The Mind and Sin’s Deceitfulness

In ch. 8 of his The Power and Efficacy of Indwelling Sin, John Owen elaborates on Hebrews 3:13 (“Take heed that you be not hardened by the deceitfulness of sin”) and discusses the role of the mind in the deceitfulness of sin:

Deceit properly affects the mind; it is the mind that is deceived… But where the mind is tainted, the prevalency must be great; for the mind or understanding is the leading faculty of the soul, and what that fixes on the will and affections rush after, being capable of no consideration but what that presents to them. Hence it is, that though the entanglements of the affections unto sin be oftentimes most troublesome, yet the deceit of the mind is always most dangerous, and that because of the place that it possesses in the soul as unto all its operations.