Owen: The Beginnings of Apostasy

“For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.  For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.”—Romans 2:12-13

“Secret sins,” such as are not known to be sins, it may be, to ourselves, make way for those that are “presumptuous.” Thus pride may seem to be nothing but a frame of mind belonging unto our wealth and dignity, or our … abilities; sensuality may seem to be but a lawful participation of the good things of this life; passion and peevishness, but a due sense of the want of respect that we must suppose owing unto us; covetousness, a necessary care of ourselves and of our families. If the seeds of sin are covered with such pretences, they will in time spring up and bear bitter fruit in the minds and the lives of men. And the beginning of all apostasy, both in religion and in morality, lies in such pretences. Men plead that they can do so-and-so lawfully, until they can do things openly unlawful.”

John Owen (1616-1683),  A Treatise of the Dominion o f Sin and Grace[1688], in Works of John Owen,v.VII, London: Johnson & Hunter, 1852, p. 559