is not a doctrine at all to him. No; to him it is a sure experience. It is not even a divine doctrine to him, so much as a spiritual and a personal experience: a daily, a bitter, a hateful, a loathsome, a cruel, and a lifelong spiritual experience. <br><br>"And then, among other things," says John Owen, that most Pauline of men, "this inward experience of Paul is the great guarantee and the sure preservative of evangelical truth in Paul's mind, and heart, and doctrine; just as it is in every man's mind, and heart, and doctrine who has Paul's spiritual experience." No man need attempt to argue Paul - no, nor any of Paul's successors - out of this so experimental and so personal truth, because they all "find" it in themselves. Incontestably so, according to the depth and the sincerity and the spirituality of their minds and their hearts. 'I know it,' says the Apostle. 'I know it, beyond all possible dispute or shadow of doubt. For I find it within my own soul, continually and incessantly, and that to my cost, to my shame, and to my deepest pain; to a shame and to a pain that are simply indescribable and inconsolable.' "Some," says John Owen, summing up his great masterpiece on this deep matter - "some pretend to great natural virtue, and some to great gospel perfection, but I am resolved to believe the Apostle and my own experience." And so am I. "<br><br>======================================================================================<br><br>I find my theology and my experience firmly in line with that of Whyte and Owen on this important matter.<br><br><br>In Him,<br><br>Gerry<br>
