occasions though compared with that measure of Grace which usually is acted by the Children of God upon ordinary occasions it is a special assistance of the Spirit Of this nature is that Boldness which the Servants of Christ receive to confess Christ before Men in times of Persecution and to Die for the Truth with Constancy Courage and Joy 3. There are also singular Eminencies of Grace which some diligent careful and choice Servants of God attain unto far above what the ordinary sort arrive at Enoch had his Conversation so much in Heaven that he was said to walk with God David's Soul was often full of delight in God Some in the height of Assurance rejoyce in God with joy unspeakable and full of Glory Moses was eminent in Meekness Job in Patience the Apostle Paul in Zeal for promoting the Gospel c. Now Satan when he comes to question the Graces of Men he presents them with these Measures and if they fall short as ordinarily they do he concludes them altogether Graceless 2. Satan also can do much to heighten the ordinary work and usual fruits of every Grace His Art herein lies in two things 1. He gives us a description of Grace as it is in it self abstracted from the Weakness Dulness Distraction and Infirmities that are Concomitant with it as it comes forth to Practice He brings to our view Grace in its Glory and without the Spots by which our Weakness and Satan's Temptation do much disfigure it 2. He presents us with Grace in its whole Body compleated with all its Members Faith Love Hope Patience Meekness Gentleness c. From both these he sets before those whom he intends to discourage a compleat Copy of an exact holy Christian As if every true Christian were to be found in the constant Practice of all these Graces at all times on all occasions and that without weakness or Infirmity Whereas indeed a true Christian may be found sometimes evidently practising one Grace and weak or at present defective in another And sometimes the best of his Graces is so interrupted with Temptation so clogged with Infirmity that its workings are scarce discernable 3. He hath a Policy in heightning those Attainments and workings of Soul in things relating to God and Religion which are to be found in Temporary Believers which because they sometimes appear in the Unconverted as well as in the Converted though all Unconverted Men have them not are therefore called Common Graces This he doth that he may from thence take occasion to disprove the Real Graces of the Servants of God of whom better things and things that accompany Salvation that is special saving Graces are to be expected Heb. 6. 9. His way herein is 1. To shew the utmost bravery of these Common Graces how much Men may have how far they may go and yet at last come to nothing For Gifts they may have powerful Eloquence Prophecy understanding of Mysteries faith of Miracles For good Works they may give their Estates to relieve the Poor In Moral Vertues they may be Excellent their Illumination may be great they may taste the good Word of God and the Powers of the World to come Heb. 6. 4. Their Conversation may be without offence and their Conscience Honest as Paul's was before his Conversion 2. With these heights of common Grace he compares the lowest degree of Special Grace And because the Principles Motives and Ends which constitute the difference betwixt these two are as it were under-ground more remote from Sense and Observation and oftentimes darkned by Temptation He takes the boldness to deny the Truth of Grace upon the account of the small inconsiderable appearance that it makes confidently affirming that Special Grace must of necessity make a far greater outward shew than these Common Graces In what manner and to what end Satan doth heighten Grace in the abstract we have seen It remains that we discover 2. How he doth lessen Grace in the Concrete this is the center of his Design He would not extol Grace so much but that he hopes thereby to condemn the Generation of the Just and to make it appear that there are few or none that are truly Gracious When he comes to apply all this to the condition of any Child of God he deals treacherously and his cunning consists of three Parts 1. He compares the present state of any one with whom he deals to the highest attainments and excellencies of Grace allowing nothing to be Grace but what will answer these Descriptions he had already given Here the Tempter doth apparently make use of a false Ballance and a Bag of deceitful Weights For thus he puts them to it Thou sayest thou hast Grace but thou dost altogether deceive thy self for indeed thou hast none at all Compare thy self with others that were in Scripture noted as undoubtedly Gracious and thou wilt see that in the Ballance thou art lighter than Vanity Abraham had Faith but he believed above hope Moses and Paul had love but they manifested it by preferring their Brethrens happiness before their own David was a Saint but he had a Heart ravished with God The Martyrs spoken of in Heb. 11. they could do Wonders they were above fears of Men above the love of the World they loved not their Lives to the Death How joyfully took they the spoyling of their Goods How couragiously did they suffer the sharpest Torments Besides saith he all the Children of God are described is Sanctified throughout abounding with all fruits of Righteousness their Faith is Working their Love still Laborious their Hope produceth constant Patience What art thou to these That in thee which thou callest Faith or Love or Patience c. 't is not fit to be named with these Thy fears may tell thee that thou hast no Faith and so may thy Works thy murmurings under God's Hand is evidence sufficient that thou hast no Patience The little that thou dost for God or especially wouldst do if it were not for thy own advantage may convince thee that thou hast no love to him thy weariness of Services and Duties thy confessed unprofitableness under all do proclaim thou hast no delight in God nor in his Ways He further adds for the confirmation of all this Consider how far Temporaries may go that shall never go to Heaven Thou art far short of them thy Gifts thy Works thy Vertues thy Illumination thy Conversation thy Conscientiousness are nothing like theirs How is it possible then that such as one as thou a pittiful contemptible Creature shouldst have any thing of true Grace in thee Thus he makes the Application of all the Discovery of Grace which he presented to them Though he needs not urge all these things to every one any one of these particulars frequently serves the turn When a trembling Heart compares it self with these Instances it turns its Back yields the Argument and is ashamed of its former Hopes as those are of their former Confidence
who flee from Battel Hence then do we hear of these various Complaints One saith Alas I have no Grace because I live not as other Saints have done in all exactness Another saith I have no Faith because I cannot believe above Reason and contrary to Sense as Abraham did A third crys out He hath no Love to God because he cannot find his Soul ravished with desire after him Another thinks He hath a hard Heart because he cannot weep for Sin Another concludes against himself because He finds not a present chearful resolve while he is not under any question for Religion to suffer Torments for Christ Some fear themselves Because Temporaries in some particulars have much out-gone them You see how Complaints may upon this score be multiplied without end and yet all this is but Fallacy Satan tells them what Grace is at the highest but not a word of what it is at lowest And so unskilful is a tossed weak Christian that he in examining his Condition looks after the highest Degrees of Grace as affording clearer Evidence and not after the Sincerity of it which is the safest way for Trial where Graces are weak In a word this kind of Arguing is no better than that of Children who cannot conclude themselves to be Men because their present stature is little and they are not as tall as the Adult 2. Another part of his cunning in lessening the real Graces of God's Children is to take them at an advantage when their Graces are weakest and themselves most out of order He that will chuse to measure a Man's Stature while he is upon his Knees seems not to design to give a faithful account of his Height No more doth Satan who when he will make Comparisons always takes the Servants of God at the worst And indeed many advantages do the Children of God give him insomuch that it is no wonder that he doth so oft Baffle them but rather a wonder that they at any time return to their Comforts 1. Sometimes he takes them to task while they are yet young and tender when they are but newly converted before their Graces are grown up or have had time to put forth any considerable Fruit. 2. Or when their Graces are tired out by long or grievous assaults of Temptation for then they are not what they are at other times 3. When their Hearts are discomposed or muddied with fear for then their sight is bad and they can so little judg of things that differ that Satan can impose almost any thing upon them 4. Sometimes he comes upon them when some Grace acts his part but poorly as not having its perfect work and is scarce able to get through sticking as it were in the Birth 5. Or when the progress of Grace is small and imperceptible 6. Or while in the absence of the Sun which produceth Flowers and Fragrancy and is the time of the singing of Birds Cant. 2. 11 12. it is forced to cast off its Summer Fruits of Joy and sensible Delights and only produceth Winter Fruits of Lamenting after God Longing and Panting after him justifying of God in his Dealings and Condemning it self all this while sowing in Tears for a more pleasing Crop 7. Or while Expectations are more than Enjoyments the Man it may be promised himself large incomes of greater measures of Comforts Ease or Strength under some particular Ordinances or Helps which he hath lately attained to and not finding things presently to answer what he hoped for is now suspitious of his case and thinks he hath attained nothing because he hath not what he would 8. Sometimes Satan shews them his Face in this Glass when 't is foulest through the spots of some Miscarriage 9. Or he takes advantage of some Natural Defects as want of Tears which might be more usual in former times but are now dried up or from the Ebbings and uncertainty of his Aâ—â—ections which are never sure rules of Trials 10. Or in such acts that are of a mixed nature in the Principles and Motives where it may seem to be uncertain to which the Act must be ascribed as to the true Parent The Heart of a gracious Person being challenged upon any of these Points and under so great a Disadvantage being called out to give a proof of himself especially in the view of Grace set forth in all its Excellency and Glory shall have little to plead but will rather own the Accusation And the rather because 3. It is another part of Satan's cunning to urge them whilst they are thus at a stand with a Possibility nay a Probability of their mistaking themselves by passing too favourable an opinion formerly of their Actions To confirm them in this apprehension 1. He lays before them the consideration of the deceitfulness of the Heart which being so above all things and desperately wicked beyond ordinary discovery makes a fair way for the entertainment of a suspition of Self-delusion in all the former hopes which a Man hath had of himself Satan will plainly speak it Thou hast had some thoughts and workings of Mind towards God but seeing they carry so great a disproportion to Rule and Example and come so far short of Common Graces 't is more than probable that such poor weak confused appearances are nothing How knowest thou that thine adherence to and practice of the Command and Services of God are any more than from the power of Education the prevalency of Custom or the impressions of Moral swasion How dost thou know that thy desires after God and thy delight in him are any more than the products of Natural Principles influenced by an Historical faith of Scripture Doctrine 'T is oftentimes enough for Satan to hint this A suspitious Heart as it were greedy of its own misery catcheth at all things that make against it and hence complains That it hath no Grace because it sees not any visible Fruits or makes not a sufficient appearance at all times when opposed or resisted or because it wants sensible progress or gives not the Summer Fruits of Praises Rejoycings and Delights in God or because it seems not to meet with remarkable improvements in Ordinances or because it cannot produce Tears and raise the Affections and because the Party doth not know but his Heart might decieve him in all that he hath done Which the Devil yet further endeavoureth to confirm 2. By a consideration of the seeming Holiness and Graces of such as believed themselves to be the Children of God and were generally by others reputed so to be who yet after a glorious profession turned Apostates This being so great and undeniable an Instance of the Hearts deceitfulness makes the poor tempted Party conclude that he is certainly no true Convert Thus have we seen Satan's Sophistry in the management of those five grand Topicks from whence he draws his false Conclusions against the Children of God pretending to prove that they are not Converted or at least if they
Errour it only now remains that something be spoken of his attempts against the Peace and Comfort of the Children of God That 't is also one of Satans chief designs to cheat us of our Spiritual Peace may be fully evinced by a consideration of his Malice the great concern of inward Comfort to us and the many Advantages which he hath against us by the disquiet of our Minds First whosoever shall seriously consider the Devil 's implacable Malice will easily believe that he so envies our Happiness that he will industriously rise up against all our Comforts 'T is his inward fret and indignation that Man hath any interest in that Happiness from which he irrecoverably fell and that the Spirit of God should produce in the hearts of his People any spiritual joy or satisfaction in the belief and expectation of that Felicity and therefore must it be expected that his Malice heightned by the torment of his own guilt which as some think are those Chains of darkness in which he is reserved at present to the judgment of the great day will not cannot leave this part of our Happiness unattempted He endeavours to supplant us of our Birth-right of our Blessing of our Salvation and the comfortable hopes thereof From his common imployment in this matter the Scripture hath given him names importing an opposition to Christ and his Spirit in the ways they take for our Comfort and Satisfaction Christ is our Advocate that pleads for us Satan is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Calumniator The Spirit interceds for us Satan is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Accuser of the Brethren who accuseth them before God night and day The Spirit is our Comforter Satan is our Disturber a Beelzebub who is ever raking in our Wounds as Flyes upon Sores The Apostle Paul had his Eye upon this when he was advising the Corinthians to receive again the penitent incestuous Person his caution was most serious 2 Cor. 2. 11. lest Satan get advantage of us lest he deceive and circumvent us for his expression relates to Men cunningly deceitful in Trade that do over-reach and defraud the unskilful and the reason of this caution was the known and commonly experienced subtilty of Satan for we are not ignorant of his devices implying that he will and frequently doth ly at catch to take all advantages again 〈◊〉 Some indeed restrain these advantages to Vers 10. as I ld 〈◊〉 only meant that Satan was designing to fix the Corinthians upon an Opinion that Backsliders into great Sins were not to be received again or that he laid in wait to raise a Schism in the Church upon the account of this Corinthian Others restrain this advantage which he waited for to Vers 7. where the Apostle expresseth his fear lest the excommunicated Person should be swallowed up of too much sorrow but the caution being not expressly bound up to any one of these seems to point at them all and to tell us that Satan drives on many designs at once and that in this Mans case Satan would endeavour to put the Corinthians upon a Pharisaical rigour or to rend the Church by a division about him and to oppress the Penitent by bereaving him of his due comfort so that it appears still that it is one of his designs to hinder the Comfort and molest the Hearts of God's Children Secondly Of such concern is inward spiritual Peace to us that 't is but an easie conjecture to conclude from thence that so great an Adversary will make it his design to rob us of such a Jewel For 1. Spiritual Comfort is the sweet Fruit of Holiness by which God adorns and beautifies the ways of Religious Service to render them amiable and pleasant to the Undertakers Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace Prov. 3. 17. and this is the present rest and refreshment of God's faithful Servants under all their toil that when they have tribulation from the World yet they have peace in him Joh. 16. 33. and that being justified by Faith they have peace with God and sometimes joy unspeakable and full of glory 1 Pet. 1. 8. and this they may the more confidently expect because the fruits of the Spirit are Love Joy Peace c. Gal. 5. 22. 2. Spiritual Comfort is not only our satisfaction but our inward Strength and Activity for all holy Services doth depend upon it By this doth God strengthen our Heart and gird up our Loyns to run the ways of his Commandments it doth also strengthen the soul to undergo Afflictions to glory in Tribulations to triumph in Persecutions the outward Man is also corroborated by the inward peace of the Mind A merry Heart doth good like a Medicine but a broken Spirit drieth the Bones Prov. 17. 22. all which are intended by that expression Neh. 8. 10. The joy of the Lord is your strength 't is strength to the Body to the Mind and that both for service and suffering the reason whereof the Apostle doth hint to us Phil. 4. 7. The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your Hearts and Minds that is Peace doth so guard us as with a Garison for so much the word imports that our Affections our Hearts being entertained with divine satisfactions are not easily enticed by baser proffers of worldly delights and our Reasonings our Minds being kept steady upon so noble an object are not so easily perverted to a treacherous recommendation of vanities 3. Joy and Peace are propounded to our careful endeavours for Attainment and Preservation as a necessary duty of great importance to us Rejoycings are not only recommended as seemly for the Vpright but injoined as Service and that in the constant practice Rejoyce evermore In every thing give thanks 1 Thess 5. 16 18. Rejoyce in the Lord alway and again I say rejoyce Phil. 4. 4. In the Old Testament God commanded the observation of several Feasts to the Jews these though they had their several respective grounds from God's appointment yet the general design of all seems to have been this that they might rejoyce before the Lord their God Lev. 23. 40. as if God did thereby tell them that it was the comely complexion of Religion and that which was very acceptable to himself that his Children might always serve him in chearfulness of Heart seeing such have more cause to rejoyce than all the World besides They are then much mistaken that think mounful Eyes and sad Hearts be the gretest Ornaments of Religion or that none are serious in the Profession of it that have a chearful Countenance and a rejoycing frame of Spirit 'T is true there is a Joy that is devilish and in Mirth which is madness to which Christ hath denounced a Wo Wo be to them that laugh now for they shall mourn and weep but this is a Joy of another nature a carnal delight in Vanity and Sin by which Men fatten their hearts to
frightful thoughts about it so that we judg of it according to our fears and make it frightful to our selves as if it would be to no purpose rather a mischief than an advantage 2. Sometime our satisfaction ariseth from some special token of Favour which our indulgent Father le ts fall upon us while we are in his work As when he gives us more than ordinary assistance or puts Joy and Comfort into our Hearts And this he often doth to make us come again and to engage afresh in the same or other services as having tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious and that there is a blessedness in waiting for him As in our Bodies he so orders it that the concocted juices become a successive Ferment to those that succeed from our daily Meat and Drink So from Duties performed doth he beget and continue Spiritual Appetite to new undertakings But O how sadly is all this hindered by the disquiet of the Heart The Graces of Faith and Love are usually obstructed if not in their Exercise yet in their delightful Fruits and if God offer a kindness inward sorrow hinders the perception As when Moses told the Israelites of their deliverance they hearkned not for hard bondage If a message of Peace present it self in a Promise or some consideration of Gods merciful disposition yet usually this is not credited Job confesseth so much of himself Job 19. 16. If I had called and he had answered me yet would I not believe that he had hearkened unto my Voice David also doth the like Psal 77. 2 3. My Soul refuseth to be comforted I remember God and was troubled Matter of greatest comfort is often so far from giving ease that it augments the trouble However the Heart is so hurried with its fears and discomposed with grief that it cannot hearken to nor consider nor believe any kind offer made to it By all these ways doth the Devil through the disquiet of Mind unfit the Lord's People for Duty and what a sad advantage this is against us cannot easily be told By this means he may widen the distance betwixt God and us keep our Wounds open make us a reproach to Religion And what not But 3. By these disquiets he pusheth us on to reject all duties for when he hath tyred us out by wearisom endeavours under so great indispositions and unfitness he hath a fair advantage to tempt us to lay all aside Our present posture doth furnish him with arguments he forgeth his Javelings upon our Anvil and they are commonly these three 1. That duties are difficult And this is easily proved from our own experience while we are broken or bowed down with sorrows we make many attempts for duty and are oft beat off with loss our greatest toil helps us but to very inconsiderable performances hence he infers 'T is foolishness to attempt that which is above our strength better sit still then toil for nothing 2. That they are unfruitful and this is our own complaint for troubled Spirits have commonly great expectations from duties at first and they run to them as the impotent and sick people to the Pool of Bethesda with thoughts of immediate ease as soon as they shall step into them but when they have tryed and waited a while siretching themselves upon duty as Elisha's Servant laid the Staff upon the Face of the Shunamites Son and yet there is no voice nor hearing no answer from God no peace then are they presently disatisfied reflecting on the Promises of God and the Counsels of good Men with this Where is all the pleasantness you speak of what advantage is it that we have thus run and laboured when we have got nothing and then 't is easy for the Devil to add And why do you wait on the Lord any longer 3. His last and most dangerous argument is that they are sinful Unfitness for Duty produceth many distractions much deadness wandering thoughts great interruptions and pittiful performances Hence the troubled Soul comes off from duty wounded and halting more distressed when he hath done than when he began upon these considerations that all his service was sin a mocking of God a taking his name in vain nay a very blasphemous affront to a divine Majesty Upon this the Devil starts the question to his Heart whether it be not better to forbear all Duty and to do nothing Thus doth Satan improve the trouble of the mind and often with the designed success For a dejected Spirit doth not only afford the materials of these Weapons which the Devil frames against it but is much prepared to receive them into its own Bowels The grounds of these Arguments it grants and the inferences are commonly consented to so that ordinarily duty is neglected either 1. Through sottishness of Heart or 2. Through frightful fears Or 3. Through desperateness bringing a Man to the very precipice of that Atheistical determination I have cleansed my hands in vain 4. Satan makes use of the troubles of Gods Children as a stumbling-block to others 'T is no small advantage to him that he hath hereby an occasion to render the ways of God unlovely to those that are beginning to look Heaven-ward he sets before them the Sighs Groans Complaints and restless Out-cries of the wounded in Spirit to scare them off from all seriousness in Religion and whispers this to them Will you chuse a Life of Bitterness and Sorrow can you eat Ashes for Bread and mingle your Drink with Tears will you exchange the comforts and contents of Life for a melancholly Heart and a dejected countenance how like you to go Mourning all the day and at night to be scared with Dreams and terrified with Visions will you chuse a Life that is worse than Death and a condition which will make you a terrour to your selves and a burthen to others can you be in love with an heart loaden with grief and perpetual fears almost to distraction while you see others in the mean time enjoy themselves in a contented peace Thus he follows young beginners with his suggestions making them believe that they cannot be serious in Religion but at last they will be brought to this and that 't is a very dangerous thing to be religious overmuch and the high way to dispair So that if they must have a Religion he readily directs them to use no more of it than may consist with the pleasures of Sin and the World and to make an easy business of it not to let Sin lye over-near their Heart lest it disquiet them nor over-much to concern themselves with Study Reading Prayer or hearing of threatning awakening Sermons lest it make them Mad nor to affect the sublimities of Communion with God exercises of Faith and Divine Love lest it discompose them and dash their worldly Jollities out of Countenance A Counsel that is readily enough embraced by those that are almost perswaded to be Christians and the more to confirm them in it he
worst than the first So also 2 Pet. 2. 20. To this purpose is that of Soloman concerning the danger of continuance in sin after many Reproofs Prov. 29. 1. He that being often reproved hardneth his Neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy These and many such like Scriptures Satan hath in readiness which he plies home upon the Consciences of those that are troubled with the sense of Sin telling them That their Hearts and Ways being continually evil notwithstanding all the Courses that God hath taken to reclaim them that they having so long neglected so great Salvation or that after having seemed to entertain it became more sinful than before Which they will easily believe because they are now more sensible of Sin and more observant of their Miscarriages than formerly There can be no question but they are given up to vile Affections and like the Ground that bears nothing but Briers and Thorns they are rejected and nigh unto Cursing whose end is to be Burned The Wound that is made with this Weapon is not so easily healed as some others already mentioned because though Satan do unduly wrest these Passages to such failures in the Children of God as have little or no affinity with them for they only speak of falling into open prophaneness with contumacy yet they that have deep Convictions accompanied with great Fears do usually think that there are none worse than they are And though they will grant that some others have more flagitious lives yet they think they have Hearts so desperately wicked that they must needs be under as great hazards as those whose Lives seem to be worse 4. There is but one Argument more that carries any probability of proof for everlasting Condemnation and that is from an hard and impenitent Heart How Satan will manage himself to make a Child of God believe that he hath such an Heart is our last observation relating to his Sophistry And it is this He unjustly aggravates the discomposures of the spirits of those that are troubled for Sin and from thence draws his Arguments of irrecoverable Damnation pleading that their Hearts are Seared Hardned uncapable of Repentance and consequently of Heaven That final Impenitency will conclude Damnation is certain and that some have been given up to such a judicial hardness long before Death that they could not Repent may not only be evidenced from the Threatning of God to that purpose Mat. 13. Make the Heart of this People fat c. but also from the sad Instances of Pharaoh of whom 't is said that God hardned his Heart and the Jews who were blinded Rom. 11. 8. God hath given them the Spirit of slumber Eyes that they should not see and Ears that they should not hear But still the Art lieth in this How to make a Child of God believe that it 's so with him For this purpose he must take him at some advantage he cannot terrifie him with this Argument at all times While he is acting Repentance with an undisturbed settled frame of Heart 't is not possible to make him believe he doth not or cannot Repent for this were to force him contrary to sense and experience But he must take him at some season which may with some probability admit of his Plea and nothing is more proper for that design than a troubled Heart so that he hath in this case two things to do 1. He disquiets the Soul into as great an height of Confusion as he can That 2. When he hath melted it into heaviness and torn it into pieces he may work upon its distractions There are many things that fall out in the case of great anxiety of Mind that are capable of improvement for the accomplishment of this design As 1. Distracting troubles bring the Heart under the stupidity of Amazement Their thoughts are so broken and disjoynted that they cannot unite them to a composed settled resolution in any thing they can scarce joyn them together to make out so much as might spell out their distinct desires or endeavours they scarce know what they are doing or what they would do 2. They also poyson the thoughts with harsh apprehensions against God Great distresses make the thoughts sometimes recoil against the Holy Lord with unseemly questionings of his Goodness and Compassion and this puts Men into a bad sullen humour of untowardness from whence through Satan's improvement arise the greatest plunges of dispair 3. Most usually in this case the greatest endeavours are Fruitless and Dissatisfactory Satan though he be no friend to Duty doth unseasonably urge them to Repent and Pray but 't is because they cannot do either with any satisfaction and then their Failures are matter of Argument against them For it they resolve to put themselves upon a more severe course of Repentance and accordingly begin to think of their sins to number them or to aggravate them they are usually affrighted from the undertaking by the hainous appearance of them they cannot they dare not think of them the remotest glimps of them is terrible to an affrighted Conscience the raising of them up again in the Memory like the rising of a Ghost from the Grave is far more astonishing than the first prospect of them after Commission So true is that of Luther If a Man could see Sin perfectly it would be a perfect Hell If they set themselves to beg their Pardon by earnest Prayer they are so distracted and confused in Prayer that their Prayers please them not they come off from the Duty more wounded than when they began Or if in any measure they overcome these difficulties so that they do pray and confess their Iniquities then they urge and force a sorrow or compunction upon themselves but still to a greater dissatisfaction For it may be and this usually happens in greater Distresses they cannot weep nor force a tear or if they do still they judg their sorrow is not deep enough nor any way suitable to the greatness of their sin 4. To all these Satan sometimes makes a further addition of trouble by injecting blasphemous thoughts Here he sets the Stock with an intention to Graff upon it afterward When all these things are thus in readiness then comes he to set fire to the Train and thus he endeavours to blow up the Mine Is not thy Heart hardned to everlasting destruction How canst thou deny this Art thou not grown stupid and senseless of all the hazards that are before thee Here he insists upon the amazement and confusion of their Spirit and 't is very natural for those that are drunk with the Terrours of the Almighty to think themselves stupid because of the distraction of their thoughts I have known several that have pleaded that very Argument to that purpose Satan goes on What greater evidence can there be of an hardned Heart than Impenitency Thou canst not mourn enough Thou hast not a tear for thy sins though thou couldst weep enough formerly upon
Imprimatur Hic Liber cui Titulus Daemonologia Sacra Or A Treatise of Satans Temptations in Three Parts Guil. Sill. Martii 26. 1677. DAEMONOLOGIA SACRA OR A TREATISE OF Satans Temptations In Three Parts By RICHARD GILPIN 2 Cor. 2. 11. We are not ignorant of his Devices LONDON Printed by J. D. for Richard Randel and Peter Maplisden Booksellers in New Castle upon Tine 1677. To the Reader THe accurate searches into the Secrets of Nature which this Age hath produced though they are in themselves sufficient evidences of a commendable Industry yet seeing they fall so exceedingly short of that discovery which Men aim at giving us at best but probable conjectures and uncertain guesses they are become as little satisfactory to Men that look after the true causes of things as those Ships of desire whose great undertaking for Gold had raised high expectations in their attempts but in the return brought nothing home for their Ventures but Apes and Peacocks While Men reflect upon themselves under such Disappointments they cannot but check themselves for over-promising themselves in their Adventures with that of Zophar Vain Man would be wise But how happy would it be for Men if such failures of expectation might better inform them If our Attainments in these pursuits will not bear our Charges nor recompence our pains and loss of time with an answerable profit though we may see cause sometimes as a Divertisement or Recreation to use them yet how shall we satisfie our selves to make them our chief and sole business If we knew of nothing of higher concern to us than these our neglect of greater Matters were more excusable but seeing we are sufficiently instructed that we have more weighty things to look after such as relate to a certain future estate of happiness or misery the very discovery of this to a Rational Being must needs intitle such things to the first and greatest part of his care He that knows that there is one thing necessary and yet suffers himself to be diverted from the pursuit of that by troubling himself about many things is more justly chargable with folly than he that neglects his Estate and finds himself no other Imployment but to pursue Feathers in the Wind. Among those things that Religion offers to our study God and our own hearts are the chief God is the First and Last and whole of our Happiness the Beginning Progress and Compleatment of it is from him and in him for in that Centre do all the Lines meet but our Heart is the Stage upon which this Felicity as to the application of it is transacted upon this little spot of Earth doth God and Satan draw up their several Armies here doth each of them shew their Power and Wisdom this is treated by both each of them challenge an interest in it 't is attaqued on the one side and defended on the other So that here are Skirmishes Battels and Stratagems managed that Man then that will not concern himself in his Enquiries how the Matter goes in his own Heart what Ground is got or lost what Forts are taken or defended what Mines are sprung what Ambuscado's laid or how the Battel proceeds must needs lie under a just imputation of the greatest folly neither can he be excused in his neglect by the most pressing sollicitations of other things that seem to require his attendance upon the highest imaginable pretences of necessity For what is he profited that gains the whole World if he loses his Soul But the exact and faithful management of such spiritual Enquiries with their necessary improvement to diligent watchfulness and careful endeavours of resistance is another manner of work than most Men dream of To discover the intrigues of Satans policy to espie his haunts and lurking places in our hearts to note his subtile contrivances in taking advantages against us and to observe how the Pulse of the Soul beats under his provocations and deceitful allurements how far we comply or dissent requires so much attendance and laborious skilfulness that it cannot be expected that such Men who design no more than to be Christians at the easiest rate and content themselves with a formal superficiality of Religion or such who having given up themselves to the deceitful sweets of worldly carnal delights are not at leisure to engage themselves in so serious a Work or such whose secret guilt of rebellious Combination with the Devil against God makes them fearful to consider fully the hazards of that wickedness which they had rather practise with forgetfulness lest the review of their ways and sight of their danger should awaken their Consciences to give them an unwelcome disquiet it cannot I say be expected that any of these sorts of Men whilst they are thus set should give themselves the trouble of so much pains and toil as this Business doth require Upon this consideration I might rationally fix my Prognostick of the entertainment of the following Treatise What acceptance soever it may find with such as are cordially concerned for their Souls and the Realities of Religion and of such I may say as the Apostle Paul concerning Brotherly Love 1 Thess 4. 9. as touching this Matter They need not that I write unto them for they themselves are taught of God to be suspicious of Satans devices and by experience they find his deceits so secret and withal so dangerous that any help for further discovery and caution must needs be welcome to them yet to be sure the Prince of Darkness who is always jealous of the least attempts that may be made against his Empire will arm his forementioned Subjects against it and whomsoever else he can prevail upon by the power of prejudice to reject it as urging us to a study more severe or harsh than is consistent either with the lower degrees of knowledge of many or with that ease which most Men desire to indulge to themselves or as offering such things which they to save themselves from further trouble will be willing to call Chimaera's or idle Speculations and this last I may rather expect because in this latter Age Satan hath advanced so far in his general design against all Christianity and for the introduction of Paganism and Atheism that now none can express a serious conscientious care for holiness and the avoidance of sin but upon pain of the imputation of silliness or whining preciseness and none can speak or write of Conversion Faith or Grace but he shall be hazarded by the scoffs of those that are unwilling to judge the private workings of the heart to Godward or spiritual exercises of Grace to be any better than conceited Whims and unintelligible Nonsense but seeing such Men make bold to jeer not only that Language and those forms of Speech which the Holy Ghost thought fit to make use of in the Scriptures but also the very things of Faith Grace and Spirit which are every where in the Sacred Oracles recommended to us
upon Tine 1677. PART I. 1 PET. 5. 8. Be sober be vigilant because your Adversary the Devil as a roaring Lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour CHAP. I. The Introduction to the Text from a consideration of the desperate ruine of the Souls of Men. The Text opened expressing Satan's Malice Power Cruelty and Diligence THe Souls of Men are precious the whole World cannot repair their loss hence by God are all Men in particular charged with care and watchfulness about them He hath also set up Watchmen and Overseers whose business it is to watch over Souls and in the most strict and careful manner as those that must give an account What can more stir up Men to the discharge of this Duty than the frequent alarms which we have of the assaults of such an Adversary whose business 't is to destroy the Soul The Philistims are upon thee Sampson he fights continually and useth all the policy and skill he hath for the management of his strength Besides 't is a Consideration very affecting when we view the Desolations that are made in the Earth what Wounds what Overthrows what Cruelties Slaveries and Captivities these conquered Vassals are put to It was as some think an inexcusable cruelty in David against the Ammonites when he put them under Saws and Harrows of Iron and made them pass through thâ—e Brick-kiln but this Spiritual Pharaoh hath a more grievous House of Bondage and Iron Furnace Neither is this miserable destruction ended but will keep pace with Time and shall not cease till Christ shall at his appearance finally conquer him and tread him down If Xerxes wept to look upon his Army through the prospective of devouring Time which upon an easy foresight shewed him the death of so great a company of gallant Men we may well weep as David at Ziglag till we can weep no more or as Rachel for her Children refusing to be comforted while we consider what a great number of succeeding Generations heaps upon heaps will be drawn with him to a consuming Tophet And could we follow him thither to hear the cries of his Prisoners the roarings of his Wounded where they curse the day that brought them forth and themselves for their folly and madness in hearkning to his Delusions the dreadful out-crys of Eternity and then their rage against Heaven in cursings and blasphemings while they have no mitigations or ease nor the refreshment of a drop of Water to cool their Tongues we would surely think we could never spend our time better than in opposing such an Enemy and warning Men to fly from the wrath to come to take heed they come not into his snare with what earnestness would we endeavour to perswade Men what diligence would we use to cast Water upon these devouring Flames and to pluck Men as Brands out of the Fire 'T is true if Satan had dealt plainly with Men and told them what Wages they were to expect and set a visible mark upon his Slaves or had managed a visibly destructive hostility Men have such natural principles of self-preservation and of hatred of what appears to be evil that we might expect they would have fled from him and still have been upon their guard But he useth such Artifices such Sleights and Couzenage that Men are cast into a sleep or a golden dream while he binds them in Chains of Darkness they see not their end the Snare nor the Pit nay he intoxicates them with a love of their misery and a delight in helping forward their ruin so that they are Volunteers in his Service and possessed with a madness and rage against all that will not be as willing as themselves to go to Hell but especially if they put forth a compassionate hand to help any out of that Gulf of Misery they hate them they gnash upon them with their teeth and run upon them with utmost violence as if they had no Enemies but these compassionate Samaritans How great is this Mystery of Darkness Who shall be able to open the depths of it Who shall declare it fully to the Sons of Men to bring these hidden things to light Especially seeing these hellish Secrets which are yet undiscovered are double to those that have been observed by any that have escaped from his power He only whose prerogative it is to search the hearts of Men can know and make known what is in the heart of Satan he views all his goings even those Paths which the Vultures Eye hath not seen and can trace those foot-steps of his which leave no more print or tract behind them than a Ship in the Sea or a Bird in the Air or a Serpent on a Stone Yet notwithstanding we may observe much of his Policies and more would God discover if we did but humbly and faithfully improve what we know already 'T is my design to make some discovery of those Haunts I have observed if by that means I may be useful to you to quicken and awaken you And first I shall set before you the strength and power of your Enemy before I open his Cunning and Craft There are found in him whatsoever may render an Adversary dreadful As first Malice and Enmity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a Law Term and signifies an Adversary at Law one that is against our Cause and the Text as some think heightens this Malice 1. by the Article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which denotes an Arch Enemy 2. The Name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies a Slanderer or Calumniator for the word is twice in the New Testament used for a Slanderer shewing his hatred to be so great that it will not stick at lying and falshood either in accusing God to us or us to God Nay it particularly hints that when he hath in malice tempted a poor Wretch to sin he spares not to accuse him for it and to load him with all things that may aggravate his guilt or misery accusing him for more than he hath really done and for a worse estate than he is really in Secondly His Power under the metaphor of a Lion a Beast of prey whose innate property is to destroy and is accordingly fitted with strength with tearing Paws and a devouring Mouth that as a Lion would rend a Kid with ease and without resistance so are Men swallowed up by him as with open Mouth so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies he can sup them up at a draught Thirdly His Cruelty a Roaring Lion implying not only his innate property to destroy which must be a strange fierceness but also that this innate Principle is heightned and whetted on as hunger in a Lion sharpens and enrages that disposition till he get his Prey so that he becomes raving and roaring putting an awful Majesty upon Cruelty and frighting them out of endeavours or hopes of resistance and increasing their misery with affrightments and tremblings Thus Satan shews a fierce and
truculent temper whose power being put forth from such an implacable malice must needs become rage and fierceness Fourthly His Diligence which together with his Cruelty are consequences of his Malice and Power he goes about and seeks he is restless in his pursuit and diligent as one that promiseth himself a satisfaction or joyful contentment in his Conquests CHAP. II. Of the Malice of Satan in particular The Grounds and Causes of that Malice The Greatness of it proved and Instances of that Greatness given I Shall first give some account of his Malice by which it shall appear we do not wrong the Devil in calling him malicious the truth of which Charge will evidence it self in the following particulars First The Devil though a Spirit yet is a proper Subject of Sin We need no other evidence for this than what doth by daily experience result from our selves we have sins which our Spirits and Hearts do act that relate not to the Body called a filthiness of the Spirit in contradistinction to the filthiness of the Flesh 'T is true it cannot be denyed but that those Iniquities which have a necessary dependance upon the Organs of the Body as Drunkenness Fornication c. cannot properly as to the formality of the Act be laid at Satan's door though as a tempter and provoker of these in Men he may be called the Father of these sins yet the forementioned Iniquities which are of a Spiritual Nature are properly and formally committed by him as Lying Pride Hatred and Malice And this distinction Christ himself doth hint Joh. 8. 44. When he speaketh a Lye he speaketh of his own where he asserts such spiritual Sins to be properly and formally acted by himself The certainty of all appears in the Epithites given him the wicked One the unclean Spirit as also those places that speak his fall They kept not their first Estate Jude 6. The Angels that sinned 2 Pet. 2. 4. If sins Spiritual are in a true and proper sense attributed to the Devil then also may Malice be attributed to him Secondly The wickedness of Satan is capable of increase a magis minus though he be a wicked Spirit and as to inclination full of wickedness though so strongly inclined that he cannot but sin and therefore as God is set forth to us as the Fountain of Holiness so is Satan called the Author and Father of Sin Yet seeing we cannot ascribe an infiniteness to him we must admit that as to acts of Sin at least he may be more or less sinful and that the wickedness of his heart may be more drawn out by Occasion Motives and Provocations besides we are expresly taught thus much Rev. 12. 12. The Devil is come down having great wrath because his time is short where we note 1. that his wrath is called great implying greater than at other times 2. That External Motives and Incentives as the shortness of his time prevail with him to draw forth greater acts of fury Thirdly Whatsoever Occasions do draw out or kindle malice to a rage Satan hath met with them in an eminent degree in his own fall and Man's happiness Nothing is more proper to beget malice than hurts or punishments degradations from happiness Satan's Curse though just fills him with rage and fretting against God when he considers that from the state and dignity of a blessed Angel he is cast down to darkness and to the basest condition imaginable for the part of his Curse which concerned Satan as well as the Serpent Vpon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shall be thy Meat implies a state most base as the use of the phrase proves they shall lick the dust of thy feet Thine enemies shall lick the dust Psal 72. 9. They shall lick the dust as a Serpent Mich. 7. 17. Where the Spirit is so wicked that it cannot accept the punishment of its iniquity All punishment is as a poyson and invenoms the heart with a rage against the hand that afflicted it thus doth Satan's fall enrage him and the more when he sees Man enstated into a possibility of enjoying what he hath lost The envy and pride of his heart boils up to a madness for that is the only use that the wretchedly miserable can make of the sight of that happiness which they enjoy not especially if having once enjoyed it they are now deprived this begot the rage and wrath in Cain against Abel and afterward his Murther The eye of the wicked is evil where God is good Hence may it be concluded that Satan being a wicked Spirit and this wickedness being capable of acting higher or lower according to occasions and with a suitableness thereto cannot but shew an unconceiveable malice against us our happiness and his misery being such proper occasions for the wickedness of his heart to work upon Fourthly This Malice in Satan must be great First If we consider the greatness of his wickedness in so great and total an Apostacy He is so filled with iniquity that we can expect no small matters from him as to the workings of such cursed Principles not only is he wicked but the spirit and extract of wickedness as the phrase signifies Ephes 6. 12. Secondly The Scripture lays to his charge all Degrees Acts and Branches of Malice As 1. Anger in the impetuous hast and violence of it Rev. 12. great wrath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there signifies Excandescentia the Inflammation of the Heart and whole Man which is violent in its motion as when the Blood with a violent stream rusheth through the Heart and sets all Spirits on fire and therefore this Wrath is not only called great but is also signified to be so in its threatning a wo to the Inhabitants of the Earth 2. Indignation is more than Anger as having more of a fixed fury and this is applyed to him Ephes 4. 27. in that those that have this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are said to give place to the Devil which is true not only in point of temptation but also in respect of the resemblance they carry to the frame and temper of Satan's furious heart 3. Hatred is yet higher than Wrath or Indignation as having deeper roots a more confirmed and implacable resolution Anger and Indignation are but short Furies which like a Land Flood are soon down though they are apt to fill the Banks on a sudden but Hatred is lasting and this is so properly the Devil's disposition that Cain in hating his Brother is 1 John 3. 12. said to be the proper Off-spring and lively Picture of that wicked One who is there so called rather than by the name of the Devil because the Apostle would also insinuate that hatred is the Master-piece of Satan's wickedness and that which gives the fullest Character of him 4. All Effects of his cruelty arise from this Root this makes him accuse and calumniate this puts him upon breathing after those murthers and destructions which damned
Scripture speaks of a two-fold Kingdom of Light and of Darkness and in this we hear of Satan's Seat or Throne of his Servants and Subjects Yea that which is more the Scripture speaks of a kind of Deity in Satan he is called the God of this World 2 Cor. 4. 4. Which doth not only set forth the intollerable pride and usurpation of Satan in propounding himself as such so drawing on poor blind Creatures to worship him but also discovers his Power which by Commission he hath obtained over the Children of Disobedience Hence doth he challenge it as a kind of right and due from the poor Americans and others that they should fall down and worship him and upon this Supposition was he so intollerably presumptuous in offering the Kingdoms of the World to Christ for such a Service and Worship If it be questioned What Satan's Authority is I shall answer it thus First His Authority is not absolute or unlimited he cannot do what he pleaseth and therefore we do find him begging leave of God for the exerting of his Power in particular Cases as when he was a Lying Spirit in the Mouth of Ahab's Prophets and in every Assault he made upon Job nay he could not enter into the Swine of the Gaderens till he had Christ's Commission for it Secondly Yet hath he a Commission in general a standing Commission as petty Kings and Governours had under the Roman Emperor where they were authorised to exercise an Authority and Power according to the Rules and Directions given them this is clearly signified by those Expressions they are Captives at his Will and given up to Satan as Persons Excommunicated and when Men are converted they are said to be translated from his Power and put under another Jurisdiction in the Kingdom of Christ All which would have been highly improper if a Commission for Satan and an Authority for those Works of Darkness had not been signified by them Next let us view the Extent of this Authority both as to Persons and Things In relation to Persons the boundary of his Kingdom reacheth as far as Darkness he rules in the dark places of the Earth or the darkness of this World and therefore his Kingdom is hence denominated a Kingdom of Darkness This extends we may well imagine as far as Heathenism reacheth where he is worshipped as God as far as any darkness of Mahumetanism stretcheth it self as far as the darkness of Infidelity and blindness upon the hearts of unconverted Men which if summed up together must needs take up the greatest part of the World by far which is acknowledged not only by that large Expression World Prince of this World c. but also by that Prophetick Speech of Rev. 11. 15. The Kingdoms of this World are become the Kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ which acknowledgeth they had not been so before in the sense wherein we now speak Neither is his Kingdom so bounded but that he also can when allowed make Excursions and Inroads into the Kingdom of Christ so far as to molest disturb and annoy his Subjects as the Kings of any Nation besides the Power which they Exercise in their proper Jurisdiction may molest their Neighbours And Christ so far permits this as is useful to his own Designs yet still with straiter reserves and limitations to Satan and a resolved rescue and conquest for his own People If we enquire the Extent of his Power in relation to things we find the Air in a peculiar manner permitted to him so that he is named by it as by one of his chief Royalties the Prince of the Power of the Air we find also Death with the Powers of it given up to him so that this is a peraphrasis of him He that hath the Power of Death Heb. 2. 14. And if we take notice of his large proffer to Christ of the Kingdoms of the World All this will I give thee we may imagine that his Commission reacheth far this way as Rewards and Encouragements to his Service which we will the readilier entertain when we find that by God's allowance wicked Men have their Portion in this Life and that these are called their Good Things Thirdly Let us proceed a step further to the Efficacy of this Authority which also First Upon wicked Men is no less remarkable than is his Commission he is called the strong Man in reference to their Hearts which he fortifies as so many Castles and Garisons against God He also rules in them without controul his Suggestions and Temptations are as Laws to them he fills their Hearts with his Designs and raiseth their Affections to an high and greedy pursuit of them he works in them and by an inward force doth hurry them on to atchieve his Enterprises In all this ensnaring and captivating them at his pleasure Secondly The Saints which are Subjects of another Kingdom are still fearing complaining watching praying and spreading out their hands with lifting up their Eyes to Heaven for help against him they complain of violence and restless Assaults from him they are sensible that he can suggest evil thoughts and follow them with incessant Importunities that he can draw a darkness upon their Understanding by bribing their Wills and Affections against them that he can disturb their Duties and that because of him they cannot do the good they would many a fear doth he beget in their Hearts many a disquiet hour have they from him their flesh hath no rest and happy are they if they escape from him without broken Bones many excellent ones have been cast down by him and for a time have been like dead Men. 'T is sad to see so just a Person as Lot under his feet so choice a Saint as David wounded almost to the death so high an Apostle as Peter by force and fear from him to open his Mouth with Curses and Imprecations in the denial of his Saviour to say nothing of the Buffetings of others which was sufficiently wearisom to Paul and described by a Thorn in the Flesh which if a Learned Man think right is compared by a Metaphor to those sharp Stakes upon which Christians were cruelly spitted and burnt Thirdly His quick and ready accomplishment is a further proof of the Efficacy of his Power No sooner had God given him a Commission in reference to Job but he quickly raiseth the Tempest brings down the House slayes his Children brings Fire from Heaven and which would seem strange hath the Troops of the Sabeans and Chaldeans at his beck as if they had been listed under his known Command so that in a little time he puts his Malice into Act. Fourthly If any would slight all this as being the Force of Principalities and Powers against Flesh and Blood We may see he hath so much strength and confidence as to grapple with an Angel of Light as he did in the contesting for Moses his Body Jude v. 9. This was
himself I the Lord do it or I am he that searcheth and signifies that none else is able to do the like Yet Satan can do much this way for if we consider how he can come so near to our Spirits as to communicate his Injections to us and that he often entertains a Dispute with us in this secret way of access that he hath to our Thoughts if we observe his Arguings his Answers and Replys to our refusals so direct so pertinent so continued we shall be constrained to grant that he can do more this way than is commonly imagined That I may explain this with a due respect to God's Prerogative of knowing the Heart I shall First Shew that there are two things which are clearly out of Satan's reach 1. Our future Thoughts he cannot tell what shall be our Thoughts for time to come he may possibly adventure to tell what Suggestions he resolves to put into our Hearts but what shall be our Resolves and Determinations thereupon he knows not This is singled out as one part of God's Prerogative that he knoweth the determinate Purposes and Resolves of the Heart aforehand because he turneth the Heart as he pleaseth Prov. 21. 1. 2. Our present formed Thoughts the immediate and imminent Acts of the Mind he cannot directly see into He may tell what floating Thinkings he hath put into our Heart but our own proper Thoughts or formed Resolves he cannot directly view this is also particularly insisted on as proper to God alone John 2. 24 25. Christ knew all Men so directly that he needed not that any should testifie of Man this Satan stands in need of he sometimes knows Men and their Thoughts but he needs a Sign or notification of these Thoughts and cannot immediately look into them the reason why Christ needed not this is rendred thus for he knew what was in Man that is intuitively he knew his Thoughts and could immediately read them Secondly I shall endeavour to explain how much or how far he can pry into our Thoughts Several things are granted which argue Satan can go a great way toward a discovery As First That he knows the Objects in our Fancy or Phantasins and this as clearly as we do behold things with our Eyes and the proof given hereof is this That there are Diabolical Dreams in which the Devil cannot create new Species and such as our Senses were never acquainted withal as to make a Blind Man dream of Colours but that he can only call forth and set in order those Objects of which our Imagination doth retain the Shadows or Impressions and this he could not do if he did not visibly behold them in our fancy Secondly 'T is certain he knows his own Suggestions and Temptations darted into our Minds upon which he can at present know what our Thoughts are busied upon Thirdly He knows the secret workings of our Passions as Love Desire Fâ—ar c. because these depend upon or are in a concomitancy of the motions of the Blood and Spirits which he can easily discern though their motions and workings may be kept secret from the observation of all by-standers Fourthly Some go further as Scotus referente Barthol Sybilla supposing that he knows what is in our Thoughts at any time only he knows not to what these Thoughts incline but I leave this to those that can determine it certainly In the mean time I proceed Thirdly To shew what a guessing Faculty he hath of what he doth not directly know he hath such grounds and advantages for Conjecture that he seldom fails of finding our Mind As First His long experience hath taught him what usually Men do think in such cases as are commonly before them by a cunning observation of their Actions and Ways he knows this Secondly He by study and observation knows our temper and inclination and consequently what Temptations do most sute them and how we do ordinarily entertain them Thirdly He knows this the more by taking notice of our Prayers our complainings and mournings over our defects and miscarriages Fourthly He is quick and ready to take notice of any Exteriour Sign by which the Mind is signified as the Pulse the motion of the Body the change of the Countenance all which do usually shew the assent or dissent of the Mind and at least tell him what entertainment his Offers have in our Thoughts Fifthly Being so quick-sighted he can understand those particular Signs which would escape the observation of the wisest Men there are some things small in themselves and therefore unobserved which yet to wise Men are very great indicia of things the like may be said of us in reference to our inclinations our acceptance or resistance of Temptations which yet he hath curiously marked out Sixthly No doubt but he hath ways to put us upon a discovery of our Thoughts while we conceal them as by continuing and prosecuting Temptations or Suggestions till our trouble or passions do some way discover how it is with us By all which it appears that his guessings and conjectures do seldom fail him 'T is now time to speak to the other Question which is Whether and how far Satan knows things to come To this I shall return Answer in these two Conclusions First There is a way of knowing future things which is beyond the knowledg of Devils and proper only to God Esa 41. 23. there God puts the competition 'twixt Himself and Idols about the truth of a Diety upon this issue That he that can shew the things that are to come hereafter he is God which because they cannot do he doth hereby evince them to be no Gods If Satan could truly and properly have done this he had had a Plea for a Godhead In Divine Predictions two things are to be considered 1. The Matter foretold when the events of things contingent and as to second Causes casual depending upon indeterminate Causes are foretold 2. The Manner when these things are not uncertainly or conjecturally or darkly but clearly certainly infallibly and fully predicted Of this nature are Divine Predictions which Satan cannot perform nor yet the Angels in Heaven Secondly Yet Satan hath such advantages for the knowledg of future Things and such means and helps for a discovery of them that his Conjectures have often come to pass First He knows the Causes of Things which are secret to us Upon which he seems to foretel many things strange to us As a Physician may foretel the Effects Workings and Issues of a Disease as seeing them in the Causes which would pass for little less than Prophesie among the Vulgar Thus an Astrologer foretells Eclipses which would be taken for a Divine Excellency where the knowledg of the ground of these foretellings had not taken away the wonder Secondly Many things are made known to him by immediate Divine Revelation We know not the intercourse betwixt God and Satan in the
lusts Gal. 5. 24. We are further told by John 1 Epist 2. 16. that all those snares that are in the World are only hazardous and prevailing by our Lusts More generally the Apostle Peter speaks the whole bundle of actual Sins that have ever been in the World came in at this door The corruption that is in the World is through Lust In the stirring up our Lusts Satan useth no small Art and Subtilty and ordinarily he worketh by some of these following ways First He useth his skill to dress up an Object of Lust that it may be taking and alluring he doth not content himself with a simple proposal of the Object but doth as it were paint and varnish it to make it seem beautiful and lovely besides al lthat wooing and importunity which he useth to the Soul by private and unseen Suggestions he hath no doubt a care to gather together all possible concurring Circumstances by which the seeming goodness or conveniency of the Object is much heightned and enlarged We see those that have skill to work upon the Humors of Men place a great part of it in the right circumstantiating a motion and in taking the Tempers and Inclinations of Men at a right time And they observe that the missing of the right season is the hazard of the design even there where the Object and Inclination ordinarily are sutable There is much in placing a Picture in a right position to give it its proper grace and lustre in the Eyes of the Beholders When a man is out of humor he nauseats his usual delights and grows sullen to things of frequent practice 'T is likely Eve was not a Stranger to the Tree of Knowledg before the Temptation but when the Serpent suggests the goodness of the Fruit the Fruit it self seems more beautiful and desirable good for Food and pleasant to the Eyes Though we are not able to find out the way of Satan's beautifying an Object that it may affect with more piercing and powerful delights yet he that shall consider that not only Prudence in an advantageous management of things adds an additional beauty to Objects proposed but also that Art by placing things in a right posture may derive a radiancy and beam of Beauty and Light upon them as an ordinary piece of Glass may be so posited to the Sun beams that it may reflect a sparkling light as if it were a Diamond He that shall consider this I say will not think it strange for the Devil to use some Arts of this kind for the adorning and setting off an Object to the Eye of our Lusts Secondly We have reason to suspect that he may have ways of Deceit and Imposture upon our Senses The deceits of the Senses are so much noted that some Philosophers will scarce allow any credit to be given them not that they are always deceitful but that they are often so and therâ—fore always suspitious The Soul hath no intelligence but by the Senses 't is then a business of easie belief that Satan may not altogether slight this advantage but that when he sees it fit for his purpose he may impose upon us by the deception of our Eyes and Ears we little know how oft our Senses have disguised things to us In a pleasing Object our Eyes may be as a magnifying or multiplying Glass In the first Temptation Satan seems to have wrought both upon the Object and also upon the Senses She saw it was good for Food and pleasant who can question but that she saw the Fruit before but this was another kind of sight of more power and attraction An instance of Satan's Cunning in both the forementioned particulars we have from Austin relating the Story of his Friend Alipius who by the importunity of his Acquaintance consented to go to the Theatre yet with a resolve not to open his Eyes lest the sight of these Spectacles should entice his Heart but being there the noise and sudden shouting of the multitude prevailed so far with him that he forgot his resolution takes the liberty to see what occasioned the shouting and once seeing is now so inflamed with delight that he shouts as the rest do and becomes a frequenter of the Theatre as others What was there to be seen and heard he knew before by the relation of others but now being present his Eyes and Ears were by Satan so heightned in their offices that those bloody Objects seemed pleasant beyond all that had been reported of them and the lust of his Heart drawn out by Satan's cunning disposal of the Object and Senses Thirdly There is no small inticement arising from the fitness and sutableness of Occasion An Occasion exactly fitted is more than half a Temptation This often makes a Thief an Adulterer c. Where the acts of these Sins have their rise from a sudden fit of humor which occasion puts them in rather than from design or premeditation Cunningly contrived Occasions are like the danger of a Precipice if a Man be so foolish as to take up a stand there a small push will throw him over though a far greater might not harm him if he were upon a Level 'T is Satan's Cunning to draw a Man within the reach of an Occasion All the resolves of Alipius were not safe-guard to him when once he was brought within hearing and sight of the Temptation If he had staid at home the hazard of Satan's Suggestions though earnest had not been so much as the hearing of his Ears and sight of his Eyes In 2 Cor. 2. 11. Paul's fears of Satan's taking advantage against the Corinthians did manifestly arise from the present posture of their Church affairs for if the excommunicated Person should not be received again into the Church an ordinary push of Temptation might either have renewed or confirmed their Contentions or precipated them into an opinion of too much severity against an offending Brother and that their present frame made them more than ordinarily obnoxious to these Snares is evident from the Apostle's caution inserted here in this Discourse so abruptly that any Man may observe the necessity of the Matter and the earnestness of his Affections did lead his Pen. The Souls of Men have their general Discrasia's and Disaffections as our Bodies have from a lingring distemperature of the Blood and Humors in which case a small occasion like a particular error of Diet c. in a declining Body will easily form that Inclination into particular acts of Sin Fourthly Satan hath yet a further reach in his Enticements by the power which he hath upon our Fancies and Imaginations That he hath such a power was discovered before This being then supposed how serviceable it is for his end 't is now to be considered Our Fancy is as a Glass which with admirable celerity and quickness of motion can present before us all kinds of Objects it can in a moment run from one end of the Earth to the
to make provisions for the Flesh and to enjoy or act what their unbridled violence will elad to in the execution of their desires They carry all on before them and engage the whole Man with the highest eagerness to fulfil every Lust to go up to the highest degrees and with an unsatiable greediness to yield themselves servants of Iniquity unto Iniquity CHAP. XI That Lust darkens the Mind Evidences thereof The five ways by which it doth blind Men. 1. By preventing the exercise of Reason The ways of that prevention 1. Secresy in tempting Satan's subtilty therein 2. Surprisal 3. Gradual Intanglements THat Satan doth entice us by stirring up our Lust hath been discovered it remains that I next speak to the second thing propounded which was That by this power of Lust he blinds and darkens our Mind That the Lusts of Men are the great principle upon which Satan proceeds in drawing on so great a blindness as we have spoken of I shall briefly evince from these few Observations First From the unreasonableness and absurdity of some Actions in Men otherwise sufficiently rational He that considers the acts of Alexander in murthering Calisthenes for no other crime than defending the cause of the Gods and affirming that Temples could not be built to a King without provoking a Deity and yet this so smoothed if Quintus-Curtius represent him right that he seemed to flatter Alexander with an opinion of Delfication after his death Whosoever I say shall consider this cruelty will condemn Alexander as blind and irrational in this matter and yet no other cause can be assigned hereof but that his lust after Glory and Honour darkned his Reason The like may be said of his killing Ephestion's Physician because he died The brutal fury of that Consul that made a Slave to be eaten up with Lampreys for no other fault than the breaking of a Glass can be ascribed to nothing else but the boyling over of his Passion A sadder instance of this we have in Theodosius senior who for an affront given to some of his Officers in Thessalonica commanded the destruction of the City and the slaughter of the Citizens to the number of 7000 without any distinction of nocent and innocent This blind rage the Historian notes as the fruit of violent and unbridled Lust in a Man otherwise just and gracious Thousands of Instances of this nature might be added But Secondly If we consider the known and visible hazards to Life and Estate and that which is more to that part of them which is Immortal upon all which Men do desperately adventure upon no other ground or motive than the gratifications of their Lusts We may easily conclude that there is a strange force and power in their Passions to blind and besot them and this notwithstanding is the common practice of all Men where Grace as the only Eye-salve doth not restore the sight The Heathens in all these practices of Filthiness and Folly recorded Rom. 1. 29. They had so far a discovery of the danger if they had not imprisoned that Truth and Light in Vnrighteousness vers 18. that they knew the judgment of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death vers 32. Yet notwithstanding the vanity of their Imaginations influenced by Lust darkned their heart so much that they did not only do these things of so great vileness and unspeakable hazard but had pleasure in those that did them Thirdly The blinding power of Lust is yet more remarkable When we see Men glorying in their Shame and mounting their triumphal Chariots to expose themselves a Spectacle to all in that garb of deformity which their Lusts have put them in 'T is a blindness to do any act against the rules of Reason but 't is a far great blindness for Men to pride themselves in them What have the issues of most Wars been but burnings of Cities devastations of flourishing Kingdoms spilling the blood of Millions besides all the Famine and other miseries that follow yet these actions that better beseem Tigars Lions and savage Bruits than Men of Reason are honoured with the great triumphant names of Vertue Manhood Courage Magnanimity Conquest c. If the power and humor of their Lusts of vain-glory and revenge had not quite muffled their understandings these things would have been called by their proper names of Murther Cruelty Robbery c. and the Actors of such Tragedies instead of triumphal Arches and acclamations of Praise would have been buried under heaps of Ignominy and perpetual Disgraces as Prodigies of Nature Monsters of Men and Haters of Mankind Fourthly But there is yet one Evidence more plain and convincing When our Lusts are up though Reason offer its aids to allay the Storm yet the wisest of Men otherwise composed and calm are so far from taking the advantage of its guidance that oftentimes they trample upon it and despise it and as if Lusts by some secret Incantation had made them impenetrable they are not capable of its light and conduct and can make no more use of it than a blind Man can do of a Candle To this purpose let us observe the carriage of Disputants if Men do any way publickly engage themselves in a Contest of this nature though Truth can be but on the one side yet both Parties give Arguments and answer Objections with equal confidence of victory and a contempt of the reasons and strength of each others discourses and this proves so fatal to him that maintains the mistake or untruth that not one of a thousand hath the benefit and advantage for the finding of Truth which free and unprejudiced Bystanders may have so true is that Omne perit judicium cum res transit in affectum When Affections are engaged Judgment is darkned 'T is a thing of common observation that when Men are discoursed into Anger and Heat they presently grow absurd are disabled for speaking or understanding Reason and are oft hurried to such inconveniences and miscarriages that they are ashamed of themselves when they cool and the fit is over Impedit ira animum c. To all this might be added the power of Lust in Persons voluptuous who dedicate themselves to the pleasures of the Flesh Those that serve divers Lusts and Pleasures their slavish Estate their base Drudgery do clearly evince that Lust unmans them and puts out their Eyes Mark-Antony by this means became a Slave to Cleopatra never did a poor Captive strive more to obtain the good will of his Lord than he to please this Woman insomuch that besotted with his Lust he seemed to want that common foresight of his danger which the smallest measure of Reason might have afforded to any and so dallied himself into his ruine From all these Considerations and Instances it appears our Lusts afford such Vapours and Mists that our Reason is darkned by them or rather they are like a Dose of Opium that strongly stupifies and binds
up the Senses But yet it remains that the various ways by which our Lusts do blind us be particularly opened and they are five 1. Our Lusts blind us by preventing the use and exercise of Reason 2. By perverting it 3. By withdrawing the Mind from it 4. By disturbing it in its operation And 5. By a desperate precipitancy All which I shall more fully explain First Our Lusts blind us by preventing and intercepting the exercise of Light and Reason and Satan in this case useth these deceits First He endeavours so to stir up our Lust as yet to conceal his design Secresie is one of his main Engines he doth not in this case shew his Weapon before he strikes and indeed his Policy herein is great For 1. By this means he takes us at unawares secure and unprepared for resistance 2. We are often ensnared without noise and before our consideration of things can come in to rescue us 3. If he get not his whole design upon us this way yet he oft makes an half victory by this means he procures an half consent or inclination to sin before we discover that we are under a Temptation for when the Foundation of a Temptation is laid unespyed then we awaken with the Sin in our hand as sleeping Men awake sometime with the word in their mouths If any question how can these things be how can he steal a Temptation upon us with such secresie I answer he can do it these three ways First He sometimes after a careless manner and as it were by the by drops in a Suggestion into our hearts and that without noise or importunity giving it as it were this charge stir not up nor awaken him and then he sits by to observe the issue and to see if the Tinder will take fire of it self Thus many a motion thrown into our hearts as it were accidently or ever we are aware begets a sudden flame Secondly He sometimes fetcheth a compass and makes a thing far different to be a Preamble or Introduction to his intended design Thus by Objects Imployments Discourse or Company that shew not any direct tendency to evil doth he insensibly occasion Pride Passion or Lust How slyly and secretly doth he put us upon what he intends as a further snare how unawares while we think of no such thing are we carried sometime upon the borders of Sin and into the enemies quarters Satan in this acts like a Fowler who useth a stalking Horse as if he were upon some other imployment when yet his design is the destruction of the Bird. Thirdly Another way of Secresie is his raising a croud of other thoughts in the Mind and while these are mixed and confusedly floating in the Understanding or Fancy then doth he thrust in among them the intended Suggestion and then suffering the rest to vanish he by little and little singles this out as a more special object of consideration so that we cast a sudden glance upon this and we are often taken with it before we consider the danger In this Satan doth as Souldiers who take the advantage of a Mist to make a nearer approach to their Enemies and to surprise them before discovery of the danger This he doth with us while we are in a Musing fit or a Melancholy dream A second Deceit for the preventing of a serious consideration is sudden Surprisal In the former he endeavoured to conceal the Temptation while he is at work with us but in this he shews 〈◊〉 Temptation plainly only he sets upon us without giving of us warning of the onset but then he backs it with all the violent importunity he can and by this he hinders the recollecting of our selves and the aid of Reason This course Satan only takes with those whose Passions are apt to be very stirring and boysterous or such as being his Slaves and Vassals are more subject to his commands Thus a sudden provocation to an angry Man gives him not time to consider but carries him headlong A surprise of Occasion and Opportunity is frequently a conquest to those that have any earnestness of Hope Desire or Revenge Surely David was taken at this advantage in the matter of Bathsheba And here we may note that good Men upon such a sudden motion do yield without any blow or strugling to that which at other times they could not be drawn to by many reasons Thirdly Consideration is prevented by gradual Intanglements Satan so orders the matter that Sin creeps on upon us as Sleep by insensible degrees For this end sometimes he dissembles his Strength and sets upon us with lower Temptations and with less force than otherwise he could He knows we are not moved to extreams but by steps and habits are not confirmed but by gradual proceedings to take too great strides may sometime prevail at present but the suddenness and greatness of the alteration begetting a strangeness on the Soul may occasion after-thoughts and recoyling Therefore he tempts first to thoughts then to a delight in these thoughts then to the continuation of them then to resolve and so on to practice And in like manner he tempts some to make bold with a small matter which shall scarce come under the notion of wrong then to a greater and so gradually to higher things and thus he insensibly brings on a thievish Inclination and Practice For the same end sometimes he shews his skill in the management of Occasions he imperceptibly hooks Men into Sin by drawing them first to be bold with Occasions he tells them they may sit at the Ale-house and yet not be drunk that they may keep Familiarity and yet not be lewd that they may look upon a Commodity and yet not steal and when the Occasions are by this means made familiar to them then he puts them on a stop further but by such slow motions that the progress is scarce discerned till they be in the Snare CHAP. XII Of Satan's perverting our Reason His second way of blinding The possibility of this and the manner of accomplishing it directly several ways and indirectly by the delights of Sin and by Sophistical Arguments with an account of them THe second way by which Satan blinds us through the power of Lust is by preverting and corrupting our Reason drawing it to approve of that which it first disapproved That our Lusts have such a power upon the Understanding to make such an alteration need not seem strange to those that shall consider that the Scripture propounding the knowledge of the highest Mysteries doth positively require as a necessary prerequisite to these things that we lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness in these terms noting the loathsom defilement of our Lusts that so we may receive the ingrafted Word strongly implying that our Lusts have a power to elude and evade the strongest reasons and to hinder their entertainment Which our Saviour notes to have been also the cause of the Jews blindness How can
way of blinding us Follows next The fourth way by which our Lust prevails in Satan's hand to blind Knowledg and that is by distracting and disturbing it in its work This piece of subtilty Satan the rather useth because 't is attended with a double advantage and like a two-edged sword will cut either way For 1. A confusion and distraction in the Understanding will hinder the even and clear apprehensions of things so that those principles of Knowledg cannot reach so deep nor be so firm and full in their application For as the Senses if any way distracted or hindred though never so intent must needs suffer prejudice in their operations a thick Air or Mist not only hinders the sight of the Eye but also conduceth to a misrepresentation of Objects Thus is the Understanding hindred by confusion But 2. If this succeed not yet by this he hinders the peace and comfort of God's Children 'T is a trouble to be haunted with evil thoughts To work this distraction First Satan useth a clamorous importunity and doth so follow us with Suggestions that what way soever we turn they follow us we can think nothing else or hear nothing else they are ever before us Secondly He worketh this disturbance in our thoughts by levying a legion of Temptations against us many at once and of several kinds from within from without on every side he gathers all from the Dan to the Bersheba of his Empire to oppress us with a multitude so that while our thoughts are divided about many things they are less fixed and observant in any particular Thirdly He sometimes endeavours to weary us out with long Sollicitations As those that besiege a City when they cannot storm endeavour to waste their Strength and Provisions by a long Siege His design in this is to come upon us as Ahitophel counselled Absolom when we are weary and weak-handed by watching and long resistance Fourthly But his chief design is to take the advantage of any trouble inward or outward and by the help of this he dangerously discomposeth and distracts our Counsels and Resolves If any have a Spirit distemper'd only under the apprehensions of Wrath 't is easie for him to confound and amaze such that they shall scarce know what they do or what they think The like advantage he hath from outward Afflictions and these opportunities he the rather takes for these Reasons First Usually inward or outward troubles leaves some stamp of murmuring and fullenness upon our Hearts and of themselves distemper our Spirits with a sad inclination to speak in our haste or to act unadvisedly Job's affliction imbittered his Spirit and Satan misseth not the advantage then he comes upon him with Temptations and prevailed so far that he spake many things in his anguish of which he was ashamed afterward and hides his face for it Once have I spoken but I will not answer yea twice but I will proceed no further Secondly By reason of our Burthen we are lâ—ss weildy and more unapt to make any resistance God himself expresseth the condition of such under the similitude of those that are great with young who because they cannot be driven fast he gently leads them But Satan knows a small matter will discompose them and herein he deals with us as Simeon and Levi dealt with the Sechemites who set upon them when they were sore by circumcision Thirldly Troubles of themselves occasion Confusion multitudes of Thoughts Distractions and Inadvertencies If Men see a hazard before them they are presently at their wits end they are puzled they know not what to do thoughts are divided now resolving this then presently changing to a contrary purpose 'T is seldom but as in a multitude of words there is much folly so in a distraction of Thoughts there are many Miscarriages and Satan with a little labour can improve them to more here he works unseen in these troubled Waters he loves to angle because his Baits are not discerned Fifthly Our Considerations and Reasonings against Sin are hindred by a bold forward precipitancy When Men are hasted and pressed to the committing of Sin and like the deaf Addar stop their Ears against the voice of the Charmer in this case the rebellious Will is like a furious Horse that takes the Bridle in his Teeth and instead of submitting to the government of his Rider he carries him violently whither he would not Thus do Men rush into Sin as the Horse into the Battel The devices by which Satan doth forward this we may observe to be these among others First He endeavours to affright Men into an hopelesness of prevailing against him and so intimidates Men that they throw down their Weapons and yield up themselves to the Temptation they conclude there is no hope by all their resistance to stand it out against him and then they are easily perswaded to comply with him To help this forward Satan useth the Policy of Souldiers who usually boast high of their strength and resolutions that the hearts and courage of their Adversaries failing the Victory may fall to them without stroke The Devil expresseth a disdain and scorn of our weak opposition as Goliah did of David Am I a Dog that thou comest to me with Staves doest thou think to stand it out against me 't is in vain to buckle on thine Armour and therefore better were it to save the trouble of striving than to fight to no purpose With such like arguings as these are Men sometimes prevailed with to throw down their Weapons and to over-run their Reason through fear and hopelesness Secondly Sometimes he is more subtile and by threaping Men down that they have consented already he puts them upon desperate adventures of going forward This is usually where Satan hath used many sollicitations before after our hearts have been urged strongly with a Temptation when he sees he cannot win us over to him then he triumphs and boasts we are conquered already and that our thoughts could not have dwelt so long upon such a subject but that we had a liking to it and thence would perswade us to go on and enjoy the fulness of that delight which we have already stoln privately over Shooes over Boots Now though his arguings here be very weak for though it be granted that by the stay of the Temptation on our thoughts he hath a little entangled us it cannot hence be inferred that it is our wisdom to entangle our selves further yet are many overcome herewith and give up themselves as already conquered and so give a stop to any further consideration Thirdly When Men will not be trapanned into the Snare by the former delusions he attempts to work them up to a sudden and hasty resolve of sinning he prepares all the materials of the Sin puts every thing in order and then carries us as he did Christ into the Mountain to give us a prospect of their beauty and glory All these saith he will I give thee
his Interest and upon design he will sometimes so carry himself that he may be deemed and supposed to be gone out of a Man As those that besiege Forts or walled Towns do sometimes raise the Siege and feign a departure intending thereby to take a sudden advantage of the carelesness of the besieged In the explanation of this Policy I shall 1. Shew how many ways he feigns a departure 2. Vpon what designs he doth it There are three ways whereby Satan seems to forsake his Interest First He frequently ceaseth the prosecution of a Design which yet he hath in his Eye and Desire when he perceives that there are some things in his way that render it not feasible nay he forbears to urge Men to their darling sins upon the same score and who would not think Satan cast out in such a case When a Man spits out the sweet Morsel which heretofore he kept under his Tongue and sucked a sweetness from it when Men of noted Iniquities abstain from them and become smooth and civil who would not think but that the unclean Spirit were gone This way and course he puts in practice in several cases First When he perceives some extraordinary occasion puts any of his Subjects into a good mood or humor of Religion Wicked Men are not ordinarily so highly bent upon evil ways but that they may be at sometimes softned and relaxed Pharaoh who is most eminently noted for a heart judicially hardned at the appearance of the Plagues upon himself and Egypt usually relented somewhat and would confess he had sinned and that fit would continue upon him for some little time But very frequently 't is thus with others an extraordinary occasion melts and thaws down the natural affections of Men as a warm day melts the Snow upon the Mountains and then the stream will for a time run high and strong at which time Satan sees 't is in vain to urge them Thus Men that receive an eminent kindness and deliverance from God what is more common than for such Men to say Oh! we will never be so wicked as we have been we will never be drunk more the World shall see us reformed and new Men These are indeed good words and yet though Satan knows that such expressions are not from a good heart as that of Deut. 5. 29. implyes They have well said O that there were such an heart in them he nevertheless thinks it not fit then to press them to their usual wickedness at that time for natural affections raised high in a profession of Religion will withstand Temptations for a fit and therefore he forbears till the stream run lower What a fit of affection had the Israelites when their Eyes had seen that miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea What Songs of rejoycing had they what resolves never to distrust him again Psal 106. 12. Then believed they his words they sang his praise Satan doth not presently urge them to murmuring and unbelief though that was his design but he stays till the fit was over and then he could soon tempt them to forget his works How like a Convert did Saul look after David had convinced him of his integrity and had spared his life in the Cave he weeps and acknowledgeth his iniquity justifies David owns his kindness and seems to acquiesce in his succession to the Kingdom The Devil had no question a great spite at David and 't was his great design to stir up Saul against him and yet at that time he could not prevail with him to destroy David though he might easily have done it he was then in a good mood and Satan was forced to give way to necessity and to seem to go out of Saul for the present Secondly He also ceaseth from his design when he sees he cannot fit his Temptation with a sutable opportunity What could be more the Devil's design and Esau's satisfaction than to have had Jacob slain Esau professeth it was the design of his heart and yet he resolves to forbear so long as his Father Isaac lived Gen. 27. 41. The days of my Father's mourning are at hand then but not till then will I slay my Brother Jacob. The Devil often sows his seed and yet waiteth and hath long patience not only in watering and fitting the hearts of Men for it but also in expectancy of fit opportunities and in the mean time he forbears to put Men upon that which time and occasion cannot fitly bring forth to practice The Prophet Hosea 7. 4. speaks of that People as notoriously wicked they are all adulterers but withall he observes that they forbare these enormous abominations for want of fit seasons their heart was as an Oven heated by the Baker sufficiently enflamed after their wickedness and yet the Baker after he had kneaded the dough prepared all the ground-work of the Temptation ceased from raising sleeping all the night till all was leavened that is though their hearts were enraged for Sin yet the Devil doth wait till occasions present themselves and becomes in the mean time like one asleep Now while the Devil thus sleeps the fire that is secretly in the heart being not seen Men gain the good opinion of Converts with others and often with themselves not knowing what Spirit they are of because Satan ceaseth upon the want of occasions to tempt and provoke them Thirdly Our Adversary is content to forbear when he percieves that a restraining grace doth lock up the hearts and hands of Men. When a stronger than he cometh who can expect less but that he should be more quiet that God doth restrain Men sometime when he doth not change them needs no proof that Satan knows of these restraints cannot be denyed who can give an account of these communings and discourses that are betwixt God and Satan concerning us his pleadings in reference to Job were as unknown to Job till God discovered them as his pleadings concerning our selves are to us Besides who can tell how much of God's restraining grace may ly in this of God's limiting and straitning Satan's Commission Now the Devil hath not so badly improved his observations but that he knows 't is in vain to tempt where God doth stop his way and tye up Mens hands Abimeleck was certainly resolved upon wickedness when he took Sarah from Abraham Gen. 20. 2. and yet the matter is so carried for some time how long we know not as if the Devil had been asleep or forgot to hasten Abimeleck to his intended wickedness for when God cautions him he had not come near her vers 4. the ground of all this was neither in the Devil's backwardness nor Abimeleck's modesty but Satan lets the matter rest because he knew that God withheld him and suffered him not to touch her Fourthly When Men are under the awe and fear of such as carry an Authority in their Countenances and Imployments for the discouraging of Sin Satan as hopeless to prevail doth not solicite to
resolves to try his utmost Strength And hence is it that Converts complain that when they begin in earnest to look after God they are most troubled with Temptations Besides this what ever he can do to make them drive heavily shall not be wanting Sometimes he makes attempts upon their thoughts and affections which are as their Chariot wheels and if these can be knocked off any way it retards them Sometimes he casts stumbling-blocks in their way if any prejudice may divert them if Threatnings or Penalties can hinder if the frowning of Friends or any thing else can put a stop to their Proceedings he will have them ready Sometimes he endeavours to retard them by sollicitations of acquaintance offers of former occasions and opportunities of sinning or what ever else may be as a remora to their intentions Fourthly But if none of these serve then as his last shift he proclaims open War against them pursues them as Enemies and Rebels now he begins to accuse them for that which they did by his Advice and Temptation Now Sins that were called little are aggravated Now that day of Repentance which he was wont to say was long he tells them 't is quite spent that the Sun of their hope is set nothing now doth he suggest but Hell Damnation and Wrath he makes them as it were see it hear it and feel it in every thing that interest in their hearts which he dissembled before now he stands upon and asserts and will not be beat off designing in all this either to make them weary of these new resolves by this unusual disquietment and hostility or to precipitate them upon some desperate undertaking or at least to avenge himself upon them in venting his Malice and Rage against them but of this more afterward CHAP. XVII Satan's Deceits against Religious Services and Duties The Grounds of his displeasure against Religious Duties His first design against Duties is to prevent them His several subtilties for that end by exernal hindrances by indispositions bodily and spiritual by discouragements the ways thereof by dislike the grounds thereof by sophistical arguings His various pleas therein OUr next work is to take notice of the spite and methods of the Serpent against the ways of Worship and Service that these are things against which his heart carries an high fury and for the overthrow of them imploys no small part of his Power and Subtilty needs no proof seeing the experience of all the Children of God is an irresistible evidence in this matter I shall therefore first only set forth the grounds of his displeasure and earnest undertakings against them before I come to his particular ways of Deceit which are these First By this means if he prevail he deprives us of our Weapons This is a stratagem of War which we find the Philistims practised against Israel they took away all their Smiths lest the Hebrews should make them Swords or Spears hence was it that in the Battel there was neither Sword nor Spear found in the hand of any of the People that were with Saul and Jonathan The Word of God is expressly called the Sword of the Spirit Prayer is as a Spear or rather a general piece of Armour if the Devil deprive us of these he robs us of our Ammunition for by reason of these the Church is compared to a Tower built for an Armory wherein hang a thousand Bucklers all Shields of mighty Men and the Apostle expressly calls them Weapons of our Warfare of purpose given us for the pulling down of strong Holds and the demolishing of those Forts and Batteries of high Imaginations that Satan rears up in the hearts of Men against their happiness if these be taken away our Locks are cut as Sampson's were our Strength is departed and we become weak as other Men we are open to every incursion and inroad that he pleaseth to make against us Secondly If he hinders these he intercepts our Food and cuts off our Provisions The Word is called Milk sincere Milk of the Word 't is that by which we are born nourished and increase 't is our Cordial and Comfort Christ indeed is the Bread of Life and the fountain of all our Consolations but the Word and Prayer are the Conduit Pipes that convey all to us if these be cut we fade as a Leaf we languish we consume and waste we become as a Skin Bottle in the Smoak our moisture as the drought in Summer our Soul fainteth our Heart faileth and we become as those that go down to the Pit so that if the Devil gain his design in this he hath all give him this and give him the Kingdom also this is the most compendious way of doing his work and that which saves him a labour in his Temptations The strongest Holds that cannot otherwise be taken are easily subdued by Famine and like Fig-trees with their ripe Figs when they are shaken even fall into the mouth of the eater if our Spiritual Food fail us of our own accord we yield up our selves to any lust that requires our complyance Thirdly Besides these there is no design whereby Satan can shew more malice and spite against God He doth all he can to maintain a competition with the Almighty his Titles of the God of the World the Prince of the power of the Air shew what in the pride of his heart he aspires to as well as what by commission God is pleased to grant him These duties of Worship and Service are the homage of God's Children by which they testify the acknowledgments of his Deity by wresting these out of our hands Satan robs God of that honour and makes the allegiance of his Servants to cease if he could do more against God doubtless he would but seeing he hath not an Arm like God and so cannot pull him out of Heaven by this means he sets up himself as the God of the World and enlargeth his Territories and staves off the Subjects of the God of Heaven from giving him the honour due to his Name and that the Devil in these endeavours is carried on by a spite against God as well as by an earnest desire of the ruine of Souls may be abundantly evidenced by his way of management of that opposition that he gives to the duties of Service and Worship I shall only to make this out instance in three things 1. That where the Devil prevails to set up himself as an Object of Worship there he doth it in a bold insolent presumptuous imitation of God's Appointments in the ways of his Service he enjoyns Covenants Seals Sacrifices Prayers and Services to his miserable Slaves as may appear by undoubted Histories of which more in due place 2. He never acknowledgeth the truth of God's ways but with an evil mind and upon design to bring them under contempt his Confessions have so much of deceit in them that Christ would not accept them and therefore we read that
when the Devil was sometime forward to give his testimony to Christ as Mark 1. 25. I know thee who thou art the holy one of God Jesus rebuked him and commanded him to hold his peace he clearly saw that he confessed him not to honour him but by such a particular acknowledgment to stir up the rage and fury of the People against him To this end Satan in Acts 16. 17. many days together publickly owns Paul and Silas These Men are the servants of the most high God which shew unto us the way of Salvation though he spake truth yet had he a malicious aim in it which he accordingly brought about by this means and that was to raise up persecution against them and to give ground to that accusation which they afterward met withall vers 21. That they taught customs which were not lawful to be received But 3. His particular spite against God in seeking to undermine his Service is further manifested in this That the Devil is not content to root out the service due to God but when he hath done that he delights to abuse those places where the Name of God was most celebrated with greatest prophanations I shall not in this insist upon the conjecture of Tilenus that Sylva Dodonaea a place highly abused by the Devil and respected for an Oracle was the seat or a religious place of Dodanim mentioned in Gen. 10. 4. nor upon that supposal mentioned also by the same Author that the Oracle of Jupiter Hammon was the place where C ham practised that religious worship which he learned in his Fathers house We have at hand more certain evidences of the Devils spite Such was his abuse of the Tabernacle by the prophane sons of Eli who prophaned that place with their uncleanness and filthy adulteries Such was his carriage to the Ark while it was captivated by the Philistims Of like nature were his attempts against the Temple it self Solomon in his latter days was tempted to give an affront to it he built an high place for Chemosh the Abomination of Moab in the hill that is before Jerusalem in the very sight and face of the Temple but afterward he prevailed to defile the Temple it self Gilgal and Beth-aven are places of such high prophanation that the Prophet Hos 9. 15. tells them all their wickedness was in Gilgal none of their abominations were like to those and in Hos 4. 15. they are dehorted from going to Gilgal or Bethaven and yet both these places had been famous for Religion before Gilgal was the place of the general Circumcision of the Israelites that were born in the Wilderness there was their first solemn Passover kept after their entring into the Land Bethel was a place where God as it were kept House the house of God Here Jacob had his vision But the more famous they had been for duties of Worship the Devil sought to put higher abuses upon them so that Gilgal became on Hatred and Bethel became a Beth-aven an house of Vanity Fourthly Satan is the more animated to undertake a design against the ways of religious Service because he seldom or never misseth at least something of success This attempt is like Saul and Jonathan's Bow that returned not empty In other Temptations sometimes Satan comes off basfled altogether but in this work as 't was said of some Israelites he can throw a stone at an hairs breadth and not miss he is sure in one thing or other to have the better of us his advantage in this case is from our unsutableness to our service What we do in the duties of Worship requires a choice frame of Spirit our hearts should be awed with the most serious apprehensions of divine Majesty filled with Reverence animated with Love and delight quickned by Faith clothed with Humility and self-abhorrency and in all the procedure of duties there must be a steady and firm prosecution under the strictest watchfulness Of this nature is our work which at the first view would put a Man to a stand and out of amazement force him to say who is sufficient for these things who can stand before such an holy Lord God But when we come to an impartial consideration of our manifold weaknesses and insufficiences in reference to these Services what shall we say we find such a narrowness of Spirit such ignorances sottishness carelesness of Mind Thoughts so confused tumultuous fickle slippery and unconstant and our hearts generally so deceitful and desperately wicked that 't is not possible that Satan should altogether labour in vain or catch nothing this being then a sure gain we may expect it to be under a most constant practice Fifthly If he so prevails against us that the services of Worship become grosly abused or neglected then doth he put us under the greatest hazards and disadvantages Nothing so poysonous as duties of Worship corrupted for this is to abuse God to his face by this not only are his Commands and Injunctions slighted as in other sins but we carry it so as if we thought him no better than the Idols of the Heathens that have Eyes and see not that have Ears and hear not To come without an Heart or with our Idols in our Heart is it any thing of less scorn than to say Tush doth the most High see Besides he hath given such severe Cautions and Commands in these matters as will easily signify the aggravation of the offence You see how sharply God speaks of those that came to enquire of the Lord with the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face Ezek. 14. 4 7. I will answer them according to the multitude of their Idols I will answer them by my self Saul's miscarriage in offering Sacrifice 1 Sam. 13. 13. was that great offence for which God determined to take the Kingdom from him God's severity against Nadah and Abihu his stroke upon Vzzah do all shew the hazard of such prophanations But above all that danger which both Old and New Testament speak of the hardning of the Heart blinding the Eyes dulling the Ears that Men should not hear nor see nor be converted and saved but that the Word should instead of those cordial refreshing smells which beget and promote spiritual life in the obedient breath forth such envenomed poysonous exhalations when 't is thus abused and prophaned that it becomes the savour of death unto death is most dreadful No wonder then if Satan be very busie against these holy things when if he catch us at an advantage of this nature it proves so deadly and dangerous to us for what can more please him that makes it his delight and imployment to destroy All these Reasons evince that Satan hath an aking tooth against religious Services and that to weaken prevent or overthrow them is his great endeavour Here then especially may we expect an assault according to the advice of Sirach My Son when thou entrest God's Service stand fast in
some perfect some less perfect some little Children some young men some Fathers The end of all this is to make them apprehend themselves Christians of an higher rank and order which also makes way consequently for a further inference viz. That there must needs be immunities and priviledges suitable to these heights and attainments To this purpose 3 he produceth those Scriptures that are design'd by God to raise up the minds of Men to look after the internal Work and Power of his Ordinances and not to center their minds and hopes in the bare formal use of them without applying their thoughts to God and Christ unto whom they are appointed to lead us Such as these Scriptures Rom. 2. 28. He is not a Jew which is one outwardly neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh but he is a Jew which is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter And Rom. 6. 7. we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter 2 Cor. 5. 16. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh yea though we have known Christ after the flesh yet now henceforth know we him no more Ephes 4. 13. He gave some Apostles and some Prophets c. for the perfecting of the Saints till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man By a perverse Interpretation of these and some other Scriptures of like import he would perswade them That the great thing that Christ designed by his Ordinances was but to train up the weaker Christians by these rudiments as the A B C to Children to a more spiritual and immediate way of living upon God and that these become altogether useless when Christians have gotten up to any of these imaginary degrees of a supposed Perfection Enough of this may be seen in the writings of Saltmarsh Winstanly and others in the late times How great a Trade Satan drove by such misapprehensions not long since cannot easily be forgotten so that God's Worship did almost lye wast and in many places the way to Sion did mourn Secondly He will sometimes confess an equality of priviledge among the Children of God and yet plead an inequality of duty that God is as good and strong to us and that we have all an equal advantage by Christ he will readily acknowledge But then when we should propound the diligence of the Saints in their Services for our pattern as of Davids praying seven times a day Daniels three times Anna's serving God with fastings and prayers night and day c. He tells us these were extraordinary Services and as it were works of supererrogation more than the Command of God laid upon them So that we are not tyed to such strictness and we being naturally apt to indulge our selves in our own ease are too ready to comply with such Delusions And by degrees Men are thus brought to a confident belief that they may be good enough and do as much as is required though they slacken their pace and do not Fast Pray or Hear so often as others have done Thirdly Another Sophism of his is to heighten one Duty to the ruine of another He strives to make an intestine War among the several parts of the Services we owe to God and from the excellency of one to raise up an enmity and undervaluing disregard of another Thus would he sever as inconsistent those things that God hath joyned together As among false Teachers some say Lo here is Christ and others Lo he is there So we find Satan dealing with Duties he puts some upon such high respects to Preaching that say they Christ is to be found here most frequently rather than in Prayer or other Ordinances others are made to have the like esteem for Prayer and they affirm in this is Christ especially to be met withal Others say the like of Sacraments or Meditation In all these Satan labours to beget a dislike and neglect of other Services Thus in what relates to the Constitution of Churches he endeavours to set up purity of Churches to the Destruction of Vnity or Vnity to the ruine of Purity A notable Example hereof we have in the Euchytae a Sect of praying Hereticks which arose in the time of Valentinian and Valens who upon the pretence of the Commands of Christ and Paul for Praying continually or without ceasing and fainting owned no other Duty as necessary vilifying Preaching and Sacraments as things at best useless and unprofitable The like attempts he makes daily upon Men where though he prevail not so far as to bring some necessary Duties of Service into open contempt yet he carries them into too much secret neglect and disregard Fourthly He improves the grace of the Gospel to infer an unnecessariness of Duty and this he doth not only from the advantage of a prophane and careless Spirit in such as presumptuously expect Heaven though they mind not the way that leads to it for with such it is usual as one observes for Satan to sever the means from the end in things that are good to make them believe they shall have Peace though they walk in the Imaginations of their Heart to make them lean upon the Lord for Heaven in the apparent neglect of Holiness and Duty As in evil things he severs the end from the means making them confident they shall escape Hell and Condemnation though they walk in the path that leads thither But besides this he abuseth the understandings and affections of Men by strange and uncouth inferences as that God hath received a satisfaction and Christ hath done all so that nothing is left for us to do The Apostle Paul was so much aware of this kind of arguing that when he was to magnifie the Grace of God he always took care to fence against such perverse reasonings severely rebuking and refelling such objections as in Rom. 3. 7 8. Where speaking that our unrighteousness did commend the righteousness of God he falls upon that reply Why then am I judged as a sinner Which he sharply refells as an inference of slanderous imputation to the Gospel which hath nothing in it to give the least countenance to that Conclusion Let us do evil that good may come And adds That Damnation shall justly overtake such as practise accordingly The like we have Rom. 6. 1. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound which he rejected with the greatest abhorrency God forbid From both which places we may plainly gather that as unsound as such arguings are yet Men through Satans subtilty are too prone upon such pretences to dispute themselves to a careless neglect of Duty This might be enlarged in many other instances as that of Maximus Tyrius who disputed all Duties unnecessary upon this ground That what God will give cannot be hindred and what he
but draw neer to him with our lips while our hearts are far from him Secondly The like spoil of Duty is made when we adventure upon it in our own strength and not in the strength of Christ Satan sees the pride of our heart and how much our gifts may contribute to it and how prone we are to be confident of a right performance of what we have so often practised before and therefore doth he more industriously catch at that advantage to make us forget that our strength is in God and that we cannot come to him acceptably but by his own power Christians are often abused this way when their strength is to seek Duty is oft perversly set before them that they may act as Sampson did when his locks were cut who thought to shake himself and to go out as at other times and so fell into the hands of the Philistines Thirdly If he can substitute base ends and Principles as motives to Duty instead of these that God hath commanded he knows the Service will become stinking and loathsome to God Fasting Prayers Alms Preaching or any other Duty may be thus tainted when they are performed upon no better grounds than to be seen of Men or out of Envy or to satisfie humour or when from custom rather than conscience How frequently did the Prophets tax the Jews for this that they fasted to themselves and brought forth fruit to themselves How severely did Christ condemn the Pharisees upon the same account telling them that in hunting the applause of Men by these devotions they had got all the reward they were like to have Fourthly When we do our Services unseasonably not only the grace and beauty of them is spoiled but often are they rendred unprofitable There are times to be observed not only for the right management of common Actions but also for Duties What is Christian Reproof if it be not rightly suited to season and opportunity The same may be said of other Services Fifthly Services are spoiled when Men set upon them without resolutions of leaving their Sins While they come with their Idols in their heart and the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face God will not be enquired of by them He requires of those that present their Services to him that at least they should not affront him with direct purposes of continuing in their Rebellions against him nay he expects from his Servants that look for a Blessing in their Duties that they come with their hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and their bodies washed with pure water If they come to hear the Word they must lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness if they pray they must lift up pure hands If they come to the Lords Supper they must eat that Feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth And albeit he may accept the Prayers of those that are so far convinced of their Sins though they be not yet sanctified that they are willing to lay down their Weapons and are touched with a sence of Legal Repentance for thus he heard Ahab and regarded the Humiliation of Nineveh Yet while Men cleave to the love of their iniquity and are not upon any terms of parting with their Sins God will not look to their Services but abhor them For thus he declares himself Isa 1. 11. To what purpose is the multitude of your Sacrifices Bring no more vain oblations I cannot away with them it is iniquity even the solemn meeting my soul hateth them they are a trouble to me I am weary to bear them when you spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you yea when you make many Prayers I will not hear The ground of all this is that their heart was no way severed from the purposes of Sinning Your hands are full of blood vers 15. Satan knowing this so well he is willing that they engage in the Services of God if they will keep up their Allegiance to him and come with intentions to continue wicked still for so while he cannot prevent the actual performance of Duty which yet notwithstanding he had rather do because he knows not but God may by that means sometime or other rescue these Slaves of Satan out of his hand he makes their Services nothing worth and renders them abominable to God Sixthly In the manner of undertaking Duties are spoiled when Men have not a submissive ingenuity in them by giving themselves up to the direction and disposal of the Almighty but rather confine and limit God to their wills and desires Sometimes Men by attempting of Services to God think thereby to engage God to humour them in their wills and ways With such a mind did Ahab consult the Prophets about his expedition to Ramoth-Gilead not so much seeking Gods mind and counsel for direction as thinking thereby to engage God to confirm and comply with his determination With the same mind did Johanan and the rest of the people consult the Lord concerning their going down to Aegypt Jer. 42. 5. Though they solemnly protested Obedience to what God should say whether it were good or evil yet when the return from God suited not with their desires and resolutions they denied it to be the Command of God and found an evasion to free themselves of their engagement Jer. 43. 2. Such dealings as these being the evident undertakings of an Hypocritical heart must needs render all done upon that score to be presumptuous temptings of God no way deserving the name of Service Secondly Not only are Services thus spoiled in those wrong grounds and ways of attempting or setting about them but in the very act or performance of them while they are upon the Wheel as a Potters Vessel in the Prophet they are often marred and this Satan doth two ways 1 By disturbing our thoughts which should be attentive and fixed upon the Service in hand 2 By vitiating the Duty it self First By distracting or disturbing our thoughts This is an usual Policy of Satan Those Fowls which came down upon Abrahams Sacrifice are supposed by Learned Expositors to signifie those means and ways by which the Devil doth disorder and trouble our thoughts in Religious Services And Christ himself compares the Devil stealing our thoughts from Duty to the Fowls of the Air that gather up the Seed as soon as it is sown There are many reasons that may perswade us that this is one of his Master-pieces of Policy As 1 in that the business of Distraction is oft easily done our thoughts do not naturally delight in Spiritual things because of their depravement neither can they easily brook to be pent in or confined so strictly as the nature of such imployments doth require so that there is a kind of preternatural force upon our thoughts when they are Religiously imployed which as it is in it self laborious like the stopping of a Stream or driving Jordan back so upon
the least relaxing of the Spring that must bend our thoughts Heaven-ward they incline to their natural bend and current As a Stone rolled up a Hill hath a renitentia a striving against the hand that forceth it and when that force slackens it goes down-ward How easily then is it for Satan to set our thoughts off our Work If we slacken our Care never so little they recoyle and tend to their old Byas and how easie is it for him to take off our hand when 't is so much in his power to inject thoughts and motions into our Hearts or to present Objects to our Eyes or Sounds to our Ears which by a natural force raiseth up our apprehension to act for in such cases non possumus non cogitare we cannot restrain the act of thinking and not without great heedfulness can we restrain the pursuit of those thinkings and imaginations 2 Satan can also do it insensibly our distractions or roveings of thoughts creep and steal upon us silently we no more know oft when they begin than when we begin to sleep or when we begin to wander in a journey where oft we do not take our selves to be out of the way till we come to some remarkable turning 3 And when he prevailes to divide our thoughts from our Duty he always makes great advantage for thus he hinders at least the comfort and profit of Ordinances While we are busied to look to our hearts much of the Duty goeth by and we are but as those that in Publick Assemblies are imployed to see to the order and silence of others who can be scarce at leasure to attend for their own advantage Besides much of the sweetness of Ordinances are abated by the very trouble of our Attendance When we are put to it as Abraham was to be still driving away those Fowls that come down upon our Sacrifice the very toil will eat out and eclipse much of the comfort Thus also he at least provides matter to object against the sincerity of the Servants of God and will assurly find a time to set it home upon them to the purpose that their hearts were wandring in their Services Thus he further gets advantage for a temptation to leave off their Duty and will not cease to improve such distractions as we have heard to an utter overthrow of their Services Nay if he prevail to give us such distractions as wholly takes away our minds and serious attentions from the Service then is the service become nothing worth though the outward circumstances of attendance be never so exact and Saint-like Who could appear in a more religious dress than those in Ezek. 33. 31. who came and sate and were pleased with Divine Services as to all outward discovery as Gods People yet was all spoiled with this that their hearts were after their Covetousness Now this Distraction Satan can work two wayes First By outward Disturbances He can present Objects to the Eyes on purpose to entice our thoughts after them The closing of the Eyes in Prayer is used by some of the Servants of God to prevent Satan's Temptations this way And we find in the Story of Mr. Rothwel that the Devil took notice of this in him That he shut his eyes to avoid distraction in prayer Which implies a Concession in the Devil that by outward Objects he useth to endeavour our distraction in Services The like he doth by noises and sounds Neither can we discover how much of these Disturbances by Coughings Hemmings Tramplings c. which we hear in greater Assemblies are from Satan by stirring up others to such noises We are sure the Damsel that had an unclean Spirit Act. 16. that grieved and troubled Paul going about these Duties with her Clamours was set on by that Spirit within her to distract and call off their thoughts from the Services which they were about to undertake Besides the common ways of giving trouble to the Servants of God in outward Disturbances he sometimes though rarely doth it in an extraordinary manner thus he endeavoured to hinder Mr. Rothwel from praying for a Possessed Person by rage and blaspheming The like hinderance we read he gave Luther and others and truly so strict an attendance in the exercise of our Minds spiritual Sences and Graces is required in matters of Worship and so weak are our hearts in making a resistance or beating off these assaults that a very smal matter will discompose us and a smaller discomposure will prejudice and blemish the Duty Secondly He distracts or disturbs us also by inward Workings and injections of Motions and representations of things to our Minds and as this is his most general and usual way so doth he make use of greater variety of contrivance and art in it As First By the troublesome impetuousness and violence of his Injections they come upon us as thick as Hail No sooner do we put by one Motion but another is in upon us he hath his Quiver full of these Arrows and our hearts under any Service swarm with them we are incessantly infested by them and have no rest At other times when we are upon worldly business we may observe a great ease and freedom in our thoughts neither doth he so much press upon us but in these Satan is continually knocking at our door and calling to us so that it is a great hazard that some or other of these Injections may stick upon our thoughts and lead us out of the way or if they do not yet 't is a great molestation or toil to us Secondly He can so order his dealings with us that he provokes us sometimes to follow him out of the Camp and seeks to ensnare us by improving our own spiritual resolution and hatred against him even as courage whetted on and enraged makes a Man ventersome beyond the due bounds of prudence or safety To this end he sometimes casts into our thoughts hideous Blasphemous and Atheistical suggestions which do not only amaze us but oftentimes engage us to dispute against them which at such time is all he seeks for for whereas in such cases we should send away such thoughts with a short Answer Get thee behind me Satan We by taking up the Buckler and Sword against them are drawn off from minding our present Duty Thirdly He doth sometimes seek to allure and draw our thoughts to the Object by representing what is pleasant and taking 1 He will adventure to suggest good things impertinently and unseasonably as when he puts us upon Praying while we should be Hearing or while we are Praying he puts into our hearts things that we have heard in Preaching these things because good in themselves we are not so apt to startle at but give them a more quick welcome 2 He also can allure our thoughts by the strangeness of the things suggested sometimes we shall have hints of things which we knew not before or some fine and excellent notions so that
Doctrine at Oxford And of late we have had the sad experience of the power of Errour to infect no Errour so absurd ridiculous or blasphemous but once broached it presently gained considerable numbers to entertain it Fourthly Errour is also eminently serviceable to Satan for the bringing in Divisions Schisms Rents Hatreds Heart-burnings Animofities Revilings Contentions Tumults Wars and whatsoever bitter Fruits breach of Love and the malignity of Hatred can possibly produce Enough of this might be seen in the Church of Corinth the divisions that were amongst themselves were occasioned by it and a great number of evils the Apostle suspected to have been already produc'd from thence as Debates Envyings Wraths Strifes Back-bitings Whisperings Swellings Tumults 2 Cor. 12. 20. He himself escaped not from being evilly intreated by those among them that were turned from the simplicity of the Gospel The quarrelsome exceptions that they had raised against him he takes notice of They charged him with levity in neglecting his promise to come to them 2 Cor. 1. 17. They called him carnal one that walked according to the flesh chap. 10. 2. they taunted him as a contemptible Fellow ver 10. They undervalued his Ministry which occasioned not without great Apology a commendation of himself nay they seemed to call him a false Apostle and were so bold as to challenge him for a proof of Christ speaking in him 2 Cor. 13. 3. If the Devil had so much advantage from Errour that was but in the bud and that in one Church only what may we imagine hath he done by it when it broke out to an open flame in several Churches What work do we see in Families when an Errour creeps in among them the Father riseth up against the Son the Son against the Father the Mother against the Daughter the Daughter against the Mother what sad divided Congregations have we seen what Fierceness Prejudices Slanders Evil-surmises Censurings and Divisions hath this brought forth what bandying of Parties against Parties Church against Church hath been produced by this Engine How sadly hath this poor Island felt the smart of it the bitter contests that have been betwixt Presbyterian and Independent betwixt them and the Episcopal makes them look more like factious Combinations than Churches of Christ The present differences betwixt Conformists and Nonconformists if we take them where they are lowest they do daily produce such effects as must needs be very pleasing and grateful to the Devil both Parties mutually objecting Schism and charging each other with Crime and Folly what invectives and railings may be heard in all Companies as if they had been at the greatest distances in point of Doctrine But whosoever loseth to be sure the Devil gains by it Hatreds Strife Variance Emulations Lyings Railings Scorn and Contempt are all against the known duty of brotherly kindness and are undoubted provocations against the God of Love and Peace What can we then think of that can be so useful to Satan as Errour when these abovementioned evils are the inseparable products of it The modestest Errours that ever were among good Men are still accompanied with something of these bitter Fruits The differences about Meats and Days when managed with the greatest moderation made the Strong to despise the Weak as silly wilful factious Humorists and on the contrary the Weak judged the Strong as prophane careless and bold Despisers of divine Institutions for so much the Apostle implyes Rom. 14. 3. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth But should we trace Errour thorow the ruines of Churches and view the slaughters and bloodshed that it hath occasioned or consider the Wars and Desolations that it hath brought forth we might heap up matter fit for Tears and Lamentations and make you cease to wonder that Satan should so much concern himself to promote it Fifthly The greatest and most successful Stratagem for the hindering a Reformation is that of raising up an Army of Errours Reformation of Abuses and corruptions in Worship or Doctrine we may well suppose the Devil will withstand with his utmost might and Policy because it endeavours to pull that down which cost him so much labour and time to set up and so crosseth his end They who are called out by God to jeopard their lives in the high places of the Field undertake an hard task in endeavouring to check the power of the Mighty whose interest it is to maintain those defilements which their Policy hath introduced to fix them in the possession of that grandeur and command which so highly gratifies their Humours and self-seeking aspiring Minds But Satan knowing the strength of that Power which hath raised them up to oppose with spiritual resolution the current of Prevailing Iniquity usually provides himself with this reserve and comes upon their backs with a Party of deluded erronious Men raised up from among themselves and by this means he hopes either to discourage the Undertakers for Reformation by the difficulty of their work which must needs drive on heavily when they that should assist prove hinderers or at least to straiten and limit the success For by this means 1. He divides the Party and so weakens their hands 2. He strengthens their Enemies who not only gather heart from these divisions seeing them so fair a prognostick of their ruine but also improve them by retorting them as an argument that they are all out of the way of Truth 3. The erroneous Party in the Rear of the Reformers do more gall them with their Arrows even bitter words of cursed reviling and more hazard them with their Swords and Spears of opposition than their Adversaries in the Front against whom they went forth In the mean while they that stand up for Truth are as Corn betwixt two Milstones oppressed with a double conflict beset before and behind This hath been Satan's method in all ages And indeed Policy it self could not contrive any thing that would more certainly obstruct Reformation than this When the Apostles who in these last days were first sent forth were imployed to reform the World to throw down the Ceremonies of the Old Testament and Heathen Worship Satan had presently raised up Men of corrupt Minds to hinder their Progress what work these made for Paul at Corinth and with the Galatians the Epistles to those Churches do testify The business of these Men was to draw Disciples after them from the simplicity of the Gospel nay to another Gospel and this they could not do but by setting up themselves boasting of the Spirit carrying themselves as the Apostles of Christ and contemning those that were really so insinuating thereby into the affections of the seduced as if they zealously affected them and that Paul was but weak and contemptible nay their very Enemy for telling them the truth What unspeakable hindrance must this be to Paul What grief of heart What fear and jealousie must this
sticks not sometime to asperse the poor troubled Soul with Dissimulation where that accusation is proper for the Devil cares not how inconsistent he be to himself so that he may but gain his end affirming all his seriousness to be nothing but whining Hypocrisy So that whether they judg these troubles to be real or feigned his conclusion is the same and he perswades Men thereby to hold off from all religious strictness holy diligence and careful watchfulness 5. A further use which the Devil makes of these troubles of Spirit is to prepare the Hearts of Men thereby to give entertainment to his venomous impressions Distress of Heart usually opens the Door to Satan and lays a Man naked without Armour or Defence as a fair Mark for all his poysoned Arrows and 't is a hundred to one but some of them do hit I shall chuse out some of the most remarkable and they are these 1. After long acquaintance with grief he labours to fix them in it In some cases custome doth alleviate higher griefs and Men take an odd kind of delight in them 't is some pleasure to complain and Men settle themselves in such a course their Finger is ever upon their Soar and they go about telling their Sorrows to all they converse with though to some this is a necessity for real Sorrows if they be not too great for vent will constrain them to speak yet in some that have been formerly acquainted with grief it degenerates at last into a formality of complaining and because they formerly had cause so to do they think they must always do so But besides this Satan doth endeavour to chain Men to their mourning upon two higher Accounts 1. By a delusive contentment in sorrow as if our tears paid some part of our debt to God and made amends for the injuries done to him 2. By an obstinate sullenness and desperate resolvedness they harden themselves in sorrow and say as Job 7. 11. I will not refrain my Mouth I will speak in the anguish of my Spirit I will complain in the bitterness of my Soul Am I a Sea or a Whale that thou settest a Watch over me 2. Another impression that Mens Hearts are apt to take is unthankfulness for the favours formerly bestowed upon them their present troubles blot out the memory of old kindnesses they conclude they have nothing at all because they have not peace though God heretofore hath sent down from on high and taken them out of the great Waters or out of the Mire and Clay where they were ready to sink though he hath sent them many tokens of Love conferred on them many Blessings yet all these are no more to them so long as their sorrows continue than Haman's Wealth and Honour was to him so long as Mordecai the Jew sate at the Kings Gate Thus the Devil oft prevails with God's Children to deal with God as some unthankful Persons deal with their Benefactors who if they be not humour'd in every request deny the reality of their Love and dispise with great ingratitude all that was done for them before 3. By inward griefs the Heart of the afflicted are prepared to entertain the worst interpretation that the Devil can put upon the Providences of God The various Instances of Scripture and the gracious Promises made to those that walk in Darkness and see no Light do abundantly forewarn Men from making bad conclusions of God's dealings and do tell us that God in design for our tryal and for our profit doth often hide his Face for a moment when yet his purpose is to bind us up with everlasting compassions Now the Devil labours to improve the sorrows of the Mind to give a quite contrary construction if they are afflicted instead of saying Sorrow may endure for a Night but Joy will come in the Morning or that for a little while God hath hidden himself he puts them to say this Darkness shall never pass away If the grief be little he drives them on to a fearful expectation of worse as he did with Hezekiah Esa 38. 13. I reckoned till Morning that as a Lyon so will be break all my Bones from Day even to Night wilt thou make an end of me If God purpose to teach us by inward Sorrows our Pride of Heart carelessness neglect of dependance upon him the bitterness of Sin or the like the Devil will make us believe and we are too ready to subscribe to him that God proclaims open War against us and resolves never to own us more So did Job chap. 19. 6. Know now that God hath overthrown me and compassed me with his Net how often complained he thou hast made me as thy mark thou hast broken me asunder thou hast taken me by my Neck and shaken me to peices So also Heman Psal 88. 14. Why castest thou off my Soul why hidest thou thy Face from me 4. Upon this occasion the Devil is ready to envenome the Soul with sinful wishes and execrations against itself Eminent Saints have been tempted in their trouble to say too much this way Job solemnly cursed his Day Job 3. 3. Let the Day perish wherein I was born and the Night in which it was said there is a Manchild conceived c. So also Jeremiah chap. 20. 14. Cursed be the Day wherein I was Born let not the Day wherein my Mother bare me be Blessed Cursed be the Man who brought tydings to my Father saying a Man-child is Born unto thee and let that Man be as the Cities which God overthrew and repented not Strange rashness what had the Day deserved or wherein was the Messenger to be blamed Violent Passions hurried him beyond all bounds of reason and moderation When troubles within are violent a small push sets Men forward and when once they begin they are carried headlong beyond what they first intended 5. On this advantage the Devil sometimes imboldens them to quarrel God himself directly When Job and Jeremiah cursed their day it was a contumely against God indirectly but they durst not make bold with God at so high a rate as to quarrel him to his Face Yet even this are Men brought to often when their sorrows are long-lasting and deep The Devil suggests Can God be faithful and never keep Promise for help can he be merciful when he turns away his ears from the cry of the miserable where is his pity when he multiplies his wounds without cause Though at first these cursed intimations do a little startle Men yet when by frequent inculcating they grow more familiar to the Heart the distressed break out in their rage with those exclamations Where is the faithfulness of God where are his Promises hath he not forgotten to be gracious are not his Mercies clean gone And at last it may be Satan leads them a step higher that is 6. To a desparing desperateness For when all Passages of relief are stop up and the burthen becomes great Men are
apt to be drawn into rage and fury when they think their burthen is greater than they can bear and see no hope of ease in a kind of revenge they express their anger against the hand that wounded them The Devil is officiously ready with his advice of Curse God and die and they being full of anguish are quickly made to comply with it 7. When 't is at this height the Devil hath but one Stage more and that is the suggesting of irregular means for ease Rage against God doth not quench the inward burning Blasphemies against Heaven easeth not the Pain the Soar runs still and ceaseth not the trouble continues the Man cannot endure it longer all Patience and Hope is gone what shall he do in this case The Devil offers his Service he will be the Physician and commonly he prescribes one of these two things 1. That 't is best to endeavour to break through all this trouble into a resolved prophaneness not to stand in awe of Laws nor to believe that there is a God that governs in the Earth but that this is only the bitter fruit of melancholy and unnecessary seriousness and therefore 't is best to eat drink and be merry If a Man can thus escape out of his trouble the Devil needs no more but oft he cannot the wounds of Conscience will not be thus healed Then 2. He hath another remedy which will not fail as he tells them that is to destroy themselves to end their troubles with their lives How open are the Breasts of troubled Creatures to all these Darts and were it not that God secretly steps in and holds the afflicted with his right hand 't is scarce imaginable but that wounded Consciences should by Satan's subtile improvement of so fair an advantage be brought to all this misery 8. Satan can afflict the Body by the Mind For these two are so closely bound together that their good and bad estate is shared betwixt them If the Heart be merry the Countenance is chearful the Strength is renewed the Bones do flourish like an Herb. If the Heart be troubled the Health is impaired the Strength is dryed up the Marrow of the Bones wasted c. Grief in the Heart is like a Moth in the Garment it insensibly consumeth the Body and disordereth it This advantage of weakening the Body falls into Satans hands by necessary consequence as the Prophets ripe Figs that fell into the Mouth of the Eater And surely he is well pleased with it as he is an Enemy both to Body and Soul But 't is a greater satisfaction to him in that as he can make the Sorrows of the Mind produce the Weakness and Sickness of the Body So can he make the Distemper of the Body by a reciprocal requital to augment the trouble of the Mind How little can a sickly Body do it disables a Man for all Services he cannot oft Pray nor Read nor Hear Sickness takes away the Sweetness and Comfort of Religious Exercises this gives occasion for them to think the worse of themselves they think the Soul is weary of the ways of God when the Body cannot hold out All failures which weariness and faintness produce are ascribed presently to the bad dispostion of the Mind and this is like Oyl cast upon the Flame Thus the Devil makes a double gain out of Spiritual trouble 9. Let it be also reckoned among the advantages which Satan hath against Men from trouble of Spirit that 't is a contentment to him to see them in their Miseries 't is a sport to him to see them as Job speaks take their Flesh in their Teeth and cry out in the bitterness of their Souls their groanings are his Musick when they wallow in Ashes drown themselves in Tears roar till their Throat is dry spread out their Hands for help then he gluts his Heart in looking upon their woes When they fall upon God with their unjust Surmises evil Interpretations of Providence questioning his Favour denying his Grace whishing they had never been Born then he claps his Hands and shouts a Victory The pleasantest sight to him is to see God hiding himself from his Child and that Child broken with fears torn in peices with griefs made a Brother to Dragons a Companion to Owls under restless Anxities perpetual Lamentations feeble and sore broken their Strength dryed like a Potsheard their Throat dry their Tongue cleaving to their Jaws their Bowels boyling their Bones burnt with Heat their Skin black upon them their Flesh consumed their Bones sticking out chastened with strong pain upon their Bed This is one of Satan's delightful Spectacles and for these ends doth he all he can to bereave them of their Comfort which we may the more certainly perswade our selves to be true when we consider the grounds forementioned his malicious nature the advantages of Spiritual Peace and the disadvantages of Spiritual trouble CHAP. VI. Of the various Ways by which he hinders Peace 1. Way by discomposures of Spirit These Discomposures explained by shewing 1. What advantage he takes from our natural Temper and what Tempers give him this advantage 2. By what occasions he works upon our natural Tempers 3. With what success 1. These Occasions suited to natural Inclinations raise great disturbance 2. They have a tendency to Spiritual Trouble The thing proved and the manner how discovered 3. These Disturbances much in his Power General and Particular Considerations about that Power HAving evidenced that one of Satan's principal designs is against the Peace and Comfort of God's Children I shall next endeavour a discovery of the various ways by which he doth undermine them herein All inward troubles are not of the same kind in themselves neither doth Satan always produce the same effects out of all Some being in their own nature disquiets that do not so directly and immediately overthrow the Peace and Joy of believing and the Comforts of assurance of Divine Favour as others do Yet seeing that by all he hath no small advantage against us as to Sin and Trouble and that any of them at the long-run may lead us to question our interest in Grace and the Love of God and may accordingly afflict us I shall speak of them all which that I may do the more distinctly I shall rank these troubles into several heads under peculiar names it may be not altogether so proper but that the curious may find matter of exception to them that by them and their explanation the differences may the better appear I distinguish therefore of a fourfold trouble that the Devil doth endeavour to work up upon the Hearts of Men. They are 1. Discomposures 2. Affrightments 3. Dejections of Sadness 4. Distresses of Horrour Of all which I shall speak in their order And 1. Of Discomposures of Soul These are Molestations and Disturbances by which the Mind is put out of order and made unquiet the calm in which it should enjoy it self and by which it should be
vexation yet we might justly on that single account call him the troubler of the Spirits of Men considering that naturally the thoughts of Men are restless and their imaginations ever rowling If Men sequester themselves from all business if they shut themselves up from commerce with Men turn Eremites as Jerom did on purpose to avoid disquiet yet their thoughts would hurry them from place to place sometimes to the Court sometimes to the Market sometimes to Shews and Pastimes sometimes to quarrellings sometimes they view Fields Buildings and Countries sometimes they fancy Dignities Promotions and Honours they are ever working upon one object or other real or supposed and according to the object such will the affections be high or low joyful or sorrowful so that if the utmost of what Satan could do were no more than to provide occasions discomposures would follow naturally The evil dispositions of Men would thereby be set a working though Satan stood by as an Idle Spectator The Serpent in our Breasts as Solomon tells us Eccles 10. 11. would bite without inchantment that is except it were charmed But Satan can do more than tempt objectively when he hath provided the Fewel he can also bring Fire For 2. He can also set our passions on work and incense them to greater fury than otherwise they would arrive at We see persons that are distempered with passion may be whetted up to an higher pitch of rage by any officious Flatterer that will indulge the humor and aggravate the Provocation Much more then can Satan do it by whispering such things to our Minds as he knows will increase the Flame and therefore is it that where the Scripture doth caution us against anger as the proper product of our own corruption calling it our wrath Eph. 4. 26 27. There also it warns us against the Devil as the incendiary that endeavours to heighten it And where it tells us of the disorders of the tongue which though a little Member can of it self do great mischief Jam. 3. 6. there it also tells us that the Devil brings it an additional Fire from Hell It is set on Fire of Hell And there are several ways by which Satan can irritate the Passions As 1. By presenting the occasions worse than they are or were ever intended unjustly aggravating all circumstances By this means he makes the object of the passions the more displeasing and hateful this must of necessity provoke to an higher degree 2. He can in a natural way move as it were the Wheels and set the passions a going if they were of themselves more dull and sluggish for he hath a nearer access to our Passions than every one is aware of I will make it evident thus our Passions in their workings do depend upon the fluctuations excursions and recursions of the Blood and animal Spirits as Naturalists do determines Now that Satan can make his approaches to the Blood Spirits and Humors and can make alterations upon them cannot be denied by those that consider what the Scripture speaks in Jobs case and in the cases of those that were by possession of the Devil made Dumb Deaf or Epileptick for if he could afflict Job with grievous Boils 't is plain he disordered and vitiated his Blood and Humors which made them apt to produce such Boils or Ulcers and if he could produce an Epilepsy 't is evident that he could infect the Lympha with such a sharpness as by vellicating the Nerves might cause a Convulsion and these were much more than the disorderly Motions of Blood Spirits or Humors which raise the passions of Men. If any object to this That then considering Satan's malicious diligence we must expect the Passions of Men would never be at rest 'T is answered that this power of Satan is not unlimited but oft God prohibits him such approaches and without his leave he can do nothing and also grace in God's Children working calmness submission and patience doth ballance Satan's contrary endeavour For as hurtful and vexatious occasions being represented by the Sence to the imagination are apt to move the Blood and Spirits so on the contrary the Ballast of Patience and other Grace doth so settle the Mind that the Blood and Spirits are kept steady in their usual course 3. When the Passions are up Satan can by his suggestions make them more hâ—ady and violent He can suggest to the Mind Motives and Arguments to forward it and can stir up our natural corruption with all its powers to strike in with the opportunity Thus he not only kindles the Fire but blows the Flame 4. And he can further fix the Mind upon these thoughts and keep them still upon the Hearts of Men. And then they eat in the deeper and like Poyson diffuse their malignity the further We see that Men who are at first but in an ordinary fret if they continue to meditate upon their Provocation they increase their vexation and if they give themselves to vent their Passions by their Tongues though they begin in some moderation yet as motion causeth heat so their own words whet their rage according to Eccles 10. 13. The beginning of the words of his Mouth is foolishness but the latter end of his talk is mischievous madness The same advantage hath Satan against Men by holding down their thoughts to these occasions of discomposure If occasions be so much in Satan's power and he have also so great an hand over Mens Passions 't is too evident that he can do very much to discompose the Spirits of Men that are naturally obnoxious to these troubles except God restrain him and Grace oppose him Thus have I spoken my thoughts of the first sort of troubles by which Satan doth undermine the peace of Mens Hearts CHAP. VII Of the second way to hinder Peace Affrightments the general Nature and Burthen of them in several Particulars What are the Ways by which he affrights 1. Atheistical Injections Observations of his proceeding in them 2. Blasphemous Thoughts 3. Affrightful Suggestions of Râ—probation Observations of his proceedings in that course 4. Frightful Motions to Sâ—n. 5. Strong immediate impressions of Fear 6. Affrightful scrupulosity of Conscience THe next rank of troubles by which the Devil doth endeavour to molest us I call Affrightments It is usual for those that speak of Temptations to distinguish them thus Some are say they Enticements some are Affrightments but then they extend these Affrightments further than I intend comprehending under them all those Temptations of sadness and terror of which I am next to speak but by Affrightments I mean only these perplexities of Spirit into which Satan casts Men by overacting their fears or astonishing their minds by injecting unusual and horrid thoughts against their consents Some there are that have thought those Temptations of which the Apostle complains 2 Cor. 12. 7. there was given me a Thorn in the Flesh the Messenger of Satan to buffet me were of this kind
serious Resolves The chast Person tempted to Uncleanness or the just man to Revenge the humble Person urged to the same Sin that cost him so dear c. They wonder at their own Hearts and while they mistake these Temptations by judging them to be the issues of their own Inclination with astonishment they cry out Oh I had thought that I had mortified these Lusts but what a strange Heart have I I see sin is a strong in me as ever And I have cause to fear my self c. 2. And this is yet a greater trouble because usually Satan takes them at some advantage of an offered occasion or opportunity then he gives them a sudden push and with importunity urgeth them to take the time this often affrights them into Trembling and their Fears do so weaken their purposes that their hazards are the greater in that they are astonished into an Inactivity So that in this case the Men of Might do not readily find their Hands 3. Neither are these motions sudden and transient glances which perish as soon as they are born though it be a very frequent thing with Satan to cast in motions into the Heart for trial sake without further prosecution but he in this case pursues with frequent Repetitions following hard after them to the increase of the Affrightment So that for a long time together Men may be afflicted with these Messengers of Satan to buffet them and though they may Pray earnestly against them that they may be removed yet they find the motions continue upon them Which must needs be an hateful annoyance to an upright Heart that doth know it to be only Satans design to affright much more must it afflict those that do not perceive the Contriver and end of such motions but judg them to be the natural workings of their own evil Heart 4. Satan can also affright Men by immediate impressions of Fear upon their minds He can do much with the imagination especially when Persons are distempered with Melancholy for such are naturally fearful and any impressions upon them have the deepest most piercing operation They are always framing to themselves dismal things and abound with black and dark Conceits surmising still the worst and always incredulous of what is good Hence it is that sometimes Men are seized upon by Fearfulness and Trembling when yet they cannot give any tollerable account of a cause or reason why it should be so with them And others are excessively astonished with the shadows of their own thoughts upon the meanest pretences imaginable That this is the work of Satan doth appear by unquestionable evidence This was that evil Spirit which God sent between Abimelech and the Men of Sechem Judg. 9. 23. God permitted Satan for the Punishment of them both to raise Fears and Jealousies in the Heart of Abimelech against the Men of Sechem and in the Hearts of the Men of Sechem against Abimelech They were mutually afraid of one another and these Fears wrought so far that they were for the prevention of a supposed danger engaged in Treacherous Conspiracies to the real Ruine of them both The evil Spirit that vexed Saul 1 Sam. 16. 14. was nothing else but sudden and vehement fits of Terrour and inward fear which the Devil raised by the working up of his Melancholy For we may observe these Fits were allayed by Musick and also we might see by his disposition out of his fits and by his carriage in them that inward fears were his tormentors for 1 Sam. 18. 9. 't is noted that Saul eyed David that is his jealous fears began to work concerning David of whom 't is said expresly ver 12. that he was afraid because the Lord was with him and when the evil Spirit came upon him his heart was exercised with these fears and accordingly he behaved himself when he cast the Javelin at David with a purpose to slay him Upon any occasion of trouble especially the Devil was at hand to heighten his affrightment insomuch that when the supposed Samuel told him of his Death 1 Sam. 28. 20. he was afraid to such an height that he fell straightway all along on the Earth and there was no strength in him Neither must we suppose that Satan in this kind of working is confined only to wicked Men for there is nothing in this manner of affrightment which is inconsistent with the condition of a Child of God especially when God gives him up to tryal or correction Nay many of Gods Servants suffer under Satans hand in this very manner Let us consider the troubles of Job and we shall find that though Satan endeavoured to destroy his peace by discomposure of Spirit by questioning his integrity by frightful injections of blasphemous thoughts yet all these he vanquished with an undaunted courage the Blasphemy he rejected with abhorrency his integrity he resolved he would not deny so long as he lived his losses he digested easily with a sober composed mind blessed God that gives and takes at pleasure and yet he complains of his fears and his frequent surprisals thereby insomuch that his friends take notice that most of his trouble arose from thence Job 22. 10. a sudden fear troubleth thee and he himself confesseth as much Job 9. 34. let not his fear terrify me but it is not so with me So that it appears that Job's inward distress was mostly from strong impressions of affrighting fears These fears impressed upon the Mind must needs be an unexpressible trouble there is nothing that doth more loosen the Sinews and Joynts of the Soul to the weakening and utter enfeebling of it in all its endeavours than fears it scatters the strength in a moment And besides the present burthen which will bow down the backs of the strongest these fears have a special kind of envious magnanimity in them For 1. they come by fits and have times of more fierce and cruel assaults yet in their intervals they leave the Heart in a trembling fainting posture for the Devil gives not over the present sit till he hath rent them sore and left them as he did the Mans Son in Mark 9. 26. as one dead So that 't is no more to be reckoned compassion and gentleness in Satan toward the afflicted that their fits are not constant than it can be accounted tenderness or kindness in a Tyrant who when he hath racked or tormented a Man as much as strength will bear without killing out of hand gives over for a time that the party might be reserved for new torments 2. These fits usually return at such times as the Party afflicted seems to promise himself some little ease being designed to give the greater disappointment in intercepting his expected comforts Sleep and Meat are the two great refreshments of the distressed these times Satan watcheth for his new onsets Job found it so in both cases his Meal-times were times of trouble Job 3. 24. My sighing cometh that is the fits of sighing return
delivered from their fears 5. They are also apt after ease of their troubles to have frequent returns What disposition all these things being considered can be more exactly shaped to serve Satans turn If he would have Men to believe the worst of themselves he hath such imaginations to work upon as are already misshapen into a deformity of evil surmising Would he terrifie by Fears or distress by Sadness he hath that already and 't is but altering the Object which oftentimes needs not for naturally the serious Melancholick imploys all his Griefs upon his supposed miserable estate of Soul and then he hath Spiritual distress Would he continue them long under their sorrows or take them upon all occasions at his pleasure or act them to a greater height than ordinary Still the Melancholick temper suits him This is sufficient for caution that we take special care of our Bodies for the preventing or abating of that Humour by all lawful means if we would not have the Devil to abuse us at his will 6. Sickness or Death-Bed is another solemn occasion which the Devil seldom misseth with his will Death is a serious thing it represents the Soul and Eternity to the Life While they are at a distance Men look slightly upon these but when they approach near to them Men usually have such a sight of them as they never had before We may truly call Sickness and Death-Bed an hour of Temptation which Satan will make use of with the more mischievous industry because he hath but a short time for it That 's the last Conflict and if he miss that we are beyond his reach for ever So that in this case Satan incourageth himself to the Battel with a now or never And hence we find that it is usual for the dying Servants of God to undergo most sharp Encounters then to tell them when the Soul is about to loose from the Body that they are yet in their Blood without God and Hope is enough to affright them into the extreamest Agonies for they see no time before them answerable to so great a work if it be yet to do And withal they are under vast discouragments from the weariness and pains of Sickness their understandings and faculties being also dull and stupified so that if at this last plunge God should not extraordinarily appear to rebuke Satan and to pluck them out of these great Waters as he often doth by the fuller interposition of the Light of his Face and the larger Testimony of his Spirit after their long and comfortable profession of their Faith and holy Walking their Light would be put out in Darkness and they would lie down in Sorrow Yet this I must note That as desirous as Satan is to improve this occasion he is often remarkably disappointed and that wherein he it may be and we would least expect I mean in regard of those who through a timerous Disposition or Melancholy or upon other Accounts are as I may so say all their life-time subject to Bondage those Men who are usually exercised with frequent fits of Spiritual Trouble when they come to Sickness Death-Bed and some other singular occasions of trouble though we might suspect their fears would then be working if ever Yet God out of gracious Indulgence to them considering their Mould and Fashion or because he would prevent their extream fainting c. doth meet them with larger Testimonies of his Favour higher Joys more confident satisfactions in his Love than ever they received at any time before and this to their wonder their high admiration making the times which they were wont to fear most to be times of greatest Consolation This Observation I have grounded not upon one or two Instances but could produce a cloud of Witnesses for it Enough it is to check our forward fears of a future evil day and to heal us of a sighing Distemper while we afflict our selves with such thoughts as these If I have so many fears in Health how shall I be able to go through the valley of the shadow of Death 4. I have one thing more to add for these discovery of these Spiritual Troubles and that is to shew you the Engines by which Satan works them and they are these two Sophistry and Fears 1. As to his Sophistry by which he argues the Children of God into a wrong apprehension of themselves it is very great He hath a wonderful dexterity in framing Arguments against their Peace he hath variety of shrewd Objections and subtile Answers to the usual Replies by which they seek to beat him off There is not a Fallacy by which a cunning Sophister would seek to entangle his Adversary in Disputation but Satan would make use of it as I might particularly shew you if it were proper for a common Auditory Though he hath so much impudence as not to blush at the most silly contemptible Reason that can be offered notwithstanding he hath also so much wit as to urge though never true yet always probable Arguments How much he can prevail upon the beliefs of Men in cases relating to their Souls may be conjectured by the success he hath upon the understandings of Men when he argues them into Errour and makes them believe a lye We usually say and that truly that Satan cannot in any case force us properly to consent yet considering the advantages which he takes and the ways he hath to prepare the Hearts of Men for his impressions and then his very great subtilty in disputing we may say that he can so order the matter that he will seldom miss of his aim It would be an endless work to gather up all the Arguments that Satan hath made use of to prove the Condition or State of God's Children to be bad But that I may not altogether disappoint your expectations in that thing I shall present to your view Satan's usual Topicks the Common-places or Heads unto which all his Arguments may be reduced And they are 1. Scripture abused and perverted His way is not only to suggest that they are Unregenerate or under an evil frame of Heart but to offer proof that these Accusations are true And because he haâ—h to do with them that profess a belief of Scriptures as the Oracles of God he will fetch his proofs from thence telling them that he will evidence what he saith from Scripture Thus sometimes he assaults the weaker unskilful sort of Christians Thou art not a Child of God for they that are so are Enlightned translated from Darkness they are the Children of the Light but thou art a poor ignorant dark blind Creature and therefore no Child of God Sometimes he labours to conclude the like from the Infirmities of God's Children abusing to this purpose that of 1 John 3. 9. He that is born of God doth not commit sin And He cannot sin because he is born of God Thus he urgeth it Can any thing be more plainly and fully asserted Is not this
the nature of the affliction and the temper of Mens Hearts do afford him For 1. Afflictions are a great depth one of the secrets of God so that 't is hard to know what God intends by them 2. The end of the Lord is not discovered at first but at some distance when the Fruits thereof begin to appear 3. The mind of the afflicted cannot always proceed regularly in making a judgment of God's design upon them especially at first when 'tis stounded by the assault and all things in confusion Faith is to seek Patience awanting and Love staggering after it hath recollected it self and attained any calmness to fit it for a review of the ways of God and of the Heart it is better enabled to fix some grounds of Hope Lam. 3. 19 20 21. This I recall to my Mind therefore have I Hope 4. Afflictions have a Light and a Dark side and their appearances are according to our posture in which we view them as some Pictures which if we look upon them one way they appear to be Angels if another way they seem Devils 5. Some Men in Affliction do only busy themselves in looking upon the dark side of Affliction Their disposition either through natural timerousness or strong impressions of Temptation is only to meditate terrours and to surmise evils These Men out of the Cross can draw nothing but the Wormwood and the Gall while others that have another Prospect of them observe mixtures of Mercy and Gentleness and do melt into submission and thankfulness These considered together are a great advantage to Satan in disputing against the peace of Gods afflicted Children and it often falls out that as he doth misrepresent God's design so do they urged by Temptation upon that account misjudge themselves 3. He also misrepresents God in the works of his Spirit if God withdraw his countenance or by his Spirit signifies his displeasure to the Consciences of any if he permit Satan to molest them with Spiritual Temptations presently Satan takes occasion to put his false and malignant interpretation upon all he tells them that Gods hiding his Face is his casting them off that the threatnings signified to their Conscience are plain declarations that their present state is Wrath and Darkness That Satans molestations by Temptations shew them to be yet under his power that the removal of their former Peace Joy and sensible delight which they had in the ways of God is beyond contradiction an evidence that God hath no delight in them nor they in him that their Faith was but that of Temporaries their Joy but that of Hypocrites which is only for a moment How often have I heard Christians complaining thus We cannot be in a state of Grace our Consciences lye under the sense of Gods displeasure they give testimony against us and we know that testimony is true for we feel it 'T is true time was when we thought we had a delight in Hearing Praying Meditating but now all is a burthen to us we can relish nothing we can profit nothing we can remember nothing time was when we thought we had assurance and our Hearts rejoyced in us sometimes we have thought our Hearts had as much of Peace and Comfort as they could hold now all is vanished and we are under sad fears if God had had a favour to us would he have dealt thus with us Thus are they cheated into a belief that they never had any Grace they take all for granted that is urged against them they cannot consider Gods design in hiding his Face nor yet can they see how Grace acts in them under these complainings how they express their Love to God in their desires and pantings after him in their bewailing of his absence in abhorring and condemning themselves c. but their present feeling and an Argument from sence is very strong bears down all before it Thus doth Satan frame his Arguments from misrepresentations of God which though a right view of God would easily answer them yet how difficult it is for a Person in an hour of Temptation to dispel by a right apprehension of the ways of the Holy God doth abundantly appear from Psal 77. where the case of Asaph or whoever else he was doth inform us 1. That 't is usual for Satan for the disquieting of the Hearts of Gods Children to offer a false Prospect of God 2. That this overwhelms their Hearts with grief ver 3. 3. That the more they persist in the prosecution of this method under the Mists of Prejudice they see the less being apt to misconstrue every thing in God to their disadvantage ver 3. I remembred God and was troubled 4. The reason of all that trouble lies in this that they can only conclude wrath and desertion from God's carriage toward them 5. That till they look upon God in another method and take up better thoughts of him and his Providences even while they carry the appearance of Severity they can expect no ease to their complainings For before the Prophet quitted himself of his trouble he was forced to acknowledge his mistake ver 10. in the misconstruction he made of his dealings and to betake himself to a resolve of entertaining better thoughts of God ver 7. His Interrogation Will the Lord cast off for ever c shews indeed what he did once think being misled by Satan but withal that he would never do so again Will the Lord cast off for ever Is not here the Voice of a despairing Man but of one that through better information hath rectified his Judgment and now is resolved strongly to hold the contrary to what he thought before as if he should say 'T is not possible that it should be so he will not cast off for ever and I will never entertain such perverse thoughts of God any more 6. But before they can come to this it will cost them some pains and serious thoughts 't is not easy to break these Fetters to answer this Argument but they that will do so must appeal from their present sence to a consideration of the issues of these dealings upon other Persons or upon themselves at other times for the Prophet ver 5. considered the days of old and the years of ancient times and ver 6 he also made use of his own experience calling to remembrance that after such dealings as these God by his return of favour gave him Songs in the Night 4. Another common head from whence this great Disputant doth fetch his Arguments against the good condition and state of God's Servants is their sin and miscarriages Here I shall observe two or three things in the general concerning this before I shew how he draws his false Conclusions from thence As 1. That with a kind of feigned ingenuity he will grant a difference betwixt Sin and Sin betwixt Sins reigning and not reigning Sins mortified and not mortified betwixt the Sins of the Converted and the Unconverted and upon this
be in a state of Grace that they in that state are in a very bad unsuitable condition to it For if his Arguments fall short of the first they seldom miss the latter mark This was his first Engine Now follows 2. The other Engine by which he fixeth these Conclusions which though it be not Argumentative yet it serves to sharpen all his Fallacies against the Comforts of God's Children this is fear which together with his Objections he sends into the Mind That Satan can raise a storm and commotion in the Heart by fear hath been proved before I shall now only in a few things shew how he doth forward his design by astonishing the Heart with his frightful thundrings 1. His Objections being accompanied with Affrightments they pass for strong undeniable Arguments and their Fallacy is not so easily detected Fear as well as Anger darkens Reason and disables the Understanding to make a true faithful search into things or to give a right judgment As Darkness deceives the Senses and makes every Bush affrightful to the Passenger or as muddied Waters hinder the sight so do Fears in the Heart disable a Man to discover the silliest Cheat that Satan can put upon it 2. They are also very Credulous When Fear is up any Suggestion takes place As suspitious Incredulity is an effect of Joy the Disciples at first hearing that Christ was risen for Joy believed it not so suspitious Credulity is the effect of Fear And we shall observe several things in the Servants of God that shew a strange Inclination as it were a Natural aptitude to believe the evil of their Spiritual Estate which Satan suggests to them As 1. There is a great forwardness and Precipitancy in the Heart to close with evil Thoughts raised up in us When jealousies of God's Love are injected there is a violent Hastiness forthwith all calm deliberation being laid aside to entertain a belief of it This is more than once noted in the Psalms In this case David acknowledgeth this hasty Humour I said in my haste Psal 31. 22. and Psal 116. 11. This hasty forwardness to determine things that are against us without due examination Asaph calls a great weakness This is my Infirmity Psal 77. 10. 2. There is observable in those that are under Spiritual Troubles a great kind of Delight if I may so call it to hear Threatnings rather than Promises and such Discourses as set forth the misery of a Natural State rather than such as speak of the Happiness of the Converted Because these things in their apprehension are more suitable to their Condition and more needful for them in order to a greater measure of Humiliation which they suppose to be necessary However thus they add fuel to the Flame 3. They have an aptitude to hide themselves from Comfort and with a wonderful nimbleness of Wit and Reasoning to evade and answer any Argument brought for their Comfort as if they had been Volunteers in Satans service to fight against themselves 4. They have also so great a blasting upon their Understanding that Satan's tempting them to doubt of their good Estate is to them a sufficient reason to doubt of it and that is Ground enough for them to deny it because Satan questions it 3. These Fears make all Satan's suggestions strike the deeper they point all his Arrows and make them pierce as it were the Joynts and Marrow they poyson and envenom them to the great increase of the Torment and hinderance of the Cure they bind the Objections upon them and confirm them in a certain belief that they are all true We have now viewed Satan's Engines and Batteries against the Servants of the Lord for the destuction of their Joy and Peace by Spiritual Troubles but these are but the beginnings of sorrows if compared with those distresses of Soul which he sometimes brings upon them Of which next CHAP. IX Of his fourth way to hinder Peace by Spiritual Distresses 1. The Nature of these Distresses the Ingredients and Degrees of them Whether all distresses of Soul arise from Melancholy 2. Satan's method in working them the Occasions he makes use of the Arguments he urgeth the strengthening of them by Fears 3. Their Weight and Burthen explained in several Particulars Some concluding Cautions THe last sort of Troubles by which Satan overthrows the peace of the Soul are Spiritual Distresses these are more grievous Agonies of Soul under deepest apprehensions of Divine Wrath and dreadful Fears of everlasting Damnation differing in nature and degree from the former sorts of Troubles though in these Satan observes much what the same General Method which he used in Spiritual Troubles last mentioned For which cause and also that these are not so common as the other I shall speak of them with greater Brevity Herein I shall shew 1. Their Nature 2. Satan's Method in working them 3. Their Weight and Burthen 1. The Nature of Spiritual Distresses will be best discovered by a consideration of those Ingredients of which they are made up and of the different degrees thereof 1. As to the Ingredients there are several things that do concur for the begetting of these violent Distresses As 1. There is usually a Complication of several kinds of Troubles Sometimes there are outward Troubles and inward discomposures of Spirit arising from thence sometimes Affrightments of blasphemous thoughts long continued and usually Spiritual Troubles in which their State or Condition have been called to question have gone before Heman who is as famous an Instance in this case as any we meet withal in Scripture in Psal 88. seems not obscurely to tell us so much his Soul was full of troubles ver 3. And in ver 7. he complains that God had afflicted him with all his Waves And that these were not all of the same kind though all concurred to the same end he himself Explains ver 8 18. where he bemoans himself for the unkindness of his Friends Thou hast put away mine Acquaintance Lover and Friend hast thou put far from me 2. These Troubles drive at a further end than any of the former for their design was only against the present Quietness and Peace of God's Children but these design the ruine of their hopes for the future they are troubled not for that they are not Converted but for that they expect never to be Converted This is a trouble of an high nature making them believe that they are eternally Reprobated cut off from God for ever and under an impossibility of Salvation 3. These troubles have the consent and belief of the Party In some other troubles Satan disquieted the Lords Servants by imposing upon them his own cursed suggestions violently bearing in upon them temptations to Sin and Blasphemy or objections against their state of Regeneration while in the mean time they opposed and refused to give consent but in these Satan prevails with them to believe that their case is really such as their Fears represent it to be
Bilney Martyrs whose Consciences were so sorely wounded for Recanting the Truth which they professed that they seemed to feel a very Hell within them The more fixed Distresses as they are of longer continuance so they are often accompanied with the very worst Symptomes For when in these Agonies no Sun nor Star of comfort appears to them for many days all hope that they shall be saved seems to be taken away and being tired out with Complaints and Importunities without any Answer they at last reject the use of Means Some have lain many Years as the Paralytick Man at the Pool of Bethesda without Cure Some from their Youth up as Heman complains Some carry their Distresses to their Death-Bed and it may be are not eased till their Souls are ready to depart out of their Bodies and then they often end suddenly and comfortably Some I could tell you of who on their Death-Bed after grievous Terrours and many Out-crys concerning their miseries of Blackness and Darkness for ever lay long silent and then on a sudden brake out into Raptures of Joy and adoring Admiration of the Goodness of God using that speech of the Apostle Rom. 11. 33. O the depth of the riches both of the Wisdom and knowledg of God! how unsearchable are his Judgments and his Ways past finding out Others go out of the World in Darkness without any appearance of Comfort Such an Instance was Mr. Chambers as the story of his Death testifies mentioned by Mr. Perkins in his Treatise of Desertions of whom this account is given that in great Agonies he cried out he was Damned and so died The case of such is surely very sad to themselves and appears no less to others yet we must take heed of judging rashly concerning such Nay if their former Course of Life hath been uniformly good for who will reject a fine Web of Cloth as one speaks for a little course List at the end especially if there be any obscure appearance of hope As that Expression of Mr. Chambers O that I had but one drop of Faith is by Mr. Perkins supposed to be we ought to judg the best of them We have seen the nature of Spiritual Distresses in the Ingredients and Differences thereof We are now to Consider 2. Satan's method in procuring them Which consists 1. In the Occasions which he lays hold on for that end 2. In the Arguments which he useth 3. In the working up of their Fears by which he confirms Men in them 1. As to the Occasions He follows much the same Course which hath been described before in Spiritual Troubles so that I need not say much only I shall note two things 1. That it makes much for Satan's purpose if the Party against whom he designs have faln into some grievous sins Sins of common Magnitude do not lay a foundation suitable to the Superstructure which he intends he cannot plausibly argue Reprobation or Damnation from every ordinary sin but if he finds them guilty of something extraordinary then he falls to work with his Accusations The most usual sins which he takes advantage from are as Mr. Perkins observes those against the Third Sixth and Seventh Command sometimes those against the Ninth Murther Adultery Perjury and the wilful denial of Truth against Conscience are the Crimes upon which he grounds his Charge but most usually the last Upon this the distressed Spira and some of the Martyrs As for the other the more private they are Satan hath oft the more advantage against them because God's secret and just Judgment will by this means bring to Light the hidden things of Darkness and force their Consciences to accuse them of that which no Man could lay to their Charge that he might manifest himself to be the searcher of the Hearts and trier of the Reins Thus have many been forced to disclose private Murthers secret Adulteries and to Vomit up though with much pain and torture that which they have by Perjury or Guile extorted from others 2. Where Satan hath not these particular Advantages he doth endeavour to prepare Men for Distresses by other Troubles long continued All men that are brought to dispair of their Happiness must not be supposed to be greater Sinners than others some are distressed with fears of Eternal Damnation that are in a good measure able to make Job's protestation in these cases That their Heart hath not been deceived by a Woman That they have not laid wait at their Neighbours door That they have not lift up their hand against the Fatherless when they saw their help in the Gate that their Land doth not cry against them nor the Furrows thereof complain that when they saw the Sun when it shined or the Moon walking in brightness their Heart hath not been secretly enticed nor their Mouth kissed their Hand that they rejoyced not in the destruction of him that hated them nor lift up themselves when evil found him c. Notwithstanding all which their Fears are upon and prevail against them But then before Satan can bring them to consent to such dismal Conclusions against themselves they must be extraordinarily fitted to take the Impression either tired out under great Afflictions or long exercised with Fears about their Spiritual Estates without intermixture of Comfort or Ease or their Faculties broken and weakned by Melancholy Any of these give him an advantage equivalent to that of great Sins For though he cannot say to these your sins are so Enormous that they are considered themselves together with their Circumstances sad signs or Reprobation yet he will plead that God's carriage towards them doth plainly discover that he hath wholly cast them off and left them to themselves without hope of Mercy 2. As for the Arguments which he useth they are much-what from the same Topicks which he maketh choice of in bringing on Spiritual Troubles Only as he aims at the Proof of a great deal more against God's Children than that they are not Converted so accordingly he scrues up his Mediums for proof to an higher pin His Arguments are 1. From Scriptures wrested or misapplied His choice of Scriptures for this purpose is of such places as either seem to speak most sadly the dangerous and fearful Estate of Men according to the first view and literal representation of them through the unskilfulness of those that are to be concerned Or of such places as do really signifie the miserable Unhappiness of some Persons who through their own fault have been cut off from all hope and the possibility of the like to some others for the future So that in framing Arguments from Scripture the Devil useth a twofold cunning 1. There are some Scriptures which have the word Damnation in them applied to some particular Acts and Miscarriages of Men when yet their intendment is not such as the word seems to sound or as he would make them to believe Now when he catcheth a Child of God in such acts as are there
he fixeth upon that and labours all he can to make it look most desperately that so he may call it the Sin against the Holy Ghost and in this he hath a mighty advantage that most Men are in the Dark about that sin All Men being not yet agreed whether it be a distinct Species of Sin or an higher degree of wilfulness relating to any particular Sin Upon this score Satan can lay the Charge of this sin upon those that Apostatize from the Truth and through Weakness have Recanted it Thus he dealt with Spira with Bilney with Bainham and several others There is so near a resemblance in these sins of denying Truths to what is said of the Unpardonable Sin that these Men though they were Scholars and Men of good Abilities yet they were not able to answer the Argument that the Devil urged against them but it prevailed to distress them Upon others also hath Satan the advantage to fix this Accusation For let the Species of the sin be what it will if they have any thing of that Notion that the Sin against the Holy Ghost is a presumptuous Act of Sin under Temptation they will call any notorious Crime the Sin against the Holy Ghost because of the more remarkable aggravating Circumstances that have accompanied such a Fact 2. He aggravates the Sins of God's Children from the Wilfulness of their sinning 'T is a thing often too true that a Child of God may be carried by a violent Impetus or strong inclination of Affection to some particular Iniquity where the forwardness of desires that way by a sudden haste do stifle those Reluctancies of Mind which may be expected from one endowed with the Spirit of God whose power upon them doth ordinarily sway them to lust against the Flesh But it is more ordinary to find a Temptation to prevail notwithstanding that an enlightned Mind doth make some Resistance which because 't is too feeble is easily born down by the strong importunities of Satan working upon the inclinations of the Flesh Both these Cases are improved against them over whom Satan hath got any advantage of doubting of their Estate If they have resisted but ineffectually or not resisted at all he chargeth them with the highest Wilfulness and will so aggravate the matter that they shall be put in fear not only that there can be no Grace where Sin hath so much power as either to controul so much light and endeavours or hath so subjected the Heart to its dominion that it can command without a contradiction but that they can have no Hope that they that sin with so high an hand should ever enter into God's Rest And to this purpose he commonly sets before them that Text of Heb. 10. 26. If we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledg of the Truth there remaineth no more Sacrifice for sins Or that of Heb. 6. 4. It is impossible for those who were once enlightned if they fall away to renew them again to Repentance Both which places speak indeed at least such a difficulty as in common use of speech is called an impossibility if not an utter absolute impossibility of Repentance and Pardon But then the sinning wilfully or falling away there mentioned is only that of Total Apostacy when Men that have embraced the Gospel and by it have met with such impressions of Power and delight upon their Hearts which we usually call Common Grace do notwithstanding reject that Gospel as false and fabulous and so rise up against it with Scorn and utmost Contempt as Julian the Apostate did If now the true intendment of those Scriptures were considered by those that are distressed with them they might presently see that they were put into fear where no such cause of fear was But all Men have not this knowledg nor do they so duely attend to the matter of the Apostles Discourse as to be able to put a right Interpretation upon it upon such Satan imposeth his deceitful gloss and tells them Wilful sinners cannot be restored to Repentance but you have sinned wilfully when sin was before you you rushed into it without any consideration as the Horse into the Battel or when God stood in your way with Commands and advice to the contrary when your Consciences warned you not to do so great wickedness yet you would do it You were as those that break the Yoke and burst the Bonds Upon this supposition that these Texts speak of wilful sinning in the General How little can be said against Satan's Argument How many have I known that have been tortured with these Texts judging their Estate fearful because of their wilfulness in sinning Who upon the breaking of the snare of Satan's misrepresentation have escaped as a Bird unto the Hill 3. When either of the two former Ways will not serve the turn that is when he meets with such against whom he hath nothing of notorious wickedness to object or such as have a better discerning of Scripture than so to be imposed upon he labours to make a Charge against them from the number of their Miscarriages Here he takes up all the filth he can and lays it upon one heap at their Door 'T is indeed an easie thing for Satan to set the Sins of a Child of God in order before him and to bring to mind innumerable Evils especially to one that is already awakened with a true discovery of the Corruption of Nature and the Vileness of Sin In which case the more a Man considers the more he will discover and Sins thus set in Battel Array though they be not more than ordinary hainous yet being many have a very dismal appearance Satan's design in this is to bring Men under the Affrightments which seem most proper to be raised from a perverse Aspect of the third Rank of Scriptures which a little before I pointed at For the Word of God speaking of the Final Estate of Men doth not only discover the hopeless condition of some as to Eternal Life from some particular Acts of Sin but also the sad Estate of others from the manner degrees and frequency of sinning The Heathens because they improved not the Knowledg of God which they had from the Works of Creation neither making those Inferences in matters relating to his Worship which those Discoveries did direct them unto nor behaving themselves in full compliance to those Rules of vertuous Conversation which they might have drawn from these Principles and unto which in point of Gratitude they were obliged Rom. 1. 21. They glorified him not as God neither were thankful therefore God gave them up to a Reprobate mind And generally concerning all others the Scripture teacheth us that a return to a prophane fleshly Life after some Reformation hath a greater hazard in it than ordinary as appears by the Parable in Mat. 12. 45. Seven more wicked Spirits re-enter where one that was cast out is received again and the last state of that Man is
compared with Psal 31. 22. is declared as his weakness will force us to conclude it an ingenuous Confession of his distrust at the first when he was greatly afflicted though he recovered himself afterwards to a belief of the promise and that in that Distemper he plainly reflected upon Samuel and calls the Promises of God given by him a very Lye Thirdly 'T is strange also that present Instances of God's Providences working out unexpected Deliverances should not relieve the hearts of his Saints from the power of such distrust that when they see God is not unmindful of them but doth hear them in what they feared they should still retain in their minds the impression of an unbelieving apprehension and not rather free themselves from their expectations of future ruine by concluding that he that hath and doth deliver will also yet deliver David had this thought in his heart that he should one day perish by the hand of Saul even then when God had so remarkably rescued him from Saul and forced Saul not only to acknowledg his Sin in prosecuting him but also to declare his belief of the Promise concerning David One would have expected that this should have been such a Demonstration of the Truth of what had been promised that he should have cast out all fear and yet contrariwise this pledg of God's purpose to him is received by a heart strongly prepossessed with misgiving thoughts and he continues to think that for all this Saul would one day destroy him Fourthly The pangs of this Distrust are also so remarkable that after they have been delivered and have found that the Event hath not answered their fears they have in the review of their carriage under such fears recounted this their weakness among other remarkable things thereby shewing the unreasonableness of their unbelief and their wonder that God should pass by so great a Provocation and notwithstanding so unexpectedly deliver them David in the places before cited was upon a thankful acknowledgment of God's Love and wonderful Kindness which he thought he could not perform without leaving a record of his strange and unworthy distrust as if he had said So greatly did I sin and so unsuitably did I behave my self that I then gave off and concluded all was lost To open this a little further I shall add the Reasons why Satan strikes in with such an occasion as the want of means to tempt to distrust which are these First Such a condition doth usually transport Men besides themselves puts them as it were into an Extacy and by a sudden rapture of of Astonishment and Fear forceth them beyond their settled thoughts and purposes This David notes as the ground of his inconsiderate rash speaking It was my haste I was transported c. Now as Passion doth not only make Men speak what otherwise they would not but also to put bad Interpretations upon actions and things beyond what they will bear and hasten Men to Resolves exceedingly unreasonable So doth this state of the Heart under an amazement and surprize of Fear give opportunity to Satan to put Men to injurious and unrighteous thoughts of the Providence of God and by such ways to alienate their Minds from the trust which they owe him Secondly Sense is a great help to Faith Faith then must needs be much hazarded when Sense is at a loss or contradicted as usually it is in straits That Faith doth receive an advantage by Sense cannot be denyed To believe what we see is easier than to believe what we see not and that in our state of Weakness and Infirmity God doth so far indulge us that by his allowance we may take the help of our Senses is evident by his appointment of the two Sacraments where by outward visible Signs our Faith may be quickned to apprehend the Spiritual benefits offered Thomas resolving to suspend his belief till he were satisfied that Christ was risen by the utmost tryal that Sense could give determining not to credit the Testimony of the rest of the Disciples till by putting his Finger into his Side he had made himself more certain Christ not only condescended to him but also pronounceth his approbation of his belief accepting it that he had believed because he had seen But when outward usual helps fail us our Sense being not able to see afar off is wholly puzled and overthrown the very disappearing of probabilities gives so great a shake to our Faith that it commonly staggers at it and therefore was it given as the great commendation of Abrahams Faith that he notwithstanding the unlikelyhood of the thing staggered not at the Promise noting thereby how extraordinary it was in him at that time to keep up against the contradiction of Sense and how usual it is with others to be beaten off all Trust by it 'T is no wonder to see that Faith which usually called Sense for a Supporter to fail when t is deprived of its Crutch And he that would a little understand what disadvantage this might prove to a good Man when Sense altogether fails his expectation he may consider with himself in what a case Thomas might have been if Christ had refused to let him see his Side and to thrust his Finger into the print of the Nails in all appearance had it been so he had gone away confirmed in his unbelief Thirdly Though Faith can act above Sense and is imployed about things not seen yet every Saint at all times doth not act his Faith so high Christ tells us that to believe where a Man hath not had the help of Sight and Sense is Noble and Blessed Joh. 20. 29. yet withal he hints it to be rare and difficult he that hath not seen and yet hath believed implyes that 't is but one amongst many that doth so and that 't is the Conquest of a more than ordinary difficulty Hence it is that to love God when he kills to believe when means fail are reckoned among the high actings of Christianity Fourthly When Sense is non-plust and Faith fails the Soul of Man is at a great loss having nothing to bear it up it must needs sink but having something to throw it down besides its own propensity downward to distrust it hath the force of so great a disappointment to push it forward and such bitterness of Spirit heightned by the malignant Influence of Satan that with a violence like the Angels throwing a Milstone into the Sea it is cast into the bottom of such depths of unbelief that the knowledg of former Power and extraordinary Providences cannot keep it from an absolute denyal of the like for the future Israel in the Wilderness when they came to the want of Bread though they acknowledged he clave the Rock and gave them Water in the like strait yet so far did their Hearts fail of that due Trust in the Power and Mercy of God which might have been expected that though they confessed the one they as
distrustfully question and deny the other He clave the Rock but can he provide Flesh can â—e give Bread Strange unbelief that sees and acknowledgeth Omnipotency in one thing and yet denies it in another Fifthly Providence hath been an old Question 't is an Atheism that some have been guilty of to deny that God ordereth all affairs relating to his Children here below who yet have not so fully extinguished their natural Impressions as to dare to deny the being of God That God is they confess but withal they think that he walketh in the Circuit of Heaven and as to the smaller concerns of Men neither doth good nor evil This being an old Error to which most are but too inclinable and the more because such things are permitted as the punishment of his Children and their Tryals while others have all their heart can wish as seem scarce consistent with that love and care which Men look for from him to his Servants they are apt enough to renew the thoughts of that perswasion upon their Minds for which the failure of ordinary ways of help seems to be an high probability that he keeps himself unconcerned and therefore there seems to be no such cause of relyance upon him The Psalmist so expresseth that Truth Men shall say Verily there is a God that judgeth in the Earth that it is discovered to be a special retrivement of it by many and signal convincing Evidences from that distrust of God and his Providences that Men usually slide into upon their Observation of the many seeming failures of outward means of help Secondly The other Branch of the Observation That from a distrust of Providence he endeavours to draw them to an unwarrantable attempt for their relief is as clear as the former Sarai being under a distrust of the promise for a Son because of her Age gave her Hand-maid to Abraham that in that way the Promise seeming to fail she might obtain Children by her David because of the many and violent pursuits of Saul not only distrusted the Promise thinking he might one day perish by him but resolves to provide for his own safety by a speedy escape into the Land of the Philistines a course which as appears by the Temptations and evils he met with there was altogether unwarrantable That from a distrust Men are next put upon unwarrantable Attempts is clear from the following Reasons First The affrightment which is bred by such distrusts of Providences will not suffer Men to be idle Fear is active and strongly prompts that something is to be done Secondly Yet such is the confusion of Mens minds in such a case that though many things are propounded in that hurry of thoughts they are deprived usually of a true Judgment and deliberation so that they are oppressed with a multitude of thoughts as David on the like occasion takes notice in the Multitude of my thoughts within me c. and as he expresseth the case of Sea-men in a Storm they are at their wits end Thirdly The desparing grievance of Spirit makes them take that which comes next to hand as a drowning Man that grasps a Twig or Straw though to no purpose Fourthly Being once turned off their Rock and the true stay of the Promise of God for help whatever other course they take must needs be unwarrantable If they once be out of the right way they must needs wander and every step they take must of necessity be wrong Fifthly Satan is so Officious in an evil thing that seeing any in this condition he will not fail to proffer his help and in place of Gods Providence to set some unlawful Shift before them Sixthly And so much the rather do Men close in with such overtures because a sudden fit of passionate fury doth drive them and out of a bitter kind of despite and crossness as if they meditated a revenge against God for their disappointment they take up an hasty wilful resolve to go that way that seems most agreeable to their passion saying with King Joram What wait we upon the Lord any longer for We will take such a course let come on us what will The Service which the Observation well digested may perform for us is very fully contained in an advice which David gives on the like occasion Psal 37. 34. which is this Wait on the Lord and keep his way Failures of ordinary means should not fill us with distrust neither then should we run out of God's way for help He that would practise this must have these three things which are comprehended in it First He must have full perswasions of the Power and Promise of God I do not mean the bare hear-say that God hath promised to help and that he is able to deliver but these Truths must be wrought upon the heart to a full Assurance of them and then we must keep our Eye upon them for if ever we lose the Sight of this when troubles beset us our Heart will fail us and we shall do no otherwise than Hagar who when her Bottle of Water was spent and she saw no way of supply sate down gave up her Son and self for lost and so falls a weeping over her helpless condition This was that Sight of God in regard of his Power Goodness Faithfulness and Truth which are things Invisible which kept up the Heart of Moses that it sunk not under the pressure of his fears when all things threatned his ruine Secondly He that would thus wait upon God had need to have an equal Ballance of Spirit in reference to second causes Despise or Neglect them he may not when he may have them for that were intollerable presumption and so to center our Hopes and Expectations upon them as if our welfare did certainly depend upon them is an high affront to Gods Omnipotency and no less than a sinful idolizing of the Creature but the engagements of our Duty must keep carefully to the first and the consideration of an Independency of an Almighty Power as to any subordinate means or causes must help us against the other miscarriage When all means visible fail us we must look to live upon Omnipotent Faithfulness and Goodness which is not tyed to any thing but that without all means and contrary to the Powers of second Causes can do what he hath promised or sees fit Thirdly There is no waiting upon God and keeping his way without a particular trust in God to this we are not only warranted by frequent Commands Trust in the Lord I say Trust in the Lord but highly encouraged to it under the greatest Assurances of help Psal 37. 5. Trust in him and he shall bring it to pass Trust in the Lord and do Good and verily thou shalt be fed ver 3. The Lord shall help and deliver them because they trust in him And this we are to do at all times and in the greatest Hazards and with the highest Security I laid me
that 't is not only a denyal of God that is above but usually a vesting some mean and contemptible thing with those Attributes which only suit a God Infinite and Eternal As Israel did not only forsake the Almighty by their distrust but place their hopes upon Ashur upon their own Horses and Warlike Preparations and at last upon the works of their hands which they called their Gods How offensive this is to the Lord we may observe by that notable check which the Prophet gave Ahaz Esay 7. 8 13. notwithstanding his complement of refusing a Sign which God offered him for the strengthning of his hope upon a pretence that he would trust without it though indeed he absolutely distrusted him as appears by 2 Chron. 28. 20. that it was a weaning and tyring out the Patience of a long-suffering God Is it a small thing for you to weary Men but will you weary my God also God is so active and jealous of all incroachments of this kind that they may expect he will give up such Offenders to be punished by the terrors of an higher distrust He that is not owned as a God in his Providences will not be owned as a Father for Spiritual Mercies they that will not own him for the Body shall not be able to lay hold upon him or his strength to be at peace with him for their Souls and by this piece of just discipline he often cures the distrust of Providence in his Children who when they see themselves plunged into terrors and fears about their everlasting Welfare do not only call God Just and accept of the punishment of their Iniquity in distrusting him for smaller matters but now wish with all their hearts that they might have no greater thing to trouble them than what relates to the Body or this Life To Sum up all these reasons in one word Satan hath from the forementioned considerations a certain expectation of prevalency For not only in this case doth God as it were fight for him by giving them up to distrust their Filial Interest that have provoked him by a distrust of Providence and our Faith is also so weakned by the former overthrow that 't is not able to maintain its ground in an higher matter but also this distrust carries that in the nature and grounds of it that will of it self work up to a disbelief of spiritual Mercies He knows then that this piece of the Victory is an easy Consequence of the former and we may say of it as the Prophet Nahum chap. 3. 12. of the Strong-holds of Nineveh 't is like a Fig-tree with the first ripe Figs if they be shaken they shall even fall into the mouth of the eater This Temptation of distrusting our Son-ship falls into Satans Mouth with a little Labour when once he hath prevailed so far as to make us distrust the Providence of God in outward matters This must warn and caution us against any unbeseeming unbelieving entertainment of jealousy against the Lords Providence we are but too apt in our straits to take a greater liberty to question his Mercy and Power not foreseeing how closely this borders upon a greater evil we may say of it as the Apostle speaks of babling in Controversies that they lead to more ungodliness and that such words eat as a Canker so doth this distrust usually carry us further and when we fall out with God for small matters he will be angry in earnest and withdraw from us our Consolations in greater In the depth of your distresses when your fears are round about you and God seems to compass you about with his Net when Lover and Friend forsakes and when there is no appearance of help endeavour for the keeping hold of your Interest in God to behave your selves according to the following directions First Look upon the Providences of God to be as a great deep the bottom of whose ways and designs you cannot reach think of them as of a Mystery which indeed you must study but not throw away because you cannot at first understand it Providences are not to be dealt with as Alexander did by Gordius his knot who when he could not loose it he cut it If you see not the end of the Lord or cannot meet with a door of hope in it yet lay your Hand upon your Mouth speak not think not evil of things you know not but wait till the time of their bringing forth Secondly You must keep up in your hearts high and honourable thoughts of God yea of his Mercy and Goodness and where you cannot see your way or God's way before you yet as it were by a kind of implicit Faith must you believe that he is Holy and Good in all his ways Thirdly Though you may read your Sins or God's displeasure in them and accordingly endeavour to humble your selves and call your selves vile yet must it be always remembred that Eternal Love or Hatred is not to be measured by them Fourthly Restrain complainings 'T is indeed an ease to complain I will speak saith Job that I may be refreshed notwithstanding a vent being given 't is difficult to keep within bounds Our complainings entice us to distrust as may appear in Job who took a boldness this way more than was fit as Chap. 10. 3. Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress and that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands All this hath been said in the opening of the Temptation it self now must I consider the motive that Satan used to bring on the Temptation by If thou be the Son of God c. The Question that is here moved by some is whether Satan really knew or truly doubted Christ to be the Son of God Several Learned Men think that he was in doubt and the reasons are variously conjectured Cyprian conceives that the unity of the two Natures in one Person did blind him he knew it to be impossible that the Divine Nature should hunger and might think it strange that the Humane Nature should fast so long Cornelius a Lapide thinks that Satan knew that there should be two Natures united in one Person and that this occasioned Satans Fall while he proudly stomacked the exaltation of the Humane Nature but he imagins Satan's doubt arose from a doubtful Sence of that phrase This is my beloved Son as not knowing whether Christ were the Natural or an Adopted Son of God But notwithstanding these apprehensions others conceive that Satan knew very well who Christ was and that being privy to so many things relating to him as the Promises which went before and directly pointed out the time the Angels Salutation of Mary at his Conception the Star that conducted the Wise Men to him the Testimony from Heaven concerning him with a great many things more he could not possibly be ignorant that he was the Messias and the Son of God by Nature Neither doth that expression If thou be the Son of God
the use of God's own Appointments Secondly Besides that he thus betrays them by these lying helps he doth by this means cast them on a further iniquity of idolizing these foolish Calves of their own invention In this case Men have a presumptuous expectation from such usages of that which God never promised to do by them neither ever entred into his heart so to do seeing he answers them all with this Who hath required these things at your hands And accordingly their Consciences are more concerned for the Omission of one of these Fooleries than for the neglect of the greater things of the Law such are more troubled for the neglect of the Sign of the Cross or Holy-Water than for their constant carelesness and want of Faith by which their Hearts should be guarded against their Enemy Thirdly In the mean time he makes work for his own Triumph over them that dote upon these sottish Inventions If we can suppose Satan to have Pleasure or Mirth at any thing we may be sure he will laugh at such preparations for a Spiritual Welfare it being as truly ridiculous for any Man to go out with these Weapons against Satan as for a Combatant to assail a Gyant with a Paper-Helmet a Wicker-Shield and a Wooden-Daggar And indeed when Satan counterfeits a Flight or fear of such matters as for his advantage he sometimes doth it is but in design to beget or confirm in Men a confidence of a Vertue or strength in these usages against his Power that so they may fix upon them to the neglect of God's own Institutions which he most dreads Thus we read that he cunningly ceased his Oracle at Daphne upon a pretence of the silencing Power of the Bones of the Martyr Babilas which were buried near the place on purpose to lead unwary Christians to the adoration of Saints and their Reliques Many such instances we have in Sprenger of the Devils feigned Flight at the Sign of the Cross the sprinkling of Holy-Water the Angelical Salutation St. Bernards Staff or certain Words and Verses hung about the Neck and a great deal of such stuff we may meet with in most of their Writers all which are but cunning contrivances of Satan to advance a belief of the vertue of these things and so to stop Men there to the neglect of those Spiritual Weapons which the Scripture recommends These we have observed from the place in general the Holy City Let us go on to the place in particular where Satan acted all this the Pinacle of the Temple Various are the conjectures of Men about this whether it were some Fane or the top of some Spire or the place whence the Apostle James was thrown down or the top of the Kings Porch which was erected to a great height over a deep Valley or some Battlement c. But we are not concerned in such inquiries only here I shall take notice of Scultetus who supposing the place to be the top of a Fane or Spire and reading in Josephus that the points of such Broaches were so sharp that a Bird could not rest upon them without piercing its Foot was therefore willing to conclude that these Temptations were not really and historically acted but in Vision only all this ariseth from a wrong interpretation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which our English renders Pinacle whereas it properly signifies any Battlement or Angular prominency jutting out over the rest like a Wing which would afford a sufficient footing and support 'T is more profitable to enquire after Satans Reason for the choice of such a place no question but it was upon design for else he might with equal convenience have tempted Christ to cast himself down from some Tree or Precipice in the Wilderness but then what that design was is not so easy to determine it seems plain that he might suppose that Christ might be the rather animated to the undertaking of flying in the Air by the hopes of Glory which might be expected from such a performance before so many Spectators But some think that he had a design also upon the Men of Jerusalem and intended some delusion to the Jews which I am not unwilling to close with partly because the Experiences that we have of his devices assure us that in one Temptation his ends are oft manifold and I cannot but think that Satan would make all things sure and provide in his projecting Mind against allevents for if Christ should have yeilded and evidenced so great a Power in the sight of all the People it might have been a conviction general that he was the Messias about that time universally expected and partly I am ready to think so because in case Christ had done so it lay so fair to confirm the Jews in a misapprehension of the personal coming of Elias of whom they understood the Prophecy of Mal. 3. 1. Behold I will send my Messenger and he shall prepare the way before me and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his Temple even the Messenger of the Covenant If the Jews expected Elias to come from Heaven to the Temple how strongly would they have been confirmed in this opinion if they had seen a Man fly from the Temple in the Air and by this means John the Baptist who was the Elias that was to come should have been neglected and Christ himself though honoured as Elias not owned for the Messias Observe then That Satan's designs are large and that he projects the ensnaring or deluding of others by such Temptations as seem only to concern those that are under the immediate trouble of them He tempts Christ to cast himself down and also by it at least intends a delusion to the Jews he tempts one Man upon the back of another one is tempted to Errour another by that Mans Temptation is tempted to Atheism and rejecting of all Religion One Man is tempted to Prophaneness another is tempted by that to an uncharitable disrespect of him 't is Easy to multiply Instances of this CHAP. XIV That presumption was the chief design of this Temptation Of tempting to extreams What presumption is The several ways of presuming The frequency of this Temptation in the generality of Professors in Hypocrises desparing Persons and in the Children of God The reasons of Satans Industry in this Design His deceitful contrivance in bringing about this Sin Preservatives against it NExt to the preparation which Satan made for the second conflict already explained the Temptation intended offers it self to our view which is this Cast they self down What Satan chiefly intended by it we may collect from Christ's answer as well as from the thing it self for he thus replys It is written thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God Christ doth not use this Scripture to any such sense as this that he should hereby prohibit Satan to tempt him because he was Satan's Lord and God but he mentions this Scripture
Minds upon the occasion of any loss vexation disappointment or disgrace to as great an height as he can and when their Lives are made bitter to them and they are sufficiently prepared by the uneasiness of their condition then he propounds Death as the only remedy to set them at quiet wherein besides his officiousness to provide them with instruments of cruelty and opportunity for their use he follows them with Arguments drawn from the sence of their present Condition the great intendment whereof is to aggravate their smart and to make their burthen seem intollerable and then Self-ruine is but a natural Consequence We may see enough of this in the discontents of good Men and that they naturally work this way Job speaks the general apprehensions of Men in trouble Job 3. 20 21. The bitter in Soul value not Life they long for Death and dig for it more than for bid Treasures they rejoyce exceedingly and are glad when they can find the Grave Jonah in his discontent prefers Death before Life It is better for me to die than to live Elias doth the like and Job seems impatient for it All this is from the power and working of this Temptation though God held their hand that it did not fully prevail In Ahithophel the ground of discontent was more a fancied than a real disgrace his Counsel was rejected which was in it self no great dishonour and this works up such a perplexing resentment in his Mind that Satan prevails with him to hang himself very deliberately Secondly He most frequently drawn on Men to destroy themselves by terrors and desparing troubles of Conscience these as they afford greater disquiet and distress of mind than other kind of discontentments so doth he more prevail by them for a wounded Spirit is above ordinary strength and hard to bear only it may may seem strange that those who so experimentally feel how fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God should entertain such a Temptation as to their apprehensions and knowledg will certainly plung them into the very Ocean of everlasting Vengeance This no doubt Satan finds to be no small obstruction to his design but here he useth his skill to open a way for them that would out-run their lives on the one hand as he labours to pursue them with sence of Wrath and Indignation on the other hand To this purpose he tells them 1. that all the Hell they are to meet with is in their Consciences and that Death will free them from all or at least that Death will give a present ease and that till the Resurrection they shall be in quiet Those that are willing to receive these apprehensions may easily be prevailed with to hasten their own death seeing they have already fixed this Conclusion with themselves that there is no hope nor pardon for them that they are Reprobates and cut off for their thoughts can meditate nothing but the terrors of such Conclusions 2. He sometimes endeavours to perswade them that by executing this revenge upon themselves they may make some kind of satisfaction and amends for the sins they have commited which though most false yet 't is a wonder how far such ungrounded Surmises may possess the Minds of the Desperate That Judas might have some such thought when he destroyed himself is conjectured by some but that must be but a conjecture seeing none can pretend to know his thoughts but we may speak with greater freedom of those who have declared the working of such apprehensions upon their Minds 3. A more plausible pretext he useth when he endeavours to perswade them that they may kill themselves and yet go to Heaven for all that to this purpose the subtil Adversary is not backward to tell them what have been the Charitable Expressions of some Men who have supposed a possibility of Repentance inter pontem fontem as we say betwixt the Stroke or Halter and the Death Capel is so apprehensive of the mischeivous improvement of this Charity for an encouragement to Self-Murther that he with great earnestness cautions all Ministers against such liberal Expressions I have known some and heard of others that have been so possessed with this Imagination of being saved notwithstanding that having purposed to destroy themselves though God prevented them that they did it not they have first by Prayer recommended themselves to God and so prepared themselves to die 4. Sometimes though such afflicted ones have no such perswasion but that from Death they go immediately to Hell yet are they pushed forward by a certain fearful curiosity of knowing the worst At that rate did Spira express himself when he desired to be freed of his Life that he might know the utmost of those torments which he feared as if the affrightments of his fearful expectations were worse than the real feeling of them 5. But most of all doth he prevail against that objection of greater misery after Death by running Men up to a desperate destraction in their terrors their present anguish is made insupportable so that they hasten out of Life without care or consideration of what shall follow Thirdly He tempts Men directly to destroy themselves from a Principle of Heroick boldness and seeming fortitude of Mind a thing very common among the Romans who impatient of injuries and from pride of Heart not willing to subject themselves to affronts chused rather to tear their own Bowels than to live to see themselves abused Lucretia being forced by Tarquinius and not willing to outlive her disgrace stabb'd her self Cato not being able to endure the Victory of Caesar puts an end to his days Innumerable instances of this kind Histories do every where afford These though they consulted their own passions and knew of nothing that prompted them but their own Generosity or Magnanimity yet were they not without a Tempter to such cruel actions Satan undoubtedly pleased himself by exercising his cruelty upon them so easily by the help of such an humour which passed among these blind Heathens for the highest proof of Vertue and Fortitude To this height it came insomuch that we find Seneca highly applauding Cato for procuring his liberty by his own death and setting forth that Fact as the most delightful Spectacle to the Gods Though indeed as Augustine notes it is not Fortitude but weakness and a clear evidence of impatience which cannot bear other Mens Insolencies or their own hardships And if we examine the matter to the bottom though there be audacity in it to undertake their own death yet is this led on by no better Principles than Pride Impatience and Despair which may the better be discovered if we consider such kind of attempts as they arise from more Ignoble and base occasions Paterculus tells us of a Tuscan Southsayer who being carried to Prison with his Friend Fulvius Flaccus and despairing of pardon desperately runs his head against the Prison Door and
Duty then he objects They draw nigh me with their Lips but their Heart is far from me If he sees them dull and without Consolation at the Lord's Supper then to be sure they hear of him he that eats and drinks unworthily eateth and drinketh Damnation to himself If he find him bemoaning that he is not so apprehensive of Mercies or Judgments as he would be then he sets home some such Scripture as this This Peoples Heart is waxed gross and their Ears are dull of hearing c. These Scriptures are frequently perverted by Satan from the true and proper meaning of them I have had complaints from several dejected Christians of these very Scriptures urged upon them to their great trouble when yet it was evident that none of these were truly applyed by Satans Temptation against them These things give us warning not to take any thing of this Nature upon trust If Satan can so imitate the Spirit of God in applications of Scripture and bringing it to our remembrance we have great reason to beware lest we be imposed upon by Satan's Design clothed in Scripture Phrase not that I would have Men esteem the secret setting of Scripture upon their Minds to be in all cases a delusion and to be disregarded as such Some indeed there are that so severely remark the weaknesses of Professors of Religion that they raise up a scorn to that which is of most necessary and serious use because the Devil prevails with some Hypocrites to guild themselves with Scripture phrase and others through imprudent inadvertency are unknown to themselves beguiled by Satan to misapplications of Scripture to their own estate or to other things they therefore decry all the inward workings of the Heart as Fancy or affected singularity these do but the Devils work But that the Spirit of God whom Satan treacherously endeavours to imitate doth set home Scripture Commands Threatnings and Promises upon the Hearts of his People is not only attested by the Experience of all that are inwardly acquainted with the ways of God but is one of the great Promises which Christ hath given for the comfort of his People in his absence Joh. 14. 26. But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father shall send in my Name he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you This then being granted as a firm unshaken Truth our care must be in discovering and avoiding Satan's counterfeit using of Scripture and in this we should be more wary First Because we are not so apt to suspect what we meet with in such a way when 't is brought to us in the Language of Scripture Secondly And those that are not exercised in the Scripture will he at a sad loss as not knowing how to extricate themselves from such difficulties as may arise to them from Satan's Sophistry Thirdly Wariness is also more necessary because we are inclinable to believe what suits our Desires and Conscience awakened is averse to the rejecting of that which answers its fears You may say What is there of direction for us in this Case The Answer is ready Two things are given us in Charge 1. That we be wisely suspicious A facile hasty credulity is treacherous Christ forbids when he foretels the rising of false Christ's Math. 24. 26. the forwardness of a sudden belief taxing thereby those that are presently taken with every new appearance 'T is childish to be carryed with every Wind we are warned also of this 1 Joh. 4. 1. Believe not every Spirit 2. We are commanded to bring all Pretences whatsoever to Tryal though immediate Revelation or Vision be pretended or extraordinary Commission yet must all be brought to the Touch-Stone we must prove all things 1 Thes 5. 21. and try those that say they are Apostles Rev. 2. 2. Nay the Spirits are to be tryed whether they be of God 1 Joh. 4. 1. You will say How must we try I Answer God hath given a Publick Sufficient and Certain rule which is the Scripture and all must be tryed by that so that if there be Impulses or Discoveries or Remembrances of Scripture upon any it must not be taken for granted that they are of God because they pretend so high for so we shall make Satan Judg in his own Cause but lay all to the Line and Plummet of the written Word and if it answer not that call it confidently a delusion and reject it as accursed though it might seem in other regards to have been suggested by an Angel from Heaven But it will be said Satan pretends to this Rule and it is Scripture that is urged by him I Answer though it be so yet he useth not Scripture in its own Intendment and Sense for the discovery of his unfaithful dealing First Compare the Inference of the suggestion with other Scriptures If it be from a dark Scripture compare it with those that are more plain and in every case see whether the general Current of the Scriptures speak the same thing for if it be from Satan he either plays with the Words and Phrases from doubtful and equivolent terms making his conclusion or his citation will be found Impertinent or which is most usual contrary to Truth or Holiness if any of these appear by a true examination of the Import of the Scripture which he seeks to abuse or by comparing it with the Scope and Genius of other Scriptures you may certainly pronounce that it is not of God but Satan's deceit Secondly Consider the tendency of such Suggestions Let no Man say that this will come too late or that it is an after game I do not mean that we should stay so long as to see the Effects though this is also a certain discovery of Satan's knavery in his highest pretences the Phanatick Furies of the German Enthusiasts do now appear plain to all the World to have been Delusions by their End Fruits and Issue But that while these Conclusions are obtruded upon us we should observe to what they tend which we shall the better know if all Circumstances round about be considered Sometimes Satan doth covertly hint his Mind and send it along with the suggestion sometimes our condition will enough declare it and there is no case but it will afford something of discovery if seriously pondered If he either prompt us to Pride Vain-Glory or Presumption or that our condition sway us that way it will be sufficient ground of Suspition that 't is Satan that then urgeth Promises or Priviledges upon us If we are of a wounded Spirit inclined to Distrust or if we be put on to despair it is past denyal that 't is Satan that urgeth the Threatnings and presseth the Accusations of the Law against us He that gathers Stones Timber Lime and such Materials together as are usually imployed in Building doth discover his intention before he actually Build his
Appetite Senses or Affections fetch all their delights from hence Secondly Besides the common Materials of Sin that are digged out of this Mine the World hath something of an aptitude in it to tempt Not that it hath properly and formally insidiationis animum an active Subtilty to lay snares for Men but yet it is not so purely passive as to make it altogether Innocent There is something of a Curse upon it ever since by the fall of Man it was loosned from its proper primitive ends and as the Devil spake by the Serpent so doth he urge speak tempt and insinuate by the World so that it is still an occasion of danger to us and hath a special advantage over our affections upon several accounts As 1. in that it is in its self lawful to be used 2. In that it is suitable to our desires and tempers 3. In some respects it might be necessary and advantageous for the comfort of Life for the support of Families and to enable us to be helpful to others 4. It is near to us under our Eye we have familiar converse with it it is still with us 5. We have a natural propensity to be in love with it the Flesh would fain be pleased and nothing is more answerable to it than the pleasures of the World We need not wonder then when we see it so highly captivating the affections of Men and leading them bound in Chains and Fetters Some make it their God Gain is all their Godliness and Religion they seek their Portion in this Life this is their Treasure and here is their Heart and it would be no less wonder if Satan should be guilty of so much oversight as to neglect the use of an Instrument which is every way so fitted for his purpose Thirdly Besides this fair prospect which it gives to Sin it hath an enmity to God and his ways which is no less advantagious to the Devil This is positively affirmed Jam. 4. 4. the Friendship of this World is Enmity with God not only is this true in a lower sense as a hinderance being backward and averse to it but it is a direct opposition and contrariety to God and his Service it s drawing back and hindring is charge enough against it for it 1. withdraws those thoughts affections time care and endeavours which should be laid out upon better things so that Holiness must needs be obstructed dwindle and decay by it 2. It hinders the influence of Heaven it shuts out the light causally quencheth and resisteth the Spirit and meritoriously also it provokes God to withdraw to remove his Glory and to give over his striving with them But the contrariety that it hath to all the parts of Holiness is yet more Christ notes it Matth. 6. 24. These two Masters God and the World are contrary in their Deisigns in their Commands in their Natures so that it is impossible for any Man to serve them both they both require the Heart and they both require it to contrary and incompitable Services and Ends These then are such Masters as would be Domini in Solidum Masters of the whole Now there cannot be two Masters of one thing in that sense neither if there were could the Hearts of Men serve these different commands but their work would necessarily engage their affections to one only they would either love the one and hate the other or hold to the one and despise the other This very consideration if there were no more doth render the World a desirable Instrument for Satan Fourthly In all this the World hath so many Cunning Disguises and plausible Shifts that it becomes thereby wonderfully serviceable to Satan 'T is the perfection of wicked Policy to manage wicked designs under plausible pretences these the World hath in readiness when 't is accused of Rebellion and Treachery against God The pleas of Necessity of Prosecution of a lawful Calling of providing for a Family of not neglecting the benefits of God of chearing the Heart and taking the Comforts of the Labours of their Hands and a great many more are ready excuses to ward off the force of the convincing Word these the Devil drives home and fastens them into such strong perswasions that the deluded Sinner cannot see the danger that is before him nor the Spiritual Adultery or Idolatry of his Soul in his excessive love to Worldly Pleasures Fifthly The World hath also a Spiritual Fascination and Witchcraft by which where it hath once prevailed Men are inchanted to an utter forgetfulness of themselves and God and being drunk with Pleasures they are easily engaged to a madness and height of Folly Some like foolish Children are made to keep a great stir in the World for very trifles for a vain shew they think themselves great honourable excellent and for this make a great bustle when the World hath not added one Cubit to their Stature of real worth Others are by this Circe transformed into Savage Creatures and act the part of Lyons and Tygars Others like Swine wallow in the Lusts of uncleanness Others are unmanned putting off all natural affections care not who they ride over so they may rule or be made Great Others are taken with ridiculous Frenzies so that a Man that stands in the cool shade of a sedate composure would judg them out of their wits It would make a Man admire to read or the Frisks of Caius Caligula Xerxes Alexander and many others who because they were above many Men thought themselves above humane Nature they forgat they were born and must die and did such things as would have made them but that their greatness over-awed it a laughing-Stock and common scorn to Children Neither must we think that these were but some few or rare instances of worldly intoxication when the Scripture notes it as a general distemper of all that bow down to worship this Idol They live without God in the World saith the Apostle that is they so carry it as if there were no God to take notice of them to check them for their madness God is not in all his thoughts saith David Psal 10. 4 5. The Judgments of God are far above out of their Sight he puffs at his Enemies and saith in his Heart he shall never be moved c. The whole Psalm describes the Worldling as a Man that hath lost all understanding and were acting the part of a Frantick Bedlam what then can be a more fit Engine for the Devil to work with than the Pleasures of the World I shall briefly apply this to two sorts of Men those that are straitned with want and necessities and those whose cups run over having all that their Heart can wish First To those that think their measure of outward Comforts little I would from the Doctrine now explained tell them that they have not so much cause to vex and disquiet themselves for their Poverty or Troubles as they apprehend The World is not so
desireable a thing as many dream did but Men consider how great a snare it is and what dangers attend the fullness of it they would not so earnestly covet it nor so passionately lament when it flys from them If thou hast so much Godliness as can quiet thy Heart in a contented enjoyment of thy little that little which thou hast is better than great riches of the wicked thou little knowest from what Pride Insolency Contempt of God and Men and many other Temptations and Lusts God doth preserve thee by denying thee Earthly things thou art now it may be often looking up to God striving to believe his Word often examining thy Heart labouring to live upon God and his Allsufficiency looking after the Bread that endures to Eternal Life when if thou hadst the Temptations of Plenty it may be feared thou wouldst be another Man and be carried away to forget God to be careless of Holy walking and so make way for Bitterness and Sorrow at last Secondly I would also caution Poor Men not to enlarge their desires too much after the World but to fear the Temptations of the World it is not only a snare to those that enjoy it but to those that want it for while they admire it and engage their Affections for it it ensnares them in sinful undertakings they are tempted to Lye Cheat Dissemble to use unlawful Shifts to Rob Steal over-reach in Bargaining and to neglect the care of the Soul in all Let such call to mind 1. that often the Providence of God doth of purpose thwart and cross the designs of such so that though they toyland sweat running from Market to Market rising early and sitting up late yet he blowes upon their gettings and they wither to nothing while it is yet in their hand or if they seem to keep them longer yet all the end they make with them is but to put them into a bag with holes they perish by evil travel Eccles 5. 14. 2. They often are at a great deal of labour in pursuit and then when the desired object is within their reach they are overwhelmed with their disappointment as if Providence designed to mock them for their Folly This is excellently set forth in the Emblem of a Man climbing up a Rock with great labour to reach a Crown that hung upon the Precipice who when he had stretched himself to grasp it falls down and breaks his Neck 3. And when they do by great toyl rake together an heap of Riches they are starved frequently in their Plenty and so cursed that they have no more than the beholding of their Goods with their Eyes in that God denies them a Heart to use them 4. Their gettings allay not their Thirst for more He that loveth Silver shall not be satisfyed with Silver Eccles 5. 10. 5. Often they are given as a scourge and Plague as the Quales given to the Israelites came out of their Nostrils The wise Man notes it Eccles 5. 13. Riches are kept for the Owners thereof to their hurt Secondly To those that have the delights of the World plentiful Estates full Tables beautiful Houses rich Tradings Honours and Dignities I would desire to give the greatest caution that they take heed to themselves because they walk in the midst of Snares These should consider 1. that the great God hath laid most serious charges upon them not to love the World but to withdraw their Affections from it nay to be Crucified to it as to any captivating delight and to use it with such an Indifferency of mind that they should be in their deportments towards it as if they used it not 2. They should have their danger in their Eye How careful is he of his steps that knows he walks in the midst of Serpents which are ready to sting him the thoughts of this should blunt the edg of our Delights If you were at a Feast where you knew there were poysoned Dishes you would be affraid to eat any thing Do you think that Captain Smith when he was taken by the Salvages of America and had plenty of Meat set before him which he knew was given to fatten him that he might be better Meat when he was killed had any Stomack to Eat or to Drink Was that Feast pleasing to him that fat under a sharp Sword hung over his Head in a Horse Hair when he expected every moment it should fall upon him and kill him Such are great Men rich Men with what fear and care should they use these things when they know there is hazard of mischief from them upon every occasion How much doth Christ speak in that one Sentence it is easier for a Camel to go through the Eye of a Needle than for a rich Man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven He means not that 't is absolutely impossible but extreamly difficult and the difficulty lies in the hinderances which their Riches casts before them 3. They should carefully consider for what ends God gives these and to what use they are to be put Rich Men are but God's Pursers they do but carry the Bag and what is put therein for publick uses if accordingly as faithful Stewards they lay it out upon those that have need they shall make Friends of the unrighteous Mammon and it will turn to a Spiritual Account but if they think that all is for themselves and so shut their Bowels and Purses from others then they carry the Bag no otherwise than as Judas did and will be easily perswaded to sell Christ and Heaven for a little more of Earth CHAP. XXII Of Christ's Answer in the general That these Temptations were upon design for our Instruction Of the Agreement betwixt Ephes 6. and Matth. 4. The first Direction Of couragious Resolves in resisting Temptations It s consistency with some kind of fear The necessity of this Courage Wherein it consists and that there is a courage in mourning Spirits THese Answers of Christ to the several Temptations which are now to be explained are different as to their matter yet the general Purport of them being the same I shall therefore handle them together They may be considered two ways First As they are fit and pertinent answers to particular Temptations of Distrust of Presumption of Debauching the Heart by Worldly Delights to the Service of Satan and thus may they be useful in their consideration to those who are directly moved by Satan to such Sins And when at any time we are tempted in straits to cast away our reliance upon the careful Providence of God we may look upon Christ's Answer that Man's Life doth not so depend upon the usual means but that any other thing blessed by Divine Appointment may be useful to that end When we are enticed to presume of extraordinary supports then by Christ's Example the Temptation may be resisted by considering that however God be to be trusted yet he is at no time to be tempted by unnecessary expectations
deliverances that they would not take into consideration the unrighteous terms upon which they might have escaped Thirdly When a Temptation after all means used continues to be troublesom and is rather an annoyance than an infection then must we not dispute it but by an Holy Contempt despise it Temptations to Blasphemy are oft of this nature as hath been noted in its place and there are other things by which Satan creates to God's Children great disquiet while they in the mean time abhor the Sin and cry out of the Tryal Here when the Messenger of Satan will not depart 't is an advice that hath the general approbation of Holy experienced Men that we should despise the Temptation as an approved way to our quiet and ease for while we think to repel such assaults by strugling with Arguments we do but increase the force of them as he that thinks to shelter himself against the Wind by holding up his Cloak before him doth but derive upon himself a stronger blast Fourthly In Temptations of inward trouble and terror it is not convenient to dispute the matter with Satan David in Psal 42. 11. seems to correct himself for his mistake his Soul was cast down within him and for the cure of that Temptation he had prepared himself by Arguments for a Dispute but perceiving himself in a wrong course he calls off his Soul from disquiet to an immediate application to God and the Promises Trust still in God for I shall yet praise him but in Psal 11. 1. he is more aforehand with his work for while his Enemies were acted by Satan to discourage him he rejects the Temptations at first before it setled upon his thoughts and chaseth it away as a thing that he would not give ear to In thee Lord do I put my trust how say ye then to my Soul flee as a Bird to your Mountain And there are weighty reasons that should disswade us from entring the lists with Satan in Temptations of inward trouble As 1. the determination of the Sincerity of the Soul and its converted state is a Question of no small difficulty a knotty Controversy more intricate and abstruse than those Controversies that in the Schools are of greatest Name for difficulty for this is lyable to more weighty Objections and stands in need of nicer distinction As Dr. Goodwin Observes They that converse with dejected Spirits find so much quickness and nimbleness of reasoning turning every way to ward off the force of an Argument brought for their consolation that even wise and able Heads are oft put to a stand and know not what to answer Would it then be fit to give Satan this advantage or to admit him so far into our reasoning He that will invite Satan to such a contest shall be sure to have his hands full Secondly This kind of Temptation doth usually disable Men for arguing it oftentimes confounds the Brain stupifies the understanding and weakens the Memory Heman complains of himself as distracted by terrors Job calls himself desperate Such Persons are not surely in a fit case to manage a Temptation with so cunning a Sophister as Satan Thirdly If they descend into the Battel he is not only too strong for them but commonly after a while they take Satan's part against themselves and comply with him concluding against their own peace Fourthly There is also a better way at hand than to enter into a Dispute and that is By going to God by a present Faith Love or Repentance when the truth of any of these is questioned It is a difficult task to prove some time that former acts of Faith Love or other Graces were sincere this may admit of such objections from a wounded Spirit that it will be hard to answer them but in this case 't is a nearer way to see if there be not in all these complainings some present acts of these Graces whether such complainants are not willing to embrace Christ upon any terms whether they do not have Sin whether they would not unfeignedly be reconciled to God c. It oft falls out that this doth stay the trouble when examinations of former acts do nothing for them Some Men are at more pains as one saith to repair and fit an old Building then would serve to rear a new one Yet must it be remembred that though it were the best course to resist Temptations of this nature at first by avoiding unnecessary disputings notwithstanding when this as I noted before of other Temptations hath seized upon the heart and taken possession then shall we be forced to fill our Mouths with Arguments and whether we will or no must we undergo a Contest As we see in David who when his troubles had prevailed upon him was forced to plead with God with himself with the Temptation and to have recourse to former Experience the days of old and the years of the right hand of the most High and all little enough Thirdly All that I shall further say concerning the inconvenienceies of disputing with Satan shall be to give you the reasons manifesting these unnecessary Communings with him to be every way hazardous and unsuitable As First 'T is an Honour to Satan and a disgrace to our selves Men are loth to be seen contesting with Persons of a far inferiour rank especially in such things which have procured to such a noted Infamy 'T is an usual peice of Generosity in Men of Spirit that they scorn to strive with a Scold or contend with a Beggar or be found in Company of those that are under an evil name deservedly and in matters that are vile and base 't is highly disgraceful to admit them to a debate Such things will either get more credit than they deserve while they seem to be countenanced by a dispute or else shall communicate their discredit to those that shall shew such familiarity with them Secondly By refusing to dispute Temptations we raise up in our hearts an active abhorrency of them and by that abhorrency we are cautioned and strengthned against them It must needs awaken our hatred into a present activity against that Sin which our consideration at first view presents to us so abominable that it deserves no other Answer but to be whipt out of our sight And when our Heart is thus alarmed it cannot but stand upon its Guard 'T is a course that Holy Men have taken to keep Men at a greater distance from Sin to present it as a thing of greatest abhorrency and that is the intendment of that Expression Rom. 6. 1. Shall we Sin that Grace may abound God forbid The vileness of that abuse of Gospel Grace he shews by setting it below the merit of any serious thought he sharpens their apprehensions against it by an out-cry of detestation The like he doth Eph. 5. 3. where he indeavours to set their Hearts against uncleanness and covetousness by telling them that it was unbecoming Saintship that such things should be