"Temptation is like a knife, that may either cut the meat or the throat of a man; it may be his food or his poison, his exercise or his destruction"
About this Quote
Temptation, for John Owen, is not a naughty detour on the road to virtue; its the blade already in your hand. The knife image does two jobs at once. It grants temptation a kind of moral neutrality - an instrument with potential uses - while also refusing modern comforts about self-mastery. A knife always implies proximity, pressure, and consequence. You dont theorize about it from across the room. You either learn its proper use or you bleed.
Owen writes as a Puritan theologian in a 17th-century England rattled by civil war, political whiplash, and intense scrutiny of the inner life. In that world, the drama of faith is not mainly public performance; its private governance. The subtext is practical and disciplinary: temptation will not politely announce itself as evil. It arrives as appetite (food), as strength-training (exercise), as something that can be rationalized as useful. That ambiguity is the trap. Owen is warning that the same impulse that builds a life can also end it, depending on the habits and spiritual vigilance of the person wielding it.
The line also carries a sly rebuke to complacency. Calling temptation "exercise" suggests it can be metabolized - turned into practiced resistance that forms character. But "throat" snaps the reader back to risk: small misuses can become fatal. Owen isnt romanticizing struggle; hes insisting that desire is always operative, always capable of turning daily life into either nourishment or self-harm.
Owen writes as a Puritan theologian in a 17th-century England rattled by civil war, political whiplash, and intense scrutiny of the inner life. In that world, the drama of faith is not mainly public performance; its private governance. The subtext is practical and disciplinary: temptation will not politely announce itself as evil. It arrives as appetite (food), as strength-training (exercise), as something that can be rationalized as useful. That ambiguity is the trap. Owen is warning that the same impulse that builds a life can also end it, depending on the habits and spiritual vigilance of the person wielding it.
The line also carries a sly rebuke to complacency. Calling temptation "exercise" suggests it can be metabolized - turned into practiced resistance that forms character. But "throat" snaps the reader back to risk: small misuses can become fatal. Owen isnt romanticizing struggle; hes insisting that desire is always operative, always capable of turning daily life into either nourishment or self-harm.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Discipline |
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