Octavius Winslow - Spiritual Declension
Several of us from Wendy’s improv group were sitting around a Kenny Mango’s sucking down some Chai and digging Kenny’s new place. Eugene and I began discussing authors/books from the old school reformed list. He brought to my attention an author I had never heard of named Octavius Winslow. One of the books he wrote back in 1841 is called “Spiritual Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul”. Eugene said this book was so deep and full of conviction that he could not make it past the first chapter. I found it in the web for free… Click here.
After reading the first chapter I honestly felt like Isaiah did in Chapter 6 “ And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Seriously, I have never read anything so clear and so convicting as this first chapter. I can see this book literally taking months, even years to get your mind and soul around.
The first chapter deals with our position “in Christ, in God” and how this act of grace we should hunger and thirst after God.
Yet another characteristic of the divine life in the soul, is its security. “Your life is hid with Christ in God.” There, nothing can touch it: no power can destroy it. It is “hid with Christ,” the beloved Son of the Father, the delight, the glory, the richest and most precious treasure of Jehovah: still more, it is “hid with Christ in God,” in the hand, in the heart, in the all-sufficiency, yes, in the eternity of God. Oh the perfect security of the spiritual life of the believer! No power on earth or in hell can move it. It may be stormed by Satan, assaulted by corruption, scorned by men, and even in the moment of unbelief and in the hour of deep trial its existence doubted by the believer himself; yet there it is, deep lodged in the eternity of God, bound up in the heart and with the existence of Jehovah, and no foe can destroy it.
Yet, there are times that hidden sin and fleshly desires creep out of the heart and cause a state of “incipient declension”.
This decay of grace may be advancing, too, without any marked decline in the spiritual perception of the judgment, as to the beauty and fitness of spiritual truth. The loss of spiritual enjoyment, not of a spiritual perception of the loveliness and harmony of the truth, shall be the symptom that betrays the true condition of the soul. The judgment shall lose none of its light, but the heart much of its fervor; the truths of revelation, especially the doctrines of grace, shall occupy the same prominent position as to their value and beauty, and yet the influence of these truths may be scarcely felt. The Word of God shall be assented to; but as the instrument of sanctification, of abasement, of nourishment, the believer may be an almost utter stranger to it; yes, he must necessarily be so, while this process of secret declension is going forward in his soul.
This incipient state of declension may not involve any lowering of the standard of holiness; and yet there shall be no ascending of the heart, no reaching forth of the mind towards a practical conformity to that standard. The judgment shall acknowledge the divine law, as embodied in the life of Christ, to be the rule of the believer’s walk; and yet to so low and feeble a state may vital godliness have declined in the soul, there shall be no panting after conformity to Christ, no breathing after holiness, no “resistance unto blood, striving against sin.” Oh, it is an alarming condition for a Christian man, when the heart contradicts the judgment, and the life belies the profession! - when there is more knowledge of the truth than experience of its power, - more light in the understanding than grace in the affections, - more pretension in the profession than holiness and spirituality in the walk! And yet to this sad and melancholy state it is possible for a Christian professor to be reduced. How should it lead the man of empty notions, of mere creeds, of lofty pretension, of cold and lifeless orthodoxy, to pause, search his heart, examine his conscience, and ascertain the true state of his soul before God!
Once more: This state of secret departure from God may exist in connection with an outward and rigid observation of the means of grace; and yet there shall be no spiritual use of, or enjoyment in, the means. And this, it may be, is the great lullaby of his soul. Rocked to sleep by a merely formal religion, the believer is beguiled into the delusion that his heart is right, and his soul prosperous in the sight of God. Even more than this, - a declining believer may have sunk so deeply into a state of formality, as to substitute the outward and the public means of grace for a close and secret walk with God. He may have taken up his abode in the outer courts of the temple; he may dwell in the mere porch of the sanctuary. Frequent or even occasional retirement consecrated to meditation, self-examination, the reading of God’s Word, and secret prayer, may yield to an outward, bustling form of godliness. Public and committee meetings - religious societies - business and professional engagements - wearing a religious aspect, and even important in their subordinate places, may thrust out God from the soul, and exclude Christ from the heart. And that a believer should be satisfied to “live at this poor dying rate,” content to dwell amid the din and the bustle of the outworks, is one of the most palpable and alarming symptoms of the decline of the life of God in his soul.
This has taken me back… to the true essence of Spiritual Life and what it really means to be loved so much that I was adopted into God’s family and called “Son of God”. When I act like a moron, live in the flesh, do not conform my life to the image of Jesus… I grieve the very heart of the creator of the universe. Oh that I would pant after God, take hold on Holiness, Strive against sin… “unto blood” if need be.
“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”
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The clarion doesn’t ring until, unbeknownst to our own state of mind, we are deep in the recesses of declension and are awakened not knowing how we arrived or how long we’ve been there. Something, some word, or person, or event is the alarm ringing within our heart … that the Spirit finally uses to arrest our downward spiral. The slough engulfs, until the Lord rescues.