Winslow’s Personal Declension in Modern English
There is a new book on the Puritan Rewrites page: Octavius Winslow’s Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul, complete in all nine chapters.
Winslow is later than the Puritans. He published this book in 1841, when he was in his early thirties. But he read them, quoted them and wrote in their spirit. Owen, Charnock and Traill all turn up in its pages. He wrote in a busy age of missionary societies, Bible societies, new churches and endless committees. His worry was that all this activity could hide a quiet drying up of the heart. A Christian could be busy everywhere and growing cold inside, and no one would notice, least of all the Christian.
What the book is about
Most books on the Christian life tell you how to be strong. This one tells you what it looks like when you are weak, how you got there, and how you come back.
The first chapter is about the hidden stage of decline, when the soul is unwell and nobody knows it. You keep up your duties but enjoy nothing in them. You read the Bible without hunger, and you pray without feeling near to God. The next chapters follow that decline through the graces one at a time: love growing cold, faith growing weak, prayer drying up, truth let go, the Holy Spirit grieved, and a branch that bears no fruit.
It would be a heavy book if it stopped there, but it doesn’t. Every chapter ends with the way back, and the last two chapters are about the Lord who restores and the Lord who keeps. Winslow insists that grace can droop but never die:
“Grace is indestructible. But it can decline, and that is what this book is about.”
And he is gentle about the way home:
“Not for one moment has God turned his back on you, though you have turned your back on him countless times.”
How this edition was made
Winslow wrote in long, rolling Victorian sentences. Here they are shorter, and he speaks to you more directly. His order, his argument and his nine chapters are kept. Where he repeated himself, the repeats have been trimmed. Scripture is quoted from the ESV. At the end of each chapter there is a short box called “In plain words” that sums up what the chapter said.
Reading it and listening to it
The book is about 56,000 words, one of the shorter books in the series. You can read it on the page or download it as a PDF or EPUB.
There is also a full audiobook, just over five hours long, with a chapter list so you can jump to any chapter. As it plays, the text follows along on the page. The voice is computer-generated, but it reads clearly.
You can read it, listen to it or download it here.