John Owen on lapsed Christians

“I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have judged formerly to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon as to all evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge so, is this; Because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if you judge him in a swoon, though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.”

John Owen, “Discourse IX,” The Works of John Owen, Vol 16., Ed. Thomas Russell, (1826), 542.