  Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.—1 Peter V. 8. CHAPTER I.The introduction to the text, from a consideration of the desperate ruin 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,’ [Heb. xiii. 17.] 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 it is to destroy the soul? ‘The Philistines are upon thee, Samson!’ [Judges xvi. 9;] he fights continually, and useth all the policy and skill he hath for the management of his strength. Besides, it is a consideration very affecting, when we view the ‘desolations that are made in the earth,’ [Ps. xlvi. 8,] 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 the brick-kiln,’ 2 Sam. xii. 31; 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 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’ [Rev. ii. 23] can know, and make known, what is in the heart of Satan; he views all his goings, even those paths which the ‘vulture’s eye hath not seen,’ [Job xxviii. 7,] and can trace those footsteps of his, which leave no more print or track behind them than ‘a ship in the sea, or a bird in the air, or a serpent on a stone,’ [Prov. xxx. 19.] 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. It 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. 1. As, first, Malice and enmity: ? ??t?d???? 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.75 (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 falsehood, 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.76 2. 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 ?atap?? signifies, he can sup them up at a draught, À ?atap???. 3. 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 heightened 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. 4. 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. CHAPTER 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 itself in the following particulars:— 1. 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 ourselves. We have sins which our spirits and hearts do act, that relate not to the body, called ‘a filthiness of the spirit,’ in con 2. Secondly, The wickedness of Satan is capable of increase, a magis et 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 drawn more out by occasions, motives, and provocations; besides, we are expressly taught thus much, Rev. xii. 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. 3. 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.77 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, ‘Upon 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,’ Isa. xlix. 23; ‘Thine enemies shall lick the dust,’ Ps. lxxii. 9; ‘They shall lick the dust as a serpent,’ Micah vii. 17. Where the spirit is so wicked that it cannot accept the punishment of its iniquity, all punishment is as a poison, and envenoms 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, 4. Fourthly, This malice in Satan must be great. (1.) First, If we consider the greatness of his wickedness in so great and total an apostasy. 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, Eph. vi. 12, [p?e?at??? t?? p?????a?.] (2.) Secondly, The Scripture lays to his charge all degrees, acts, and branches of malice; as [1.] Anger, in the impetuous haste and violence of it. Rev. xii. 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 threatening ‘a woe to the inhabitants of the earth.’ [2.] Indignation is more than anger, as having more of a fixed fury; and this is applied to him, Eph. iv. 27, in that those that have this pa?????s??, 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, ira brevis furor, 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 [in] 1 John iii. 12 said to be the proper offspring 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 masterpiece 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 murders and destructions which damned spirits are now groaning under. (3.) Thirdly, This malice is the result of that curse laid upon Satan: Gen. iii. 15, ‘I will put enmity betwixt thee and the woman, betwixt her seed and thy seed.’ Which implies, [1.] A great enmity; and some render it inimicitias implacabiles, implacable enmities. [2.] A lasting enmity, such as should continue as long as the curse should last. [3.] That this should be his work and exorcise, to prosecute and be prosecuted with this enmity; so that it shews the devil’s whole mind and desire is in this work, and that he is whetted on by the opposing enmity which he meets withal. It is the work of his curse, of his place, of his revenge, and that wherein all the delight he is capable of That this curse relates not only to the serpent, who was the instrument, but also to Satan, who was the agent, is agreed by all almost. That it was not the serpent alone, but the devil speaking by it, is evinced from its speaking and reasoning. And that the curse reached further than a natural enmity betwixt a serpent and a man, is as evident, in that Christ is expressly held forth as giving the full accomplishment of this curse against Satan: 1 John iii. 8, ‘The devil sinneth from the beginning; for this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil,’ which is a clear exposition and paraphrasis of the ‘woman’s seed bruising the serpent’s head.’ (4.) Fourthly, I shall add to this some few instances of Satan’s malice, by which it will appear to be great. [1.] First, That malice must needs be great which shews itself where there is such a load of anguish and horror that lies upon him. He is now ‘reserved in chains of darkness in hell,’ 2 Peter ii. 4. He is in hell, a place of torment; or, which is all one, hell is in him. He carries it about him in his conscience, which, by God’s decree, binds him to his horror like a chain. It is scarce imaginable that he should have a thought free from the contemplation of his own misery, to spend in a malicious pursuit of man. What can we think less of it than a desperate madness and revenge against God, wherein he shews his rage against heaven, and hunts after our blood as for a little water to cool his tongue; and when he finds his hand too short to pull the Almighty out of his throne, he endeavours, panther-like, to tear his image in man, and to put man, created after his image, upon blaspheming and dishonouring his Maker. [2.] Secondly, That malice must needs be great that seeks its own fuel, and provides or begs its own occasions, and those such as give no proper provocation to his anger. Of this temper is his malice. He did thus with Job: he begs the commission, calumniates Job upon unjust surmises, presseth still for a further power to hurt him, insomuch that God expressly stints and bounds him—which shews how boundless he would have been if left to his own will—and gives him at last an open check, Job ii. 3, wherein he lays open the malice of his heart in three things: [1.] His own pressing urgency: ‘Thou movedst me;’ [2.] His destructive fury: no less would serve than Job’s utter destruction; [3.] Job’s innocency: all this without cause: ‘Thou movedst me to destroy him without cause.’ [3.] Thirdly, That malice must needs be great that will pursue a small matter. What small game will the devil play rather than altogether sit out! If he can but trouble, or puzzle, or affright, yet that he will do, rather than nothing; if he can, like an adder in the [4.] Fourthly, That malice must be great which will put itself forth where it knows it can prevail nothing, but is certain of a disappointment. Thus did Satan tempt Christ. Those speeches, ‘if thou be the Son of God,’ do not imply any doubt in Satan; he knew what was prophesied of Christ, and what had been declared from heaven in testification of him, so that he could not but be certain he was God and man; and yet what base unworthy temptations doth he lay before him, as ‘to fall down and worship him’! Was it that Satan thought to prevail against him? No surely; but such was his malice, that he would put an affront upon him, though he knew he could not prevail against him. [5.] Fifthly, The malice of wicked men is an argument of Satan’s great malice. They have an antipathy against the righteous, as the wolf against the sheep, and upon that very ground, that they are ‘called out of the world.’ How great this fury is, all ages have testified. This hath brought forth discord, revilings, slanders, imprisonments, spoiling of goods, banishments, persecutions, tortures, cruel deaths, as burning, racking, tearing, sawing asunder, and whatever the wit of man could devise for a satisfaction to those implacable, furious, murderous minds; and yet all this is done to men of the same image and lineage with themselves, of the same religion with themselves, as to the main; nay, sometime to men of their own kindred, their own flesh and blood, and all to those that would live peaceably in the land. What shall we say to these things? How come men to put on a savage nature, to act the part of lions, leopards, tigers, if not much worse? The reason of all we have, John viii. 54, ‘Ye are of your father the devil; he was a murderer from the beginning:’ as also Gen. iii. 15, ‘I will put enmity between her seed and thy seed so that all this shews what malice is in Satan’s heart, who urgeth and provokes his instruments to such bloody hatreds. Hence whoever were the agents [Rev. ii. 10] in imprisoning the saints, the malice of Satan in stirring them up to it, makes him become the author of it; ‘Satan shall cast some of you into prison.’ CHAPTER III.Of Satan’s power.—His power as an angel considered.—That he lost not that power by his fall.—His power as a devil.—Of his commission.—The extent of his authority.—The efficacy of his power.—The advantages which he hath for the management of it, from the number, order, place, and knowledge of devils. That Satan’s power is great, is our next inquiry; where, 1. First, We will consider his power as an angel. In Ps. ciii. 20 angels are said ‘to excel in strength;’ and in ver. 21, as also Ps. cxlviii. 2, they are called ‘God’s host;’ which is more fully expressed, 1 Kings xxii. 19, ‘I saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, and all the host of Though this may fully satisfy us that angels excel in strength, yet the Scripture suggests another consideration relating to the office and employment of angels, where their commission shews not only a liberty for the exercise of this power, but also doth imply such a power as is fit to be commissionated to such acts. These invisible beings are called thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, Col. i. 16. It is indeed a task beyond a sober undertaking to distinguish these words, and to set their true bounds and marks of difference. This Augustine acknowledged;79 yet may we hence conclude, [1.] That these words Such a powerful spirit is Satan by creation. But because it will be doubted lest his fall hath bereaved him of his excellency, and cast him down from his strength, I shall evidence that he still retains the same natural power. To which purpose it is not unfit to be observed, [1.] That the same terms and names which were given to good angels, to signify their strength and commission, Col. i. 16, and ii. 10, are also given to Satan, Eph. vi. 12. Devils are called ‘principalities,’ ‘powers,’ ‘rulers;’ and Col. ii. 15, they have the same names which in ver. 10 were given to good angels, ‘he spoiled principalities and powers.’ [2.] The Scripture gives particular instances of Satan’s power and working: as his raising tempests in the air, commanding fire from heaven—both which he did in prosecution of his malice against Job; his carrying the bodies of men in the air—as he did with Christ, hurrying him from the wilderness to the mountain, from thence to the pinnacle of the temple; his breaking chains and fetters of iron, Mark v. 4; his bringing diseases—instances whereof were that crooked woman whom Satan had bowed together, Luke xiii. 16, and the lunatic person, Luke ix. 31, with a great many more. [3.] It is also observable that, notwithstanding, Satan’s fall hath made an alteration as to the ends, uses, and office of his power; yet, nevertheless, God makes use of this strength in him, not only as an executioner of wrath against his enemies—as when he vexed Saul by this evil spirit; and through this lying spirit, gave up Ahab to be deluded into his ruin, and inflicted plagues upon Egypt, by sending evil angels among them, 1 Sam. xvi. 14; 1 Kings xxii. 21; Ps. lxxviii. 49—but also for the trial of his own servants. Thus was Job afflicted by Satan, and Paul buffeted by his messenger. 2. Secondly, This power of his, as a devil, falls next under our consideration, wherein are divers particulars to be noted: as, (1.) First, His commission and authority. If any put that question to him which the Jews did to Christ, ‘By what authority dost thou these things?’ or, ‘Who gave thee this authority?’ we have the answer in John xii. 24, and xvi. 11, where he is called, ‘the prince of this world;’ and accordingly the Scripture speaks of a twofold 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. iv. 4; which doth not only set forth the intolerable 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, [Zanchius.] 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 intolerably 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:— [1.] 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 Gadarenes till he had Christ’s commission for it. [2.] Secondly, Yet hath he a commission in general—a standing commission, as petty kings and governors 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,’ [2 Tim. ii. 16,] and ‘given up to Satan,’ [1 Tim. i. 20,] 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,’ [Col. i. 13.] 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 Mohammedanism stretcheth itself, 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 the world,’ &c., but also by that prophetic speech of Rev. xi. 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 If we inquire 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 periphrasis of him, ‘He that hath the power of death,’ Heb. ii. 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.’81 3. Thirdly, Let us proceed a step further, to the efficacy of this authority; which also, (1.) First, Upon wicked men is no less remarkable than is his commission. He is called ‘the strong man,’ [Luke xi. 21,] in reference to their hearts, which he fortifies, as so many castles and garrisons, against God. He also ‘rules in them’ without control; his suggestions and temptations are as laws to them; he ‘fills their hearts,’ Acts v. 3, with his designs, and raiseth their affections to a high and greedy pursuit of them; he works in them, and by an inward force doth hurry them on to achieve his enterprises, in all this ensnaring and captivating them ‘at his pleasure,’ Eph. ii. 2; 2 Tim. ii. 26. (2.) 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. It 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 wearisome to Paul, and described by ‘a thorn in the flesh,’ 2 Cor. xii. 7; which, if a learned man think right, is compared, by a metaphor, to (3.) 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, slays 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. (4.) 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 9. This was a created angel, else he durst not sure have brought a ‘railing accusation;’ but in that he strove, and railingly accused, it shews he wanted not a daring boldness to second his commission and power. 4. Fourthly, It will be also requisite to lay open the advantages he hath in the management of all this power, which are great; as, (1.) First, The multitude of devils. That there are many is not denied, upon the evidence of seven cast out of Mary Magdalene, and the legion which were settled in one poor man at once. It may be we may not credit the devil’s own account of his strength so much as to believe that their number was exactly answerable to a Roman legion, which, if some speak right, was 6666; yet there being so plain an allusion to a Roman legion, and the Scripture in the recital favouring it so far as to consent to a truth in that part of the story, we can do no less than conclude that the number of devils in that person was a very great number, and so great, that the similitude of legion was proper to express it by. Besides, if the Scripture had been silent in this particular, our reason would have clearly drawn that conclusion from such premises as these, that he is the ‘god’ of the world, and rules in the ‘children of disobedience;’ for whatsoever we conceive of his power, we cannot think him omnipotent or omnipresent, these being the incommunicable attributes of the great Creator of all things, in which no creature can share with God. Being then assured that he is the tempter of all men, and that he cannot be in all places at once, we must needs apprehend the devils to be many, as is signified by that expression, ‘the devil and his angels.’ (2.) Secondly, He hath also an advantage for the executing of his designs, from that order, which from the fore-mentioned grounds we must be forced to conceive to be among devils. I know the bold determination of the order of angels by Dionysius is justly rejected, not only by IrenÆus and Augustine,83 but also by the generality of protestants, who upon that and other grounds of like presumption do reject that author as not being the true Dionysius the Areopagite. Neither do some of our protestant authors, as Chamier and others, admit the government of angels to be monarchical, which supposition the papists would gladly make use of, as a foundation whereon to establish the universal headship of the pope, being a thing which (3.) Thirdly, The advantage of place among armies is reckoned much. Satan seems to have something this way as an advantage of ground, in that he is styled spiritual wickedness in high places.90 What advantage high places may be to devils and spirits we cannot further imagine, than that they, being thus above us and about us in the air, see and know our ways and actions, and so receive information from thence for their malicious proceedings against us. (4.) Fourthly, But his greatest advantage is from his knowledge, which I shall a little explain in the following chapter. CHAPTER IV.That Satan hath a great measure of knowledge, proved by comparing him with the knowledge of Adam in innocency, and by his titles.—Of his knowledge, natural, experimental, and accessory.—Of his knowledge of our thoughts.—How far he doth not know them, and how far he doth, and by what means.—Of his knowledge of things future, and by what ways he doth conjecture them.—The advantages in point of temptation that he hath by his knowledge. In the discovery of Satan’s knowledge, I shall first give evidence and demonstration thereof. To which purpose— 1. Let us consider the knowledge of Adam in innocency; which being found to be great, it will thence be easily concluded that Satan’s knowledge is far greater. Two notable discoveries we have of Adam’s knowledge, the one was his giving of names to all creatures, Gen. ii. 29, which was not only a sign of his dominion, but also a notable instance of his understanding, seeing the names were given according to the natures of creatures; whereof Bochartus gives a large account, as the camel is called ???, because it is apt to repay injuries; the kite, ???, from its sharpness of sight; the pelican is named ???, from its usual vomiting, &c.91 The consideration of the aptness of names imposed on creatures made Plato acknowledge that it was a work above ordinary capacity. The other discovery of Adam’s knowledge was his knowledge of the original of Eve at first sight, Gen ii. 23; he said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,’ &c. This instance Luther made use of to prove the knowledge that we shall have of one another in heaven; which shews that Adam’s understanding was then incomparably more sublime than ours, and of a nearer approach to the knowledge which a state of glory shall furnish us withal. To this might be added a further proof from the rare inventions and excellent discoveries that some raised wits have made, of things that have laid deep and far out of the view of common capacities. As also those views, sights, and more than ordinary comprehensions which the souls of men have had, when they were a little freed from the clog and hindrance of the body, either in ecstasies or by approaching death; all which put together will go far to prove a very great measure of knowledge in Satan, if we take along with us this foundation, that in all the works of God we find the highest knowledge in the noblest being. Living creatures are more excellent than stones or trees, and therefore hath God furnished them with senses, and hath also distinguished them by higher degrees of sagacity, according to their excellency above others. Thus the ape, fox, elephant, &c., have such abilities above the worm and fly, &c., that some have questioned whether they had not some lower degrees of reason: yet as these are below man, so doth his reason far excel their greatest quickness of sense. Angels are a higher being than man—for he made him ‘lower than the angels’—and consequently their knowledge is proportionably greater. So that if Adam in innocency 2. Secondly, But the proof is more full and direct, from those appellations and titles which the Scripture and the experience of men have put upon him; his usual name, ?a???, quasi ?a???, which—in Mat. viii. 31; Mark v. 12; Rev. xvi. 14—we translate devil, properly signifieth one that is wise, knowing, or skilful. And however the wickedness of that spirit hath so far dishonoured this word, that it is always, as some think, used to signify ‘unclean spirits;’ yet still it carries an evidence of their nature in reference to knowledge, that though they are wicked creatures, yet are they wise and knowing. It is said, Gen. iii. 1, ‘The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field;’ which, though it be true literally of the serpent, whose wisdom and subtlety naturalists have abundantly noted, yet that expression hath an eye upon Satan, who was the principal agent; and the serpent there is called subtle, as influenced by Satan, whose instrument he was:92 which we may believe, not only upon the credit of Austin and Lyra, but more securely upon the testimony of other scriptures, which name him ‘the old serpent,’ Rev. xvii. 9, and impute all that craft in the management of that temptation to a particular remarkable skill and subtlety of Satan. ‘The serpent beguiled Eve through subtlety,’ 2 Cor. xi. 3; and, if Beza conjecture right, the appellation ?a??? do so fitly suit this history of the tree of knowledge, that the title of knowledge seems to be given him for this singular masterpiece of craft. 3. Thirdly, That Satan hath great knowledge is by these arguments discovered; but if further inquiry be made into the nature of his knowledge, we shall be nearer to a satisfaction in this particular; and here we may observe a threefold knowledge in Satan. (1.) First, A natural knowledge; which the schoolmen have distinguished into these two: [1.] An evening knowledge, which he received from things created, whereby the species of things were impressed upon his mind, and so received, being a knowledge À posteriori, from the effects of things; which, because it is more dark and obscure than that which ariseth from the causes of things, they termed evening knowledge. [2.] The other is morning knowledge, which is a knowledge of things in the power and wisdom of God, in which he saw the ideas and images of all things. This knowledge they prefer before the other, as lines and figures are better known from mathematical instruction than by their bare tract as written in dust.93 (2.) Secondly, Besides this he hath an experimental knowledge; which is the improvement of that natural stock, by further acquisitions and attainments. And indeed Satan had very high advantages for an increase of knowledge. He had a great stock to begin withal; he hath had fit and suitable objects to work upon in his contemplations, so that by comparing things with things in so large a field of variety, and that for so many years together, it cannot be but that he (3.) Thirdly, To both the former may be added another knowledge, which because it is from another spring, I may call it an accessory knowledge, consisting in occasional discoveries made to him, either when God is pleased to make known so much of his mind and purpose, as he employs him, as an instrument or servant, to execute, as he did in the case of Job and Ahab; or when he informs himself from the Scriptures, or catcheth hints of knowledge from the church and the ordinances thereof. If good angels have an increase of knowledge this way, as is evident they have, ‘for to principalities and powers in heavenly places is made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,’ Eph. iii. 10, we cannot but imagine that Satan hath some addition of knowledge from such discoveries. While we are upon this point, it will be necessary to offer some satisfaction to two questions. Quest. 1. First, Whether Satan knows our thoughts? Ans. 1. It is undoubtedly God’s prerogative to know the thoughts. He knows them intuitively, which is beyond the power of any creature: Jer. xvii. 9, ‘Who can know it?’ This is a challenge to all, implying the utter impossibility of it to any but to God alone; ‘I the Lord search the heart;’ he knows the most inward thoughts: Rev. ii. 23, ‘I am he which searcheth the reins, and the heart;’ he knows them evidently and certainly: Heb. iv. 13, ‘All things are naked and open95 before him with whom we have to do.’ Those secret thinkings and intendments which are hid from others, and which we ourselves cannot distinctly read, because of their secret intricacy or confusedness, yet the very inside and outside of them are uncased, cut up and anatomised by his eye; in all which expressions God is careful to reserve this to himself, ‘I the Lord do it,’ or ‘I am he, &c., that searcheth;’ and signifies that none else is able to do the like. Ans. 2. 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 replies 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, 1. 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 2. 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, (1.) First, That he knows the objects in our fancy or phantasms, 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.97 (2.) Secondly, It 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. (3.) Thirdly, He knows the secret workings of our passions, as love, desire, fear, &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 bystanders. (4.) Fourthly, Some go further, as Scotus, (referente Barthol. Sybilla,)98 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 meantime I proceed, 3. 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, (1.) 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. (2.) Secondly, He by study and observation knows our temper and inclination, and consequently what temptations do most suit them, and how we do ordinarily entertain them. (3.) Thirdly, He knows this the more, by taking notice of our prayers, our complainings and mournings over our defects and miscarriages. (4.) Fourthly, He is quick and ready to take notice of any exterior 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. (5.) Fifthly, Being so quick-sighted, he can understand those particular signs which would escape the observation of the wisest men.99 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. (6.) 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. It is now time to speak to the other question, which is, Quest. 2. Whether and how far Satan knows things to come? Ans. To this I shall return answer in these two conclusions: Conclusion 1. First, There is a way of knowing future things, which is beyond the knowledge of devils, and proper only to God, Isa. xli. 23; there God puts the competition betwixt himself and idols, about the truth of a deity, 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. Conclusion 2. Secondly, Yet Satan hath such advantages for the knowledge of future things, and such means and helps for a discovery of them, that his conjectures have often come to pass. [1.] First, He knows the causes of things, which are secret to us. Upon which he seems to foretell many things strange to us; as a physician may foretell the effects, workings, and issues of a disease, as seeing them in the causes, which would pass for little less than prophecy among the vulgar. Thus an astrologer foretells eclipses, which would be taken for a divine excellency, where the knowledge of the ground of these foretellings had not taken away the wonder. [2.] Secondly, Many things are made known to him by immediate divine revelation. We know not the intercourse betwixt God and Satan in the matter of Job. Satan having obtained his commission to [3.] Thirdly, He hath a deep insight in affairs of kingdoms and states, and so might, from his experience and observation, easily conjecture mutations and alterations. A politician may do much this way. For aught we know, Satan’s prophecy, in the likeness of Samuel, to Saul, of his ruin, and the translation of his kingdom to David, might be no more than a conjectural conclusion, from his comparing the order of the present providence with former threatenings and promises. [4.] Fourthly, He hath a greater understanding of Scripture prophecies, than ordinarily the wisest men have, so that at second hand he might be able to foretell what shall come to pass; whilst we that do not so clearly see into Scripture predictions, may not be able to find out the matter. Hence by oracle he foretold Alexander of his success, which he knew from the prophecy of Daniel, chap. xi., long before.100 [5.] Fifthly, He hath advantage from his nature as a spirit, by which he overhears and sees the private actings, complottings, and preparations of men in reference to certain undertakings, and can easily, by his agents, communicate such counsels or resolves in remote countries and kingdoms, which must pass for real predictions, if the event answer accordingly. [6.] Sixthly, He can foretell, and with probability of success, such things as he by temptation is about to put men upon, especially seeing he can choose such instruments as he, from experience, knows are not likely to fail his enterprise. [7.] Seventhly, To this may be added, the way and manner by which he expresseth himself, either in doubtful or enigmatical terms, or in general expressions, which may be applied to the event, what way soever it should happen. Of these, authors have observed many instances, which were superfluous to enumerate.101 Satan’s knowledge being thus explained, it is easy to imagine what an advantage it is to him in the management of his temptations. For, First, He by this means knows our tempers and dispositions. Secondly, And what is most likely to prevail with us. Thirdly, How inclinable we are upon any motion made to us, and what hope to gain upon us. Fourthly, He knows fit times, seasons, and advantages against us. Fifthly, He knows how to pursue suggestions, and can choose strong reasons to urge us withal. Sixthly, He knows how to delude our senses, to disturb our passions. Seventhly, He knows all the ways and arts of affrightments, vexations, disquietments, hindrances, and disturbances of duty. [8.] Eighthly, He by this means is furnished with skill for his public cheats and delusions in the world; how to amuse, astonish, and amaze men into errors and mistakes, which he hath always endeavoured with very great success in the world, as we shall see hereafter. CHAPTER V.Instances of Satan’s power.—Of witchcraft, what it is.—Satan’s power argued from thence.—Of wonders.—Whether Satan can do miracles?—An account of what he can do that way.—His power argued from apparitions and possessions. I shall add, in the fifth place, some particular instances of his power, in which I shall insist upon these four—witchcraft, wonders, apparitions, and possessions. 1. First, Witchcraft affords a very great discovery of Satan’s power. But because some give such interpretations of witchcraft, as, if true, would wholly take away the force of this instance, I shall first endeavour to establish a true notion of witchcraft; and secondly, from thence argue Satan’s power. (1.) First, Though the being of witches is not directly denied, because the authority of Scripture—Exod. xxii. 18; Deut. xviii. 10, &c.—hath determined beyond controversy that such there are; yet some will allow no other interpretation of the word,102 than a skill and practice in the art of poisoning, because the Septuagint doth interpret the Hebrew word, ?????, by f??a???, veneficam; which apprehension they strengthen by the authority of Josephus,103 who giveth this account of the law, ‘Let none of the children of Israel use any deadly poison, or any drug wherewith he may do hurt,’ &c. It is easy to observe that this conceit ariseth from a great inobservancy of the reason of the application of these words, f??a??? and veneficus, to witchcraft, in Greek and Latin authors. Witchcrafts were supposed to be helped forward by the strength of several herbs, and these, by incantations and other ceremonies at their gathering, imagined to attain a poisonous and evil quality or efficacy for such effects as were intended to be produced by them, as appears by Ovid, Virgil, and other authors.104 Hence was it that the word f??a??? became applicable to any sort of witchcraft. To this may be added, that such persons were resorted to for help against diseases, [vide Leigh. Crit. Sac. in Voc.] As also that they used unguents [1.] That this word is ranked with others, as being of the same alliance, which will carry the apprehensions of any considerate man to effects done by the help of Satan, in an unusual way, as Deut. xviii. 10, ‘There shall not be found among you any that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire’—this is not the consuming of their children to Moloch, but by way of lustration, a mock baptism, a piece of witchcraft, to preserve from violent death—‘or that useth divination, an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,’ &c.105 The very neighbourhood of the witch will tell us that this witch must be a diviner, divination being the general term, comprehending the seven particulars following.106 It would be a harsh straining to put in the poisoner, in the sense of our opposites, among the diviners. Yet the second argument is more cogent, which is this: That among those whom Pharaoh called together to encounter with Moses, Exod. vii. 11, we find witches or sorcerers expressed by the same word, ??????, which is used in Exod. xxii. and Deut. xviii. What can more certainly fix the interpretation of the word than this place, where the end of Pharaoh’s calling them together was, not to poison Moses and Aaron, but by enchantment to outvie them in point of miracles? which will shew that witchcraft is not poisoning, but the doing of strange acts by the aid of Satan. Neither was this the act of one man—who might possibly, together with that present age, be under a mistake concerning witches, though it be a thing not to be supposed—but long after him, Nebuchadnezzar, in Dan. ii. 4, being astonished with his dreams, calls for the sorcerers or witches, and magicians, to give him the interpretation; which had been a matter very improper for them, if their skill had lain only in mixing poisons.107 When we have thus silenced this imagination, we have yet another to encounter with, and that is, Of those that think these witches, of which the fore-cited texts do speak, are but mere cheats, and by some tricks of delusion and legerdemain pretend they can do things which indeed they cannot do at all; and yet finding death threatened to such, which, in a business of mere juggling, would seem too great a severity, they have framed this answer to it,108 that the death is threatened, not for juggling, but for their presumptuous and blasphemous undertaking to do things that belong to a divine power, and for taking In answer to this apprehension, I shall not much insist upon these reasons, which yet are sufficiently weak—the latter accusing God’s laws of unreasonable severity, and the former accusing them of unnecessary redundancy, seeing enough in other places is provided against blasphemers110—but shall offer a consideration or two, which I judge will be of force to rectify the mistake. [1.] First, Though it cannot be denied but that a great many cheats there have been in all ages, by which men have endeavoured to raise the repute and esteem of their own skill and excellencies, or for other base ends; yet, from hence to conclude that all these things that have been done under the name of witchcraft were such, must be an unsufferable piece of insolence; not only denying that credit which all sober men owe to history, to the constant belief of all ages, to the faithfulness and wisdom of judges, jurors, witnesses, laws, and sanctions, but also dangerously overthrowing all our senses; so that at this rate we may well question whether we really eat, drink, move, sleep, and anything else that we do. This reason is urged by grave and serious men.111 [2.] Secondly, It cannot be imagined that such things are merely delusory, where the voluntary confessions of so many have accused themselves and others, not of thinking or juggling, but of really acting and doing such things—with such circumstances as have particularised time, place, thing, and manner. [3.] Thirdly, The real effects done by the power of witchcraft shew it not to be delusion. Such are the transportation of persons many miles from their habitations, and leaving them there; their telling things done in remote places; raising of storms and tempests; vomiting of pins, needles, stones, cloth, leather, and such like; and these, some of them, attested by sober and intelligent persons who were eye-witnesses. Large accounts you have of these in Bodinus, Sprengerius, and several others that have borrowed these relations from them.112 The notion of poisonings, or delusory jugglings, being below what the Scripture intends to set forth as witchcraft, it is evident that witchcraft is a power of doing great things by the aid of the devil; by which our way is open to improve this instance, to demonstrate— [1.] First, It is acknowledged that a great part of those things that are done in this matter, as concurrent with, or helpful toward the promoting of such acts, are Satan’s proper works—as the troubling of the air, raising storms, apparitions, various shapes and appearances, transportations from place to place, and a great many more things of wonder and amazement, all which exceed human power.113 [2.] Secondly, Many things of wonder done by such persons, to which some suppose the secret powers of herbs or things contribute their natural aids or concurrence, are evidences of Satan’s deep knowledge of and insight into natural causes. Of this nature is that ointment with which witches are said to besmear themselves in order to their transportation; the power and efficacy whereof is by some imagined to consist in this, that it keeps the body tenantable and in a fit condition to receive the soul by re-entry after such separations, as, by all circumstances are concluded, have been really made in pursuit of those visionary perambulations and transactions; which things, if they be so—as they are not improbable—witches have them from Satan’s discovery, and they are to be ascribed to his power.114 [3.] Thirdly, Those actions that are most properly the witch’s own actions, and in which the power of hurting doth, as some suppose, reside, are notwithstanding either awakened or influenced by Satan; so though we grant, what some would have, that the power of hurting is a natural power, and a venomous magnetism of the witch, and that her imagination, by her eye darts those malignant beams which produce real hurts upon men—after the manner of the imagination’s force upon a child in the womb, which hath, as by daily experience and history is confirmed, produced marks, impressions, deformities, and wounds—and that Satan doth but cheat the witch into a belief of his aid in that matter; that with a greater advantage he may make use of her power, without which he could do nothing; yet even this speaks his ability, in that at least he doth awaken and raise up that magical force which otherwise would be asleep, and so puts the sword into their hand. Yet some attribute far more to him—to wit, the infusion of a poisonous ferment—by that action of sucking the witch in some part of the body—by which not only her imagination might be heightened by poisonous streams breathed in, which might infect blood and spirits with a noxious tincture.115 2. The second grand instance of his power I shall produce from those actions of wonder and astonishment which he sometime performs, which indeed have been so great that they have occasioned that question— Whether Satan can do miracles? To this we answer— (1.) That God alone can work miracles, a miracle being a real act, done visibly, and above the power of nature. Such works some have ranked into three heads:116 [1.] Such as created power cannot produce; as to make the sun stand still or go backward. [2.] Such as are in themselves produceable by nature,117 but not in such an order; as to make the dead to live, and those that were born blind to see, which is strongly argued, John ix. 32, to be above human power; and, John x. 21, to be above the power of devils. [3.] Such as are the usual works of nature, yet produced, above the principles and helps of nature, as to cure a disease by a word or touch. Things that are thus truly and properly miraculous are peculiarly works of God; neither can it be imagined, that since he hath been pleased to justify his commands, ways, and messages, by such mighty acts—2 Cor. xii. 12; Heb. ii. 4; John x. 38—and also hath been put to it, to justify himself and his sole supreme being and godhead from false competitors—Ps. lxxxvi. 10, and lxxii. 18—by his miraculous works, it cannot be imagined, I say, that he would permit any created being, much less Satan, to do such things. (2.) Secondly, Though Satan cannot do things miraculous, yet he can do things wonderful and amazing—mira non miracula. And in this point lies the danger of delusion, as Christ foretells: Mat. xxiv. 24, ‘False Christs shall arise, and shew great signs and wonders.’ In 2 Thes. ii. 4, the apostle tells us, ‘The coming of antichrist shall be with all power, and signs, and wonders’—that is, as some interpret,118 with the power of signs and wonders; which, however they be lying, both in reference to the design they drive at—which is to propagate errors—and also in their own nature, being truly such, in respect of their form, false as miracles, being indeed no such matter, but juggling cheats; yet, notwithstanding, there is no small cunning and working of Satan in them, insomuch that the uncautious and injudicious are ‘deceived by those wonders that he hath power to do,’ Rev. xiii. 13. In this matter, though we are not able to give a particular account of these underground actions, yet thus much we may say— [1.] First, That in many cases his great acts, that pass for miracles, are no more but deceptions of sense. Naturalists have shewn several feats and knacks of this kind. Jo. Bap. Porta119 hath a great many ways of such deceptions, by lamps and the several compositions of oils, by which not only the colours of things are changed, but men appear without heads, or with the heads of horses, &c. The like deceptions are wrought by glasses of various figures and shapes. If art can do such things, much more can Satan. [2.] Secondly, He can mightily work upon the fancy and imagination; by which means men are abused into a belief of things that are not; as in dreams, the fancy presents things which are really imagined to be done and said, whenas they are visions of the night, which vanish [3.] Thirdly, There are wonderful secrets in nature, which if cunningly used and applied to fit things and times, must needs amaze vulgar heads; and though some of these are known to philosophers and scholars, yet are there many secret things locked from the wisest men, whose powers and natures because they know not, they may also be deluded by them. Augustine122 reckons up many instances, as the loadstone, the stone pyrites, selenites, the fountain of Epirus, that can kindle a torch, and many more; and determines that many strange things are done by the application of these natural powers, either by the wit of man or diabolical art. To this purpose he gives an account of an unextinguishable lamp, ?????? ?sest??, in a temple of Venus, which allured men to worship there, as to an unquestionable deity, when in truth the thing was but an ingenious composition from the stone asbeston, of which Pliny makes mention, that being kindled, it will not be quenched with water.123 Of this nature were those lamps found in several vaults accompanying the ashes of the dead, reserved there in urns, both in England and elsewhere.124 If men by such helps find such easy ways to delude men, what exactness of workmanship and seeming wonders may be expected from Satan upon such advantages! [4.] Fourthly, Many of his wonders may challenge a higher rise. Satan knows the secret ways of nature’s operations, and the ways of accelerating or retarding those works; so that he cannot only do what nature can do, by a due application of active to passive principles,125 and the help of those seminal powers that are in things, but he may be supposed to perform them in a quicker and more expeditious man [5.] Fifthly, The secret way of Satan’s movings and actings is no small matter in these affairs. How many things do common jugglers by the swift motions of their hands, that seem incredible! Thus they make the bystanders believe they change the substances, natures, and forms of things, when they only, by a speedy conveyance, take these things away, and put others in their room. They that shall consider Satan as a spirit, subtle, imperceptible, quick of motion, &c., will easily believe him to be more accomplished for such conveyances than all the men in the world. Having now seen the way of his wonders, let us next consider the advantage he hath by such actions. If we look upon Simon Magus, Acts viii. 10, 11, we find that he by these ways had a general influence upon the people, ‘To him they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest;’ and that his actions were reckoned no less than miraculous, as done by ‘the mighty power of God.’ If we go from hence to the magicians of Pharaoh, Exod. vii. 11, it is said, ‘They did so with their enchantments,’ which, howsoever the matter was, prevailed so with Pharaoh and the court, that they saw no difference betwixt the wonders done by Moses and them, save that, it may be, they thought Moses the more skilful magician. But besides this, if we consider what they did, it will argue much for his power, if we can imagine, as some do,126 that they turned their rods into real serpents; the power is evident: and there is this that favours that opinion; it is said they could not make lice, which seems to imply they really did the other things, and it had been as easy to delude the senses in the matter of lice as in the rods, if it had been no more than a delusion. Neither are some awanting to give a reason of such a power—viz., serpents, lice, &c., being the offspring of putrefaction; by his dexterous application of the seminal principles of things, he might quickly produce them. If we go lower, and take up with the opinion of those that think that they were neither mere delusions, nor yet true serpents; but real bodies like serpents, though without life, this will argue a very great power.127 Or if we suppose, as some do,128 that Satan took away the rods, and secretly conveyed serpents in their stead, or—which is the lowest apprehension we can have—that Pharaoh’s sight was deceived, the matter is still far from being contemptible, forasmuch as we see the spectators were not able to discern the cheat. 3. Thirdly, The next instance produceable for evidencing his power is that of apparitions. It cannot be denied but that the fancy of melancholic or timorous persons is fruitful enough to create a thousand bugbears; and also that the villainy of some persons hath been designedly employed to deceive people with mock apparitions—of which abundance of instances might be given from the knavery of the papists, discovered to the world beyond contradiction; but all this will not conclude that there are no real appearances of spirit or devils. Such sad effects in all ages there have been of these things, that most men will take it for an undeniable truth. Instead of others, let the apparition at Endor to Saul come to examination. Some indeed129 will have us believe that all that was but a subtle cheat managed by that old woman; and that neither Samuel nor the devil did appear, but that the woman, in another room by herself, or with a confederate, gave the answer to Saul. But whosoever shall read that story, and shall consider Saul’s bowing and discourse, and the answers given, must acknowledge that Saul thought at least he saw and spake with Samuel; and indeed the whole transaction is such, that such a cheat cannot be supposed. Satisfying ourselves, then, that there was an apparition, we must next inquire whether it was true Samuel or Satan. It cannot be denied but that many judge it was true Samuel, but their reasons are weak.130 [1.] That proof from Ecclesiasticus xlvi. 23, is not canonical with us. [2.] That he was called Samuel, is of no force. Scripture often gives names of things according to their appearances. [3.] That things future were foretold, was but from conjecture; in which Satan yet, all things considered, had good ground for his guessing. [4.] That the name Jehovah is oft repeated, signifies nothing. The devil is not so scarce of words. ‘Jesus I know,’ saith that spirit in the Acts. [5.] That he reproved sin in Saul, is no more than what the devil doth daily to afflicted consciences in order to despair. I must go then with those that believe this was Satan in Samuel’s likeness. [1.] Because God refused to answer Saul by prophets or Urim; and it is too harsh to think he would send Samuel from the dead, and so answer him in an extraordinary way. [2.] This, if it had been Samuel, would have given too much countenance to witchcraft, contrary to that check to Ahaziah, 2 Kings i. 3, ‘Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to inquire of Baal-zebub?’ [3.] The prediction of Saul’s death, though true for substance, yet failed as to the exactness of time, for the battle was not fought the next day. [4.] The acknowledgment of the witch’s power, ‘Why hast thou disquieted me?’ shews it could not be true Samuel, the power of witchcraft not being able to reach souls at rest with God. [5.] That expression of ‘gods ascending out of the earth,’ is evidently suspicious. The reality of apparitions being thus established, Satan’s power will be easily evinced from it. To say nothing of the bodies in which spirits appear, the haunting of places and persons, and the other effects done by such appearances, speak abundantly for it. 4. Fourthly, The last instance is of possessions, the reality of which can no way be questioned, because the New Testament affords so much for it. I shall only note some things as concerning this head. As, (1.) First, The multitudes of men possessed. Scarce was there (2.) Secondly, The multitudes of spirits in one person is a consideration not to be passed by. (3.) Thirdly, These persons were often strongly acted, sometime with fierceness and rage, Mat. viii. 28; some living without clothes and without house, Luke viii. 27; some by an incredible strength breaking chains and fetters, Mark v. 3. (4.) Fourthly, Sometime the possessed were sadly vexed and afflicted, cast into the fire and water, &c. (5.) Fifthly, Some were strangely influenced. We read of one, Acts xvi. 16, that had a spirit of divination, and told many things to come, which we may suppose frequently came to pass, else she could have brought ‘no gain to her master by soothsaying.’ Another we hear of whose possession was with a lunacy, and had fits at certain times and seasons. The possessed person with whom Mr Rothwell discoursed, within the memory of some living, could play the critic in the Hebrew language.131 (6.) Sixthly, In some the possession was so strong, and so firmly seated, that ordinary means and ways could not dispossess them: ‘This kind comes not out but by prayer and fasting,’ Mat. xvii. 21; which shews that all possession was not of one kind and manner, nor alike liable to ejection. (7.) Seventhly, To all these may be added obsessions: where the devil afflicts the bodies of men, disquiets them, haunts them, or strikes in with their melancholy temper, and so annoys by hideous and black representations. Thus was Saul vexed by ‘an evil spirit from the Lord,’ which as most conceive was the devil working in his melancholy humour. That the devil should take possession of the bodies of men, and thus act, drive, trouble, and distress them, so distort, distend, and rack their members; so seat himself in their tongues and minds that a man cannot command his own faculties and powers, but seems to be rather changed into the nature of a devil than to retain anything of a man, this shews a power in him to be trembled at. Satan’s power being thus explained and proved, I shall next speak something of his cruelty. CHAPTER VI.Of Satan’s cruelty.—Instances thereof in his dealing with wounded spirits, in ordinary temptations of the wicked and godly, in persecutions, cruelties in worship.—His cruel handling of his slaves. He that shall consider his malice and power, must unavoidably conclude him to be cruel. Malice is always so where it hath the advantage of a proportionable strength and opportunity for the effecting of its hateful contrivances. It banisheth all pity and commiseration, 1. First, From his desperate pursuits of advantage upon those whose spirits are wounded. The anguish of a distressed conscience is unspeakably great, insomuch that many are, as Heman, Ps. lxxxviii. 15, ‘even distracted, while they suffer the terrors of the Almighty.’ These, though they look round about them for help, and invite all that pass by to pity them, ‘because the hand of the Lord hath touched them,’ [Job xix. 21,] yet Satan laughs at their calamity, and mocks at them under their fears, and doth all he can to augment the flame. He suggests dreadful thoughts of an incensed majesty, begets terrible apprehensions of infinite wrath and damnation, he aggravates all their sins to make them seem unpardonable. Every action he calls a sin, and every sin he represents as a wilful forsaking of God, and every deliberate transgression he tells them is ‘the sin against the Holy Ghost.’ He baffles them in their prayers and services, and then accuseth their duties for intolerable profanations of God’s name; and if they be at last affrighted from them, he then clamours that they are ‘forsaken of God’ because they have forsaken him. He, as a right Baal-zebub,132 rakes in their wounds, as flies are ever sucking where there is a sore. Their outcries and lamentations are such music to him, that he gives them no rest; and with such triumph doth he tread upon those that thus lie in the dust, that he makes them sometimes accuse themselves for that which they never did, and in derision he insults over them in their greatest perplexities, with this, ‘Where is now thy God?’ [Ps. xlii. 3,] and ‘Who shall deliver thee out of my hand?’ This were enough to evidence him altogether void of compassion. But, 2. Secondly, He shews no less cruelty in his usage of those that are his slaves. The service that he exacts of those that are his most willing servants, is no less than the highest cruelty; and not only [1.] in regard of the misery and destruction which he makes them work out for themselves, which is far greater than where men are forced by the most brutish tyrants to buy their own poison or to cut their own throats, because this is unspeakably less than the endless miseries of eternal torments; but [2.] also in regard of the very slavery and drudging toil of the service which he exacts from them. He is not pleased that they sin, but the vilest iniquities most contrary to God and most abominable to man, as the highest violations of the laws of nature and reason, are the things which he will put them upon, where there are no restraints in his way. He drave the heathens, as Paul testifies, Rom. i., to affections so vile and loathsome, that in their way of sinning they seemed to act rather like brutes than men, their minds becoming so injudicious that they lost all sense of what was fit and comely. Neither [3.] doth this satisfy his cruelty, that the worst of abominations be practised, but he urgeth them to the highest desperateness in the manner of performance, and so draws them out to the front of the battle, that they might contemn and outdare God to 3. Thirdly, There is also a cruelty seen in his incessant provokings and force upon the children of God, while he urgeth his loathed temptations upon them against their will. When I consider Paul’s outcry in this case, Rom. vii. 15, 19, ‘That which I do, I allow not; the evil which I would not, that do I,’ &c., my thoughts represent him to me, like those Christians that were tortured in the trough, where water was poured by a continued stream upon their mouths, till the cloth that lay upon their lips was forced down their throats; or like those that had stinking puddle-water by a tunnel poured into their stomachs, till they were ready to burst; and surely he apprehended himself to be under very cruel dealing by Satan when he cried out, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?’ If we seriously consider the mind and endeavours of those children of God that are striving against sin, and have cast it off as the most loathsome abominable thing, when Satan urgeth them to evil with his incessant importunities, it is as if they were forced to eat their own excrements, or to swallow down again their own vomit; for the devil doth but as it were cram these temptations down their throats against their will. 4. Fourthly, If we cast our eye upon the persecutions of all ages, we shall have thence enough to charge Satan withal in point of cruelty, for he who is styled ‘a murderer from the beginning,’ [John viii. 44,] set them all on foot. It is he that hath filled the world with blood and fury, and hath in all ages, in one place or other, made it a very shambles and slaughter-house of men. [1.] Can we reckon how often Satan hath been at this work? That is impossible. His most public and general attempts of this kind are noted by histories of all ages. The persecutions of Pharaoh against Israel, and of the prevailing adversaries of Israel and Judah against both or either of them, 5. Fifthly, We have yet a more visible instance of his cruelty in his bloody and tyrannical superstitions. Look but into the rites and ways of his worship among the heathen in all ages and places, and you will find nothing but vile and ridiculous fooleries, or insolent and despiteful usages. In the former he hath driven men to villainous debaucheries, in the latter to execrable cruelties. Of the latter I shall only speak; though in the former, by debasing man to be his laughing-stock, he is cruel in his scorn and mockery. Here I might mention his tyrannical ceremonies of the lower order, such as touch not life; such were their tedious pilgrimages, as in Zeilan; their painful whippings, as of the youth of LacedÆmon at the altar of Diana; of their priests, and that with knotted cords upon their shoulders, as at Mexico and New Spain; their harsh usages in tedious fastings, stinking drenches, hard lyings upon stones, eating earth, strict forbearances of wine and commerce, their torturings and manglings of their bodies by terrible lancings and cuttings for the effusion of blood, 1 Kings xviii.; their dismembering themselves, plucking out their eyes, mangling their flesh, to cast in the idol’s face, sacrificing their own blood, as did the priests of Bellona and Dea Syria.134 So did the kings of New Spain at their election, as Montezuma the Second, who sacrificed by drawing blood from his ears and the calves of his legs.135 In Narsinga and Bisnagar they go their pilgrimages with knives sticking on their arms and legs till the wounded flesh festered. Some cast themselves under the wheels of the waggon on which their idol is drawn in procession.136 Yet are all these but small matters in comparison of the bloody outrages committed upon mankind in the abominable custom of sacrificing men to him. Of this many authors give us a large account.137 The LacedÆmonians to avert the plague sacrifice a virgin; the Athenians, by the advice of Apollo’s oracle, sent yearly to King Minos seven males and so many females to be sacrificed to appease the wrath of the god for their killing of Androgeus. The Carthaginians, being vanquished by These Scripture evidences, if we were backward to credit what histories say of this matter, may assure us of the temper and disposition [1.] First, These inhuman, or rather, as Purchas calls them, over-human sacrifices, were practised in most nations. Not only the Indians, Parthians, Mexicans, &c., but Æthiopians, Syrians, Carthaginians, Grecians, Romans, Germans, French, and Britons used them. [2.] Secondly, These cruelties were acted not only upon slaves and captives, but upon children, whose age and innocency might have commanded the compassions of their parents for better usage. [3.] Thirdly, These sacrificings were used upon several occasions, as at the sprouting of their corn, at the inauguration, coronation, and deaths of their kings and noblemen, in time of war, dearth, pestilence, or any danger; in a word, as the priests in Florida and Mexico used to say, whenever the devil is hungry or thirsty, that is, as oft as he hath a mind. [4.] Fourthly, In some places the devil brought them to set times for those offerings; some were monthly, some annual. The Latins sacrificed the tenth child; the annual drowning of a boy and a girl in the lake of Mexico; the casting of two yearly from the Pons Milvius142 at Rome into Tiber, are but petty instances in comparison of the rest. [5.] Fifthly, We cannot pass by the vast number of men offered up at one time. So thirsty is Satan of human blood, that from one or two, he hath raised the number incredibly high. In some sacrifices five, in some ten, in some a hundred, in some a thousand have been offered up. It was the argument which Montezuma, the last Emperor of Mexico, used to Cortez to prove his strength and greatness by, that he sacrificed yearly twenty thousand men, and some years fifty thousand. Some have reserved their captives for that end, others have made war only to furnish themselves with men for such occasions. [6.] Sixthly, There are also several circumstances of these diabolical outrages that may give a further discovery of his cruelty, as that these miserable creatures thus led to be butchered have been loaden with all the cursings, revilings, and contumacious reproaches as a necessary concomitant of their violent deaths. Thus were those used who were forced to be the public ?a???ata, or expiation, for the removal of common calamities. Death also was not enough, except it had been most tormenting in the manner of it, as of those that suffered by the embracements of Moloch. The joy and feastings of such sacrificings, which were in themselves spectacles of mourning and sorrow, were cruelties to the dead, and a barbarous enforcement against the laws of nature in the living. But the dashing of the smoking heart in the idol’s face, and the pulling off the skins from the massacred bodies, that men and women might dance in them, were yet more cruel ceremonies. And lastly, In those that have been prepared for those solemnities, by delicious fare, gorgeous ornaments, and the highest reverence or honours, as was the manner of several countries; yet was this no other than Satan’s insulting over their miseries, of which we can say no otherwise, than that his tenderest mercies are cruelties. [7.] Seventhly, I may cast into the account, that in some places [8.] Eighthly, It is wonderful to think that the devil should, by strange pretexts of reason, have smoothed over these barbarous inhumanities, so that they have become plausible things in the judgments of those miserable wretches. In piacular sacrifices they believed that except the life of a man were given for the life of men, that the gods could not be pacified.144 In other sacrifices, both eucharistical and for atonement, they retained this principle, ‘that those things are to be offered to the gods that are most pleasing and acceptable to us; and that the offering of a calf or a pigeon was not suitable to such an end.’ This maxim they further improved by the addition of another of the same kind, ‘that if it were fit to offer a human sacrifice, it must also be innocent, and consequently little children are the fittest for such a purpose.’ And some have also conjectured that the devil hath not been awanting to improve the example of Abraham sacrificing his son, or the law in Lev. xxvii. 28, or the prophecies concerning the death of Christ, as the great sacrifice of atonement, to justify and warrant his hellish cruelty.145 In some cases cruelty hath arisen from the very principles of reverence and love which children have to parents, and friends to friends: as in Dragoian, when any are sick, they send to their oracle to know whether the parties shall live or die; if it be answered they shall die, then their friends strangle them and eat them; and all this from a kind of religious respect to their kindred, to preserve, as they imagine, their flesh from putrefaction, and their souls from torment.146 The like they do at Javamajor, when their friends grow old and cannot work, only they eat not their own friends, but carry them to the market and sell them to those that do eat them.147 [9.] Lastly, Let us call to mind how long the devil domineered in the world at this rate of cruelty. When the world grew to a freer use of reason and greater exercise of civility, they found out ways of mitigation, and changed these barbarous rites into more tolerable sacrifices; as in Laodicea, they substituted a hart to be sacrificed instead of a virgin; in Cyprus, an ox was put instead of a man; in Egypt, waxen images instead of men. Images of straw at Rome were cast into Tiber in the place of living men; and the terrible burnings of Moloch, which was not peculiar only to the nations near to Canaan, but was in use also at Carthage, and found in the American islands by the Spaniards; the like brazen images were also found in Lodovicus Vives his time, by the French, in an island called by them Carolina. How impossible is it to cast up the total sum of so many large items! When these terrible customs have had so general a practice in most nations, upon so many occasions, upon such seeming plausible principles; when such great numbers have been destroyed at once, and these usages have been so long practised in the world, and with such difficulty restrained, what vast multitudes of men must, we imagine, have been consumed by Satan’s execrable cruelty! 6. Sixthly, There remains one instance more of the devil’s cruelty, which is yet different from the former, which I may call his personal cruelties; because they are acted by his own immediate hand upon certain of his vassals, without the help or interposure of men, who, in most of the fore-mentioned cases, have been as instruments acted by him. Here I might take notice of his fury to those that are possessed. Some have been as it were racked and tortured in their bodies, and their limbs and members so distorted, that it hath been not only matter of pity to the beholders to see them so abused, but also of admiration150 to consider how such abuses should be consistent with their lives, and that such rendings and tearings have not quite separated the soul from the body. In the Gospels we read of some such ‘cast into the fire, and into the water,’ [Mat. xvii. 15;] others, conversing ‘with tombs and sepulchres,’ in the cold nights ‘without clothes;’ and all of them spoken of as creatures sadly tormented, and ‘miserably vexed.’ The histories of later days tell us of some that vomited crooked pins, pieces of leather, coals, cloth, and such like; of others snatched out of their houses, and tired even to fainting, and waste of their spirits, as Domina Rossa, mentioned by Bodin, with a great many more to this same purpose. We may take a view of his dealing with witches, who, though he seem to gratify them in their transportations from place to place, and in their feastings with music and dancings, are but cruelly handled by him very often. The very work they are put upon—which is the destruction of children, men, women, cattle, and the fruits of the earth—is but a base employment; but the account he takes of them, of the full performance of their enterprizes, and the cruel beatings they have of him, when they cannot accomplish any of their revenges, is no less than a severe cruelty. He gives them no rest unless they be doing hurt; and when they cannot do it to the persons designed, they are forced to do the same mischief to their own children or relations, that they may gratify their tyrannical master. Bodin relates the story of But leaving these, let us further inquire into Satan’s carriage toward those that in America and other dark and barbarous places know no other god, and give their devoutest worship to him. To those he is not so kind as might be expected; but his constant way is to terrify and torment them, insomuch that some know no other reason of their worship but that he may not hurt them. And since the English colonies went into these parts, these Americans have learned to make this distinction between the Englishman’s God and theirs, that theirs is an evil god, and the other a good God; though that distinction in other places is in the general far more ancient, where they acknowledge two gods, one good, the other bad; and the worse the god is, the saddest, most mournful rites of sacrificing were used, as in caves, and in the night—the manner of the worship fitly expressing the nature of the god they served.151 Our countrymen have noted of the natives of New England, that the devil appeared to them in ugly shapes, and in hideous places, as in swamps and woods. But these are only the prologue to the tragedy itself, for they only serve to impress upon the minds of his worshippers what cruelties and severities they are to expect from him; and accordingly he often lets them feel his hand, and makes them know that those dark and dismal preludiums are not for nothing. For sometimes he appears to the worshippers, tormenting and afflicting their bodies, tearing the flesh from the bones, and carrying them away quick152 with him; sometimes six have been carried away at once, none ever knowing what became of them.153 By such bloody acts as these he kept the poor Americans in fear and slavery; so that as bad a master as he is, they durst not but pay their homage and service to him. All these particulars being put together, will shew we do the devil no wrong when we call him cruel. CHAPTER VII.Of Satan’s diligence in several instances.—The question about the being of spirits and devils handled.—The Sadducees’ opinion discovered.—The reality of spirits proved. The last particular observed in the text is his diligence. This adds force and strength to his malice, power, and cruelty, and shews they are not idle, dead, or inactive principles in him, which, if they could be so supposed, would render him less hurtful and formidable. This I shall despatch in a few instances, noting to this purpose, 1. First, His pains he takes in hunting his prey, and pursuing his designs. It is nothing for him to ‘compass sea and land,’ to labour to the utmost in his employment; it is all his business to tempt and destroy, and his whole heart is in it. Hence intermission or cessation cannot be expected. He faints not by his labour; and his labour, with the success of it, is all the delight we can suppose him to have. So that, being pushed and hurried by the hellish satisfactions of deadly revenge, and having a strength answerable to those violent impulses, we must suppose him to undergo, with a kind of pleasing willingness, all imaginable toil and labour. If we look into ourselves, we find it true, to our no small trouble and hazard. Doth he at any time easily desist when we give him a repulse? Doth he not come again and again, with often and impudently-repeated importunities? Doth he not carry a design in his mind for months and years against us? And when the motion is not feasible, yet he forgets it not, but after a long interruption begins again where he left; which shews that he is big with his projects, and his mind hath no rest. He stretcheth out his nets all the day long. We may say of him, that he riseth up early, and sitteth up late at his work, and is content to labour in the very fire, so that he might but either disturb a child of God or gain a proselyte. 2. Secondly, Diligence is not only discovered in laboriousness, but also in a peculiar readiness to espy and to close in with fit occasions, which may in probability answer the end we drive at. In this is Satan admirably diligent; no occasion shall slip, or through inadvertency escape him. No sooner are opportunities before us, but we may perceive him suggesting to us, ‘Do this, satisfy that lust, take that gain, please yourselves with that revenge.’ No sooner obtains he a commission against a child of God, but presently he is upon his back, as he dealt with Job; he lost no time, but goes out immediately from the presence of the Lord and falls upon him. Besides what he doth upon solemn and extraordinary occasions, these that are common and ordinary are so carefully improved by him, that everything we hear or see is ready to become our snare, and Satan will assay to tempt us by them, though they lie something out of the way of our inclination, and be not so likely to prevail with us. 3. Thirdly, It is also a discovery of his diligence, that he never fails to pursue every advantage which he gets against us to the utmost. If the occasion and motion thereupon incline us, so that if we are per 4. Fourthly, The various ways which he takes, shews also his diligence. If one plot take not, he is immediately upon another. He confines not himself to one design nor to one method; but if he find one temptation doth not relish, he prepares another more suitable. If covetousness doth not please us, then he urgeth to profuseness; if terrors do not affright us to despair, then he abuseth mercies to make us careless and presuming. If we are not content to be openly wicked, then he endeavours to make us secretly hypocritical or formal. Sometime he urgeth men to be profane; if that hit not, then to be erroneous. If he cannot work by one tool, then he takes another; and if anything in his way disgust, he will not urge it over-hard, but straight takes another course. Such is his diligence, that we may say of him, as it was said of Paul upon a better ground, he will ‘become all things to all men, that he may gain some,’ [1 Cor. ix. 19.] 5. Fifthly, Diligence will most shew itself when things are at the greatest hazard, or when the hopes of success are ready to bring forth. In this point of diligence our adversary is not wanting. If men are upon the point of error or sin, how industriously doth he labour to bring them wholly over, and to settle them in evil! One would think at such times he laid aside all other business, and only attended this. How frequent, incessant, and earnest are his persuasions and arguings with such! The like diligence he sheweth in obstructing, disturbing, and discouraging us when we are upon our greatest services or near our greatest mercies. What part of the day are we more wandering and vain in our thoughts, if we take not great care, than when we set about prayer? At other times we find some more ease and freedom in our imaginations, as if we could better rule or command them; but then, as if our thoughts were only confusion and disorder, we are not able to master them, and to keep the door of the heart so close but Let us cast in another instance to these, and that is, of those that are upon the point of conversion, ready to forsake sin for Christ. Oh, what pains then doth the devil take to keep them back! He visits them every moment with one hindrance or other. Sometimes they are tempted to former pleasures, sometime affrighted with present fears and future disappointments; sometime discouraged with reproaches, scorns, and afflictions that may attend their alteration; otherwhile obstructed by the persuasion or threatening of friends and old acquaintances; but this they are sure of, that they have never more temptations, and those more sensibly troubling, than at that time—a clear evidence that Satan is as diligent as malicious. I should now go on to display the subtlety of this powerful, malicious, cruel, and diligent adversary. There is but one thing in the way, which hitherto I have taken for granted, and that is, Whether indeed there be any such things as devils and wicked spirits, or that these are but theological engines contrived by persons that carry a goodwill to morality and the public peace, to keep men under an awful fear of such miscarriages as may render them otherwise a shame to themselves and a trouble to others. It must be acknowledged a transgression of the rules of method to offer a proof of that now, which, if at all, ought This opinion of theirs, could we certainly find it out, would make much for the confirmation of the truth in question, seeing, whatever it was, it is positively condemned in Scripture, and the contrary asserted to be true. Many, and that upon considerable grounds, do think that they do not deny absolutely that there were any angels at all, but that, acknowledging that something there was which was called an angel, yet they imagining it to be far otherwise than what it is indeed, were accused justly for denying such a kind of angels as the Scripture had everywhere asserted and described. For considering that they owned a God, and, at least, the five books of Moses, if not all the other books of the Old Testament—as Scaliger and others judge, not without great probability, for neither doth the Scripture—nor Josephus mention any such thing of the prophets—it is unimaginable that they would altogether deny that there was angel or spirit at all.157 They read of angels appearing to Lot, to Abraham, and met with it so frequently, that, believing Scriptures to be true, they could not believe angels to be an absolute fiction; for one fable or falsity in Scripture, which so highly asserts itself to be an unerring oracle of the true God, must of necessity have destroyed the credit of all, and rendered them as justly suspected to be true in nothing, when apparently false or fabulous in anything. Again, If we call to mind what apprehensions they had of God, which all consent they did acknowledge, we might more easily imagine what apprehensions they had of angels, for in regard that Moses made mention of God’s face and back-parts, Exod. xxxiii., and that frequently hands and other parts of man’s body were attributed to him, they concluded God to be corporeal; and seeing the best of creatures which God created cannot be supposed to have a more noble being than was that of their Creator, and, at the utmost, to be made according to the pattern of his own image and likeness, they might upon this bottom easily fix a denial of incorporeal spirits, and by consequence that the soul of man was mortal, and therefore that there could be no resurrection; so that the nature of angels being described under the notion of spiritual substances, they are judged to deny any such thing, supposing that to be incorporeal was as much as not to be at all; and yet it were unreasonable to deny that they had not some interpretation for those passages of Scripture that mentioned angels, which in their apprehensions might be some salvo to the truth of those historical writings, which they acknowledged; but what that was we are next to conjecture. And indeed Josephus, by a little hint of their opinion, seems to tell us that they did not so much deny the being of the soul, as the permanency of it; and so, by consequence, they might not so much deny absolutely the existence of spirits, as their natural being and continuance.158 Something there was that was called by the name of angel—that they could not but own—and that this must be a real and not an imaginary thing, is evident from the real effect, and things done by them; yet observing their appearances to have been upon some special occasion, and their Their opinion, then, of angels seems to be one of these two: either that they were corporeal substances created upon a special emergency, but not permanent beings; or that they were but images and impressions supernaturally formed in the fancy by the special operation of God, to signify his mind and commands to men, upon which they might fitly be called God’s messengers and ministers. I put in this last into the conjecture, because I find it mentioned by Calvin,159 as the opinion of the Sadducees; but both are noted by Diodate,160 on Acts xxiii. 8, as with equal probability belonging to them. His words are, ‘They did not believe they were subsisting and immortal creatures, but transitory apparitions, or some divine actions and motions to produce some special and notable effect.’ Others also have been lately hammering out the same apprehension concerning angels, and profess themselves delivered from it with great difficulty, differing only in this from some of the heathens before mentioned, that what those ascribed to the puissance of the stars, natural powers, or to weakness of senses and corrupt humours, they, by the advantage of the general notions of Scripture, have ascribed to God, putting forth his power upon the minds and fancies of men, or working by the humours of the body.161 Upon this foundation they will easilier make bold with devils, to deny, if not their being, yet their temptations, imagining that we may possibly do him wrong in fathering upon him these solicitations and provocations to sin, which we by experience find to be working and acting upon our minds, thinking that our own fancies or imaginations may be the only devils that vex us; and this they more readily hearken to, from the nature of dreams and visions which happen to men in an ordinary natural way, where our fancies play with us as if they were distinct from us; as also from this consideration, that the lunatic, epileptic, and frenzical persons are in Scripture called demoniacs, as Mat. xvii. 15, with Luke ix., where the person is called lunatic, and yet said to be taken and vexed by a spirit. So also John x. 20, he hath a devil, and is mad. But these reasonings can do little with an intelligent, considering man, to make him deny what he so really feels, and is so often forewarned of in Scripture; for suppose these were called demoniacs by the vulgar, it doth not compel us to believe they were so. Men are apt to ascribe natural diseases to Satan, and Christ did not concern himself to cure their misapprehensions, while he cured their diseases.162 This some suggest as a reason that may answer many cases, though indeed it cannot answer that of Mat. xvii., because, ver. 18, it is said expressly that ‘Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him,’ which would not have been proper to have been spoken on the account of Christ by the evangelist, to express the cure As to that reason which some fetch from dreams, it is rather a dream than a reason against the being of devils, seeing the effects of these infernal spirits are far otherwise than the utmost of what can be imagined to be acted upon the stage of imaginations; so that the real and permanent being of devils may be easily proved:— [1.] First, From those real acts noted to be done by angels and devils. The angels that appeared to Lot were seen and entertained in the family—seen and observed by the Sodomites. Those that appeared to Abraham were more than fancied appearances, in that they ‘ate and drank’ with him. The devil conveyed Christ from place to place. This could not be a fancy or imagination. Their begging leave to go ‘into the swine’ shews them real existences. [2.] Secondly, From the real effects done by them. We have undoubted testimonies of men really hurt and tormented by Satan. Of some really snatched away, and carried a great distance from their dwellings. Of others possessed, in whom the devil really speaks audible voices and strange languages, gives notice of things past, and sometime of things to come. The oracles of the heathen, which however they were for the most part false or delusory, yet, in that they were responses from images and idols, were more than phantasms. [3.] Thirdly, From what the Scripture speaks everywhere of them. Of their malice and cruelty; that devils are murderers from the beginning; their daily waiting how they may devour; their arts, wiles, and stratagems; their names and appellations, when styled principalities, powers, spiritual wickednesses, the prince of the power of the air, and a great many more to that purpose, shew that, without [4.] Fourthly, Seeing also the Scripture condemned the opinion of the Sadducees, the contrary of that opinion must be true. And expressly in Acts xii. 9, that which was done by an angel is opposed to what might be visional or imaginary. [5.] Fifthly, The reality of devils and their malignity hath been the opinion of heathens. For there is nothing more common among them than the belief of inferior deities, which they called d????e? or da????a, that is, devils; and notwithstanding that they supposed these to be mediators to the supreme gods, yet they learned to distinguish them into good and evil.164 The Platonists thought that the souls of tyrants after death became lemures and larvÆ, that is, hurtful devils; and at last the name devil became of so bad a signification, that to say, ‘thou hast a devil,’ was reproach and not praise; but what these groped at in the dark, the Scripture doth fully determine, using the word devil only for a malignant spirit. CHAPTER VIII.Of Satan’s cunning and craft in the general.—Several demonstrations proving Satan to be deceitful; and of the reasons why he makes use of his cunning. We have taken a survey of our adversary’s strength, and this will open the way to a clearer discovery of his subtlety and craft, which is his great engine by which he works all his tyranny and cruelty in the world, to the ruin or prejudice of the souls of men; of which the apostle in 2 Cor. ii. 11 speaks, as a thing known by the common experience of all discerning persons. His way is to overreach and take advantages, and for this end he useth devices and stratagems, which is a thing so ordinary with him, that none can be ignorant of the truth of it: ‘We are not ignorant of his devices.’ This, before I come to the particulars, I shall prove and illustrate in the general, by the gradual procedure of these few following considerations:— First, All the malice, power, cruelty, and diligence of which we have spoken, with all the advantages of multitude, order, and knowledge, by which these cruel qualifications are heightened—these are but his furniture and accomplishment which fit him for his subtle contrivances of delusion, and make him able to deceive; neither hath he any rise of his power and knowledge but in reference to deceit. In 2. Secondly, The subtlety that the Scriptures do attribute to sin, or to the heart, is mostly and chiefly intended to reflect upon Satan, as the author and contriver of these deceits. In Heb. iii. 13 there is mention of the ‘deceitfulness of sin,’ but it is evident that something else besides sin is intended, to which deceitfulness must be properly ascribed; for sin being, as most conclude, formally a privation, or if we should grant it a positive being, as some contend, yet seeing the highest notion we can arrive at this way, excluding but the figment of Flacius Illyricus, who seems to make original sin indistinct from the very essence of the soul, is but to call it an act.165 Deceitfulness cannot be properly attributed to it, but with reference to him who orders that act in a way of deceitfulness and delusion; which ultimately will bring it to Satan’s door. If here the deceitfulness of sin be devolved upon the subject, then it runs into the same sense with Jer. xvii. 9, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things.’ But why is the deceitfulness fixed upon the heart? The ground of that we have in the next words; it is deceitful, because it is wicked, ‘desperately wicked.’ But who then inflames and stirs up the heart to this wickedness? Is it not Satan? Who then is the proper author of deceit but he? It is true, indeed, that our hearts are proper fountains of sin, and so may be accused possibly in some cases where Satan cannot be justly blamed; yet if we consider deceitfulness as a companion of every sin, though our hearts be to be blamed for the sin, Satan will be found guilty of the deceitfulness. It may be said a man complies with those things which are intended for his delusion, and so improperly by his negligence may fall under blame of self-deception; but it is unimaginable that he can properly and formally intend to deceive himself. Deceit then, not 3. Thirdly, All acts of sin, some way or other, come through Satan’s fingers. I do not say that all sin is Satan’s proper offspring, for we have a cursed stock of our own; and it may be said of us, as elsewhere of Satan, sometime we sin out of our own inclination and disposition; yet in every sin, whether it arise from us or the world, Satan blows the sparks and manageth all. As David said to the woman of Tekoah, ‘Is not the hand of Joab with thee in all this?’ [2 Sam. xiv. 19;] so may we say, Is not the hand of Satan with thee in every sin thou committest? This is so eminently true, that the Scripture indifferently ascribes the sin sometimes to us, sometimes to the devil. It was Peter’s sin to tempt Christ to decline suffering, yet Christ repelling it with this rebuke, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ Mat. xvi. 23, doth plainly accuse both Peter and Satan. It is the personal sin of a man to be angry, yet in such acts he ‘gives place to the devil;’ both man and Satan concur in it, Eph. iv. 26. Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh,’ 2 Cor. xii. 7, whatever sin it was, he calls ‘Satan’s messenger.’ He that submits not to God, doth in that comply with Satan; as, on the contrary, he that doth submit himself to God, doth resist the devil, James iv. 7. Neither doth that expression of the apostle, James i. 14, ‘Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust,’ &c., give any contradiction to this. It is not the apostle’s design to exclude Satan, but to include man as justly culpable, notwithstanding Satan’s temptations; and that which he asserts is this, that there is sin and a temptation truly prevalent when there is the least consent of our lust or desire, and that it is that brings the blame upon us; so that his purpose is not to excuse Satan, or to deny him to have a hand in drawing or tempting us on to sin, but to shew that it is our own act that makes the sin to become ours. 4. Fourthly, Such is the constitution of the soul of man, that its sinning cannot be conceived without some deception or delusion;166 for, granting that the soul of man is made up of desires, and that the soul were nothing else but, as it were, one willing or lusting power diversified by several objects; and that this power or these faculties are depraved by the fall, and corrupted; and that man in every action doth consult with his desires; and that they have so great an influence upon him, that they are the law of the members, and give out their commands accordingly for obedience; yet still these three things are firm and unshaken principles:— [1.] First, That desires cannot be set upon any object but as it is [2.] Secondly, The will doth not resolvedly embrace any object till the light of the understanding hath made out, some way or other, the goodness or conveniency of the object.167 [3.] Thirdly, There is no man that hath not a competent light for discovery of the goodness or evil of an object presented. Unregenerate men have, (1.) The light of nature. (2.) Some have an additional light from Scripture discovery. (3.) Some have yet more from common convictions, which beget sensible stirrings and awful impressions upon them. (4.) To those God sometime adds corrections and punishments, which are of force to make that light burn more clear, and to stir up care and caution in men for the due entertainment of these notices that God affords them. Regenerate men have all this light, and besides that, they have, (1.) The light of their own experience, of the vileness and odiousness of sin; they know what an evil and bitter thing it is. (2.) They have a more full discovery of God, which will make them abhor themselves in dust and ashes, Job xlii. 6; Isa. vi. 5. (3.) They have the advantage of a new heart, the law of the spirit of life, making them free from the law of sin and death. (4.) They have also the help and assistance of the Spirit, in its motions, suggestions, and teachings. (5.) They fortify themselves with the strongest resolutions not to give way to sin. Notwithstanding all these, it is too true that both regenerate and unregenerate men do sin; the reason whereof cannot be given from any other account than what we have asserted—to wit, they are some way or other deluded or deceived; some curtain is drawn betwixt them and the light; some fallacy or other is put upon the understanding some way or other; the will is bribed or biassed; there is treachery in the case, for it is unimaginable that a man in any act of sin should offer a plain, open, and direct violence to his own nature and faculties; so that the whole business is here, evil is presented under the notion of good; and to make this out, some considerations of pleasure or profit do bribe the will, and give false light to the understanding. Hence is it, that in every act of sin, men, by compliance with Satan, are said to deceive, or to put tricks and fallacies upon themselves.168 5. Fifthly, All kinds of subtlety are in Scripture directly charged upon Satan, and in the highest degrees. Sometime under the notion of logical fallacies; those sleights which disputants, in arguing, put upon their antagonists. Of this import is that expression, 2 Cor. ii. 11, ‘We are not ignorant of his devices,’ where the word in the original is borrowed from the sophistical reasonings of disputants.169 Sometime it is expressed in the similitude of political deceits; as the Scripture gives him the title of a prince, so doth it mark out his policies in the management of his kingdom, Rev. xii. 7, expressly calling them deceits, and comparing him to a dragon or serpent for his subtlety. Sometime he is represented as a warrior: Rev. xii. 17, 6. Sixthly, All this might be further proved by instances. What temptation can be named wherein Satan hath not acted as a serpent? Who can imagine the cunning that Satan used with David in the matter of Uriah? How easily he got him to the roof of the house in order to the object to be presented to him! How he directs his eye, wrought upon his passions, suggested the thought, contrived the conveniences! What art must there be to bring a darkness into David’s mind, a forgetfulness of God’s law, a fearlessness of his displeasure, and a neglect of his own danger! Surely it was no small matter that could blind David’s eye, or besot his heart to so great a wickedness. But, above all instances, let us take into consideration that of Eve, in the first transgression, wherein many things may be observed; as (1.) That he chose the serpent for his instrument, wherein, though we are ignorant of the depth of his design, yet that he had a design in it of subtlety, in reference to what he was about to suggest, is plain from the text, ‘Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field.’ It had been needless and impertinent to have noted the serpent’s subtlety as Satan’s agent, if he had not chosen it upon that score, as advantageous for his purpose. (2.) He set upon the weaker vessel, the woman; and yet such, as once gained, he knew was likely enough to prevail with the man, which fell out accordingly. (3.) Some think he took the advantage of her husband’s absence, which is probable, if we consider that it is unlikely that Adam should not interpose in the discourse if he had been present. (4.) He took the advantage of the object. It appears she was within sight of the tree, ‘She saw that it was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes;’ thus he made the object plead for him. (5.) He falls not directly upon what he intended, lest that should have scared her off, but fetcheth a compass and enters upon the business by an inquiry of the affair, as if he intended not hurt. (6.) He so inquires of the matter— If any inquire why so mighty and potent a prince useth rather the fox’s skin than the lion’s paw, these reasons may satisfy:— [1.] First, There is a necessity upon him so to do.171 He must use his craft, because he cannot compel; he must have God’s leave before he can overcome; he cannot winnow Peter before he sue out a commission, nor deceive Ahab till he get a licence; neither can he prevail against us without our own consent. The Scripture indeed useth some words that signify a force in tempting, as that he ‘put it into the heart of Judas,’ ‘filled the heart of Ananias,’ ‘provoked David,’ ‘rules in the hearts of the children of disobedience,’ and ‘leads them captive at his will,’ &c.; yet all these and the like expressions intend no more than this, that he useth forcible importunities, frames strong delusions, and joins sometime his power to his temptations; as sometime fowlers shew themselves to the birds they intend to ensnare, that so they may be affrighted into an awe and amazement, to give a better opportunity to spread their nets over them. [2.] Secondly, If he could compel, yet his way of craft and subtlety is generally the most prevalent and successful. Force stirs up an opposition; it usually alarms to caution and avoidance, and frights to an utter averseness in any design; so that where force should gain its thousands, subtlety will gain its ten thousands. [3.] Thirdly, His strength is not useless to him. For besides that it enables him to deceive with higher advantage than otherwise he could do, as hath been said, he hath times and occasions to shew his strength and cruelty, when his cunning hath prevailed so far as to give him possession. What was said of Pope Boniface, that he CHAPTER IX.Of Satan’s deceits in particular.—What temptation is.—Of tempting to sin.—His first general rule.—The consideration of our condition.—His second rule.—Of providing suitable temptations.—In what cases he tempts us to things unsuitable to our inclinations.—His third rule.—The cautious proposal of the temptation, and the several ways thereof.—His fourth rule is to entice.—The way thereof in the general, by bringing a darkness upon the mind through lust. Our next business is to inquire after these ways of deceit in particular; in which I shall first speak of such as are of more general and universal concernment—such are his temptations to sin, his deceits against duty, his cunning in promoting error, his attempts against the peace and comfort of the saints, &c.—and then I shall come to some ways of deceits that relate to cases more special. As an introduction to the first, I shall speak a word of temptation in the general. This in its general notion is a trial or experiment made of a thing. The word that signifies to tempt, comes from a word that signifies to pierce, or bore through,172 implying such a trial as goes to the very heart and inwards of a thing. In this sense it is attributed to God, who is said to have tempted Abraham, and to put our faith upon trial; and sometime to Satan, who is said to have tempted Christ, though he could not expect to prevail. But though God and Satan do make these trials, yet is there a vast difference betwixt them, and that not only in their intentions—the one designing only a discovery to men of what is in them, and that for most holy ends; the other intending ruin and destruction—but also in the way of their proceedings.173 God by providence presents objects and occasions; Satan doth not only do that, but further inclineth and positively persuadeth to evil. Hence is it that temptations are distinguished into trials merely, and seducements; suitable to that of Tertullian, [De Orat.] Diabolus tentat, Deus probat, The devil tempts, God only tries. We speak of temptation as it is from Satan, and so it is described to be a drawing or moving men to sin under colour of some reason.174 By which we may observe that, in every such temptation, there is the object to which the temptation tends, the endeavour of Satan to incline our hearts and draw on our consent, and the instrument by which is some pretence of reason; not that a real and solid reason can be given for sin, but that Satan offers some considerations to us to prevail with us, which, if they do, we take them to be reasons. This may a little help us to understand Satan’s method in tempting to sin, &c., of which I am first to speak. In temptations to sin, we may observe, Satan walks by four general rules:— 1. First, He considers and acquaints himself with the condition of every man, and for that end he studies man. God’s question concerning Job, ‘Hast thou considered my servant Job?’ Job i. 8, doth imply, not only his diligent inquiry into Job’s state—for the original expresseth it by Satan’s ‘putting his heart upon Job, or laying him to his heart’175—but that this is usual with Satan so to do; as if God had said, It is thy way to pry narrowly into every man: hast thou done this to Job? Hast thou considered him as thou usest to do? And indeed Satan owns this as his business and employment in his answer to God, ‘I come from going to and fro in the earth, from walking up and down in it.’ This cannot be properly said of him who is a spirit. Bodies go up and down, but not spirits; so that his meaning is, he had been at his work of inquiring and searching. And so Broughton translates it,176 from searching to and fro in the earth; as it is said of the eyes of God, that they ‘run to and fro,’ which intends his intelligence, search, and knowledge of things. It is such a going to and fro as that in Dan. xii. 4, which is plainly there expressed to be for the increase of knowledge. The matter of his inquiry or particulars of his study are such as these: (1.) Man’s state; he considers and guesseth whether a man be regenerate or unregenerate. (2.) The degree of his state: if unregenerate, how near or far off he is the kingdom of God; if regenerate, he takes the compass of his knowledge, of his gifts, of his graces. (3.) He inquires into his constitution and temper; he observes what disposition he is of. (4.) His place, calling, and relation; his trade, employment, enjoyments, riches, or wants. (5.) His sex. (6.) His age, &c. The way by which he knows these things is plain and easy. Most of these things are open to common observation; and what is intricate or dark, that he beats out, either by comparing us with ourselves, and considering a long tract of actions and carriage; or by comparing us with others, whose ways he had formerly noted and observed. The end of this search is to give him light and instruction in point of advantage; hence he knows where to raise his batteries, and how to level his shot against us. This Christ plainly discovers to be the design of all his study, John xiv. 30, where he tells his disciples he expected yet another onset from Satan, and that near at hand; ‘for the prince of the world’ was then upon his motion, he was a-coming; but withal, he tells them of his security against his assaults, in that there was ‘nothing in Christ’ of advantage in any of these forementioned ways to foot a temptation upon. It appears, then, that he looks for such advantages, and that without these he hath little expectancy of prevailing. 2. Secondly, Satan having acquainted himself with our condition, makes it his next care to provide suitable temptations, and to strike in the right vein; for he loves to have his work easy and feasible, he loves not [to] go against the stream. Thus he considered Judas as a covetous person, and accordingly provided a temptation of gain for Obj. To this may be objected, That experience tells us Satan doth not always walk in this road, nor confine himself to this rule: sometime he tempts to things which are cross to our tempers and inclinations, &c. Ans. It is true he doth so; but yet the general rule is not prejudiced by this exception, especially if we consider, [1.] First, That Satan being still under the commands and restraint of the Almighty, he cannot always tempt what he would, but according to a superior order and command. Of this nature I suppose was that temptation of which Paul complained so much; ‘he kept down his body,’ 1 Cor. ix. 27, upon this very design, that he might have it in subjection, and yet is he buffeted with a temptation which expected an advantage usually from the temper and frames of our bodies—for so much, I suppose, that phrase, ‘a thorn in the flesh,’ will unavoidably imply—though it still leave us at uncertainties what the temptation was in particular. Here Satan tempts at a disadvantage, and contrary to this rule; but then we must know that he was not the master of his own game—God expressly ordering such a temptation as was disagreeing with the apostle’s disposition, that it might the less prevail or hazard him, and yet be more available to keep him low, ‘lest he should be exalted above measure,’ which was God’s design in the matter. [2.] Secondly, Sometime our temper alters; as the tempers of our bodies in a sickness may in a fit be so changed that they may desire at that time what they could not endure at another. A special occasion or concurrence of circumstances may alter for the time our constitution, and so an unusual temptation may at that time agree with this design. [3.] Thirdly, Sometime by one temptation Satan intends but to lay the foundation of another; and then of purpose he begins with a strange suggestion, either to keep us at the gaze while he covertly doth something else against us, or to move us to a contrary extreme by an over-hasty rashness. [4.] Fourthly, Sometime he tempts when his main design is only 3. Thirdly, Satan’s next work is the proposal of the temptation. In the two former he provided materials and laid the trains; in this he gives fire, by propounding his design; and this also he doth with caution these several ways:— [1.] First, He makes the object speak for him, and in many he is scarce put to any further trouble: the object before them speaks Satan’s mind, and gains their consent immediately; yet is there no small cunning used in fitting the object and occasion, and bringing things about to answer the very nick of time which he takes to be advantageous for him. [2.] Secondly, Sometime he appoints a proxy to speak for him; not that he is shamefaced in temptation, and not always at leisure for his own work, but this way he insinuates himself the more dangerously into our affections, and with less suspicion, using our friends, relations, or intimate acquaintance to intercede for a wicked design. He did not speak himself to Eve, but chose a serpent: he thought Eve would sooner prevail upon Adam than the serpent could. He tempted Job by the tongue of his wife, as if he had hoped that what so near a relation had counselled would easily be hearkened to. He tempted Christ to avoid suffering by Peter, under a pretence of highest love and care, ‘Master, spare thyself,’ [Mat. xvi. 23;] yet our Saviour forbears not to note Satan’s temptation closely twisted with Peter’s kindness. At this rate are we often tempted where we little suspect danger. [3.] Thirdly, If he finds the two first ways unhopeful or unsuitable, then he injects the motion, and so plainly speaks to us inwardly himself, ‘Do this act, take this advantage for pleasure or profit,’ &c. He thought it not enough to tempt Judas by the object of gain, but he brake his mind in direct terms, and ‘put it into his heart,’ John xiii. 2. He did the like to Ananias, whose heart he filled with a large motion for that lie, and backed it with many considerations of the necessity and expediency of it, Acts v. 3. There is no question to be made of this. Dr Goodwin gives clear proofs of it, and so do several others.177 When we consider that thoughts are sometime cast upon the minds of men which are above their knowledge, and that they say and do things sometime which are far beyond any of their accomplishments and parts, and yet in the nature of it wicked, we must be forced to run so high as to charge it upon Satan. Saul’s prophesying, 1 Sam. xviii. 10, was by the influence of the evil spirit; and this—as Junius, Tirinus, and others interpret178—must of necessity be understood of such a kind of action and speaking as the true prophets of the Lord usually expressed under the influences of the blessed Spirit; for from the likeness of the action in both must the name be borrowed. The experience that we have of inward disputings, the bandying of arguments and answers in several cases, is a proof of this beyond exception. Wounded consciences express an admirable dexterity in breaking all arguments urged for their peace and establishment; as also in framing [4.] Fourthly, The motion being made, if there be need, he doth irritate and stir up the mind to the embracement of it; and this he doth two ways:— First, By an earnestness of solicitation; when he urgeth the thing over and over, and gives no rest; when he joins with this an importunity of begging and entreating with the repeated motion; when he draws together and advantageously doth order a multitude of considerations to that end; and when in all this he doth hold down the mind and thoughts, and keep them upon a contemplation of the object, motions, and reasons. Thus he provoked David, 1 Chron. xxi. 1; and this kind of dealing occasioned the apostle to name his temptations and our resistance by the name of ‘wrestlings,’ in which usually there appears many endeavours and often repeated, to throw down the antagonist. Secondly, He doth irritate by a secret power and force that he hath upon our fancies and passions. When men are said to be carried and led by Satan, it implies, in the judgment of some,179 more than importunity; and that though he cannot force the spring of the will, yet he may considerably act upon it by pulling at the weights and plummets—that is, by moving and acting our imaginations and affections. 4. Fourthly, The motion being thus made, notwithstanding all his importunity, often finds resistance; in which case he comes to the practice of a fourth rule, which is to draw away and entice the heart to consent—as it is expressed, James i. 14, ‘Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away and enticed.’180 I shall avoid here the variety of the apprehensions which some declare at large about the meaning of the words, satisfying myself with this, that the apostle points at those artifices of Satan by which he draws and allures the will of man to a compliance with his motions, which when he effects in any degree, then may a man be said to be prevailed upon by the temptation. But then here is the wonder, how he should so far prevail against that reason and knowledge which God hath placed in man to fence and guard him against a thing so absurd and unreasonable as every sin is. The solution of this knot we have in 2 Cor. iv. 4, ‘The god of this world blinds the eyes of men,’ draws a curtain over this knowledge, and raiseth a darkness upon them: which darkness, though we cannot fully apprehend, yet that it is a very great and strange darkness may be discovered, (1.) Partly by considering the subject of it—man, a rational creature, in whom God hath placed a conscience, which is both a law, and witness, and judge. It cannot be supposed an easy matter to cloud or obliterate that law, to silence or pervert that witness, or to corrupt that judge; but it will rise higher in the wonder of it if we consider this in a godly man, one that sets God before him, and is wont to have his fear in his heart—such a man as David was, that in so plain a case, in so high a manner, so long a time, with so little sense and apprehension of the evil and danger, Satan should so quickly prevail, it is an astonishment: neither will it be less strange if What shall we say of these things? Here is darkness to be felt, Egyptian darkness. To explain the way of it fully is impossible for us; to do it in any tolerable way is difficult. To make some discovery herein I shall, (1.) Shew that the devil doth entice to sin by ‘stirring up our lust;’ (2.) That by the power and prevalency of our lust he brings on the blindness spoken of. CHAPTER X.That Satan enticeth by our lust.—The several ways by which he doth it.—Of the power and danger of the violence of affections. The way, then, by which he doth entice is by ‘stirring up our lust.’ By ‘lust’ I mean those general desirings of our minds after any unlawful object which are forbidden in the tenth commandment. Thus we read of ‘worldly lusts,’ of the ‘lusts of the flesh,’ of ‘lustings to envy,’ and, in a word, we read of ‘divers lusts,’ the whole attempt and striving of corrupt nature against the Spirit being set forth by this expression ‘of lusting against the Spirit,’ Titus ii. 12; 1 Peter ii. 18; James iv. 5; Titus iii. 3; Gal. v. 17. That Satan takes advantage of our own lusts, and so ploughs with our heifer, turning our own weapons against ourselves, is evident by the general vote of Scripture. The apostle James, chap. i. 14, tells us that every temptation prevails only by the power and working of our own lusts. Satan is the tempter, but our lusts are the advantages by which he draws and enticeth. The corrupt principle within us is called ‘flesh,’ but the way whereby it works, either in its own proper motion or as stirred up by the devil, is that of lust and affection; and therefore he that would stop that issue must look to mortify it in its affections and lusts, Gal. v. 24. We are further told by John, 1 Epist. ii. 16, that all those snares that are in the world are only 1. 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 all that 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 heightened and enlarged. We see those that have skill to work upon the humours 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 suitable. 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 humour he nauseates his usual delights, and grows sullen to things of frequent practice. It is likely Eve was not a stranger to the tree of knowledge before the temptation, but when the serpent suggests the goodness of the fruit, the fruit itself seems more beautiful and desirable, ‘good for food, and pleasant to the eyes,’ [Gen. ii. 9.] 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 sunbeams 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. 2. 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 therefore always suspicious.181 The soul hath no intelligence but by the senses. It is then a business of easy 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 3. Thirdly, There is no small enticement arising from the fitness and suitableness 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 humour, 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. It is Satan’s cunning to draw a man within the reach of an occasion. All the resolves of Alypius were not safeguard to him, when once he was brought within hearing and sight of the temptation. If he had stayed 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. ii. 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 precipitated183 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.184 The souls of men have their general discrasias and disaffections, as our bodies have, from a lingering distemperature of the blood and humours; 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. 4. 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 it is now to be considered. Our fancy is as a glass, which, with admirable celerity and quickness of This is no less a powerful instrument in Satan’s hand, than commonly and frequently made use of. Who amongst us doth not find and feel him dealing with us at this weapon? When he propounds an object to our lust, he doth not usually expose it naked under the hazard of dying out for want of prosecution, but presently calls in our fancy to his aid, and there raiseth a theatre, on which he acts before our minds the sin in all its ways and postures. If he put us upon revenge, or upon lusts of uncleanness, or covetousness, or ambition, we are sure, if we prevent it not, to have our imagination presenting these things to us as in lively pictures and resemblances, by which our desires may be inflamed and prepared for consent. 5. Fifthly, Sometime he shews his art in preparing and fitting our bodies to his designs, or in fitting temptations to our bodies and the inclinations thereof. The soul, though it be a noble being, yet is it limited by the body, and incommodated by the craziness and indispositions thereof, so that it can no more act strenuously or evenly to its principles in a disordered body, than it can rightly manage any member of it, in its natural motions, where the bones are disjointed. Hence sickness or other bodily weaknesses do alter the scene, and add another kind of bias to the soul than what it had before. This Satan takes notice of, and either follows his advantage of the present indisposition, or, if he hath some special design, endeavours to cast our body into such a disorder as may best suit his intention. Asa was more easily drawn to be overseen in peevishness and rash anger in his latter days, when his body grew diseased. Satan had his advantage against Solomon to draw him to idolatry when old age and uxoriousness had made him more ductile to the solicitations of his wives; ‘When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart,’ 1 Kings xi. 4. The devil, when he took upon him to foretell Job’s blaspheming God to his face, yet he attempted not the main design till he thought he had thoroughly prepared him for it, by the anguish and smart of a distempered body and mind; and though he failed in the great business of his boast, yet he left us an experiment in Job, that the likeliest 6. Sixthly, Evil company is a general preparatory to all kinds of temptation. He enticeth strongly that way. For, (1.) Evil society doth insensibly dead the heart, and quench the heat of the affections to the things of God. It hath a kind of bewitching power to eat out the fear of the Lord in our hearts, and to take off the weight and power of religious duty. It not only stops our tongues, and retards them in speaking of good things, but influenceth the very heart, and poisons it into a kind of deadness and lethargy, so that our thoughts run low, and we begin to think that severe watchfulness of thoughts and the guard of our minds to be a needless and melancholy self-imposition. (2.) Example hath a strange insinuating force to enstamp a resemblance, and to beget imitation. Joseph, living where his ears were frequently beaten with oaths, finds it an easy thing, upon a feigned occasion, to swear by the life of Pharaoh, [Gen. xlii. 15]. Evil company is sin’s nursery and Satan’s academy, by which he trains up those whose knowledge and hopeful beginnings had made them shy of his temptations; and if he can prevail with men to take such companions, he will with a little labour presently bring them to any iniquity. 7. Seventhly, But his highest project in order to the enticing of men, is to engage their affections to a height and passionateness. The Scripture doth distinguish betwixt the ?p????a? and pa??ata, the affections and lusts, Gal. v. 24; clearly implying that the way to procure fixed desires and actual lustings, is to procure those passionate workings of the mind. How powerful a part of his design this is, will appear from the nature of these passions: which are, [1.] First, Violent motions of the heart; the very wings and sails of the soul, and every passion, in its own working, doth express a violence.187 Choler is an earnest rage; voluptuousness is nothing less; fear is a desperate hurry of the soul; ‘love strong as death; jealousy cruel as the grave;’ each of them striving which should excel in violence, so that it is a question yet undetermined which passion may challenge the superiority. [2.] Secondly, Their fury is dangerous and unbridled; like so many wild horses let loose, hurrying their rider which way they please. They move not upon the command of reason, but oft prevent it in their sudden rise; neither do they take reason’s advice for their course proportionable to the occasion, for often their humour, rather than the matter of the provocation, gives them spurs; and when they have evaporated their heat, they cease, not as following the command of reason, but as weakened by their own violence. [3.] Thirdly, They are not easily conquered; not only because [4.] Fourthly, And consequently highly advantageous in Satan’s design and enticement when they are driven up to a fury and passionateness; for besides their inward rage, which the Scripture calls burning, 1 Cor. vii. 9; Rom. i. 27, by which men are pricked and goaded on without rest or ease, to ‘make provisions for the flesh,’ and to enjoy or act what their unbridled violence will lead 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,’ Eph. ii. 3, to go up to the highest degrees, and with an unsatiable greediness to yield themselves ‘servants of iniquity unto iniquity,’ Rom. vi. 19. CHAPTER XI.That lust darkens the mind.—Evidences thereof.—The five ways by which it doth blind men: First, By preventing the exercise of reason.—The ways of that prevention: (1.) Secrecy in tempting; Satan’s subtlety therein; (2.) Surprisal; (3.) Gradual entanglements. 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:— 1. First, From the unreasonableness and absurdity of some actions in men otherwise sufficiently rational. He that considers the acts of Alexander, in murdering 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 deification after his death;188 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 darkened his reason. The like may be said of his killing HephÆstion’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 boiling 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 seven thousand, without any distinction of nocent 2. 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. i. 29, they had so far a discovery of the danger, if they had not imprisoned that truth and light in unrighteousness, ver. 18, that they knew the ‘judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death,’ ver. 32. Yet, notwithstanding, the vanity of their imaginations, influenced by lust, darkened 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.’ 3. 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. It is a blindness to do any act against the rules of reason, but it is a far greater blindness for men to pride themselves in them. What have the issues of most wars been, but burning 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 tigers, lions, and savage brutes, than men of reason, are honoured with the great, triumphant names of virtue, manhood, courage, magnanimity, conquest, &c. If the power and humour of their lusts of vainglory and revenge had not quite muffled their understandings, these things would have been called by their proper names of murder, 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. 4. 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 publicly engage themselves in a contest of this nature, though truth can be but on the one side, yet both I. First, Our lusts blind us by preventing and intercepting the exercise of light and reason; and Satan in this case useth these deceits:— 1. First, He endeavours so to stir up our lust as yet to conceal his design. Secrecy 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 a half victory. By this means he procures a half content or inclination to sin, before we discover that we are under a temptation; for when the foundation of a temptation is laid unespied, 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 secrecy? I answer, he can do it these three ways:— (1.) 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 (2.) 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, employments, 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 enemy’s quarters! Satan in this acts like a fowler, who useth a stalking-horse, as if he were upon some other employment, when yet his design is the destruction of the bird. (3.) Thirdly, Another way of secrecy is his raising a crowd 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 soldiers, 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. 2. 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 the 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 ourselves and the aid of reason. This course Satan only takes with those whose passions are apt to be very stirring and boisterous, 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 struggling, to that which at other times they could not be drawn to by many reasons. 3. Thirdly, Consideration is prevented by gradual entanglements. 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 extremes, 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 recoiling. 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 CHAPTER 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. II. Secondly, The second way by which Satan blinds us through the power of lust is by perverting 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 pre-requisite to these things, that we ‘lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness,’ James i. 20,—in these terms, noting the loathsome defilement of our lusts,—that so we may ‘receive the engrafted 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 ye believe, which receive honour one of another?’ John v. 44. Their lusts of honour stood in their light, and perverted their reason. But because this may seem to some almost impossible, that lusts should turn our sun into darkness, I shall a little explain it. The understanding doth usually, if practice of sin have not put out its light, at the first faithfully represent to our mind the nature of good and evil in matters of temptation and duty; yet its power in this case is only directive and suasive to the will, not absolutely imperative. The will must follow the understanding’s dictate, but is not under any necessity of following its first advice; it is the ultimum dictamen, the last dictate, that it is engaged to follow. However the will, in the case last mentioned, be dependent upon the understanding, yet the understanding doth also, quoad exercitium, depend upon the will, and as to the act of consideration, is under its command; so that after the understanding hath faithfully represented the evil of a sin, the will can command it to another consideration, and force it to new thoughts and consultations about it; in which case the will doth prompt the understanding, tells it what verdict it would have it to bring in, and so doth really solicit and beg for a compliance. The understanding is ductile and capable of being bribed, and therefore suffers its right eye to be put out by the will, and as a false witness or a partial judge gives sentence as the will would have it; and thus, as one observes,190 the understanding and will are like Simeon and Levi, brethren in evil, mutually complying with and gratifying each other. The possibility of lusts perverting our understanding being discovered, the way and manner how lust doth thus corrupt it, is needful to be opened. Lust exerciseth this power under the management of Satan, directly and indirectly. 1. First, Our reason is directly perverted when it is so far wrought upon as to call that good, which is indeed plainly and apparently evil. So great a corruption is not common and ordinary, neither can the heart of man be easily drawn to go so palpably against clear light and evidence. It is therefore only in some cases and in some persons, either of weaker faculties or of extraordinary debauched principles, that Satan can work up lust to give so great a darkness. However, it is evident that Satan useth these deceits in this thing. (1.) First, He strives, where the matter will bear it, to put the name of virtue or good upon actions and things that are not so. This temptation doth most appear in those things that are of a doubtful and disputable nature, or in those actions which in their appearance or pretensions may seem to be virtuous. Whatever sin is capable of any paint or varnish, that he takes the advantage of. Saul’s sacrificing was a great iniquity, and yet the pretence of the general goodness of the action, being in itself commanded, and the supposed necessity of Saul’s doing it, because Samuel came not, were considerations upon which his understanding warranted to him that undertaking. Paul’s persecution, though a real gratification of his envious lustings, by his blinded understanding was judged duty. What more common than for worldly-mindedness and covetousness to be called a faithful and dutiful care for the provision of our families! Lukewarmness is often justified under the notion of moderation and prudence; and anything that can but pretend any kindred to or resemblance of good, our lusts presently prevail for an approbation and vindication of it. (2.) Secondly, Satan useth the advantage of extremes for the corrupting of our understandings. To this purpose he doth all he can to make such an extreme odious and displeasing, that so we may run upon the contrary as matter of duty. Many there are whose heads are so weak, that if they see the danger of one extreme, they never think themselves in safety till they fly to a contrary excess, and then they think the extreme they embrace needs no other justification than the apparent evil of what they have avoided. Satan knowing this, like the lapwing, makes the greatest noise when he is furthest from his nest, and in much seeming earnestness tempts us to something that is most cross to our temper or present inclination; or endeavours to render something so to us, not with any hopes to prevail with us there, but to make us run as far from it as we can into another snare, and (3.) Thirdly, He directly binds our understandings in sinful practices, by engaging us to corrupt opinions which lead to wicked or careless courses. Satan with great ease can put men upon sin, when once he hath prevailed with them to receive an error which directly leads to it. Corrupt principles do naturally corrupt practices, and both these may be observed to meet in those deluded ones whom the Scripture mentions, ‘that denied the only Lord God, and Jesus Christ, turning also the grace of God into lasciviousness,’ Jude 4; false teachers that brought in ‘damnable heresies,’ counted it ‘pleasure to riot,’ had ‘eyes full of adultery, and could not cease from sin,’ 2 Pet. ii. 1, 13, 14. With what confidence and security will sin be practised, when an opinion signs a warrant and pleads a justification for it! (4.) Fourthly, In actions whose goodness or badness is principally discoverable by the ends upon which they are undertaken, it is no great difficulty for Satan to impose upon men a belief that they act by ends and respects which do not indeed move them at all; and in this case men are so blinded that they do not, or will not know or acknowledge they do evil. The matter of the action being warrantable, and the end being out of the reach of common discovery, they readily believe the best of themselves; and looking more at the warrantableness of the nature of the act in the general than at their grounds and intentions, they think not that they do evil. This was a fault which Christ observed in the disciples when they called for ‘fire from heaven upon the Samaritans,’ Luke ix. 55. The thing itself Elias had done before, and Christ might have done it then, but they wanted the spirit of Elias, and therefore Christ rejects their motion as unlawful in them, who considered not that a spirit of passion and revenge did altogether influence them; and instead of shewing a just displeasure against the Samaritans, he shews that Satan had blinded them by their lust, and that the thing they urged was so far from being good, that it was apparently evil, in that they were acted by ‘another spirit’ than they imagined. This way of deceit is very common. How often may we observe Christians pretending conscientious dissatisfactions about the actions of others, when the private spring that animates them is some secret grudge that lies at the bottom; and yet because the thing wherein they are dissatisfied may truly deserve blame, they are not apt to condemn themselves, but think they do well. 2. Secondly, Lusts also pervert our reason and knowledge indirectly; and this is, when we are not so far blinded as to believe the thing unto which we are tempted, to be good absolutely; yet notwithstanding, we are persuaded of some considerable goodness in it, and such as may for the present be embraced. For this purpose Satan hath ready these two engines:— (1.) First, He sets before us the pleasures, profits, and other delights of sin. These he heightens with all his art and skill, that he may fix in our minds this conclusion, that however it be forbidden, yet it would conduce much to our satisfaction or advantage if it were practised; and here he promiseth such golden ends and fruits of sin as indeed it can never lead unto, inviting us in the words of the har (2.) Secondly, His sophistical arguments, by which the danger may be lessened. Of these his quiver is full: as, [1.] First, He urgeth that the sin tempted to is little. ‘But a little one;’ it is not, saith he, so great a matter as you make it; there are other sins far greater, and these also practised by men that profess as much as you. Thus he would shame us, as it were, out of our fear, by calling it severity, niceness, or an unnecessary preciseness. If this prevail not, [2.] Secondly, He hath then another argument: Oh, saith he, be it so, that it is a little more than ordinary, yet it is but once; taste or try it; you need not engage yourselves to frequent practice, you may retreat at pleasure. But if the fear of the danger prevail against this, then, [3.] Thirdly, He labours to put us under a kind of necessity of sinning, and this he pleads as a justification of the evil. It is not altogether right, but you cannot well avoid it. This plea of necessity is large; occasion, example, command of others, strength of inclination, custom, and what not, are pleaded by him in this case. Some particularly reckon them up;191 and rather than some men will acknowledge the evil, they will blame God’s decree, as if they were necessitated by it, or his providence, as Adam, ‘The woman that thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree.’ David’s bloody resolve against the house of Nabal seems to be justified by him, from Nabal’s great ingratitude, ‘In vain have I kept all that this fellow hath in the wilderness,’ &c., 1 Sam. xxv. 21; and as one engaged by a necessity of repaying such wrongs and affronts, doth he determine to cut them off. Aaron, when he was taxed by Moses about the golden calf, excuseth the matter by a pretended necessity of doing what he did upon the violent importunity of such a heady people, Exod. xxxii. 22; and that when Moses was not to be found, ‘Thou knewest the people, that they are set on mischief.’ This that he urged to Moses Satan no doubt had urged to him, and he had acquiesced in it as something that he thought would excuse, or at least mitigate the offence. Yet if the sinner break through this snare, [4.] Fourthly, He comes on with a softer plea of infirmity, and endeavours to persuade men that they may yield under pretence of being forced, and that their strivings and reluctances will lessen the evil to an apparent sin of infirmity; and thus he bespeaks them, Have [5.] Fifthly, Then he extenuates the offence by propounding some smaller good or convenience that may follow that evil. And this, though it be a way of arguing directly contrary to that rule, ‘Do not evil that good may come,’ yet it oft proves too successful; and it is like that common stratagem of war, when, by the proposal of a small booty in view, the enemies are drawn out of their hold into a fore-contrived danger. Thus Satan pleads, This one act of sin may put you into a capacity of honouring God the more. Some have admitted advancements and dignities against conscience, upon no better ground but that they might keep out knaves, and that they might be in a condition to be helpful to good men. Surely the devil prevailed with Lot by this weapon, when he offered the prostitution of his daughters to the lusts of the Sodomites, that the strangers, as he thought them, might be preserved; by this evil, thinks he, a greater may be avoided. Herod’s conscience could not at first consent to the cutting off the head of John Baptist, but when Satan suggests the obligation of his oath, he concludes that in the killing of John he should escape the violation of the oath. Thus a pretended good to come becomes a pander to a present certain iniquity. Now if after all these arguings the conscience carrieth an apprehension of danger, then, [6.] Sixthly, He plainly disputeth the possibility of the escape of danger, though the sin be committed. All the insinuations of pleasure and advantage by which Eve was tempted could not at first blot out her fears of the consequence of that transgression; it did stick in her mind still, ‘lest we die;’ then Satan plainly denieth the danger she feared: ‘Ye shall not surely die.’ ‘The threatening,’ saith he, ‘it may be, was but for trial, or without a strict and positive purpose in God to execute it; there is no certainty that God was in good earnest when he spake so.’ The devil usually urgeth the mercy of God, the merits of Christ, his promises of pardon, the infirmities of the saints, their sins and repentances, &c.; from all these drawing this conclusion, that we may venture upon the temptation without any apparent hazard. It is but repenting, saith he, and that is an easy work to a gracious soul. God is ready to be reconciled, even to a prodigal son; he is not so cruel as to cast away any for a small matter; he that waits to be gracious will not lie at catch for opportunities and occasions to destroy us; he that delights not in the death of a sinner will not delight to take strict exceptions against every failing. If Satan can prevail with us to extenuate the sin, to slight the hazard, or any way to lessen it upon any of the forementioned accounts; then having possessed us before with high apprehensions of delights and satisfactions in the sin, he quickly persuades to accept the motion, as having a conveniency and advantage in it not to be despised: and thus doth he indirectly pervert our reason; which is the second way by which he blinds us through the working of our lust. CHAPTER XIII.Of Satan’s diverting our reason, being the third way of blinding men.—His policies for diverting our thoughts.—His attempts to that purpose in a more direct manner; with the degrees of that procedure.—Of disturbing or distracting our reason, which is Satan’s fourth way of blinding men.—His deceits therein.—Of precipitancy, Satan’s fifth way of blinding men.—Several deceits to bring men to that. III. Thirdly, Satan blinds the sons of men by diverting and withdrawing their reason, and taking it off from the pursuit of its discovery or apprehensions. For sometime it cannot be induced to go so contrary to its light as to call evil good, either directly or indirectly. Then is Satan put to a new piece of policy, and if the frame of the heart and the matter of the temptation suit his design, he endeavours to turn the stream of our thoughts either wholly another way, or to still them by turning them into a dead sea, or by some trick to beguile the understanding with some new dress of the temptation. So that we may observe in Satan a threefold policy in a subserviency to this design. For, 1. First, Satan sometimes ceaseth his pursuit and lets the matter fall, and thinks it better to change the temptation than to continue a solicitation at so great a disadvantage. When he tempted Christ and could not prevail, he ‘departed for a season,’ Luke iv. 13, with a purpose to return at some fitter time, which Christ himself was in expectation of, knowing it to be his manner to lie in wait for advantages; and accordingly when his suffering drew nigh, which, as he speaks to the Jews, was ‘their hour and power of darkness,’ Luke xxii. 53, he foretold his return upon him, ‘Now the prince of this world cometh.’ However this attempt of his against the Lord Jesus prevailed not, yet he shewed his art and skill in the suspending of his temptation to a more suitable time. And the success of this against us is sadly remarkable, for however we resist and at present stand out, yet his solicitations are often like leaven, which while it is hid in our thoughts, doth not a little ferment and change them, so that at his return he often finds our lusts prepared to raise greater clouds upon our mind. Many there are that resist strongly at present that which they easily slide into when Satan hath given them time to breathe; that say, ‘I will not,’ and yet ‘do it afterwards,’ [Mat. xxi. 29.] 2. Secondly, He sometimes withdraws their considerations, by huffing them up with a confidence that they are above the temptation; as a conquest in a small skirmish, begetting an opinion of victory, makes way for a total overthrow over a careless and secure army. We are too apt to triumph over temptations because we give the first onset with courage and resolution. Christ forewarned Peter of his denial; he stoutly defies it, and not improving this advertisement to fear and watchfulness, Satan, who then was upon a design to sift him, took him at that advantage of security, and by a contemptible instrument overthrew him. Thus while we grow strong in our apprehensions by 3. Thirdly, If these ways of policy fail him, he seemingly complies with us, and is content we judge the matter sinful, but then he proffers his service to bring us off by distinctions; and here the sophister useth his skill to further our understanding in framing excuses, coining evasions, and so doth out-shoot us in our own bow. The Corinthians had learnt to distinguish betwixt eating of meat in an idol’s temple in honour to the idol, and as a common feast in civility and respect to their friends that invited them. This presently withdrew their consideration, and so quieted them in that course, that the apostle was forced to discover the fallacy of it. The Israelites cursed him that gave a wife to any of the tribe of Benjamin; but when they turned to them in compassion, they satisfied themselves with this poor distinction, that they would not give them wives, but were willing to suffer them to take them, Judges xxi. 18, 20. It is a common snare in matters of promise or oath, where conscience is startled at a direct violation thereof, by some pitiful salvo or silly evasion to blind the eyes, and when they dare not break the hedge, to leap over it by the help of a broken reed. But I must here further observe, that Satan doth sometimes set aside these deceits aforementioned, and tries his strength for the withdrawing of our consideration from the danger of sin in a more plain and direct manner—that is, by continuing the prospect of the sweets and pleasures of sin under our eye, and withal urging us by repeated solicitations to cast the thoughts of the danger behind our back: in which he so far prevails sometimes, that men are charged with a deep forgetfulness of God, his law, and of themselves; yet usually it ariseth to this by degrees. As, (1.) First, When a temptation is before us, and our conscience relucts it. If there be any inclination to recede from a conviction, the motion is resisted with a secret regret and sorrow. As the young man was said to ‘go away sorrowful,’ [Mat. xix. 22,] when Christ propounded such terms for eternal life as he was not willing to hear of: so do we; our heart is divided betwixt judgment and affection, and we begin to wish that it might be lawful to commit such a sin, or that there were no danger in it; nay, often our wishes contradict our prayers, and while we desire to be delivered from the temptation, our private wishes beg a denial to those supplications. (2.) Secondly, If we come thus far, we usually proceed to the next step, which is, to give a dismission to those thoughts that oppose the sin. We say to them, as Felix to Paul, ‘Go thy way for this time, and when I have a convenient opportunity I will send for thee,’ [Acts xxiv. 25.] (3.) Thirdly, If a plain dismission serve not to repel these thoughts, we begin to imprison the truth in unrighteousness, Rom. i. 18; 2 Peter iii. 5, and by a more peremptory refusal to stifle it and to keep it under, and become at last willingly ignorant. (4.) Fourthly, By this means at last the heart grows sottish and forgetful. The heart is ‘taken away,’ as the prophet speaks, and then do these thoughts of conviction and warning at present perish together. IV. The fourth way by which our lust prevails in Satan’s hand to blind knowledge, and that is by distracting and disturbing it in its work. This piece of subtlety Satan the rather useth, because it 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 knowledge cannot reach so deep nor be so firm and full in their application. For as the senses, if any way distracted or hindered, 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 hindered by confusion. But (2.) If this succeed not, yet by this he hinders the peace and comfort of God’s children. It is a trouble to be haunted with evil thoughts. To work this distraction, 1. 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. 2. 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 Beersheba 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. 3. Thirdly, He sometimes endeavours to weary us out with long solicitations: 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 Ahithophel counselled Absalom, when we are ‘weary and weak-handed’ by watching and long resistance. 4. 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 distempered, or lie under the apprehensions of wrath, it is easy 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:— (1.) First, Usually inward or outward troubles leaves some stamp of murmuring and sullenness 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,’ Job xl. 5. (2.) Secondly, By reason of our burden we are less wieldy and (3.) Thirdly, Troubles of themselves occasion confusion, multitudes of thought, distractions, and inadvertencies. If men see a hazard before them they are presently at their wits’ end, they are puzzled, they know not what to do—thoughts are divided, now resolving this, then presently changing to a contrary purpose. It is seldom but ‘as in a multitude of words there is much folly,’ Prov. x. 19, 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. V. Fifthly, Our considerations and reasonings against sin are hindered by a bold forward precipitancy. When men are hasted and pressed to the committing of sin, and like the ‘deaf adder stop their ears against the voice of the charmer,’ [Ps. lviii. 4;] 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 battle. The devices by which Satan doth forward this, we may observe to be these, among others:— 1. First, He endeavours to affright men into a hopelessness 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 persuaded to comply with him. To help this forward, Satan useth the policy of soldiers, 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 Goliath did of David, ‘Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves? Dost thou think to stand it out against me? It 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 overrun their reason through fear and hopelessness. 2. Secondly, Sometimes he is more subtle, and by threaping192 men down, that they have consented already, he puts them upon desperate adventures of going forward. This is usually where Satan hath used many solicitations 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 persuade us to go on and enjoy the fulness of that delight which we have already stolen privately: over shoes, over boots. Now though his arguings here be very weak—for though it be granted that by the stay of the temptation on our 3. Thirdly, When men will not be trepanned 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 everything 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,’ [Mat. iv. 9;] do but consent, and all are thine. Now albeit there are arguments at hand, and serious considerations to deter us from practice, yet how are all laid aside by a quick resolve! Satan urgeth us by violent hurry, as Christ said to Judas, ‘What thou hast to do, do it quickly,’ [John xiii. 27.] The soul, persuaded with this, puts on a sudden boldness and resolution, and when reason doth offer to interpose, it holds fast the door, because the ‘sound of its master’s feet is behind it,’ [2 Kings vi. 32.] Doth it not say to itself, ‘Come, we will not consider, let us do it quickly, before these lively considerations come in to hinder us’? It is loath to be restrained, and conceiteth that if it can be done before conscience awaken and make a noise, all is well; as if sin ceased to be sinful because we by a violent haste endeavoured to prevent the admonition of conscience. Thus they enjoy their sin, as the Israelites ate their passover, ‘in haste, and with their staves in their hands,’ [Exod. xii. 11.] 4. Fourthly, When opportunities and occasions will well suit it. He takes the advantage of a passionate and sullen humour, and by this means he turns us clearly out of our bias; reason is trampled under foot, and passion quite overruns it. At this disadvantage the devil takes Jonah, and hardens him to a strange resolve of quarrelling God, and justifying himself in that insolency. The humour that Satan wrought upon was his fretful sullenness, raised up to a great height by the disappointment of his expectation; and this makes him break out into a choleric resolution, ‘I do well to be angry,’ [Jonah iv. 9.] Had he been composed in his spirit, had his mind been calm and sedate, the devil surely could not by any arguments have drawn him up to it; but when the spirit is in a rage, a little matter will bind reason in chains, and push a man upon a desperate carelessness of any danger that may follow; suitable to that expression of Job, chap xiii. 13, ‘Let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will.’ 5. Fifthly, All these are but small in comparison of those deliberate determinations which are to be found with most sinners, who are therefore said to sin with a high hand, presumptuously, wilfuly, against conscience, against knowledge; and this ordinarily to be found only among those whom a custom of sin hath hardened and confirmed into a boldness of a wicked way and course. When the spirits of men are thus harnessed and prepared, Satan can, at pleasure almost, form them into a deliberate resolve to cast the commandment behind their back, and to refuse to hearken. When any temptation is offered them, if God say, ‘Ask for the old paths, and walk therein,’ as Jer. vi. 16, they will readily answer, ‘We will not walk therein.’ If God say, ‘Hearken to the sound of the trumpet,’ they will reply, ‘We will not 6. Sixthly, That through the working of Satan the minds of men are darkened, and the light thereof put out by the prevalency of atheistical principles.193 Something of atheism is by most divines concluded to be in every sin, and according to the height of it in its various degrees, is reason and consideration overturned. There are, it may be, few that are professed atheists in opinion, and dogmatically so, but all wicked men are so in practice. Though they profess God, yet ‘the fool saith in his heart, There is no God,’ [Ps. liii. 1,] and in ‘their works they deny him,’ [Titus i. 16.] This is a principle that directly strikes at the root: for if there be no God, no hell or punishment, who will be scared from taking his delight in sin by any such consideration? The devil, therefore, strives to instil this poison with his temptation. When he enticed Eve by secret insinuations, he first questions the truth of the threatening, and then proceeds to an open denial of it, ‘ye shall not surely die;’ and it is plain she was induced to the sin upon a secret disbelief of the danger. She reckons up the advantages, ‘good for food, pleasant to the eye, to be desired to make one wise;’ wherein it is evident she believed what Satan had affirmed, ‘that they should be as God,’ and then it was not to be feared that they should die. This kind of atheism is common. Men may not disbelieve a Godhead; nay, they may believe there is a God, and yet question the truth of his threatenings. Those conceits that men have CHAPTER XIV.Of Satan’s maintaining his possession.—His first engine for that purpose is his finishing of sin, in its reiteration and aggravation.—His policies herein. Having explained the five ways by which Satan through the power of lust causeth blindness of mind in tempting to sin, I shall next lay open Satan’s devices for the keeping and maintaining his possession, which are these:— 1. First, He endeavours, after he hath prevailed with any man to commit an iniquity, to finish sin: James i. 15, ‘After if is conceived and brought forth, then it is finished;’ which notes its growth and increase. This compriseth these two things, its reiteration and its aggravation. (1.) First, Its reiteration is, when by frequent acts it is strengthened and confirmed into a habit. There are various steps, by which men ascend into the seat of the scornful. Nemo repentÈ turpissimus, It is not one act that doth denominate men ‘wise to do evil.’ In Ps. i. 1 seq., David shews there are gradations and degrees of sin: some walk in the counsel of the ungodly; some by progress and continuance of sin ‘stand in the way of sinners;’ some, by a hardness of heart and fixedness in wicked purposes, ‘sit in the seat of the scornful.’ To this height doth he labour to bring his proselytes; yet he further designs, (2.) Secondly, That sin may have its utmost accomplishments in all the aggravations whereof it may be capable. He strives to put men upon such a course of sinning as may be most scandalous to the gospel, most ensnaring and offensive to others, most hardening and desperate to ourselves, most offensive and provoking to God. In this he imitates the counsel of Ahithophel to Absalom, when he advised him to go in unto his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel, that so the breach betwixt him and his father might be widened to an impossibility of reconciliation. Thus he labours that sinners should act at such a rate of open defiance against heaven, as if they resolved to lie down in their iniquity, and were purposed never to think of returning and making up their peace with God. That sin may be finished in both these respects, he useth these policies:— [1.] First, After sin is once committed, he renews his motions and solicitations to act it again, and then again, and so onward till they be perfect and habituated to it. In this case he acts over again the former method by which he first ensnared them, only with such alterations as the present case doth necessitate him unto. Before, he urged for the committing of it but once. How little is he to be trusted in these promises! Now, he urgeth them by the very act they have already done, Is it not a pleasant or profitable sin, to thy very experience? hast thou not tasted and seen? hast thou not already consented? Taste and try again, and yet further; withdraw not thy hand. A little temptation served before, but a less serves now; for by yielding to the first temptation our hearts are secretly inclined to the sin, and we carry a greater affection to it than before; for this is the stain and defilement of sin, that when once committed it leaves impressions of delight and love behind, which are still the more augmented by a further progress and frequent commission, till at last by a strong power of fascination it bewitches men that they cannot forbear; all the entreaties of friends, all their own promises, all their resolves and purposes, though never so strong and serious, except God strike in to rescue by an omnipotent hand, can no more restrain them than fetters of straw can hold a giant. God himself owns it as a natural impossibility, ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin? no more can ye do good,’ [Jer. xiii. 23;] and the reason of that impossibility is from hence, that they are ‘accustomed to do evil.’ Such strong and powerful inclinations to the same sin again are begot in us by a sin already committed, that sometime one act of sin fills some men with as vehement and passionate desires for a further enjoyment, as custom and continuance doth others. Austin reports that Alypius, when once he gave way to the temptation of beholding the gladiators, was bewitched with such a delight, that he not only desired to come again with others, but also before others. Neither is it any great wonder it should be so, when, besides the inclinations that are begot in us by any act of sin to recommit it, sin puts us out of God’s protection, debilitates and weakens our graces, strengthens Satan’s arm, and often procures him further power and commission against us. [2.] Secondly, Satan endeavours to make one sin an engagement to another, and to force men to draw iniquity with cords of vanity. Agur notes a concatenation in sins, ‘Lest I steal, and take the name of God in vain,’ Prov. xxx. 9. Adam sinning in the forbidden fruit, and proclaimed guilty by his conscience, runs into another sin for the excuse of the former, ‘the woman that thou gavest me,’ &c. David affords a sad instance of this, the sin with Bathsheba being committed, and she with child upon it, David to hide the shame of his offence, (1.) Hypocritically pretends great kindness to Uriah. (2.) When that served not, next he makes him drunk, and, it may be, he involved many others in that sin as accessories. (3.) When this course failed, his heart conceives a purpose and resolution to murder him. (4.) He cruelly makes him the messenger of his own destruction. (5.) He engageth Joab in it. (6.) And the death of many of his soldiers. (7.) By this puts the whole army upon a hazard. (8.) Excuseth the bloody contrivance by providence. (9.) In all using still the height [3.] Thirdly, By a perverse representation of the state of godly and wicked men, he draws on sin to a higher completement. How often doth he set before us the misery, affliction, contempt, crosses, and sadnesses of the one, and the jollity, delights, plenty, peace, honours, and power of the other! It was a temptation that had almost brought David to an atheistical resolve against all religious duty, and that which he observed had prevailed altogether with many professors, Ps. lxxiii. When they observed ‘they were not in trouble like other men,’ and that their mouth and tongue had been insolent against God, without any rebuke or check from him; when in the meantime the godly were ‘plagued all the day, and chastened every morning:’ some that were, in profession or estimation at least, God’s people, returned to take up these thoughts, and to resolve upon such practices, ver. 10; as if God, who sees all these with so much silence, must be supposed knowingly to give some countenance to such actions. This, indeed, when it is prosecuted upon our hearts in its full strength with those ugly surmises, jealousies, and misapprehensions that are wont to accompany it, is a sad step to a desperate neglect of duty and a carelessness in sinning, in that it insensibly introduceth atheistical impressions upon the hearts of men, and such are apt to catch hold even upon good men, who are but too ready to say as David, ‘I have cleansed my hands in vain,’ [ver. 13.] [4.] Fourthly, Satan hath yet another piece of policy for the multiplication and aggravation of sin, which is the enmity and opposition of the law. Of this the apostle Paul sadly complains from his own experience: Rom. vii. 8, ‘Sin taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.’ What he laments is this, that such is the perverseness of our natures, that the law, instead of restraining us, doth the more enrage us, so that accidentally the law doth multiply sin; for when the restraint of the law is before us, lust burns not only more inwardly, but when it cannot be kept in and smothered, then it breaks out with greater violence, ‘Let us break their bonds asunder,’ &c., [Ps. ii. 3.] When the law condemns our lusts, they grow surly and desperate: ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,’ &c., [Isa. xxii. 13.] If any wonder that the law, which was given of purpose to repress sin, and which is of so great use in its authority to kill it in us, and to hinder temptations, should thus be used by Satan to increase and enrage it, they may consider that it is but still an accidental occasion, and not a cause, and sin takes this occasion without any fault of the law. Satan to this end watcheth the time195 when our hearts are most earnestly set upon our lusts, when our desires are most highly engaged, and then by a subtle art so opposeth the law, letting in its contradictions in way and measure suitable, that our hearts conceive a grudge at restraint, which together with its earnestness to satisfy the flesh, ariseth up to a furious madness, and violent striving to maintain a liberty and freedom to do according to the desires of their heart; whereas this same law, if it CHAPTER XV.Of Satan’s keeping all in quiet, which is his second engine for keeping his possession, and for that purpose his keeping us from going to the light by several subtleties; also of making us rise up against the light, and by what ways he doth that. Satan’s next engine for the maintaining his possession, is to keep all in quiet; which our Saviour notes: Luke xi. 21, ‘When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace.’ He urgeth this against those that objected to him, that he cast out devils by Beelzebub, which calumny he confuteth, by shewing the inconsistency of that with Satan’s principles and design—it being a thing sufficiently known and universally practised, that no man will disturb or dispute against his own peaceable possession; neither can it be supposed Satan will do it, because he acts by this common rule of keeping down and hindering anything that may disquiet. Breach of peace is hazardous to a possession. An uneasy government occasions mutinies and revolts of subjects; yet we might think that, the wages of sin, the light and power of conscience considered, it were no easy task for the devil to rule his slaves with so much quiet as it is observed he doth. His skill in this particular, and the way of managing his interest for such an end, we may clearly see in John iii. 20, ‘Every one that doth evil, hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.’ From which place we may observe—(1.) The great thing that doth disquiet Satan’s possession is light. (2.) The reason of that disquietment is the discovery that light makes, and the shame that follows that discovery. (3.) The way to prevent that light, and the reproof of it, is to avoid coming to it; and where it cannot be avoided, to hate it. It is Satan’s business then for keeping all in peace—(1.) To keep us from the light; or if that cannot be, then (2.) To make us rise up against it. I shall make inquiry after both these projects of the devil. To keep us from coming to the light, he useth a great many subtleties. As, 1. First, For his own part he forbears to do anything that might discompose or affright entangled souls. At other times, and in other cases, he loves to torment and affright them, to cause their wounds to stink and corrupt; but in this case he takes a contrary course, he keeps off, as much as may be, all reflections of conscience; he conceals the evil and danger of sin, he sings them asleep in their folly, ‘till a dart strike through their liver,’ and hastens them to the snare, ‘as a bird that knoweth not that it is for his life,’ Prov. vii. 23. They that 2. Secondly, He shews no less skill and diligence by secret contrivances to hinder occasions of reproof and discovery. How much he can practise upon others, that out of pity and compassion to the souls of men, are ready to draw a sinner ‘from the error of his way, and to save a soul from death!’ [James v. 20.] We can scarce imagine what ways he hath to divert and hinder them. By what private discouragements he doth defer them, who can tell? He that could dispute with the angel about the body of Moses to prevent the secret interment of it, Jude 9; he that could give a stop of one and twenty days to the angel that was to bring the comfortable message to Daniel, chap. x. 13, of the hearing of his prayers, may more easily obstruct and oppose the designs of a faithful reprover. Sometime he doth this by visible means and instruments, stirring up the spirits of wicked men to give opposition to such as seek to deliver their souls from the blood of men, by faithful warnings or exhortations. The devil was so careful to keep Jeroboam quiet in his sinful course of idolatry, that he stirs up Amaziah to banish Amos from the court, lest his plain dealing should startle or awaken the conscience of the king: Amos vii. 12, 13, ‘Go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, &c.; but prophesy not any more at Bethel, for it is the king’s chapel, it is the king’s court.’ 3. Thirdly, In order to the keeping out the light from the consciences of men, he insinuates himself as a lying spirit into the mouths of some of his mercenaries; and they speak ‘smooth things’ and deceit to Satan’s captives, telling them that they are in a good condition, Christians good enough, and may go to heaven as well as the precisest. It is a fault in unfaithful ministers, they do the devil this service. God highly complains of it: Jer. vi. 14, ‘They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace;’ Ezek. xiii. 10, ‘They have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and others daubed it with untempered mortar.’ Besides, this stratagem is the more likely to prevail, because it takes the advantage of the humours and inclinations of men, who naturally think the best of themselves, and delight that others should speak what they would have them; so that when men by the devil’s instigation prophesy deceit to sinful men, it is most likely they should be heard, seeing they desire such prophets, ‘and love to have it so.’ 4. Fourthly, Satan keeps off the light, by catching away the word after it is sown. This policy of his, Christ expressly discovers: Mat. xiii. 19, ‘When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and under 5. Fifthly, He sometimes snuffs out the light by persecution. Those hearers, Mat. xiii. 20, 21, that had received the word with some workings of affections and joy, are ‘presently offended when persecution, because of the word, ariseth.’ By this he threatens men into an acquiescency in their present condition, that if they ‘depart from iniquity, they shall make themselves a prey,’ [Isa. lix. 15.] Bonds, imprisonments, and hatreds, he suggests, shall abide them, and by this means he scares men from the light. 6. Sixthly, He sometimes smothers and chokes it with the cares of the world, as those that received seed among thorns. By earnest engagements in business, all that time, strength, and affection which should have been laid out in the prosecution of heavenly things, are wholly taken up and spent on outward things. By this means that light that shines into the hearts of men is neglected and put by. 7. Seventhly, He staves off men from coming to the light, by putting them upon misapprehensions of their estate in judging themselves by the common opinion. Satan hath so far prevailed with men, that they are become confident of this conceit, that men may take a moderate liberty in sinning, and yet nevertheless be in a good condition; that sin is not so great a matter in God’s esteem, as in the judgment of some rigorous precisian; that he will not be so extreme to mark what we do amiss, as some strict professors are. What can be of greater hindrance to that ingenuous search, strict examination, and impartial judging or shaming ourselves for our iniquities, which the light of Scripture would engage us unto, than such a conceit as this! And yet that this opinion is not only common, but ancient, is manifest by those warnings and cautions given by the apostle to the contrary: Gal. vi. 7, ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap;’ Eph. v. 6, ‘Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.’ If it had not been usual for men to live in uncleanness, covetousness, and such like offences, which he calls ‘sowing to the flesh,’ and yet in the midst of these to think they were not under the hazard of wrath, or if men had not professedly and avowedly maintained such an opinion, it had been superfluous for the apostle to have warned us with so much earnestness, ‘Be not deceived; let no man deceive you with such vain words,’ [1 Cor. vi. 9.] 8. Eighthly, It is usual for Satan to still and quiet the stirring thoughts of sinners with hopes and assurances of secrecy. As children are quieted and pleased with toys and rattles, so are sinners put off 9. Ninthly, Satan keeps them from going to the light by demurs and delays. If the light begin to break in upon their consciences, then he tells them that there is time enough afterward. Oh, saith he, thou art young, and hast many days before thee; it is time enough to repent when you begin to be old. Or thou art a servant, an apprentice under command, thou wantest fit opportunities and conveniences for serious consideration, defer till thou becomest free, and at thine own disposal. That this is one of Satan’s deceits to hinder us from making use of the light, besides what common experience may teach every man, may be clearly gathered from the exhortations of Scripture, which do not only shew us ‘the way wherein we ought to walk,’ but also press us to a present embracement of that counsel: ‘To-day, to-day, while it is called to-day, harden not your hearts;’ ‘Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation;’ ‘Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil day comes;’ ‘If ye will enquire, enquire: yea, return, come,’ Heb. iii. 7; 2 Cor. vi. 2; Eccles. xii. 1; Isa. xxi. 12. This hasty urgency to close with the offered occasions, plainly accuse us of delays, and that it is usual with us to adjourn those thoughts to a fitter opportunity, which we are not willing to comply with for the present. By these nine devices he keeps the light from ensnared sinners, or them from coming to the light. But if all this cannot draw a curtain before the sun, if its bright beams breaks through all, so that it cannot be avoided, but there will be a manifestation and discovery of ‘the hidden things of darkness,’ then Satan useth all his art and cunning to stir up in the hearts of men their hatred against the light. This is his second grand piece of policy to keep all in quiet under his command, to which purpose, 1. First, He endeavours to draw on a hatred against the light, by raising in the minds of men a prejudice against the person that brings or offers it. If he that warns or reproves express himself anything warmly or cuttingly against his brother’s sins, this the devil presently makes use of; and those that are concerned think they have a just cause to ‘stop their ears and harden their necks,’ because they conceive that anger, or ill-will, or some such base thing did dictate those, though just, rebukes. The devil turned the heart of Ahab against the faithful warnings of Micaiah upon a deep prejudice that he had taken up against him; for so he expresseth himself to Jehoshaphat, ‘I hate him, for he never prophesieth good unto me,’ 1 Kings xxii. 8. In this case men consider not how justly, how truly, how profitably anything is spoken; but, as some insects that feed upon sores, they pass by what is sound and good, and fix upon that which is corrupt and putrid, either through the weakness and inobservancy of the reprover, or pretended to be such, by the prejudice of the party which doth altogether disable him to put a right construction upon anything. 2. Secondly, If this help not, then he seeks to get the advantage of a provoked, passionate, or otherwise distempered fit; and then hatred is easily procured against anything that comes in its way. 3. Thirdly, Satan endeavours to engage our hatred against the light, by presenting our interest as shaken or endangered by it. If interest can be drawn in and made a party, it is not difficult to put all the passions of a man in arms, to give open defiance to any discovery it can make. That great rage and tumult of kings and people mentioned in Psalm ii., combining and taking counsel against the Lord and his laws, is upon the quarrel of interest. Their suspicions and jealousies that the setting up of Christ upon his throne would eclipse their power and greatness, makes them, out of a desperate hatred against the light, fall into resolves of open rebellion against his laws: ‘Let us break his bands asunder, and cast away his cords from us.’ This pretence of interest strengthened the accusation of Amaziah against Amos: chap. vii. 10, ‘Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel: the land is not able to bear all his words.’ No wonder, then, if Jeroboam, instead of hearkening to the threatening, banish him out of the land. We find the like in Asa, a good man; the devil stirs up his hatred against the seer: ‘He was wroth with him, and put him in the prison-house; for he was in a rage against him,’ 2 Chron. xvi. 10. The ground of that rage was this: the king’s interest, in his apprehension, was wrapped up in that league with the king of Syria, ver. 2, 3, so that he could not bear so plain a reproof, which directly laid the axe to the root of so great an interest as the safety of the king and kingdom, which seemed to depend so much upon that league. 4. Fourthly, Satan stirs up hatred against the light from the unavoidable effects of light, which are discovery and manifestation: Eph. v. 13, ‘All things that are reproved are made manifest; for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.’ Now the issue of this manifestation is shame, which however it be the daughter of sin and light, yet would it naturally destroy the sin that bred it; and therefore repentance is usually expressed by being ‘ashamed and confounded:’ but that Satan might avoid this, he turns the edge of shame against CHAPTER XVI.Of Satan’s third grand policy for maintaining his possession; which is his feigned departure: (1.) By ceasing the prosecution of his design; and the cases in which he doth it. (2.) By abating the eagerness of pursuit; and how he doth that. (3.) By exchanging temptations; and his policy therein.—The advantage he seeks by seeming to fly.—Of his fourth stratagem for keeping his possession, which is his stopping all ways of retreat; and how he doth that. Besides the two former designs, of finishing sin, and keeping all in quiet, by which the devil endeavours to maintain his possession, he hath a third grand subtlety, which is this: he keeps his hold by feigning himself dispossessed and cast out. Of this we have a full account: Luke xi. 24, ‘When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out.’ Christ had there noted that it is Satan’s great principle to do nothing by which his kingdom may be divided or undermined. Satan will not be divided against himself, and yet very seasonably he tells us, that for an advantage he will seem to quit 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 carelessness of the besieged. In the explanation of this policy, I shall, (1.) Shew how many ways he feigns a departure. (2.) Upon what designs he doth it. There are three ways whereby Satan seems to forsake his interest:— 1. 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 [1.] First, When he perceives some extraordinary occasion puts any of his subjects into a good mood or humour of religion. Wicked men are not ordinarily so highly bent upon evil ways, but that they may be at some times softened and relaxed. Pharaoh, who is most eminently noted for a heart judicially hardened, 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 it 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 it 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. v. 29 implies, ‘They have well said, Oh 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 rejoicing had they! what resolves never to distrust him again! Ps. cvi. 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! 1 Sam. xxiv. 16, and xxvi. 21. 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 it 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. [2.] Secondly, He also ceaseth from his design when he sees he cannot fit his temptation with a suitable 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. xxvii. 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 meantime, he forbears to put men [3.] Thirdly, Our adversary is content to forbear, when he perceives 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 denied. 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 ourselves are to us. Besides, who can tell how much of God’s restraining grace may lie in this, of God’s limiting and straitening Satan’s commission? Now the devil hath not so badly improved his observations, but that he knows it is in vain to tempt where God doth stop his way and tie up men’s hands. Abimelech was certainly resolved upon wickedness when he took Sarah from Abraham, Gen. xx. 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 Abimelech to his intended wickedness; for when God cautions him, ‘he had not come near her,’ ver. 4. The ground of all this was neither in the devil’s backwardness nor Abimelech’s modesty, but Satan lets the matter rest, because he knew that ‘God withheld him, and suffered him not to touch her.’ [4.] Fourthly, When men are under the awe and fear of such as carry an authority in their countenances and employments for the discouraging of sin, Satan, as hopeless to prevail, doth not solicit to scandalous iniquities. Much of external sanctity and saintlike behaviour ariseth from hence. The faces and presence of some men have such a shining splendour, that iniquity blusheth and hideth its head before them. Sin dare not do what it would; so great a reverence and esteem of such persons is kept up in the consciences of some, and so great an awe and fear is thence derived to others, that they will not or dare not give way to an insolency in evil. The Israelites were generally a wicked people, yet such an awe they had of ‘Joshua, and the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord,’ Josh. ii. 7, that Satan seemed to be cast out all their days. Who could have thought Joash had been so much [5.] Fifthly, He also makes as if he were cast out when he perceives the consciences of men are scared by threatened or felt judgments. He forbears to urge them against the pricks when God draws his sword and brings forth the glittering spear. Balaam’s ass would not run against the angel that appeared terribly against him in his way. The devil knows the power of an awakened conscience, and sees it in vain to strive against such a stream; and when it will be no better he withdraws. As great a power as the devil had in Ahab, when he was affrighted and humbled he gave way, and for that season drave him not on to his wonted practice of wickedness. He also carried thus to the Ninevites, when they were awakened by the preaching of Jonah. Then we see them a reforming people, the devil surceased to carry them into their former provocations. How frequently is this seen among professors, where the word hath a searching power and force upon them! Sin is so curbed and kept under, that it is like a root of bitterness in winter, lying hid under ground, Satan forbearing to act upon it or to improve it, till the storms and noise of judgments cease, and then usually it will ‘spring up and trouble them,’ Heb. xii. 15. If Satan hath really lost his hold, he ceaseth not to molest and vex even awakened consciences with urgent solicitations to sin; but if he perceive that his interest in the hearts of men remains sure to him and unshaken, then, in case of affrightment and fear of wrath, it is his policy to conceal himself, and to dissemble a departure. [6.] Sixthly, Satan is also forced to this by the prevailing power of knowledge and principles of light. Where the gospel in profession and preaching displays abroad his bright beams, then whatever shift men make to be wicked in secret, yet ‘the light is as the shadow of death to them,’ and it is even ‘a shame to speak of these things in public,’ Eph. v. 12. Here Satan cannot rage so freely, but is put to his shifts, and is forced to be silent, whilst the power of the gospel cuts off half his garments. Men begin to reform; some are clean escaped from error, 2 Pet. ii. 18; others abandon their filthy lusts and scandalous sins, and so ‘escape the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,’ ver. 20. Yet under all these great alterations and appearances of amendment, the devil is but seemingly ejected; for in the place mentioned, when the light declines, those that were escaped from error, and those that had fled from sinful pollutions, were both entangled again and carried to the These are the six cases in which Satan ceaseth the prosecution of his design, which was his first policy in feigning himself to be cast out; but he further dissembles a flight when he thinks it not fit to cease wholly, By abating his pursuit, by slacking his course; and this he doth, [1.] First, When he tempts still, but yet less than formerly. So great is his cunning and patience, that when he cannot get what he would have, he contents himself with what he can get, rather than lose all. He desires that men would give up themselves fully and freely to his service; but if they like not this, he is willing to take them, as one speaks, as retainers, and to suffer them to take a liberty to come and go at pleasure.196 He hath two main ends in tempting men to sin: one is to avenge himself upon God, in open defiance and dishonour of his name; the other is the ruin and perdition of souls. If he could, he would have these two ends meet in every temptation; yet he pleaseth himself with the latter when he cannot help it, and in that too he satisfies himself sometimes with as small an interest as may be, so that his possession and interest be but preserved. He knows that one sin loved and embraced brings death for its wages. A leak unstopped and neglected may sink the ship as well as a great storm; and therefore when he perceives the consciences of men shy and nice, he is willing they come to him, as Nicodemus came to Christ, by night in private, and that by stealth they do him service. [2.] Secondly, He sometimes offers men a composition, and so keeps his hold privately, by giving them an indulgence and toleration to comply with religious duties and observations. Pharaoh condescended that Israel should go and serve the Lord in the wilderness, upon condition that their wives, children, and substance were left behind. So Satan saith to some, ‘Go and serve the Lord,’ only let your heart be with me; leave your affections behind upon the world. That serious warning of Christ, ‘Ye cannot serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and mammon,’ evidently shews that the devil useth to conceal his interest in the hearts of sinners by offering such terms; and that men are so apt to think that Satan is gone out when they have shared the heart betwixt God and him, that they stand in need of a full discovery of that cheat, and earnest caution against it. The devil was forced to yield, that Herod should do many things at the preaching of John; yet he maintained his possession of his heart, by fixing him in his resolved lust in the matter of Herodias: and this gives just ground of complaint against the generality of sinners, ‘Ye return, but not to me, not with your whole hearts: have ye fasted to me? have ye mourned to me? they come and sit as my people, but their hearts are after their covetousness,’ [Ezek. xxxiii. 31.] [3.] Thirdly, Satan hath yet another wile by which he would cheat men into a belief that he is cast out of the heart; and this is a subtle way that he hath to exchange temptations. How weak and childish are sinners that suffer themselves thus to be abused! When they grow sick and weary of a sin, if the devil take that from them, and lay First, That sometimes he attains his end by exchanging one heinous sin for another as heinous, only not so much out of fashion: as the customs and times and places give laws and rules for fashions, according to which the decencies or indecencies of garbs and garments are determined, so is it sometimes with sin. Men and countries have their darling sins; times and ages also have their peculiar iniquities, which, in the judgment of sinners, do clothe them with a fitness and suitableness. Sometimes men grow weary of sins, because they are everywhere spoken against; because men point at them with the finger. The devil in this case is ready to change with them. Drunkenness hath in some ages and places carried a brand of infamy in its forehead; so hath uncleanness and other sins. When sinners cannot practise these with credit and reputation, then they please themselves with an alteration. He that was a drunkard is now, it may be, grown ambitious and boasting; he that was covetous is become a prodigal or profuse waster; the heart is as vain and sottish as before, only their lusts are let out another way, and run in another channel. Sometimes lusts are changed also with the change of men’s condition in the world. Poverty and plenty, a private and a public station, have their peculiar sins. He that of poor is made rich leaves his sins of distrust, envy, or deceitful dealing, and follows the bias of his present state to other wickednesses equally remarkable, and yet may be so blinded as to apprehend that Satan is departed from him. Secondly, We may observe that Satan exchangeth sins with men in such a secret private manner, that the change is not easily discovered; and by this shift he casts a greater mist before the eyes of men. Thus he exchangeth open profaneness into secret sins: filthiness of the flesh into filthiness of the spirit. Men seem to reform their gross impieties, abstaining from drunkenness, swearing, adulteries; and then, it may be, they are taken up with spiritual pride, and their hearts are puffed up with high conceits of themselves, their gifts and attainments; or they are entangled with error, and spend their time in ‘doting about questions that engender strife rather than edifying,’ [1 Tim. vi. 4;] or they are taken up with hypocrisies. Thus the Pharisees left their open iniquities, washing the outside of the cup and platter, Mat. xxiii. 26; and instead of these, endeavoured to varnish and paint themselves over, so that in all this change they were but as graves that appeared not, Luke xi. 44. Or they acquiesce in formality and the outwards of religion; like that proud boaster, ‘Lord, I thank thee I am not as other men are,’ &c., [Luke xviii. 11.] In all these things the devil seems cast out and men reformed, when indeed he may continue his possession; only he lurks and hides himself under ‘the stuff,’ [1 Sam. x. 22.] These ways of sinning are but finer poisons, which, though not so nauseous to the stomach, nor so quick in their despatch, yet may be as surely and certainly deadly; such fly from the iron weapon, and a bow of steel strikes them through. Having thus explained the three ways by which Satan pretends to depart from men, I must next shew his design in making such a pretence of forsaking his habitation. [1.] First, That all this is done by him only upon design, may be easily concluded from several things hinted to us in the fore-cited place of Luke xi. As (1.) He doth not say that the devil is ‘cast out,’ as if there were a force upon him, but that he ‘goeth out;’ it is of choice, a voluntary departure. (2.) That his going out in this sense is notwithstanding irksome and troublesome to him. The heart of man, as one observes,197 is a palace in his estimation, and dispossession, though upon design, is as a ‘desert’ to him, that affords him little ease or rest. (3.) That his going out is not a quitting of his interest; he calls it ‘his house’ still: ‘I will return to my house,’ saith he. (4.) He takes care in going out to lock the door, that it may not be taken up with better guests; he keeps it ‘empty’ and tenantable for himself: he tempts still, though not so visibly, and strives to suppress such good thoughts and motions as he fears may quite out him of his possession. (5.) He goes out, cum animo revertendi, with a purpose of returning. (6.) His secession is so dexterously and advantageously managed, that he finds an easy admittance at his return, and his possession confirmed and enlarged: ‘they enter in and dwell there.’ [2.] Secondly, The advantages that he designs by this policy are these chiefly: (1.) By this means men are dangerously confirmed in their securities. Thus the Pharisee blessed himself, ‘Lord, I thank thee,’ &c. They please themselves with this supposition, that the devil is cast out; and upon this they cease their war and watchfulness. As Saul, when he heard that David had escaped, ‘went not out to seek after him;’ so these trouble not themselves any further to inquire Satan’s haunts in their hearts. Thus he sits securely within, whilst they think he is fled from them. (2.) By this means also he fits men as instruments to serve his turn in other works of his. He must have, in some cases, handsome tools to work withal. All men are not fit agents in persecution, either to credit it, or to carry it through with vigour and zeal; for this end he seems to go out of some, that under a smoother and profession-like behaviour, when they are stirred up to persecute, the rigour might seem just. Thus ‘devout and honourable women’ were stirred up to persecute Paul and Barnabas, Acts xiii. 50. The devil had gone out so far, that they had gained the reputation of devout, and then their zeal would easily take fire for persecution, and withal put a respect and credit upon it; for who would readily suspect that to be evil or Satan’s design, which is carried on by such instruments? Besides, if he at any time intends to blemish the good ways of God by the miscarriages of professors, he fetcheth his arrow out of this quiver usually; if he brings a refined hypocrite to a scandalous sin, then doth the mouth of wickedness open itself to blaspheme ‘the generation of the just,’ as if none were better. Such agents could not be so commonly at hand for such a service, if Satan did not in the ways aforementioned seem to go out of men. (3.) It is another part of his design, after a pretended departure, to take the advantage of their The fourth and last stratagem of Satan for the keeping his possession, is to stop the way, to barricade up all passages, that there may be no possibility of escape or retreat. When he perceives that his former ways of policy are not sufficient, but that his slaves and servants are so far enlightened in the discovery of the danger that they are ready to turn back from him, then he bestirs himself to oppose their revolt; and as God sometimes ‘hedgeth up the way’ of sinners with ‘thorns,’ that they should not follow their old lovers, so doth Satan, Hosea ii. 6; to which purpose, [1.] First, He endeavours to turn them off such resolutions, by threatening to reduce them with a strong hand. Here he boasts and vaunts of his power and sinners’ weakness; as Rabshakeh did against Hezekiah, ‘What is that confidence wherein thou trustest? have the gods of Hamath and Arpad,’ &c., ‘delivered their land out of my hand?’ [2 Kings xviii. 33, 34.] Have those that have gone before you been able to deliver themselves from me? Have they been able to rescue themselves? Did I not force those that were stronger than you? Did I not make David number the people? Did I not overcome him in the matter of Uriah? Did I not compel Peter to deny his Lord, notwithstanding his solemn profession to the contrary? And can you think to break away from me so easily? By this means he would weaken their heart, and enfeeble their resolutions, that they might sit down under their bondage, as hopeless ever to recover themselves from his snare: but if these affrightments hinder not, if, notwithstanding these brags, sinners prepare themselves to turn from sin to God; then, [2.] Secondly, He improves all he can that distance which sin hath made betwixt God and them. Sins of ordinary infirmity and common incursion do not so break the peace of God’s children, as sins of a higher nature do. Even in the saints themselves, we may observe, after notorious transgression, (1.) That the acquaintance and familiarity betwixt God and them is immediately broken. What a speedy alteration is made! How suddenly are all things changed! God hides himself. The sun that shined but now, and did afford a very comfortable and cherishing heat, before we are aware, is now hid in a cloud. Our warmth and refreshments are turned into cold and chillness. There is also a change on our part, and that suddenly. As in the resurrection, we shall be changed ‘in the twinkling of an eye;’ so here, in a moment, our joys flag and decay, our delights grow dull, [3.] Thirdly, If this divert them not, but that they still persist in their resolves, then he follows after them with a high hand; sometimes, as Pharaoh did with Israel, he grows severe and imperious with them, and redoubles the tale of their bricks. He forceth them to higher and more frequent iniquities. Sometimes, as the same Pharaoh, he musters up all his chariots and horsemen to pursue after them, and in the highest diligence imaginable he brings forth his greatest power, besetting them on all sides with temptations and allurements of pleasures and delight. Where he perceives his time to be short, and his power shaken, he comes down in resolves to try his utmost strength. And hence it is that converts complain, that when they begin in earnest to look after God, they are most troubled [4.] 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 it 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 everything. 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. CHAPTER 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 subtleties for that end, by external 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 a high fury, and for the overthrow of them employs no small part of his power and subtlety, 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:— 1. First, By this means, if he prevail, he deprives us of our weapons. This is a stratagem of war which we find the Philistines practised against Israel: they took away all their smiths, lest the Hebrews should make them swords or spears; hence was it that in the battle there was ‘neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan,’ 1 Sam. xiii. 19, 2. Secondly, If he hinders these, he intercepts our food and cuts off our provisions. The word is called ‘milk, sincere milk of the word.’ It is that by which we are born, nourished, and increase; it 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 smoke,’ ‘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,’ Nahum iii. 12. If our spiritual food fail us, of our own accord we yield up ourselves to any lust that requires our compliance. 3. 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 ruin 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 out this, 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, presumptu 4. 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,’ [2 Sam. i. 22.] In other temptations sometimes Satan comes off baffled altogether, but in this work, as it was said of some Israelites, ‘he can throw a stone at an hair’s breadth, and not miss,’ Judges xx. 16. He is sure in one thing or other to have the better of us. His advantage in this case is from our unsuitableness 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, quickened 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 insufficiencies in reference to these services, what shall we say? we find such a narrowness of spirit, such ignorances, sottishness, carelessness of mind, thoughts so confused, tumultuous, fickle, slippery, and unconstant, and our hearts generally so deceitful and desperately wicked, that it 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. 5. Fifthly, If he so prevails against us that the services of worship become grossly abused or neglected, then doth he put us under the greatest hazards and disadvantages. Nothing so poisonous 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 a heart, or with our idols in our heart, is it anything 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 inquire of the Lord with ‘the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face,’ Ezek. xiv. 4, 7, ‘I will answer them according to the multitude of their idols; I will answer them by myself.’ Saul’s miscarriage in offering sacrifice, 1 Sam. xiii. 13, was that great offence for which God determined to take the kingdom from him. God’s severity against Nadab and Abihu, his stroke upon Uzziah, do all shew the hazard of such profanations. But, above all, that danger which both Old and New Testament speak of—the hardening 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, breathe forth such envenomed, poisonous exhalations when it is thus abused All these reasons evince that Satan hath an aching 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: Ecclus. ii. 1, 2, ‘My son, when thou enterest God’s service, stand fast in righteousness and fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation.’ What are the subtleties of Satan against the holy things of God, I am next to discover. Duties and services are opposed two ways: (1.) By prevention, when they are hindered. (2.) By corruption, when they are spoiled. He hath his arts and cunning, which he exerciseth in both these regards:— 1. First, then, Of Satan’s policy for the preventing of religious services. He endeavours by various means to hinder them. As, (1.) First, By external hindrances. In this he hath a very great foresight, and accordingly he foresees occasions and opportunities at a distance, and by a long reach of contrivance he studies to lay blocks and hindrances in the way. Much he doth in the dark for this end that we know not. As God hath ‘secrets of wisdom that are double to that which is known,’ Job xi. 6, so also hath Satan many ways and actings that are not discerned by us. His contrivances of businesses and avocations long aforehand are not so observed by us as they might be. Where he misseth of his end it comes not to light, and often where he is successful in his preventions we are ready to ascribe it to contingencies and the accidental hits of affairs, when indeed the hand and policy of Satan is in it. Paul, that was highly studied and skilful in Satan’s devices, observing how his purposes of coming to the Thessalonians were often broken and obstructed, he knew where the blame lay, and therefore instead of laying the fault upon sickness, or imprisonments, or the oppositions of false brethren—which often made him trouble beyond expectation—he directly chargeth all upon Satan: 1 Thes. ii. 18, ‘We would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us.’ At the same rate, understanding the purposes of faithful men for the promoting the good of men’s souls, he often useth means to stop or hinder them. Some have observed, having a watchful and jealous eye over Satan, that their resolves and endeavours of this nature have usually been put to struggle sore in their birth when their purposes for worldly affairs and matters go smoothly on without considerable opposition. (2.) Secondly, He makes use of indispositions to hinder service; and here he works sometimes upon the body, sometimes upon the soul, for both may be indisposed. [1.] First, Sometimes he takes the advantage of bodily indispositions. He doth all he can to create and frame these upon us, and then pleads them as a discharge to duty. If he can put the body into a fit of drowsiness or distemper, he will do it: and surely he can do more this way than every one will believe—he may agitate and stir [2.] Secondly, The soul hath also its indispositions, which he readily improves against duty to hinder it. As, First, It is capable of a spiritual sluggishness and dulness, wherein the spiritual senses are so bound up, that it considers not, minds not, hath no list nor inclination to acts of service. What a stupefaction are our spirits capable of! as David in his adultery seems not to mind nor care what he had done. In like manner are some in a lethargy; as the prophet speaks, they ‘care not to seek after God.’ Bernard hath a description of it: Contrahitur animus, subtrahitur gratia, defervescit novitius fervor, ingravescit torpor fastidiosus, The spirit is contracted, grace withdrawn, fervour abates, sluggishness draws on, and then duties are neglected. Secondly, The spirit is indisposed by a throng of worldly affairs, and these oft jostle out duty. Christ tells us they have the same influence upon men that gluttony and drunkenness have, and these unfit men for action. ‘Take heed,’ saith Luke xxi. 34, ‘to yourselves, lest at any time your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life.’ These then may at so high a rate overcharge the souls of men so as to make them frame excuses: ‘I have bought a farm or oxen,’ and therefore ‘I cannot attend;’ and by this means may they grow so neglective that the ‘day of the Lord may come upon them at unawares.’ Thirdly, Sometimes the soul is discomposed through passion, and then it is indisposed, which opportunity the devil espying, he closeth in with it. Sometime he ‘blows the fire,’ that the heat of anger may put them upon a carelessness. Sometimes he pleads their present frame as an unfitness for service, and so upon a pretence of reverence to the service, and ‘leaving the gift at the altar’ till they be in a better humour, many times the gift is not offered at all, 1 Pet. iii. 7. The apostle directs husbands to manage their authority over their wives with prudence, for the avoiding of brawls and contentions: ‘Ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour to the Fourthly, Ignorance and prejudice are spiritual indispositions, which are not neglected by the devil. Knowledge is the eye and guide of the soul. If there be darkness there, all acts which depend upon better instruction must cease. The disciples’ ignorance of Scriptures brought in their unbelief. Christ notes that as the fountainhead of all their backwardness: Luke xxiv. 25, ‘O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.’ In like manner, if men are not clear or knowing in the ways and necessities of duty and service, the devil can easily prevail with them to forbear and neglect. Prejudice riseth up to justify the disregard of duty, and offers reasons which it thinks cannot be answered. (3.) Thirdly, Satan endeavours to prevent duty by discouragements. If he can make the ‘knees feeble,’ and the ‘hands hang down,’ he will quickly cause activity and motion to cease. The ways by which he endeavours to discourage men from the duties of service are these:— [1.] First, He sets before them the toil and burden of duty. If a man sets his face toward heaven, thus he endeavours to scare him off: Is not, saith he, the way of religion a dull, melancholy way? Is it not a toil—a tedious task? Are not these unreasonable injunctions: ‘Pray continually,’ ‘Pray without ceasing,’ ‘Preach in season and out of season’? This suggestion, though it be expressly contrary to command, yet being so suitable to the idle and sluggish tempers of men, they are the more apt to take notice of it, and accordingly they seek ways and shifts of accommodating the command to their inclinations. In Amos viii. 5, the toil of sabbaths and festival services, as they thought it, makes them weary of the duty, ‘When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?’ These men thought their services tedious and entrenching upon their callings and occupations: Mal. i. 13, ‘They said, Behold, what a weariness is it!’ looking upon it as [2.] Secondly, He endeavours to discourage them, from the want of success in the duties of worship. When they have waited long and sought the Lord, then he puts them upon resolves of declining any further prosecution, as he did with Joram at the siege of Samaria; ‘Why wait I upon the Lord any longer?’ 2 Kings vi. 33, said he, after he had expected deliverance a long time without any appearance of help. When Saul saw that God ‘answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets,’ 1 Sam. xxviii. 6, 7, the devil easily persuaded him to leave off the ordinary ways of attendance upon God, and to consult with the witch of Endor. The profane persons mentioned in Mal. iii. 14, that had cast off all regard to his laws, all respect to his ordinances, were brought to this pitch of iniquity by the suggestions of want of success; they said, ‘It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinances, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?’ It seems they were like the people spoken of in Isa. lviii. 2, 3: they had fasted and prayed, and God delayed to answer them, which they looked upon as a disobligement from duty, and that which they could peremptorily insist upon as a reason which might justify their neglect. ‘Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?’ Neither doth this discouragement fall heavy only upon those whose hearts are departed already from God, who might be supposed to be forward to embrace any excuse from his service; but we shall find it bears hard upon the children of God. David was ready to give over all, as a man forsaken of God: Ps. xxii. 1, 2, ‘Why hast thou forsaken me? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.’ We may clearly gather from his expressions that this temptation had sorely bruised him, and that upon God’s delay of answer, he was ready to charge an unrighteousness upon God’s carriage toward him; for in that he adds that he kept his ground, and did not consent to it—as the words following, ‘But thou continuest holy,’ do imply—it shewed what the devil was objecting to him. And else [3.] Thirdly, This our adversary raiseth up discouragements to us from the unsuitableness of our hearts to our services. Herein he endeavours to deaden our hearts, to clog our spirits, to hinder and molest us, and then he improves these indispositions and discomposures against the duty, in which he hath a double advantage; for (1.) He deprives us of that delight in duty which should whet on our desires to undertake it, so that we come to the Lord’s table as old Barzillai, without a taste or relish of what we eat or drink. When we come to hear, ‘the ear that trieth words,’ as the palate tasteth meat, finds no savour in what is spoken; and this Satan can easily do by the inward deadness or disquiet of the heart, even as the anguish of diseases takes away all pleasures which the choicest dainties afford; as Job observes, ‘When a man is chastened with pain upon his bed, his life abhors bread, and his soul dainty meat,’ chap. xxxiii. 20. And when a man is brought to loathe his duties, as having nothing of that sweetness and satisfaction in them which is everywhere spoken of, a small temptation may put him upon neglect of them. (2.) He hath plausible and colourable arguments by which he formeth an opinion in the minds of men, that in cases of indisposition they may do better to forbear than to proceed. He tells them they ought not to pray or present any service while they are so indisposed, that no prayer is acceptable where the Spirit doth not enliven the heart and raise the affections; that they do but take his name in vain, and increase their sin, and that they should wait till the Spirit fill their sails: and to say the truth, it is a great difficulty for a child of God to hold his feet in such slippery places. How many have I known complaining of this, and persuading themselves verily that they might do far better to leave off all service than to perform them thus! And scarcely have I restrained them from a compliance with Satan, by telling them that indispositions are no bar to duty, but that duty is the way to get our indispositions cured; that duty is absolutely required, and dispositions to be endeavoured; and that it is a less offence to keep to duty under indispositions, than wholly upon that pretence to neglect it; and indeed, where these indispositions are bemoaned and striven with, the services are often more acceptable to God than pleasing to ourselves. The principle is truly spiritual and excellent, a foundation of sapphires and precious stones, upon which, if we patiently wait, he will build a palace of silver; for that service is more spiritual that is bottomed and carried on by a conscientious regard to a command, when there are no moral motives from sense and comfort concurring, than that which hath more of delight to encourage it, while the power of the command is less swaying and influential. [4.] Fourthly, Men are oft discouraged from a sense of unworthiness of the privilege of duty, a kind of excess of humility, which principally relates to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and prayer. The accuser of the brethren tells them that they have nothing to do to take the name of God in their mouths; that it is an insufferable presumption. (4.) Fourthly, Satan endeavours to hinder duty by bringing them into a dislike and loathing of duty. This is a course most effectual. Dislike easily bringeth forth aversation, and withal doth strongly fix the mind in purposes of neglect and refusal. The devil bringeth this about many ways; as, [1.] First, By reproaches and ignominious terms. It was an old trick of the wicked one to raise up nicknames and scoffs against the ways of God’s service, thereby to beget an odium in the hearts of men against them. ‘The seat of the scornful’ is a chair that Satan had reared up from the beginning. By this art—when ‘God was known in Jewry, and his name was great in Israel’—were the heathens kept off from laying hold on the covenant of God. He rendered them and the ordinances of worship ridiculous to the nations. The opprobrium of circumcision, and their unreasonable faith, as the heathens thought it, upon things not seen, was a proverb in every man’s mouth, Credat Judoeus Apella—non ego.201 The Jews were slandered with the yearly sacrifice of a Grecian. And Apion affirms that Antiochus found such a one in a bed in the temple; and that they worshipped an ass’s head in the temple. Apion slandered the Jews with ulcers in their Lysimachus slandered the Jews in Egypt as leprous church-robbers; and that their city was hence called Hierosola.203 When the Gentiles were called into the fellowship of the gospel, it was aspersed with the like scoffs and flouts. It was frequently called a sect, a babbling and strange and uncouth doctrine, Acts xxviii. 22; besides a great many lies and forgeries that were invented to make it seem odious; and by this means it was ‘everywhere spoken against,’ Acts xvii. 18, 20. Machiavel, that propounded the policy of full and violent calumniations to render an adversary odious, knowing that how unjust soever they were, yet some impression of jealousy and suspicion would remain, had learned it of this old accuser, who had often and long experienced it to be a prevalent course, to bring the services of God under dislike, Calumniare fortiter; aliquid adhoerebit. David, speaking of what befell himself in this kind, Ps. lxix. 9-12, that his zeal lay under reproach; his weeping and fasting became a proverb; and that in all these he was ‘the song of the drunkard,’ he expresseth such apprehensions of the power of this temptation upon the weak, that he doth earnestly beg that Satan might not make it a snare to them: ver. 6, ‘Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake: let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake.’ And further declares it, as a wonderful preservation and escape of this danger, that notwithstanding these reproaches, he had not declined his duty: ver. 13, ‘But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, Lord.’ Paul seems to speak his sense of this piece of policy; his imprisonment administered matter of reproach to his profession. Though his cause were good, yet he suffered trouble as ‘an evil-doer,’ 2 Tim. ii. 9. This he knew the devil would improve to a shame and disgrace unto the service of God, and therefore he chargeth Timothy to be aware of that temptation: 2 Tim. i. 8, ‘Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner.’ And ver. 16, he takes notice of Onesiphorus, that had escaped that snare, and was not ‘ashamed of his chain.’ And we have the greater reason to fear the danger of this art, when we find that the tempter made use of it to turn away the affections of the Capernaumites from Christ himself: Mat. xiii. 57, when he had preached in their synagogues to the applause and astonishment of all his hearers, the devil, fearing the prevalency of his doctrine, finds out this shift to bring them to a dislike of him and his preaching: ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? And they were offended in him.’ [2.] Secondly, Duties are brought under dislike by the hazards that attend them. The devil leaves it not untold what men shall meet with from the world if they ‘run not with them into excess of vanity’ and neglect. If bonds, imprisonments, banishments, hatreds, oppositions, spoiling of goods, sufferings of all kinds will divert them, he is sure to set all these affrightments before them; which though they do not [3.] Thirdly, The meanness of religious appointments, as to the outward view, is also made use of to beget a loathing of them. In this the devil hath this advantage, that however they are all ‘glorious within,’ and ‘as the curtains of Solomon,’ yet are they, as to their outward appearance, like ‘the tents of Kedar,’ without any of that pomp and splendour which the sons of men affect and admire. Christ himself, when he had veiled his glory by our flesh, was of no exterior ‘form or beauty.’ The ministration of his word, which is ‘the sceptre of his kingdom,’ seems contemptible, and a very ‘foolishness to men;’ insomuch that Paul was forced to make an apology for it, in that it wanted those outward braveries of ‘excellency of speech and wisdom,’ by shewing it was ‘glorious in its power,’ and was indeed a ‘hidden wisdom’—though not like that ‘wisdom which the princes of wisdom’ and philosophy affected—‘among such as were perfect,’ 1 Cor. ii. 1,4, 6. The sacraments, both of the Old and New Testament, seemed very low and contemptible things to a common eye; neither need we any other evidence to shew that men are apt to disrelish them, and to entertain strange thoughts of them upon this very account, than this, that some raise up batteries against these ordinances upon this ground, that because they seem low and mean to them, therefore they think it improbable that God should have indeed appointed them to be used in the literal sense, or that at best they are to be used as the first rudiments of Christianity, and not enjoined upon the more grown Christians. Neither may I altogether pass over that remarkable humour that is in some, to give additional ornaments of outward garb and form for the greater honour and lustre of these injunctions of Christ; so that while they endeavour to shew their greatest respects to them, they betray their inward thoughts to have carried some suspicion of their reality because of their plainness; and [4.] Fourthly, The sins of professors, through the craft of Satan, beget a loathing of these holy things. If God loathe his own appointments, and ‘cannot bear them,’ because of the iniquities of those that offer them, no wonder if men be tempted to disgraceful apprehensions of them, when they observe some that pretend a high care and deep respect for them live profanely. The sins of Eli’s sons wrought this sad effect upon the people, that men, for their sakes, abhorred the offerings of the Lord, 1 Sam. ii. 17. Those that fell off to error, and thence to abominable practices, ‘caused the way of truth to be evil spoken of,’ 2 Pet. ii. 2. The priests that departed out of the way, ‘caused many to stumble at the law,’ Mal. ii. 8. Nay, so high doth Satan pursue this sometimes, that it becomes an inlet to direct atheism. [5.] Fifthly, Satan also works mightily in the profane dispositions of men, and acts that principle to a disregard and weariness of the services of God. A flagitious wicked life naturally leads to it. Those that ‘eat up God’s people as bread,’ Ps. xiv. 4, ‘called not upon God.’ This eats out at last the very exterior and formal observation of religious duties. In this Satan bends his force against them, (1.) By heightening the spirits of men to an insolent defiance of God by a continued prosperity. He draws out the pride and vanity of their spirits to a bold contempt: ‘Who is the Lord that we should serve him? We are lords; we will come no more at thee; our tongues are our own,’ &c., Jer. ii. 31. Thus they ‘set their mouths against heaven.’ Eliphaz tells us this, as the usual carriage of those that lived in peace and jollity: Job xxi. 15, ‘Therefore say they unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways: [6.] Sixthly, Satan picks quarrels in men at the manner of performance of duty. When duty cannot be spoken against, then he endeavours to destroy it by the modes, circumstances, and way of performance: as (1.) If those that act in them discover any weakness—as who doth not, when he hath done his best?—this he endeavours to blemish the duty withal. The bodily presence of Paul was objected against him, as being ‘contemptible,’ and his ‘speech as weak,’ [2 Cor. x. 10;] but the design of that objection lay higher, the devil thereby endeavouring to render the duties of his ministry as contemptible, and not to be regarded. (2.) If the circumstances please not, he teacheth them to take pet with the substance, and, like children, to reject all, because everything is not suitable to their wills. (3.) If it be managed in any way not grateful to their expectations, if too cuttingly and plain, then they think they be justified to say they hate it, as Ahab did Micaiah; if any way too high or abstrusely, then likewise they fling off. On this point the devil persuaded many of Christ’s followers to desert him, John vi. 66, because he had spoken of himself in comparisons that they judged too high. When he said he was that ‘bread that came down from heaven,’ ver. 58, they said ‘that was a saying not to be borne;’ and on that occasion ‘they went back, and walked no more with him.’ [7.] Seventhly, The devil brings a nauseating of the duties of worship, by a wrong representation of them, in the carriage and gestures of those that engage in them. It seems strange to some that are but as idle spectators to observe the postures of saints, seriously lifting up their eyes to heaven, or humbly mourning and smiting on their breasts. These the devil would render ridiculous, and as the suspicious managements of an histrionical or hypocritical devotion; as men at a distance beholding the strange variety of actions and postures of such as dance, being out of the sound of their music, shall think them a company of madmen and frantic people. Such perverse prospects doth he sometimes afford to those that come rather to observe what others do, than to concern themselves in such duties, that, not seeing their private influences, nor the secret spring that moves them, they judge them foolish, and from thence they contract an inward loathing of the duties themselves. (5.) Fifthly, In order to the hindering or preventing of duty, Satan useth to impose upon men by fallacious arguings: and by a piece of [1.] First, He heightens the dignity of God’s children, upon a design to spoil their duty. He tells them they are ‘partakers of the divine nature,’ [2 Pet. i. 4;] that they are ‘in God and Christ,’ and have the communications of his Spirit, and therefore they need not now drink of the cistern, seeing they enjoy the fountain; and that these services, in their attainments, are as useless as scaffolds are when once the house is built. To prosecute this he takes advantage, (1.) of the natural pride of their hearts. He puffs them up with conceits of the excellency of their condition—a thing which all men are apt to catch at with greediness upon the least imaginary grounds, 1 Cor. viii. 7; Col. ii. 18. If a man have but a little knowledge, or have attained to any vain speculations, he is presently apt to be vainly ‘puffed up by his fleshly mind.’ The same hazard attends any conceited excellency which a man apprehends he hath reached unto. Those monsters of religion, mentioned by Peter and Jude, that made no other use of the ‘grace of God’ but to ‘turn it into wantonness,’ Jude 4; yet were they so tumefied with the apprehensions of their privileges, that whilst they designed no other thing than plain licentiousness and a wantonness in the lusts of the flesh, yet it seems they encouraged themselves and allured others from a supposed liberty which their privileges gave them; and to this purpose had frequently in their mouths ‘great swelling words of vanity,’ 2 Pet. ii. 18, even whilst they ‘walked after their own lusts,’ Jude 16. (2.) To strengthen their proud conceits, the devil improves what the Scriptures speak of the differences of God’s children—that some are spiritual, some are carnal; some weak, others strong; some perfect, some less perfect; some little children, some young men, some fathers, 1 Cor. ii. 1; Phil. iii. 15; 1 John ii. 12, 13. The end of all this is to make them apprehend themselves Christians of a higher rank and order, which also makes way consequently for a further inference, viz., that there must needs be immunities and privileges suitable to these heights and attainments. To this purpose (3.) he produceth those scriptures that are designed by God to raise up the minds of men to look after the internal work and power of his ordinances, and not to centre 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. ii. 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. vi. 7, we should ‘serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.’ 2 Cor. v. 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.’ Eph. iv. 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 persuade them that the great thing that Christ designed by his ordinances was but to ‘train up the [2.] Secondly, He will sometimes confess an equality of privilege 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 David’s ‘praying seven times a-day,’ Daniel’s three times, Anna’s serving God with fastings and prayers night and day, &c.,204 he tells us these were extraordinary services, and as it were works of supererogation, more than the command of God laid upon them. So that we are not tied to such strictness; and we, being naturally apt to indulge ourselves 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. [3.] Thirdly, Another sophism of his is to heighten one duty, to the ruin 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 joined 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 unity, or unity to the ruin of purity. A notable example hereof we have in the EuchytÆ, a sect of praying heretics, 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.205 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, Luke xviii. 1; 1 Thes. xv. 17. [4.] 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 profane and careless spirit in such as presumptuously expect [5.] Fifthly, By urging a necessity or conveniency for suspending or remitting duties. In temptations to sin, he doth from a little draw on the sinner to more; but in omissions of duty he would entice us from much to little, and from little to nothing. Very busy he is with us to break or interrupt our constant course of duty. Duties in order and practice, are like so many pearls upon one string; if the thread be broken, it may hazard the scattering of all. If we be once put out of our way, we are in danger to rove far before we be set in our rank again. To effect this, (1.) he will be sure to straiten or hinder us in our opportunities if he can, and then to plead necessity for a dispensation. It is true indeed, necessities, when unavoidable—as the issue of providence rather than our negligence—may excuse an omission of duty, because in such cases, God accepting the will for the [6.] Sixthly, Satan puts tricks upon men in order to the hindering of duty, by putting us from a service presently needful, with the proposal of another, in which, at that time, we are not so concerned. In several duties of Christianity there is a great deal of skill required to make a right choice, for present or first performance; and to have a right judgment to discover the times and seasons of them, is matter of necessary study. Our adversary observing our weaknesses in this, when no other art will prevail, endeavours to put us upon an inconvenient choice, when he cannot make us neglect all. As (1.) by engaging us in a less duty, that we may neglect a greater; he is willing that we, as the Pharisees, should ‘tithe mint and anise,’ upon condition that we ‘neglect the greater things of the law.’ This was the fault of Martha, Luke x. 41, who busied herself in making entertainment for Christ’s welcome, and in the meantime neglected to hear his preaching: which, as he notes, was the only necessary duty of that time; ‘one thing’ is necessary. She is not blamed for doing that which was simply evil in itself—for the thing she did was a duty—but for not making a right choice of duty; for that rebuke, ‘Mary hath chosen the better part,’ is only a comparative discommendation; as Austin interprets, Non tu malam, sed illa meliorem, The thing thou doest is not evil, if it had not put thee upon a neglect of a greater good. (2.) He sometimes puts men upon what is good and necessary, but such as they cannot come at without sin. Thus sacrificing in itself was a necessary duty; and such was Saul’s condition, that it concerned him at that time to make his peace with God, and to inquire his mind. Yet when the devil upon that pretence put him upon offering a sacrifice, he put him upon no small transgression, 1 Sam. xiii. 13. The like game Satan sometimes plays with private Christians, who are persuaded beyond their station and capacity in refer Satan’s second grand design against duties is to spoil them. (1.) In the manner of undertaking, and how he effects this. (2.) In the act or performance, by distracting outwardly and inwardly. His various ways therein, by vitiating the duty itself. How he doth that. (3.) After performance, the manner thereof. The chief of Satan’s ways for the hindering and preventing of duty have been noted; what he comes short in this design he next labours to make up, by spoiling and depraving them: and this he doth endeavour three ways:— I. 1. First, By putting us upon services in such a manner as shall render them unacceptable and displeasing unto God, and unprofitable to us: as by a careless and rash undertaking of service. We are commanded to ‘take heed’ to ourselves ‘how we hear’ or pray; and to ‘watch’ over our hearts, that they be in a fit posture for meeting with God, because the heart in service is that which God most looks at, and our services are measured accordingly. If then by a heedless undertaking we adventure upon them, not keeping our ‘foot when we go into the house of God,’ Eccles. v. 1, we offer no other than ‘the sacrifice of fools,’ and give occasion to God to complain that we do but ‘draw near to him with our lips, while our hearts are far from him.’ 2. 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 perversely set before them, that they may act as Samson 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, [Judges xvi 20.] 3. 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 satisfy 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. 4. Fourthly, When we do our services unseasonably, not only the grace and beauty of them is spoiled; but often are they rendered 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. 5. 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 inquired of by them,’ Ezek. xiv. 3. 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,’ Heb. x. 22. If they come to hear the word, they must ‘lay aside all filthiness, and superfluity of naughtiness,’ James i. 21; if they pray, they must ‘lift up pure hands,’ 1 Tim. ii. 8; if they come to the Lord’s Supper, they must eat that feast ‘with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,’ 1 Cor. v. 8. 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 sense 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. i. 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,’ ver. 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 some time or other rescue these slaves of Satan out of his hand, 6. Sixthly, In the manner of undertaking duties are spoiled, when men have not a submissive ingenuity208 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 God’s 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 Egypt, Jer. xlii. 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. xliii. 2. Such dealings as these being the evident undertakings of a hypocritical heart, must needs render all done upon that score to be presumptuous temptings of God; no way deserving the name of service. II. 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 potter’s 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 itself. 1. First, By distracting or disturbing our thoughts. This is a usual policy of Satan. Those fowls which came down upon Abraham’s sacrifice are supposed by learned expositors to signify those means and ways by which the devil doth disorder and trouble our thoughts in religious services, Gen. xv. 12. 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, Mat. xiii. 4. There are many reasons that may persuade us that this is one of his masterpieces of policy. As (l.) 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 employments doth require; so that there is a kind of preternatural force upon our thoughts, when they are religiously employed; which as it is in itself laborious, like the stopping of a stream, or driving Jordan back, so upon the least relaxing of the spring, that must bend our thoughts heavenward, 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 downward. How easily then is it for Satan to set our thoughts off our work! If we slacken our care never so little, they recoil and tend to their old bias; and how easy is it for him to take off our hand, when it is so much in his power to inject Now this distraction Satan can work two ways. (1.) 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;’209 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, Acts xvi., 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, (2.) 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, [1.] 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 it is a great molestation or toil to us. [2.] 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 venture some 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. [3.] 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 we can scarce forbear turning aside after them to gaze at them; and yet when all is done, except we wholly neglect the duty for them, they will so vanish, that we can scarce remember them when the duty is over. (3.) Sometimes he suits our desires and inclinations with the remembrances of things that are at other times much in our love and affection; and with these we are apt to comply, the pleasure of them making us forget our present duty. Thoughts of estates, honours, relations, delights, [4.] Fourthly, He hath a way to betray and circumvent us by heightening our own jealousies and fears against him; and here he outshoots us in our own bow, and by a kind of overdoing makes us undo our desired work. For where he observes us fearful and watchful against wandering, he doth alarm us the more: so that (1.) instead of looking to the present part of duty, we reflect upon what is past, and make inquiries whether we performed that aright, or whether we did not wander from the beginning. Thus our suspicions that we have miscarried bring us into a miscarriage: by this are we deceived, and put off from minding what we are doing at present. Or (2.) an eager desire to fix our thoughts on our present service doth amaze and astonish us into a stupid inactivity, or into a saying or doing we know not what; as ordinarily it happens to persons, that out of a great fearfulness to offend in the presence of some great personages, become unable to do anything right, or to behave themselves tolerably well; or as an oversteady and earnest fixing the eye weakens the sight, and renders the object less truly discernible to us. [5.] Fifthly, Sometimes the exercise of fancy acting or working according to some mistake which we have entertained as to the manner of performance, doth so hold our thoughts doing, that we embrace a cloud or shadow when we should have looked after the substance. I will give an instance of this in reference to prayer, which, I have observed, hath been a snare and mistake to some, and that is this: because in that duty the Scripture directs us to go to God, and to set him before us, therefore have they thought it necessary to frame an idea of God in their thoughts, as of a person present to whom they speak. Hence their thoughts are busied to conceive such a representation; and when the shadow of imagination vanisheth, their thoughts are again busied to inquire whether their hearts are upon God. Thus by playing with fancy, they are really less attentive upon their duty. [6.] Sixthly, Satan can lay impressions of distraction upon men before they come to religious services, which shall then work and shew their power to disturb and divide our hearts, which is by a strong prepossession of the heart with anything that we fear, or hope, or desire, or doth any way trouble us. These will stick to us, and keep us company in our duties, though we strive to keep them back. And this was the ground of the apostle’s advice to the unmarried persons, to continue in single life,—times of persecution and distress nearly approaching,—that they might ‘attend upon the Lord without distraction,’ 1 Cor. vii. 37; implying that the thoughtfulness and more than ordinary carefulness which would seize upon the minds of persons under such straits and hazards, would unavoidably follow them in their duties, and so distract them. 2. Secondly, The other way, besides this of distraction, by which Satan spoils our duties in the act of performance, is by vitiating duty itself; and this he commonly doth three ways. (1.) First, When he puts men upon greater care for the outward garb and dress of a service than for the inward work of it. He en (2.) Secondly, Duties and services are more apparently vitiated by human additions; a thing expressly contrary to the second commandment, and yet is there a strange boldness in men this way, which sometimes riseth to such a height, that the plain and clear commands of God are violated under the specious pretence of decency, order, and humility; and nothing doth more take them than what they devise and find out. Satan knows how displeasing this is to God, and how great an inclination there is in men to be forward in their inventions and self-devised worship, that he can easily prevail with the incautious. This was the great miscarriage of the Jewish nation all along the Old Testament; and of the pharisees, who, though they declined the idolatries of their fathers, yet were so fond upon their traditions, that they made their worship vain, as Christ tells them. And this humour also in Paul’s time was insinuating itself into Christians, managed by a great deal of deceit [Col. ii. 8] and ‘show of wisdom,’ ver. 23, which accordingly he doth earnestly forewarn them of. There are indeed several degrees of corrupting a service or ordinance by human additions, according to which it is more or less defiled: yet the least presumption this way is an offence and provocation. (3.) Thirdly, Duties are vitiated in their excess. Natural worship, which consists in fear, love, faith, humility, &c., can never be too much, but instituted worship may. Men may preach too much, and pray too long—a fault noticed by Christ in the pharisees; they made ‘long prayers’—Even in duties, a man may be righteous overmuch. Timothy was so in his great pains and over-abstemious life, to the wasting of his strength—which the apostle takes notice of, and adviseth against it, ‘Drink no longer water,’ &c., [1 Tim. v. 23.] The Corinthians were so, when out of a high detestation of the miscarriage of the incestuous person, they were backward to forgive him, and to re III. Thirdly, When Satan’s designs do not take to spoil the duties, either by the manner of the attempt or in the act, he then seeks to play an after-game, and endeavours to spoil them by some after-miscarriage of ours in reference to these services. As, (1.) First, When he makes us proud of them. We can scarce perform any service with a tolerable suitableness, but Satan is at hand to instil thoughts of applause, vainglory, and boasting: and we readily begin to think highly of ourselves and performances; as if we were better than others, whom we are apt to censure as low and weak in comparison of ourselves. Though this be an apparent deceit, yet it is a wonder how much the minds, even of the best, are apt to be tainted with it; even where there are considerable endeavours for humility and self-denial, these thoughts are apt to get too much entertainment. Now though we run well, and attain some comfortable strength and watchfulness in the services of God; yet if they be afterward fly-blown with pride, or if we think to embalm them with praises, or reserve them as matter of ostentation; though they be angels’ food, yet, like the manna of the Israelites when kept too long, they will putrify and breed worms, and so be good for nothing, after that we have been at the pains of gathering it. (2.) Secondly, When well-performed services are perverted to security, then are they also spoiled. We are ready to say of them, as the rich man of his abundance, ‘Soul, take thine ease: thou hast much laid up for many years,’ [Luke xii. 19.] Satan is willing, for a further advantage, that we think ourselves secure from him; and as after a full meal we are apt to grow drowsy, so after services we are apt to think ourselves out of harm’s way. The church after a high feast with Christ, presently falls asleep, and highly miscarries in security and neglect, Cant. v. 2. By this means do the best of saints sometimes lose the things they have wrought, and throw down what they formerly built up. NOTE. Agreeably to Note at the beginning, there will be found below the more specific title page of Part II.—G. DÆMONOLOGIA SACRA: The Second Part. CONTAINING
By R. G. London, Printed by J. D. for Richard Randel, and Peter Maplisden, |
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