Of Temptation

This small work of Dr. Owen on "Temptation" appeared in 1658. He had been urged to publish it by the solicitations of friends to whose opinion he paid deference. The probability is, that they had already heard the substance of it in discourses from the pulpit; and from an expression in the closing exhortation (see p. 150), the discourses must have been delivered at Oxford. The motives of the author in committing it to the press are still farther evinced in some allusions to the character of the times, which will be found both in the preface and in the treatise itself. The vigilant eye of Owen detected certain mischievous effects accruing from the eminent success which had attended hitherto the efforts of the party with whom he acted.