At the first view this may seem easy yet he that shall consider how much exercise of Grace goes necessarily to the right use of Scripture opposition shall not see cause to slight it as common nor yet to think that any vertue is attributed to the words For First The Scripture here is only recommended as a fit Instrument and no further or higher praise is given though therefore we may not attribute the whole of the Conquest to the Instrument alone yet this hinders not but that as an Instrument peculiarly fitted for these ends we may commend it above all other Instruments as we may justly commend Bread for nourishing above a Stone and expect more from it than from a chip so have we reason to expect more by the use of Scripture against Satan than from other means of defence which God hath not set up for that Service Secondly It is a concomitancy of Divine Power and Aid that conquers for us the Instrument is Scripture but the Power by which it works is from God Thirdly Neither is it any careless formal use of Scripture expressions that will give encouragement for expectation of a Divine concurrence but the use of Scripture in this business implyes an exercise of all Graces for it is an urging of Scripture under a fourfold Consideration First As being certainly perswaded of their Truth and fully keeping to that belief Secondly As being thankfully apprehensive of the holiness goodness and profitableness of the Commands and chearfully adhering to them as the only way and means to bring us to Union with Christ and to preserve us in it Thirdly As being highly and indispensibly obliged by them to perform the Duty commanded therein and to avoid the Sins forbidden Fourthly All this in an humble expectation of a divine help according to the Promise of God Now he that can plead the Command or Promise against a Temptation in this manner doth not do an ordinary work neither will he ascribe the success to the words and phrase of Scripture Some may peradventure wonder why Christ by his example had not recommended Prayer seeing it is of such unquestionable use in our undertakings against Satan But that enquiry may be fully satisfied if it be considered that Christ did peculiarly prepare himself to this encounter by solemn Fasting ver 2. which doth include Praying for such complicated duties are often denominated by that part which is extraordinary and usually in Scripture a Fast is only mentioned where Prayer is chiefly intended That this Fast of Christ related to the Temptation and that also as a means of preservation hath been spoken of in its place it remains only that from hence I add a fifth Direction CHAP. XXVI The fifth Direction of Prayer and of the seriousness required of those that expect the advantage of Prayer Of God's hearing Prayer while the Temptation is continued Of some that are troubled more while they pray more THat in all our endeavours of resistance frequent and earnest Prayers are not to be neglected This is so frequently recommended and so fully handled by most Authors that I shall refer you to such Authors as particularly treat of it noting only That the Apostle in Eph. 6. 18. when he recommends it to us in these words praying always with all Prayer and Supplication in the Spirit and watching thereunto with all perseverance and Supplication for all Saints he doth mind us that he that expects the advantage of that Duty must be peculiarly fitted and seriously diligent in that work For First He must have a Praying frame of Heart he must Pray always or as the Apostle elsewhere he must Pray continually Not as if this Duty must swallow up all the rest and that a Christian had no other Services to attend than Prayer but that he must be on a design to wrestle with God by Prayer and this must be constantly carried on though the acts of Prayer be intermitted and besides that in such cases he may keep his usual stated times for that duty he must have his Heart so much upon his design that every occasion or offer of Temptation will presently put him upon the Duty nay he must in respect of the frequent intercourse of his Heart with God in frequent ejaculations and breathings of Soul be as a Man wholly resolved into that Duty as Paul was at his first Conversion who as that expression behold he Prays doth intimate seems to have been all Prayer and wholly taken up with that duty Secondly He must pray in the Spirit his Soul must be truly in the Duty A more than ordinary earnestness is necessary at solemn times he must put out all his Strength he must cry mightily and with his whole Heart Thirdly When his Spirit grows dull he must reinforce it watch his Heart he must and if it be needful to quicken it up he must add Fasting or Meditation or whatever other means may be helpful Fourthly In this course he must continue without giving off the Duty though God behave himself as if he minded not his cry or took no notice of his hazard yet without weariness must our Supplications follow him It must be continued with all Perseverance Fifthly The Heart that undertakes this must not be so narrow as to be centred upon his own concern only when he is melted into a Spirit of Meekness and Compassion for others and is not so sollicitous for Peace or Ease that he could hug himself in his private enjoyment without concerning himself to tender and help those that are in the same dangers when his Supplications are for all Saints as well as for himself then may he expect to receive an Olive branch of Peace from Heaven in the return of his Prayer 'T is often objected by such that they pray but are not heard and that Temptations continue notwithstanding many crys and wrestlings First It is a great mistake to think that Prayers are not heard or do not prevail because the Temptation is not quite removed Prayers may be acceptable to God and recorded among his remembrances where the Temptation for Exercise and other holy Ends may be continued Secondly What God hath promised to such Prayer he fails not to make good he hath not promised to exempt us from Temptation but from the Power and prevalency of it If his grace be sufficient for us in the mean time 't is an answer as good as Paul got when he was importunate if together with the Temptation he gives an issue that we may be able to bear it there is his faithfulness in keeping promise he no where promised that Satan should not tempt but that he should not prevail while we can hold up our hands in the Mount to God and our praying frame will ascertain us of this For a Man is never overcome by a Temptation so long as he can Pray against it for so long he delights not in it so long he consents not and till he
When a Man is chastned with pain upon his bed his life abhors bread and his Soul dainty meat And when a Man is brought to loath his Duties as having nothing of that sweetness and satisfaction in them which is every where 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 not 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 perswading 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 complyance 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 't 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 our selves the Principle is truly Spiritual and excellent a foundation of Saphirs and precious Stones upon which if we patiently wait he will build a Pallace of Silver for that Service is more Spiritual that is bottom'd and carry'd on by a consciencious regard to a Command when there are no moral Motives from sence and comfort concurring than that which hath more of delight to encourage it while the power of the command is less swaying and influential Fourthly Men are oft discouraged from a sence of unworthiness of the priviledge of Duty a kind of excess of Humility which principally relates to the Sacrament of the Lords Supper and Prayer the Accuser of the Brethren tells them that they have nothing to do to take the Name of God in their mouthes that 't is an insufferable Presumption Hence some like the Woman with the bloody Issue dare not come to Christ to ask a cure while yet they earnestly desire it and would rather if they could privately steal it then openly beg it The Publican is presented to us in the Parable as one that could scarce get over that objection he is set forth standing at a distance not daring to lift up his eyes to Heaven scarce attempting to speak rather expressing his unworthiness to Pray than setting upon the Duty his smiting upon his breast and saying God be merciful to me a sinner argued that much of these discouragements lay upon him The like we may see in the Prodigal who it seems had it long in dispute whether he should go to his Father whose kindnesses he had so abused and so long as he could make any other shift he yielded to the Temptation at last he came to that resolve I will arise and go to my father and say I have sinned against heaven and thee and am not worthy to be called thy Son Which shew that the sense of this kept him off till necessity forced him over it And this is a discouragement the more likely to prevail for a neglect of Service because part of it is necessary as the beginning of those Convictions of our Folly to have such low thoughts of our selves that we are not worthy to come into his presence nor to look toward him is very becoming but to think that we should not come to him because our Conscience accuseth of unworthiness is a conclusion of Satan's making and such as God never intended from the premises but the direct contrary Come saith God though unworthy The like course doth the Devil take to keep Men off from the Lord's Table Oh saith he 't is a very solemn Ordinance he that partaketh of it unworthily eateth and drinketh Damnation to himself how darest thou make such bold approaches While the Hearts of Men are tender their Consciences quick and accusing the threatning begets a fear and they are driven off long and debarr themselves unnecessarily from their Mercies 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 First By Reproaches and Ignominious Terms It was an old trick of the Wicked-one to raise up Nick-names 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 Jury and his Name was great in Israel were the Heathens kept off from laying hold on the Covenant of God He rendred them and the Ordinances of Worship ridiculous to the Nations the opprobium of Circumcision and their unreasonable Faith as the Heathens thought it upon things not seen was a Proverb in every Man's mouth Credat Judaeus apella non ego The Jews were slandered with the yearly Sacrifice of a Grecian And Apion affirms That Antiochus found such an one in a Bed in the Temple and that they Worshipped an Asses head in the Temple Apion slandered the Jews with Vlcers in their privy Parts every Seventh day hence he derives Sabbath of Sabatosis which with the Aegyptians signifies an Vlcer Lysimachus slandered the Jews in Aegypt as Leprous Church-robbers and that their City was hence called Hierosola 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 Babling and strange and uncouth Doctrine besides a great many lies and forgeries that were invented to make it seem odious and by this means it was every where spoken against Machiavil 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 jealousie and suspition 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 David speaking of what befel himself in this kind Psal 69. 9 10 11 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
times he was in an Extasy and had converse with the Angel Gabriel But what he only in knavery pretended others have really felt the Stories of Familists and deluded Quakers are full of such things they frequently have fallen down and have lain as in a Swoon and when they have awaked told wonderful Stories of what they have heard and seen Thirdly Visions and Dreams were usual things in the Old Testament and famous ways of Divine Revelation but Satan was not behind in this matter his Instruments had their Visions too in Ezek. 13. 7. we have mention of Vain-Visions and Lying-Divinations and such Satanical Dreams are also noted Deut. 13. 1. If there arise among you a Dreamer of Dreams Those days of confusion that are not yet out of memory afforded store of these while unstable giddy-headed People began to dote on Novelties and Questions in Religion they gave opportunity to Satan to beguile them for he taking advantage of their nauseating of old Truths and their expectation of sublime discoveries which had sufficiently prepared them for any Impression did so over-work their Fancies that they easily conceited themselves to have had Divine Revelations and nothing was more ordinary than to hear Stories of Visions and Dreams And this spread further by a kind of Infection for it grew into a Religious Fashion and he was not esteemed that had not something of this nature to Experience And though the Folly and Impertinencies of such things generally and sometime the apparent wickedness of them as contradicting Truth and the Divine rules of Holiness were sufficient discoveries that Satans hand was in them yet until Time Experience and the Power of God had cooled the intemperate heat of this raving Humor it continued in the good liking and admiration of the more inconsiderate Vulgar And sometime those from whom more seriousness and consideration might have been expected fell into a reverence for these pretences in others and helped forward this Spiritual Witchcraft by their countenance and arguings often abusing that Text in Acts 2. 17. Your Young Men shall see Visions and your old Men shall dream Dreams by applying it to a justification of these apparently foolish dotages And indeed the effect hath discovered they were no better for many of those things which with great confidence were avouched as certain were by time proved to be false many things were useless vain ridiculous and some were brought to lament and confess their folly after they proceeded far in these ways and at last when the former opportunities are worn out Satan grew weary of that design as being no longer proper to be insisted on there is now a great calm so that 't is but seldom that we hear of such things talked of it were needless to give particular instances when you may at your leisure fetch them from hundreds of Pamphlets commonly known Fourthly One of the most noted ways by which God discovered his Mind was that of inspiration by which some eminent Persons called therefore Prophets spake the Will of God as they were moved or acted by the Spirit of God The Devil had also his false Prophets such are frequently taxed in the Old Testament and foretold in the New False Christs and false Prophets shall arise Mat. 24. 24. There were false Prophets among the People as there shall be false Teachers among you 2 Pet. 2. 1. Many false Teachers are gone out into the World Such an one was Montanus in Tertullians time David George John of Leyden Hacket our Country-Man were such and a great many such there have been in all ages 't is notoriously known that Satan hath thus inspired poor possessed wretches who have uttered threatnings against Sin and wo to Sinners The sayings of such possessed Creatures have not long since been gathered into a Volume and published as containing very perswasive Arguments to Repentance and amendment of Life Besides these our own times afford too many examples of this kind many have put on the Guise of the old Prophets in a foolish though adventurous imitation of their Actions and Prophecies Some have in our Streets resembled Jonah in Nineveh Yet forty days c. Some fancied to walk naked like Isaiah others have come with their Earthen Pitchers and broken them imitating these and other Types by which God in his true Prophets foresignifyed his judgments to come in all which Actions and Garbes with much earnestness and in an Affected Tone they have called out for Repentance in a confident denunciation of Woes and Miseries with a bold limiting of the time of forty days that the same might carry a Parallel to Jonah's Prophecy and sometime giving which is the surest way an unlimited uncertain time How the Devil acts in these matters and by what ways he seduceth them to believe they are inspired of God or have real Visions and Revelations 't is not my business now to enquire only let those that think such things strange consider that the Devil hath the advantage of deep fanciful apprehensions and a working Melancholy in such Persons by which he can easily work them to conceit any thing and confidently to believe what they have conceited Fifthly Sometime God notifyed his Mind by Signs and Miracles Satan hath also his Lying Signs and Wonders a Power God hath permitted him this way which is very great and the delusions wrought thereby are strong hazarding the deception of the Elect. This Power of doing Wonders the Devil usually applies to false Doctrines to strengthen and countenance Errors the Apostle testifies 2 Thess 2. 9. that Satan shall imploy this power for the advancement of the Man of Sin whose coming shall be with Signs and lying Wonders The Beast arising out of the Earth Rev. 13. 14. he shall deceive by the means of those Miracles which he hath Power to do And accordingly the Popish Legends are full of Stories of Miracles whereof though most be Lyes Forgeries and the false contrivements of those who sought to bring the People to receive their Doctrines the credit and advancement of which they sought by such ways some notwithstanding though not true Miracles yet were truly acted to countenance those Errors which are pretended to be established by them Sixthly God doth teach and lead his People by Impulses Christ was thus led of the Spirit into the Wilderness and Paul was bound in Spirit to go to Jerusalem 'T is common for Satan to imitate such Impulses We have clear Instances of Diabolical Impulses to Sin in Scripture a strong Impulse was on Ananias Satan filled his heart a strong Impulse on Judas Satan entred into his Heart and what then more easy to apprehend than that Satan can counterfeit better Impulses and violently stir up the Hearts of Men to actions seemingly good or indifferent Some Hypocrites are moved strongly to Pray or Preach Satan therein aiming at an increase of Pride or Presumption in them and they know no other but that it is the Spirit of God God's Children
truculent temper whose power being put forth from such an implacable malice must needs become rage and fierceness Fourthly His Diligence which together with his Cruelty are consequences of his Malice and Power he goes about and seeks he is restless in his pursuit and diligent as one that promiseth himself a satisfaction or joyful contentment in his Conquests CHAP. II. Of the Malice of Satan in particular The Grounds and Causes of that Malice The Greatness of it proved and Instances of that Greatness given I Shall first give some account of his Malice by which it shall appear we do not wrong the Devil in calling him malicious the truth of which Charge will evidence it self in the following particulars First The Devil though a Spirit yet is a proper Subject of Sin We need no other evidence for this than what doth by daily experience result from our selves we have sins which our Spirits and Hearts do act that relate not to the Body called a filthiness of the Spirit in contradistinction to the filthiness of the Flesh 'T is true it cannot be denyed but that those Iniquities which have a necessary dependance upon the Organs of the Body as Drunkenness Fornication c. cannot properly as to the formality of the Act be laid at Satan's door though as a tempter and provoker of these in Men he may be called the Father of these sins yet the forementioned Iniquities which are of a Spiritual Nature are properly and formally committed by him as Lying Pride Hatred and Malice And this distinction Christ himself doth hint Joh. 8. 44. When he speaketh a Lye he speaketh of his own where he asserts such spiritual Sins to be properly and formally acted by himself The certainty of all appears in the Epithites given him the wicked One the unclean Spirit as also those places that speak his fall They kept not their first Estate Jude 6. The Angels that sinned 2 Pet. 2. 4. If sins Spiritual are in a true and proper sense attributed to the Devil then also may Malice be attributed to him Secondly The wickedness of Satan is capable of increase a magis minus though he be a wicked Spirit and as to inclination full of wickedness though so strongly inclined that he cannot but sin and therefore as God is set forth to us as the Fountain of Holiness so is Satan called the Author and Father of Sin Yet seeing we cannot ascribe an infiniteness to him we must admit that as to acts of Sin at least he may be more or less sinful and that the wickedness of his heart may be more drawn out by Occasion Motives and Provocations besides we are expresly taught thus much Rev. 12. 12. The Devil is come down having great wrath because his time is short where we note 1. that his wrath is called great implying greater than at other times 2. That External Motives and Incentives as the shortness of his time prevail with him to draw forth greater acts of fury Thirdly Whatsoever Occasions do draw out or kindle malice to a rage Satan hath met with them in an eminent degree in his own fall and Man's happiness Nothing is more proper to beget malice than hurts or punishments degradations from happiness Satan's Curse though just fills him with rage and fretting against God when he considers that from the state and dignity of a blessed Angel he is cast down to darkness and to the basest condition imaginable for the part of his Curse which concerned Satan as well as the Serpent Vpon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shall be thy Meat implies a state most base as the use of the phrase proves they shall lick the dust of thy feet Thine enemies shall lick the dust Psal 72. 9. They shall lick the dust as a Serpent Mich. 7. 17. Where the Spirit is so wicked that it cannot accept the punishment of its iniquity All punishment is as a poyson and invenoms the heart with a rage against the hand that afflicted it thus doth Satan's fall enrage him and the more when he sees Man enstated into a possibility of enjoying what he hath lost The envy and pride of his heart boils up to a madness for that is the only use that the wretchedly miserable can make of the sight of that happiness which they enjoy not especially if having once enjoyed it they are now deprived this begot the rage and wrath in Cain against Abel and afterward his Murther The eye of the wicked is evil where God is good Hence may it be concluded that Satan being a wicked Spirit and this wickedness being capable of acting higher or lower according to occasions and with a suitableness thereto cannot but shew an unconceiveable malice against us our happiness and his misery being such proper occasions for the wickedness of his heart to work upon Fourthly This Malice in Satan must be great First If we consider the greatness of his wickedness in so great and total an Apostacy He is so filled with iniquity that we can expect no small matters from him as to the workings of such cursed Principles not only is he wicked but the spirit and extract of wickedness as the phrase signifies Ephes 6. 12. Secondly The Scripture lays to his charge all Degrees Acts and Branches of Malice As 1. Anger in the impetuous hast and violence of it Rev. 12. great wrath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there signifies Excandescentia the Inflammation of the Heart and whole Man which is violent in its motion as when the Blood with a violent stream rusheth through the Heart and sets all Spirits on fire and therefore this Wrath is not only called great but is also signified to be so in its threatning a wo to the Inhabitants of the Earth 2. Indignation is more than Anger as having more of a fixed fury and this is applyed to him Ephes 4. 27. in that those that have this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are said to give place to the Devil which is true not only in point of temptation but also in respect of the resemblance they carry to the frame and temper of Satan's furious heart 3. Hatred is yet higher than Wrath or Indignation as having deeper roots a more confirmed and implacable resolution Anger and Indignation are but short Furies which like a Land Flood are soon down though they are apt to fill the Banks on a sudden but Hatred is lasting and this is so properly the Devil's disposition that Cain in hating his Brother is 1 John 3. 12. said to be the proper Off-spring and lively Picture of that wicked One who is there so called rather than by the name of the Devil because the Apostle would also insinuate that hatred is the Master-piece of Satan's wickedness and that which gives the fullest Character of him 4. All Effects of his cruelty arise from this Root this makes him accuse and calumniate this puts him upon breathing after those murthers and destructions which damned
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 Our Countrymen have noted of the Natives of New-England that the Devil appeared to them in ugly Shapes and in hideous Places aâ— in Swamps and Woods But these are only the Prologue to the Tragedy it self 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 sometime he appears to the Worshippers tormenting and afflicting their Bodies tearing the Flesh from the Bones and carrying them away quick with him sometime six have been carried away at once none ever knowing what became of them 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 CHAP. 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 unactive Principles in him which if they could be so supposed would render him less hurtful and formidable This I shall dispatch in a few Instances nothing to this purpose First His Pains he takes in hunting his Prey and pursuing his Designs 'T is nothing for him to compass Sea and Land to labour to the utmost in his Imployment 't 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 strengh answerable to those violent Impulses we must suppose him to undergo with a kind of pleasing willingness all imaginable Toyl and Labour If we look into our selves 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 Prosilyte 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 satisfie that Lust take that Gain please your selves 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 immediatly from the presence of the Lord and fals upon him Besides what he doth upon solemn and extraordinary Occasions these that are common and ordinary are so carefully improved by him that every thing we hear or see is ready to become our snare and Satan will assay to tempt us by them though they lye something out of the way of our Inclination and be not so likely to prevail with us Thirdly 'T 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 encline us so that if we are perswaded by them he follows it on and is not satisfied with either a lower degree of acting sinfully or with one or two acts but then he presseth upon us to sin to the height with the greater contempt of God and grievance of his Spirit the greater scandal and offence to our Brethren and having once caused us to begin he would never have us to make an end His Temptations roll themselves upon us like the breaking in of Waters which by the fierceness of their current make a large way for more to follow He knows how to improve his Victories and will not thorow Slothfulness or Pity neglect to compleat them Hence it is that sometimes he reaps a large Harvest where he had sowen little and from one Temptation not only wounds the soul of him that committed it but endeavours to diffuse the Venom and Poysonous Steam of it to the Infection of others to the disgrace of Religion the hardning the Hearts of wicked Men and the turning the Ignorant out of the way of Truth In like manner if he perceive the Spirits of Men grow distempered and wounded he then plyes them with Threatnings fills them with all manner of Discouragements dresseth every Truth with the worst appearance that it may be apprehended otherwise than it is and puts such Interpretations on all Providences that every thing may augment the smart of the Wound till they be overwhelmed with Terrors 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 fietable if Covetousness doth not please us then he urgeth to Profuseness if Terrors do not affright us to dispair 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 Prophane if that hit not then to be Erronious if he cannot work by one Tool then he takes another and if any thing in his way disgust he will not urge it over-hard
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 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 fortifie themselves with the strongest Resolutions not to give way to Sin Notwithstanding all these 'T 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 'twixt them and the Light some Fallacy or other is put upon the Understanding some way or other the Will is bribed or byassed there is treachery in the case for 't 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 God 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 complyance with Satan are said to deceive or to put tricks and fallacies upon themselves Fifthly All kinds of Subtilty 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. 2. 11. We are not ignorant of his Devices where the word in the Original is borrowed from the Sophistical reasonings of Disputants Sometime 't 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. 12. 7. expressly calling them Deceits and comparing him to a Dragon or Serpent for his subtilty Sometime he is represented as a Warriour Rev. 12. 17. The Dragon was wroth and went to make War c. and here are his Warlike Stratagems pointed at Mention is made 2 Tim. 2. 26. of his Snares and the taking of Men alive or Captive directly alluding to Warlike proceedings The subtile proceedings of Arts and Craft are charged on him and his Instruments Men are said to be enticed Jam. 1. as Fish or Fowl by a Bait Others deluded as by Cheaters in false Gaming Eph. 4. 14. By the sleight of Men and the cunning craft of those that ly in wait to deceive The over-reaching of Merchants or crafty Tradesmen is alluded to in 2 Cor. 2. 11. All these sleights are in Satan in their highest perfection and accomplishment He can transform himself into an Angel of Light 2 Cor. 11. 14. where he hath an occasion for it In a word all deceiveableness of unrighteousness is in him 2 Thess 2. 10. So that a general 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a dexterity and ability for all kind of subtile Contrivances is ascribed to him 2 Cor. 11. 3. and that in his very first essay upon Eve when the Serpent deceived her thorow subtilty so that whatsoever Malice can suggest or Wit and Art contrive for Delusion or whatsoever Diligence can practise or Cruelty execute all that must be imagined to be in Satan Sixthly All this might be futher 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 Vriah 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 Conveniencies What Art must there be to bring a darkness into David's mind a forgetfulness of God's Law a fearlesness 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 first 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 subtilty in reference to what he was about to suggest is plain from the Text Now the Serpent was more subtile then any Beast of the field it had been needless and impertinent to have noted the Serpents subtilty as Satans 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 Husbands absence which is probable if we consider that 't 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 enquiry of the affairs as if he intended not hurt 6. He so enquires of the matter Hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the Garden as if he made a question of the reality of the Command and his words were so ordered that they might cast some doubt hereof into her mind 7. He under a pretence of asserting God's Liberality secretly undermines the threatning as if he had said Is it possible that so bountiful a Creator should deny the liberty of eating of any tree to what purpose was it made if it might not be tasted 8. When he finds that by these Arts he had gained a little ground and brought her to some kind of questioning of the reality of the threatning for she seems to extenuate it in saying lest we die he grows more bold to speak out his mind and plainly to annihilate the threatning Ye shall not die this he durst not do till he had gained in her mind a wavering suspition that possibly God was not in good earnest in that prohibition 9. Then he begins to urge the conveniency and excellency of the Fruit by equivocating upon the name of the Tree which he tells her could make them knowing as Gods 10. He reflects upon God as prohibiting this out of envy and ill-will to them 11. In all this there is not a word of the danger but impunity and advantage promised 12.
way of blinding us Follows next The fourth way by which our Lust prevails in Satan's hand to blind Knowledg and that is by distracting and disturbing it in its work This piece of subtilty Satan the rather useth because 't is attended with a double advantage and like a two-edged sword will cut either way For 1. A confusion and distraction in the Understanding will hinder the even and clear apprehensions of things so that those principles of Knowledg cannot reach so deep nor be so firm and full in their application For as the Senses if any way distracted or hindred though never so intent must needs suffer prejudice in their operations a thick Air or Mist not only hinders the sight of the Eye but also conduceth to a misrepresentation of Objects Thus is the Understanding hindred by confusion But 2. If this succeed not yet by this he hinders the peace and comfort of God's Children 'T is a trouble to be haunted with evil thoughts To work this distraction First Satan useth a clamorous importunity and doth so follow us with Suggestions that what way soever we turn they follow us we can think nothing else or hear nothing else they are ever before us Secondly He worketh this disturbance in our thoughts by levying a legion of Temptations against us many at once and of several kinds from within from without on every side he gathers all from the Dan to the Bersheba of his Empire to oppress us with a multitude so that while our thoughts are divided about many things they are less fixed and observant in any particular Thirdly He sometimes endeavours to weary us out with long Sollicitations As those that besiege a City when they cannot storm endeavour to waste their Strength and Provisions by a long Siege His design in this is to come upon us as Ahitophel counselled Absolom when we are weary and weak-handed by watching and long resistance Fourthly But his chief design is to take the advantage of any trouble inward or outward and by the help of this he dangerously discomposeth and distracts our Counsels and Resolves If any have a Spirit distemper'd only under the apprehensions of Wrath 't is easie for him to confound and amaze such that they shall scarce know what they do or what they think The like advantage he hath from outward Afflictions and these opportunities he the rather takes for these Reasons First Usually inward or outward troubles leaves some stamp of murmuring and fullenness upon our Hearts and of themselves distemper our Spirits with a sad inclination to speak in our haste or to act unadvisedly Job's affliction imbittered his Spirit and Satan misseth not the advantage then he comes upon him with Temptations and prevailed so far that he spake many things in his anguish of which he was ashamed afterward and hides his face for it Once have I spoken but I will not answer yea twice but I will proceed no further Secondly By reason of our Burthen we are lâ—ss weildy and more unapt to make any resistance God himself expresseth the condition of such under the similitude of those that are great with young who because they cannot be driven fast he gently leads them But Satan knows a small matter will discompose them and herein he deals with us as Simeon and Levi dealt with the Sechemites who set upon them when they were sore by circumcision Thirldly Troubles of themselves occasion Confusion multitudes of Thoughts Distractions and Inadvertencies If Men see a hazard before them they are presently at their wits end they are puzled they know not what to do thoughts are divided now resolving this then presently changing to a contrary purpose 'T is seldom but as in a multitude of words there is much folly so in a distraction of Thoughts there are many Miscarriages and Satan with a little labour can improve them to more here he works unseen in these troubled Waters he loves to angle because his Baits are not discerned Fifthly Our Considerations and Reasonings against Sin are hindred by a bold forward precipitancy When Men are hasted and pressed to the committing of Sin and like the deaf Addar stop their Ears against the voice of the Charmer in this case the rebellious Will is like a furious Horse that takes the Bridle in his Teeth and instead of submitting to the government of his Rider he carries him violently whither he would not Thus do Men rush into Sin as the Horse into the Battel The devices by which Satan doth forward this we may observe to be these among others First He endeavours to affright Men into an hopelesness of prevailing against him and so intimidates Men that they throw down their Weapons and yield up themselves to the Temptation they conclude there is no hope by all their resistance to stand it out against him and then they are easily perswaded to comply with him To help this forward Satan useth the Policy of Souldiers who usually boast high of their strength and resolutions that the hearts and courage of their Adversaries failing the Victory may fall to them without stroke The Devil expresseth a disdain and scorn of our weak opposition as Goliah did of David Am I a Dog that thou comest to me with Staves doest thou think to stand it out against me 't is in vain to buckle on thine Armour and therefore better were it to save the trouble of striving than to fight to no purpose With such like arguings as these are Men sometimes prevailed with to throw down their Weapons and to over-run their Reason through fear and hopelesness Secondly Sometimes he is more subtile and by threaping Men down that they have consented already he puts them upon desperate adventures of going forward This is usually where Satan hath used many sollicitations before after our hearts have been urged strongly with a Temptation when he sees he cannot win us over to him then he triumphs and boasts we are conquered already and that our thoughts could not have dwelt so long upon such a subject but that we had a liking to it and thence would perswade us to go on and enjoy the fulness of that delight which we have already stoln privately over Shooes over Boots Now though his arguings here be very weak for though it be granted that by the stay of the Temptation on our thoughts he hath a little entangled us it cannot hence be inferred that it is our wisdom to entangle our selves further yet are many overcome herewith and give up themselves as already conquered and so give a stop to any further consideration Thirdly When Men will not be trapanned into the Snare by the former delusions he attempts to work them up to a sudden and hasty resolve of sinning he prepares all the materials of the Sin puts every thing in order and then carries us as he did Christ into the Mountain to give us a prospect of their beauty and glory All these saith he will I give thee
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 the Soul perswaded 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 Masters feet is behind it doth it not say to it self Come we will not consider let us do it quickly before these lively considerations come in to hinder us 't is loth 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 eat their Passover in haste and with their staves in their hands Fourthly When Opportunities and Occasions will well suit it He takes the advantages of a passionate and sullen Humor and by this means he turns us clearly out of our Byass Reason is trampled under-foot and Passion quite over-runs 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 Humor 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 Cholerick resolution I do well to be angry 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 carelesness of any danger that may follow sutable to that expression of Job chap. 13. 13. Let me alone that I may speak and let come on me what will 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 an high hand presumptuously wilfully against Conscience against Knowledg and this ordinarily to be found only among those whom a custom of Sin hath hardned 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. 6. 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 hearken When the People by a course of sinning had made themselves like the wild Ass used to the Wilderness then did they peremptorily set up their Will against all the Reason and Consideration that could come in to deter them though they were told the inconveniences Jer. 2. 25. that this did unshoo their Foot and afflicted them with Thirst and Want yet was the advice slighted there is no hope said they there is no expectation that we will take any notice of these pleadings for we have fixed our resolve We have loved Strangers and after them will we go So Jer. 44. 16. As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the Name of the Lord we will not hearken unto thee but we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth out of our own Mouth A plain and full resolve of Will dischargeth all the powers of Reason and commands it silence And that this is most ordinary among Men may appear by these frequent expressions of Scripture wherein God lays the blame of all that madness which their lives bring forth upon their Will Ye would not obey ye will not come to me their heart is set to do evil c. It may indeed seem strange that Satan should proceed so far with the generality of Men and that they should do that that should seem so inconsistent with those Principles which they retain and the Light which must result from thence But we must remember that these wills and shalls of wicked Men are for the most part God's interpretation of their Acts and Carriage which speaks as much though it may be their Minds and Hearts do not so formally mould up their Thoughts into such open and brazen-fac'd assertions And yet we ought also further to consider that when the Spirit of God chargeth Man with wilfulness there is surely more of a formal wilfulness in the heart of Man than lyeth open to our view And this will be less strange to us when we call to mind Sixthly That through the working of Satan the Minds of Men are darkned and the light thereof put out by the prevalency of Atheistical Principles 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 and in their works they deny him 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 Poyson with his Temptation When he enticed Eve by secret insinuations he first questions the truth of the threatning and then proceeds to an open denyal of it ye shall not surely die and 't 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 't 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 threatnings Those conceits that Men have of God whereby they mould and frame him in their fancies sutable to their humors which is a thinking that he is such an one as our selves are Streams and Vapours from this Pit and the Hearts of the Sons of Men are desperately set within them to do evil upon these grounds much more when they arise so high as in som who say Doth God know Is there knowledg in the most High If Men give way to this what reason can be imagined to stand before them All the comminations of Scripture are derided as so many Theological scare-Crows and undervalued as so many pitiful contrivances to keep
his Interest and upon design he will sometimes so carry himself that he may be deemed and supposed to be gone out of a Man As those that besiege Forts or walled Towns do sometimes raise the Siege and feign a departure intending thereby to take a sudden advantage of the carelesness of the besieged In the explanation of this Policy I shall 1. Shew how many ways he feigns a departure 2. Vpon what designs he doth it There are three ways whereby Satan seems to forsake his Interest First He frequently ceaseth the prosecution of a Design which yet he hath in his Eye and Desire when he perceives that there are some things in his way that render it not feasible nay he forbears to urge Men to their darling sins upon the same score and who would not think Satan cast out in such a case When a Man spits out the sweet Morsel which heretofore he kept under his Tongue and sucked a sweetness from it when Men of noted Iniquities abstain from them and become smooth and civil who would not think but that the unclean Spirit were gone This way and course he puts in practice in several cases First When he perceives some extraordinary occasion puts any of his Subjects into a good mood or humor of Religion Wicked Men are not ordinarily so highly bent upon evil ways but that they may be at sometimes softned and relaxed Pharaoh who is most eminently noted for a heart judicially hardned at the appearance of the Plagues upon himself and Egypt usually relented somewhat and would confess he had sinned and that fit would continue upon him for some little time But very frequently 't is thus with others an extraordinary occasion melts and thaws down the natural affections of Men as a warm day melts the Snow upon the Mountains and then the stream will for a time run high and strong at which time Satan sees 't is in vain to urge them Thus Men that receive an eminent kindness and deliverance from God what is more common than for such Men to say Oh! we will never be so wicked as we have been we will never be drunk more the World shall see us reformed and new Men These are indeed good words and yet though Satan knows that such expressions are not from a good heart as that of Deut. 5. 29. implyes They have well said O that there were such an heart in them he nevertheless thinks it not fit then to press them to their usual wickedness at that time for natural affections raised high in a profession of Religion will withstand Temptations for a fit and therefore he forbears till the stream run lower What a fit of affection had the Israelites when their Eyes had seen that miraculous deliverance at the Red Sea What Songs of rejoycing had they what resolves never to distrust him again Psal 106. 12. Then believed they his words they sang his praise Satan doth not presently urge them to murmuring and unbelief though that was his design but he stays till the fit was over and then he could soon tempt them to forget his works How like a Convert did Saul look after David had convinced him of his integrity and had spared his life in the Cave he weeps and acknowledgeth his iniquity justifies David owns his kindness and seems to acquiesce in his succession to the Kingdom The Devil had no question a great spite at David and 't was his great design to stir up Saul against him and yet at that time he could not prevail with him to destroy David though he might easily have done it he was then in a good mood and Satan was forced to give way to necessity and to seem to go out of Saul for the present Secondly He also ceaseth from his design when he sees he cannot fit his Temptation with a sutable opportunity What could be more the Devil's design and Esau's satisfaction than to have had Jacob slain Esau professeth it was the design of his heart and yet he resolves to forbear so long as his Father Isaac lived Gen. 27. 41. The days of my Father's mourning are at hand then but not till then will I slay my Brother Jacob. The Devil often sows his seed and yet waiteth and hath long patience not only in watering and fitting the hearts of Men for it but also in expectancy of fit opportunities and in the mean time he forbears to put Men upon that which time and occasion cannot fitly bring forth to practice The Prophet Hosea 7. 4. speaks of that People as notoriously wicked they are all adulterers but withall he observes that they forbare these enormous abominations for want of fit seasons their heart was as an Oven heated by the Baker sufficiently enflamed after their wickedness and yet the Baker after he had kneaded the dough prepared all the ground-work of the Temptation ceased from raising sleeping all the night till all was leavened that is though their hearts were enraged for Sin yet the Devil doth wait till occasions present themselves and becomes in the mean time like one asleep Now while the Devil thus sleeps the fire that is secretly in the heart being not seen Men gain the good opinion of Converts with others and often with themselves not knowing what Spirit they are of because Satan ceaseth upon the want of occasions to tempt and provoke them Thirdly Our Adversary is content to forbear when he percieves that a restraining grace doth lock up the hearts and hands of Men. When a stronger than he cometh who can expect less but that he should be more quiet that God doth restrain Men sometime when he doth not change them needs no proof that Satan knows of these restraints cannot be denyed who can give an account of these communings and discourses that are betwixt God and Satan concerning us his pleadings in reference to Job were as unknown to Job till God discovered them as his pleadings concerning our selves are to us Besides who can tell how much of God's restraining grace may ly in this of God's limiting and straitning Satan's Commission Now the Devil hath not so badly improved his observations but that he knows 't is in vain to tempt where God doth stop his way and tye up Mens hands Abimeleck was certainly resolved upon wickedness when he took Sarah from Abraham Gen. 20. 2. and yet the matter is so carried for some time how long we know not as if the Devil had been asleep or forgot to hasten Abimeleck to his intended wickedness for when God cautions him he had not come near her vers 4. the ground of all this was neither in the Devil's backwardness nor Abimeleck's modesty but Satan lets the matter rest because he knew that God withheld him and suffered him not to touch her Fourthly When Men are under the awe and fear of such as carry an Authority in their Countenances and Imployments for the discouraging of Sin Satan as hopeless to prevail doth not solicite to
resolves to try his utmost Strength And hence is it that Converts complain that when they begin in earnest to look after God they are most troubled with Temptations Besides this what ever he can do to make them drive heavily shall not be wanting Sometimes he makes attempts upon their thoughts and affections which are as their Chariot wheels and if these can be knocked off any way it retards them Sometimes he casts stumbling-blocks in their way if any prejudice may divert them if Threatnings or Penalties can hinder if the frowning of Friends or any thing else can put a stop to their Proceedings he will have them ready Sometimes he endeavours to retard them by sollicitations of acquaintance offers of former occasions and opportunities of sinning or what ever else may be as a remora to their intentions Fourthly But if none of these serve then as his last shift he proclaims open War against them pursues them as Enemies and Rebels now he begins to accuse them for that which they did by his Advice and Temptation Now Sins that were called little are aggravated Now that day of Repentance which he was wont to say was long he tells them 't is quite spent that the Sun of their hope is set nothing now doth he suggest but Hell Damnation and Wrath he makes them as it were see it hear it and feel it in every thing that interest in their hearts which he dissembled before now he stands upon and asserts and will not be beat off designing in all this either to make them weary of these new resolves by this unusual disquietment and hostility or to precipitate them upon some desperate undertaking or at least to avenge himself upon them in venting his Malice and Rage against them but of this more afterward CHAP. XVII Satan's Deceits against Religious Services and Duties The Grounds of his displeasure against Religious Duties His first design against Duties is to prevent them His several subtilties for that end by exernal hindrances by indispositions bodily and spiritual by discouragements the ways thereof by dislike the grounds thereof by sophistical arguings His various pleas therein OUr next work is to take notice of the spite and methods of the Serpent against the ways of Worship and Service that these are things against which his heart carries an high fury and for the overthrow of them imploys no small part of his Power and Subtilty needs no proof seeing the experience of all the Children of God is an irresistible evidence in this matter I shall therefore first only set forth the grounds of his displeasure and earnest undertakings against them before I come to his particular ways of Deceit which are these First By this means if he prevail he deprives us of our Weapons This is a stratagem of War which we find the Philistims practised against Israel they took away all their Smiths lest the Hebrews should make them Swords or Spears hence was it that in the Battel there was neither Sword nor Spear found in the hand of any of the People that were with Saul and Jonathan The Word of God is expressly called the Sword of the Spirit Prayer is as a Spear or rather a general piece of Armour if the Devil deprive us of these he robs us of our Ammunition for by reason of these the Church is compared to a Tower built for an Armory wherein hang a thousand Bucklers all Shields of mighty Men and the Apostle expressly calls them Weapons of our Warfare of purpose given us for the pulling down of strong Holds and the demolishing of those Forts and Batteries of high Imaginations that Satan rears up in the hearts of Men against their happiness if these be taken away our Locks are cut as Sampson's were our Strength is departed and we become weak as other Men we are open to every incursion and inroad that he pleaseth to make against us Secondly If he hinders these he intercepts our Food and cuts off our Provisions The Word is called Milk sincere Milk of the Word 't is that by which we are born nourished and increase 't is our Cordial and Comfort Christ indeed is the Bread of Life and the fountain of all our Consolations but the Word and Prayer are the Conduit Pipes that convey all to us if these be cut we fade as a Leaf we languish we consume and waste we become as a Skin Bottle in the Smoak our moisture as the drought in Summer our Soul fainteth our Heart faileth and we become as those that go down to the Pit so that if the Devil gain his design in this he hath all give him this and give him the Kingdom also this is the most compendious way of doing his work and that which saves him a labour in his Temptations The strongest Holds that cannot otherwise be taken are easily subdued by Famine and like Fig-trees with their ripe Figs when they are shaken even fall into the mouth of the eater if our Spiritual Food fail us of our own accord we yield up our selves to any lust that requires our complyance Thirdly Besides these there is no design whereby Satan can shew more malice and spite against God He doth all he can to maintain a competition with the Almighty his Titles of the God of the World the Prince of the power of the Air shew what in the pride of his heart he aspires to as well as what by commission God is pleased to grant him These duties of Worship and Service are the homage of God's Children by which they testify the acknowledgments of his Deity by wresting these out of our hands Satan robs God of that honour and makes the allegiance of his Servants to cease if he could do more against God doubtless he would but seeing he hath not an Arm like God and so cannot pull him out of Heaven by this means he sets up himself as the God of the World and enlargeth his Territories and staves off the Subjects of the God of Heaven from giving him the honour due to his Name and that the Devil in these endeavours is carried on by a spite against God as well as by an earnest desire of the ruine of Souls may be abundantly evidenced by his way of management of that opposition that he gives to the duties of Service and Worship I shall only to make this out instance in three things 1. That where the Devil prevails to set up himself as an Object of Worship there he doth it in a bold insolent presumptuous imitation of God's Appointments in the ways of his Service he enjoyns Covenants Seals Sacrifices Prayers and Services to his miserable Slaves as may appear by undoubted Histories of which more in due place 2. He never acknowledgeth the truth of God's ways but with an evil mind and upon design to bring them under contempt his Confessions have so much of deceit in them that Christ would not accept them and therefore we read that
what he spoke to Jehoram proceeded from zeal yet being but a Man and subject to the like infirmities of other Men it had distracted and discomposed his Spirit which made him unfit and uncapable to entertain the visions of God Musick then being a natural means for the composure and quiet of the Mind he takes that course to calm and fit himself for that work Fourthly Ignorance and Prejudice are spiritual Indispositions which are not neglected by the Devil Knowledg 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 Fountain-head of all their backwardness Luk. 24. 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 justifie the disregard of Duty and offers Reasons which it thinks cannot be answered 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 wayes by which he endeavours to discourage Men from the duties of Service are these First He sets before them the toile and burthen 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 It is not a toile 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 expresly 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 8. 5. the toyl 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 intrenching upon their Callings and Occupations Mal. 1. 13. They said Behold what a weariness is it looking upon it as an insufferable burthen nay they proceeded so far as to snuff at it Now when the Devil had so far prevailed with them it was easie to put them upon neglect which as the place cited speaks presently followed upon it they brought the torne and the lame and the sick for a Sacrifice Satan first presented these Services as a wearisome burthen then they snuffed at them next they thought any Service good enough how mean soever though to an open Violation of the Law of Worship and lastly from a pollution of the Table of the Lord they proceeded to a plain contempt of duty the table of the Lord is polluted and the fruit thereof even his meat is contemptible vers 12. In the management of this discouragement the Devil hath most success upon those that have not yet tasted the sweetness and easiness of the wayes of the Lord his yoke is indeed easie his burthen is light his service is a true freedom to those that are acquainted with God and exercised in his Service But when Men are first beginning to look after God and Duty and are not yet filled and satisfied with the fatness of his house this Temptation hath the greater force upon them and they are apt to be discouraged thereby 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 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 Vrim nor by Prophets the Devil easily perswaded him to leave off the ordinary ways of attendance upon God and to consult with the Witch of Endor The prophane Persons mentioned in Mal. 3. 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 58. 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 justifie 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 imbrace 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 Psal 22. 1 2. Why hast thou forsaken me O my God I cry in the day time 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 Gods 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 elsewhere in Psal 69. 3. When he had cryed and was not answered he began to be weary and his eyes failed nay his flesh and heart failld his Spirit sunk as a Man almost vanquished and overcome with the Temptation 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 tryeth words as the Pallat 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
some perfect some less perfect some little Children some young men some Fathers The end of all this is to make them apprehend themselves Christians of an higher rank and order which also makes way consequently for a further inference viz. That there must needs be immunities and priviledges suitable to these heights and attainments To this purpose 3 he produceth those Scriptures that are design'd by God to raise up the minds of Men to look after the internal Work and Power of his Ordinances and not to center their minds and hopes in the bare formal use of them without applying their thoughts to God and Christ unto whom they are appointed to lead us Such as these Scriptures Rom. 2. 28. He is not a Jew which is one outwardly neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh but he is a Jew which is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter And Rom. 6. 7. we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter 2 Cor. 5. 16. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh yea though we have known Christ after the flesh yet now henceforth know we him no more Ephes 4. 13. He gave some Apostles and some Prophets c. for the perfecting of the Saints till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man By a perverse Interpretation of these and some other Scriptures of like import he would perswade them That the great thing that Christ designed by his Ordinances was but to train up the weaker Christians by these rudiments as the A B C to Children to a more spiritual and immediate way of living upon God and that these become altogether useless when Christians have gotten up to any of these imaginary degrees of a supposed Perfection Enough of this may be seen in the writings of Saltmarsh Winstanly and others in the late times How great a Trade Satan drove by such misapprehensions not long since cannot easily be forgotten so that God's Worship did almost lye wast and in many places the way to Sion did mourn Secondly He will sometimes confess an equality of priviledge among the Children of God and yet plead an inequality of duty that God is as good and strong to us and that we have all an equal advantage by Christ he will readily acknowledge But then when we should propound the diligence of the Saints in their Services for our pattern as of Davids praying seven times a day Daniels three times Anna's serving God with fastings and prayers night and day c. He tells us these were extraordinary Services and as it were works of supererrogation more than the Command of God laid upon them So that we are not tyed to such strictness and we being naturally apt to indulge our selves in our own ease are too ready to comply with such Delusions And by degrees Men are thus brought to a confident belief that they may be good enough and do as much as is required though they slacken their pace and do not Fast Pray or Hear so often as others have done Thirdly Another Sophism of his is to heighten one Duty to the ruine of another He strives to make an intestine War among the several parts of the Services we owe to God and from the excellency of one to raise up an enmity and undervaluing disregard of another Thus would he sever as inconsistent those things that God hath joyned together As among false Teachers some say Lo here is Christ and others Lo he is there So we find Satan dealing with Duties he puts some upon such high respects to Preaching that say they Christ is to be found here most frequently rather than in Prayer or other Ordinances others are made to have the like esteem for Prayer and they affirm in this is Christ especially to be met withal Others say the like of Sacraments or Meditation In all these Satan labours to beget a dislike and neglect of other Services Thus in what relates to the Constitution of Churches he endeavours to set up purity of Churches to the Destruction of Vnity or Vnity to the ruine of Purity A notable Example hereof we have in the Euchytae a Sect of praying Hereticks which arose in the time of Valentinian and Valens who upon the pretence of the Commands of Christ and Paul for Praying continually or without ceasing and fainting owned no other Duty as necessary vilifying Preaching and Sacraments as things at best useless and unprofitable The like attempts he makes daily upon Men where though he prevail not so far as to bring some necessary Duties of Service into open contempt yet he carries them into too much secret neglect and disregard Fourthly He improves the grace of the Gospel to infer an unnecessariness of Duty and this he doth not only from the advantage of a prophane and careless Spirit in such as presumptuously expect Heaven though they mind not the way that leads to it for with such it is usual as one observes for Satan to sever the means from the end in things that are good to make them believe they shall have Peace though they walk in the Imaginations of their Heart to make them lean upon the Lord for Heaven in the apparent neglect of Holiness and Duty As in evil things he severs the end from the means making them confident they shall escape Hell and Condemnation though they walk in the path that leads thither But besides this he abuseth the understandings and affections of Men by strange and uncouth inferences as that God hath received a satisfaction and Christ hath done all so that nothing is left for us to do The Apostle Paul was so much aware of this kind of arguing that when he was to magnifie the Grace of God he always took care to fence against such perverse reasonings severely rebuking and refelling such objections as in Rom. 3. 7 8. Where speaking that our unrighteousness did commend the righteousness of God he falls upon that reply Why then am I judged as a sinner Which he sharply refells as an inference of slanderous imputation to the Gospel which hath nothing in it to give the least countenance to that Conclusion Let us do evil that good may come And adds That Damnation shall justly overtake such as practise accordingly The like we have Rom. 6. 1. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound which he rejected with the greatest abhorrency God forbid From both which places we may plainly gather that as unsound as such arguings are yet Men through Satans subtilty are too prone upon such pretences to dispute themselves to a careless neglect of Duty This might be enlarged in many other instances as that of Maximus Tyrius who disputed all Duties unnecessary upon this ground That what God will give cannot be hindred and what he
that they that are born of God indeed must not dare not cannot give themselves up to a liberty in such Abominations The same Fruits of corrupt Doctrine appeared after the Apostles dayes What was Montanus but an impure wretch What were his two companion Prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla but infamous Adulteresses The Priscillianists the Manichees and abundance more left the stink of their Prophaneness behind them by reason of whom according to Peters Prophesie 2 Pet. 2. 2. the way of Truth was evil spoken of Later times have also given in full evidence of this Truth How shameful and abominable were the Lives of John of Leyden and the rest of those German Enthusiasts Who reads the story of Hacket and Coppinger without detestation of their wicked Practices What better have the Familists and Libertines of New and Old England been some were turned off to highest Ranting in all Prophaneness of Swearing Drinking Adultery and the defying of a godly Life and this under the unreasonable boast of Spirit and Perfection The Heavens may blush and the Earth be astonished at these things But in the mean time Satan huggs himself in his success and encourageth himself to further attempts in propagating Errour seeing it brings in so great an harvest of Sin Eighthly In this Design of false-Doctrine Satan is never altogether out if he cannot thus defile their Lives yet 't is a thousand to one but he obstructs their Graces by it What greater hinderance can there be to Conversion than Errour The word of Truth is the means by which God through his Spirit doth beget us 't is part of that Image of God that is implanted in us 't is God's Voice to the Soul to awaken it It cannot then be imagined that God will give the honour of that work to any Errour neither can Truth take place or have its Effect upon a Soul fore-stalled with a contrary falshood Falshood in possession will keep Truth at the door Neither is Conversion only hindred by such Errours as directly contradict converting Truths but also by Collateral non-fundamental Errours As they fill the Minds of Men with prejudice against those that profess another Perswasion so that for their own beloved Errours-sake Men will not entertain a warning or conviction from those that dissent from their Opinions they first account them Enemies and then they despise their Message 'T is no small matter in Satans way to have such an obstruction at hand in the grand concern of Conversion Yet this is further serviceable to him to hinder or weaken the Graces of the Converted already if he can set God's Children a madding upon Errour or make them fond of Novelties he will by this means exhaust the vigour and strength of their Hearts so that the substantials of Religion will be neglected For as hurtful Plants engross all the moisture and fatness of the Earth where they stand and impoverish it into an inability for the nourishment of those that are of greater worth So doth Errour possess it self of the strength of the Spirit and in the mean time neglected Graces dwindle into emptiness and fade as a Leaf The most curious Questions and Opinions that are contribute nothing to the Establishment of the Heart 't is only Grace that doth that Heb. 13. 9. The heart is established with Grace and not with disputes about Meats nay they do Grace a prejudice in that they make it sick and languishing for to that sence is the Original in 1 Tim. 6. 4. Doting about Questions or growing diseased because of the earnest prosecution of Opinions Ninthly Errour hath yet another mischief in it which makes it not a little desirable to Satan and that is the judgment or punishment that it brings So that it every way answers the Devils hatred against both Soul and Body The blessings of Prosperity and Peace do attend the Triumphal Chariot of Truth Psal 85. 11 12. Truth shall spring out of the Earth and Righteousness shall look down from Heaven And then it follows That the Lord shall give that which is good and our Land shall yield her increase But on the contrary Errour doth more provoke God than Men are aware How often did God desolate the Israelites set a fire in their Cities and gave them into the hands of their Enemies because of their changing the Truth of God into a lye and worshipping and serving the Creature more than the Creator God left not the Church of Pergamos and Thyatira without severe Threatnings for the Errour of the Nicolaitans Rev. 2. 16. Repent or else I will come unto thee quickly Vers 22. I will cast them into great tribulation except they repent of their Deeds and I will kill her children with death And accordingly God fulfilled his threatning upon them by bringing in the Saracens to desolate them and to possess their Land as he also brought the Goths upon the Empire for the Arrian Heresie How is Satan pleased to labour in a Design that will kindle the Wrath of the Almighty CHAP. II. Of the Advantages which Satan hath and useth for the Introduction of Errour As 1. From his own Power of Spiritual Fascination That there is such a Power proved from Scripture and from the Effects of it 2. From our imperfection of Knowledge the particulars thereof explained 3. From the byass of the Mind VVhat things do byas it and the power of them to sway the Understanding 4. From Curiosity 5. From Atheistical Debauchery of Conscience THat Satan may the better speed in his design he carefully takes notice of and diligently improves all advantages Indeed all his Stratagems are advantages taken against us for so the Apostle in his caution to the Corinthians calls his devices lest Satan should get an advantage of us 2 Cor. 2. 11. but here I only understand those that are more general which are the grounds and encouragements to his particular Machinations against Men and which also direct him in his procedure These are First Satan's own power of Spiritual Fascination by which he infatuates the minds of Men and deludes them as the external senses are deceived by Inchantments or Witchcraft That Satan is a cunning Sophister and can put Fallacies upon the Understanding that by subtile objections or arguments he can obtrude a falshood upon the belief of the unskilful and unwary that he can betray the judgment by the affections are things of common practice with him But that which I am now to speak of is of an higher nature and though it may probably take in much of his common method of ordinary delusion yet in this it differs at least that 't is more efficacious and prevalent for as his power over the children of disobedience is so great that he can lead them captive at his will except when he is countermanded by the Almighty so hath he by special commission a power to lead those to Errour effectually without missing his end that have prepared themselves for that spiritual
judgment by a special provocation and for ought we know as he hath an extraordinary power which he exerts at such times so may he have an extraordinary method which he is not permitted to practise daily nor upon all That such a power as this the Devil hath is believed by those whose learning and experience have made their judgments of great value with serious Men and thus some do describe it 'T is a delusion with a kind of Magical Inchantment so Calvin a Satanical operation whereby the senses of Men are deluded thus Perkins who after he had asserted that Satan can corrupt the Fantasy or Imagination he compares this Spiritual Witchcraft to such diseases of Melancholy that make Men believe that they are or do what they are not or do not as in the disease called Lycanthropia and to the inchantments of Jannes and Jambres who deluded the senses of Pharaoh Others more fully call it a more vehement operation of the great Impostor whereby he obtrudes some noxious Errour upon the mind and perswades with such efficacy that it is embraced with confidence defended strenuously and propagated zealously A particular account of the way and manner by which the Devil doth this is a task beyond sober enquiry it may suffice us to know that such power he hath and this I shall confirm from Scripture and from the effects of such delusion First There are several Scriptures which assert a Power in Satan to bewitch the minds of Men into Errour from which I shall draw such notes as may confirm and in part explain this Truth in hand And I shall begin with that of Gal. 3. 1. O foolish Galatians who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the Truth c. The word which the Apostle here useth for bewitching as Grammarians and Criticks note is borrowed from the practice of Witches and Sorcerers who use by secret powers to bind the Senses and to effect Mischiefs 'T is true he speaks of false Apostles but he intends Satan as the chief Workman and this he transfers to signify Satan's Power upon the Mind in blinding the Understanding for the entertainment of Errour Neither can any thing be objected why this place should not prove a fascinating power in Satan such as we have been speaking of but this that it may be supposed to intend no more than an ordinary powerful perswasion by Arguments Yet this may be answered not only from the authority of learned Interpreters who apprehend the Apostle and his expression to intend more but also from some concomitant particulars in the Text. He calls them foolish Galatians as we translate it but the Original goes a little higher to signify a madness and withall he seems to be surprized with wonder at the Power of Satan upon them which had not only prevailed against the Truth but against such evident manifestations of it as they had when they were so plainly fully and efficaciously instructed for before their eyes Jesus Christ had been evidently set forth which expressions and carriage cannot rationally be thought to befit a common ordinary case Next to this let us a little consider that famous Scripture in 2 Thess 2. 9 10 11. Whose coming is after the working of Satan with all Power and for this cause God shall send them strong delusions that they should believe a lye I shall from this place observe a few things which if put together will clear the truth we speak of As first In this delusion here mentioned the Apostle doth not only set down extraordinary outward means as Signs and Lying Wonders but also suits these extraordinary means with a sutable concomitant inward power for by Power I do not understand as some a power of shewing Signs and doing Wonders as if the Apostle had said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the power of Signs and Wonders for the words will not well bear that without some unnatural straining but I understand by it a Power distinct from the Signs and Wonders by which he moves their hearts to believe by an inward working upon their minds striking in with the outward means of Lying Miracles propounded to their senses And we may the better satisfy our selves in this interpretation if we compare it with Rom. 15. 19. where not only the power of doing Wonders is expressed by a phrase proper and different from this of the Text in hand through mighty Signs and Wonders or in the power of Signs and Wonders but it is also clearly distinguished from the Power of the Spirit of God in working upon the hearts to make those Wonders efficacious and perswasive so that as in the Spirit of God we observe a Power to do Wonders and a Power to work upon the Heart by these Wonders we may conclude that this wicked Spirit hath also in order to Sin and Delusion this twofold Power But secondly I note further that this Power is called a special energy of peculiar force and efficacy in its working the strange inexpressible strength of it seems to stand in need of many words for explanation He calls it all Power which as well notes the degree and height as the variety of its operations and then the energy the virtue operativeness and strength of Power Thirdly 'T is also to be observed that Satan's success and exercise of this Power of Delusion depends upon the commission of God and that therefore 't is extraordinary and not permitted to him but upon special occasions and provocation for this cause God shall send c. Fourthly The success of this Power when exercised is certain They are not only strong delusions in regard of the Power from whence they come but also in regard of the event those upon whom they come cannot but believe Infatuation and Pertinaciousness are the certain fruits of it Fifthly The Proof of all is manifest in the quality of the Errours entertained for they are palpable gross lyes and yet believed as the very truths of God and they are in such weighty points as do evidently determine the Soul to ruine lies to be damned which two things are sufficient proofs of Spiritual fascination It being unimaginable that rational Men and especially such as were instructed to a belief of a contrary truth should so far degenerate from the light of Reason as to be deluded by gross and apparent Lyes and of such high importance except their minds had been blinded in some extraordinary way Some further confirmation may be added to this truth from 1 King 22. 21. And there came forth a Spirit and stood before the Lord and said I will perswade him I will go forth and I will be a lying Spirit in the mouth of all his Prophets and he said thou shalt perswade him and prevail also I might here take notice of Satan's readiness in this work as wanting neither skill nor will if he were but always furnished with a Commission as also the powerful efficacy
capacities of the Parties as Extasies Trances and quakings of little Children their Prophesying and speaking Scripture-threatnings after such fits Some have been acted in a way of extatical Fury as Montanus of whom Eusebius witnesseth That sometimes he would be seized upon by a kind of malignant Spirit and would suddenly-break forth into a rage and Madness and presently utter rash and bold Speeches strange unusual Voices with Prophesyings insomuch that he was judged by those that saw him to be acted by the Devil Others have been as in a more sober spiritual Rapture an instance whereof I shall give you from Mr. Baxter in these words I have heard from an ancient godly Man that knew Arthington and Coppinger that they were possessed with the Spirit of the Grundletonians The same Man affirmed That he went but once among them himself and after Prayer they breathed on him as giving him the holy Ghost and he was so strangely transported for three days that he was not the same Man and his Family wondred what was the matter with him he had no Confession of Sin but an elevated strain in Prayer as if he had been in strange Raptures and after three days he was as before and came no more at them Some have been carried into Childish and ridiculous Actions such was the behaviour of Jo. Gilpin in his Delusion at Kendal in Westmerland as his going to the Fidlers House playing upon a Base Viol in token of Spiritual Melody his creeping up the Streets upon hands and knees in token of bearing his Cross his making Marks on the ground and beating it as his Mortification of Sin and a great many more things of like nature Such things as these are as spiritual Marks and Characters engraven upon Errours by which a diabolical Power moving and acting such deluded Creatures like so many Puppits is evidently discovered Thirdly When we see not only Idiots and those whose defect of Understanding might put them under the power of an ordinary Cheat thus imposed upon but Men otherwise intelligent rational and serious blinded with Follies taken with apparent Dotages admiring Trifles and carried away with things which common reason would teach them to abhor 't is more than suspicious that 't is not any probability of Truth or excellency in the Errour that prevails with them but a Spiritual Power that doth bewitch them When we consider that such a Learned Man as Tertullian begins to admire such a wretch as Montanus or such an one as Arthington led away with Hacket and Coppinger or such a Man as Kneperdollin seduced by John of Leyden and especially such numbers of wise and seemingly sober and Religious persons going down the stream after irrational and plainly irreligious Errours what else can be apprehended to be the cause but a powerful Satanical Delusion Fourthly Add we to these the consideration of the suddenness of the prevalency of such Errours against plain and evident Truths which is a circumstance taken notice of by the Apostle Gal. 1. 6. I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the Grace of Christ unto another Gospel In which case we may observe it usually falls out That Mens Affections prevent their Discoveries at the first view they are taken before they understand what the Errour is and they are perswaded before they know Fifthly and Lastly That the earnestness of the prosecution by which they maintain and propagate the Errour is a kind of unnatural fury which hurries Men with violence into an unyielding stifness to the stifling of all kind of Charity and Consideration These things put together I say makes the matter in hand evident when Men otherwise rational are at first touch highly inamoured with and violent in the pursuit of Errours that are sottish or devillish we can resolve it into nothing less than into that of the Apostle Who hath bewitched you The improvement of this first and great advantage for the introduction of Errours is more than can be well expressed but he hath besides other advantages which he no way neglects among which Secondly Our Imperfection in Knowledge is none of the least if our Knowledge had been perfect it would have been a task too hard for the Devil to make us Erroneous for Men do not err but so far as they are ignorant to impose upon Men against clear and certain Knowledg is impossible Men cannot believe that to be true which they know to be false It would be as silly for Satan to make such attempts as for a Jugler to endeavour the deception of those that know and see the ways of his Conveiances as well as himself That our Knowledg is imperfect I shall prove and explain in the following particulars First The Scripture plainly asserts it the greatest number of Men which are in an unregenerate Estate are expresly called foolish blind ignorant Men that are in Darkness Men that do not know nor consider that perish through Ignorance Others that in comparison to these are called Children of the Light and such as see with open face are notwithstanding when compared to a state of Perfection represented to be in the Non-age of their Knowledg unripe imperfect the Apostle doth so express it 1 Cor. 13. 9. We know in part we prophesie in part In the Explanation of this he compares our attainments in this World to the understanding thoughts and speakings of Children v. 11. concludes v. 12. That all our knowledg gives us but a dark imperfect reflection of things we see through a Glass darkly Secondly Men that have had the clearest heads and have been at the greatest pains in their enquiries to find out Truths have brought back the clear conviction of their own Ignorance Austin confesseth That in the Scriptures which he made his chief study the things which he knew not were more than the things he understood Chytraeus in humble Modesty goes a little further My dearest knowledg saith he is to know that I know nothing and it will be a clear demonstration of that Mans ignorance that boasts of his Knowledg his own mouth will prove against him that he knows nothing as he ought to know Thirdly The consideration of the Nature of the things which are the Objects upon which we employ our search will sufficiently convince us that we do comprehend but very little For though the Scripture hath expressed the main concerns of eternal Life so fully that they are as clear as Light and need no such stretch of the Brain but that the meanest capacities may as certainly understand them as they understood any thing of common business as That Christ dyed for Sinners that without Faith it is impossible to please God that without Holyness no Man shall see his face c. Yet as Peter speaks 2 Pet. 3. 16. There are many things that are hard to be understood there are Difficulties Depths and Mysteries Some things whereof we have but dark touches in
common Rhetorick One gives us an Observation to that purpose of his own Preaching and so may many others While then Men hear such language they have a reverence to it And as Physitians cover their Pills with Gold that the Patient might more willingly take them so do Men often swallow down Errour without due consideration because conveyed to them in a Language which they respect Secondly Satans second care for the advancement of Errour after he hath given it all the countenance he can from Scripture is to gild it over with specious pretences he sets it off with all the bravery he can and then urgeth that as an Argument of its Truth Men are apt to judg that what doth better their Spiritual Condition cannot be a Lye or delusion and the Argument were the more considerable if the advantages were such as he pretends them to be but the very noise and boast of advantages please the unwary without a due enquiry into their reality The Apostle in Rom. 16. 18. reduceth all this Policy of the Deceiver to two heads 1. Good words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 words that set out the profit and advantage of the thing 2. And fair Speeches 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Speeches that flatter the Condition of the party His Art as to the first of these is to tell them that the Notions offered to them are special Discoveries rare Mysteries which have been hidden from others and thence infers that it must of necessity conduce much to their happiness and Spiritual Perfection to know and embrace them Those that troubled the Church in Pauls days with false Doctrines used this slight of boasting as appears by that expression in 1 Tim. 6. 20. Oppositions of Science it seems they called their opinions though they were but prophane and vain-bablings by the name of Science or Knowledg implying that all others even the Apostles themselves were in the Dark and came short of their Illumination The like we have in Rev. 2. 24. of that abominable Prophetess Jezebel who recommended her blasphemous filthy Doctrines under the name of Depths Profundities or hidden Knowledg though the Spirit of God told that Church they were not such but if Depths they were depths of Satan as 't is added there by way of Correction and not of the Spirit of God We may trace these â—ooâ—steps of Satan in all considerably prevailing Errors for what hath been more common than to hear Men speak of the designs they have been carrying on under the specious Titles Of Christ's coming to set up a Righteous Kingdom The Churches coming out of Babylon and out of the Wilderness the dawning of the day of the Lord the day of Reformation the time of the Restitution of all things with abundance of Brags of the same kind I shall add no particular Instance of this nature but a few strains of H. Nicholas with whom such high promising vaunts were ordinary His Service of Love he compares to the most Holy whereas Johns Doctrine of Repentance was but a preparation to the Holy and the Service of Christ he allowed to be no more than as the Holy of the Temple this his Service he calls the perfection of Life the completion of Prophecies the perfect conclusion of the Works of God the Throne of Christ the true Rest of the Chosen of God the last Day the sure Word of Prophecy the New Jerusalem and what not If we make further enquiry into the nature of these fair promising Mysteries we shall find that Satan most frequently pitcheth upon these three First He befools Men into a belief that the Scriptures do under the Vail of their Words and Sentences contain some hidden Notions that are of purpose so disguised that they may be locked up from the generality of Men at least from learned and wise Men and that these Rarities cannot be discerned from the usual significations of the Words and Phrases as we understand other Books of the same Language but they fancy these Sacred Writings to be like the Writings of the Aegyptians by which they absconded their Mysteries especially like that kind of Writing whereby under words of common known sence they intended things which the Words themselves could not signify and that which occasions this imagination is this that we read frequently of Mysteries in Scriptures and hidden Wisdom and the special Revelation of them to God's Children which are very great Truths but yet not to be so understood as this Delusion supposeth for these expressions in Scripture intend no more than this that the design of God to save Man by Christ is in it self a Mystery which never would have been found out without a special Revelation and that though this Mystery is now revealed by the Gospel yet as to the application of it to the Hearts of Men in Conversion by the Operation of the Spirit it is yet a Mystery But none of these intend any such suggestion that there are private Notions of Truth or Doctrine that are lying under ground as it were in Scripture words which the words in the common Language will not acquaint us withal nay the contrary is expresly affirmed when we are told that all is plainly laid open to the very simple so that from the Scriptures they may as well understand the fundamental principles of Religion as they may understand any other thing which their language doth express to them However in this Satan takes advantage of Mens Pride and Curiosity to make them forward in the acceptation of such offers especially when such things are represented as the only saving discoveries which a Man cannot be ignorant of but with hazard of Damnation Secondly In this boast of Mystery Satan sometimes takes another course somewhat differing from the former and that is to put Men upon Allegorical reflections and allusions by which the Historical Passages of Scripture are made besides the import of the History resemblances of spiritual Truths which supposeth the Letter of Scripture to be true but still as no better than the first Rudiments to train up Beginners withal yet withal that the spiritual meaning of it raiseth the skilful to a higher Form in Christ's School At this rate all are turned into Allegories If they fall upon the first of Genesis they think they then truly understand it when they apply the Light and Darkness and God's separating of them with such other Passages to the regeneration of the Soul The like work make they with the Sufferings of Christ But then the crafty Adversary at last enticeth them on to let go the History as if it were nothing but a Parable not really acted but only fitted to represent Notions to us Allegories were a Trap which the Devil had for the Jews and wherein they wonderfully pleased themselves How much Origen abused himself and the Scriptures by this humour is known to many and how the Devil hath prevailed generally by it upon giddy people in later times I need not tell you The
the high flown straines of it Montanus as vile as he was had the confidence to call himself the Comforter Novatus and his Brother would be no less than Moses and Aaron The Gnosticks called themselves the Illuminati The Swinkfieildians assumed the title of the Confessors of the Glory of Christ The Family of Love had their Evangelium Regni the Gospel of the Kingdom The Fratricelli distinguished themselves from others by the term Spiritual Muntzer asserted That all of his Opinion were Gods Elect and that all the Children of their Religion were to be called the Children of God and that all others were ungodly and designed to Damnation H. Nicholas affirms That there was no knowledg of Christ nor Scripture but in his Family To this purpose most of them speak that forsake the wayes of Truth and though these swellings are but wind and vapour yet those heights are very serviceable to the Devils purposes who by this means confirms those whom he hath already Conquered and then fits them out with the greater confidence to allure others and Men are apt enough to be drawn by fair shews and confident boastings But I proceed The third Stratagem of Satan for promoting Errour is to astonish Men with strange Language and affected expressions It was an old device of Satan to coyn an unintelligible gibberish as the proper vehicle of strange Enthusiasticks Doctrine and this he artificially suits to his pretended Mysteries without this his rare Discoveries would be too flat and dull to gain upon any Man of competent understanding For if these Dotages were cloathed in plain words they would either appear to be direct non-sence or ridiculous folly It concerns him when he hath any feats of Delusion in hand to set them off with a canting speech as juglers use their hard words of Ailif Casyl Zaze Presto Millat c. to put their ignorant Admirers into a belief of some unknown power by which they do their Wonders And this is in some sort necessary extraordinary matters are above expression and such wild expressions put Men into an expectation of things sublime This knack Satan hath constantly used Montanus had his strange Speeches And all along downward to our times we may observe That Errour hath had this gaudy dress the Familists especially abound with it you may read whole Books full of such a kind of speaking as the Book called Theologia Germanica or German Divinity the Books of Jacob Behmen The bright Morning Star c. Neither are the Papists free one of late hath taken the paines to shew them this and other follies among them you may find such talk as this of being beclosed in the mid-head of God and in his meek-head of being substantially united to God of being oned to God as also of the abstractedness of Life of passive Vnions of the Deiform fund of the Soul of a state of introversion of a Super-essential life a state of nothingness c. Just like the raveings of H. Nicholas David George and others who confidently discourse of being godded with God of being consubstantiated with the Deity and of Gods being manned with them I have oft considered what reason might be given for the takeingness of such expressions and have been forced to satisfie my self with these First Many mistake the knowledge of words for the knowledge of things And well may poor ignorant Men believe they have attained no man knows what by this device when among Learned Men the Knowledg of words is esteemed so great a pitch of Learning and they nourish a great many Controversies that are only verbal Secondly Some are pleased to be accounted Vnderstanders by others and rest in such high words as a badge of Knowledge Thirdly Some are delighted with such an hard Language upon an hope That it will lead them to the knowledg of the things at last they think strange expressions are a sign of deep Mysteries I knew one that set himself to the reading of Jacob Behmens Books though at present he confessed he was scarce able to make common sense of three lines together upon a secret enticement that he had from the Language to come to some excellent discovery by much pains and reading Fourthly Some that have their Fancies heated have by this means broken confused impressions of strange things in their imaginations and conceive themselves to know things beyond what common Language can express as if with Paul rapt up into the third Heaven they hear and see Wonders unutterable But what reason soever prevails with Men to take up such a way of speaking Satan makes them believe that it containes a rich Mine or Treasury not of common Truths but of extraordinary Profundities Fourthly In stead of Argument to confirm an Errour sometimes we have only bold Assertions that it is Truth and a confident condemning the contrary as an Errour urging the danger of Mens rejecting it backed with threatning of Hell and Damnation and all this in the words of Scripture To be sure they are right and all other Men are wrong This kind of confidence and fierceness hath been still the complexion of any remarkable way of Delusion for that commonly confines their Charity to their own Party which is a great token of an Errour not only may you observe in such extraordinary Proclamations of Wrath against those that will not believe them a practice used by the Mad Fanaticks of Munster who as our Quakers were wont to do go up and down the streets crying Wo wo Repent repent come out of Babylon the heavy Wrath of God the Axe is laid to the root of the Tree But in their more setled Teaching they pronounce all to be Antichrist and of the carnal Church that do oppose them Take for this H. Nicholas his words all Knowledg besides his is but witchery and blindness and all other Teachers and Learners are a false Christianity and the Devils Synagogue a nest of Devils and wicked Spirits a false Being the Antichrist the Kingdom of Hell the Majesty of the Devil c. This piece of Art not only our Quakers to whom nothing is more familiar than to say to any opposer Thou art Damn'd thou art in the Gall of bitterness the Lake of fire and brimstone is prepared for thee c. but also the Papists commonly practise who shut all out of Heaven that are not of their Church and when they would affright any from Protestanism they make not nice to tell him That there is no possibility of Salvation but in their way The Reasons of this Policy are these 1 The Heart is apt to be startled with threatnings and moved by commands especially those that are of a more tender and frightful Spirit and though they know nothing by themselves yet these beget fears which may secretly betray Reason and make Men leave the right way because of affrightment 2 The confidence of the Assertors of such things hath also its prevalency for Men are apt to think that
Errour it only now remains that something be spoken of his attempts against the Peace and Comfort of the Children of God That 't is also one of Satans chief designs to cheat us of our Spiritual Peace may be fully evinced by a consideration of his Malice the great concern of inward Comfort to us and the many Advantages which he hath against us by the disquiet of our Minds First whosoever shall seriously consider the Devil 's implacable Malice will easily believe that he so envies our Happiness that he will industriously rise up against all our Comforts 'T is his inward fret and indignation that Man hath any interest in that Happiness from which he irrecoverably fell and that the Spirit of God should produce in the hearts of his People any spiritual joy or satisfaction in the belief and expectation of that Felicity and therefore must it be expected that his Malice heightned by the torment of his own guilt which as some think are those Chains of darkness in which he is reserved at present to the judgment of the great day will not cannot leave this part of our Happiness unattempted He endeavours to supplant us of our Birth-right of our Blessing of our Salvation and the comfortable hopes thereof From his common imployment in this matter the Scripture hath given him names importing an opposition to Christ and his Spirit in the ways they take for our Comfort and Satisfaction Christ is our Advocate that pleads for us Satan is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Calumniator The Spirit interceds for us Satan is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Accuser of the Brethren who accuseth them before God night and day The Spirit is our Comforter Satan is our Disturber a Beelzebub who is ever raking in our Wounds as Flyes upon Sores The Apostle Paul had his Eye upon this when he was advising the Corinthians to receive again the penitent incestuous Person his caution was most serious 2 Cor. 2. 11. lest Satan get advantage of us lest he deceive and circumvent us for his expression relates to Men cunningly deceitful in Trade that do over-reach and defraud the unskilful and the reason of this caution was the known and commonly experienced subtilty of Satan for we are not ignorant of his devices implying that he will and frequently doth ly at catch to take all advantages again 〈◊〉 Some indeed restrain these advantages to Vers 10. as I ld 〈◊〉 only meant that Satan was designing to fix the Corinthians upon an Opinion that Backsliders into great Sins were not to be received again or that he laid in wait to raise a Schism in the Church upon the account of this Corinthian Others restrain this advantage which he waited for to Vers 7. where the Apostle expresseth his fear lest the excommunicated Person should be swallowed up of too much sorrow but the caution being not expressly bound up to any one of these seems to point at them all and to tell us that Satan drives on many designs at once and that in this Mans case Satan would endeavour to put the Corinthians upon a Pharisaical rigour or to rend the Church by a division about him and to oppress the Penitent by bereaving him of his due comfort so that it appears still that it is one of his designs to hinder the Comfort and molest the Hearts of God's Children Secondly Of such concern is inward spiritual Peace to us that 't is but an easie conjecture to conclude from thence that so great an Adversary will make it his design to rob us of such a Jewel For 1. Spiritual Comfort is the sweet Fruit of Holiness by which God adorns and beautifies the ways of Religious Service to render them amiable and pleasant to the Undertakers Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace Prov. 3. 17. and this is the present rest and refreshment of God's faithful Servants under all their toil that when they have tribulation from the World yet they have peace in him Joh. 16. 33. and that being justified by Faith they have peace with God and sometimes joy unspeakable and full of glory 1 Pet. 1. 8. and this they may the more confidently expect because the fruits of the Spirit are Love Joy Peace c. Gal. 5. 22. 2. Spiritual Comfort is not only our satisfaction but our inward Strength and Activity for all holy Services doth depend upon it By this doth God strengthen our Heart and gird up our Loyns to run the ways of his Commandments it doth also strengthen the soul to undergo Afflictions to glory in Tribulations to triumph in Persecutions the outward Man is also corroborated by the inward peace of the Mind A merry Heart doth good like a Medicine but a broken Spirit drieth the Bones Prov. 17. 22. all which are intended by that expression Neh. 8. 10. The joy of the Lord is your strength 't is strength to the Body to the Mind and that both for service and suffering the reason whereof the Apostle doth hint to us Phil. 4. 7. The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your Hearts and Minds that is Peace doth so guard us as with a Garison for so much the word imports that our Affections our Hearts being entertained with divine satisfactions are not easily enticed by baser proffers of worldly delights and our Reasonings our Minds being kept steady upon so noble an object are not so easily perverted to a treacherous recommendation of vanities 3. Joy and Peace are propounded to our careful endeavours for Attainment and Preservation as a necessary duty of great importance to us Rejoycings are not only recommended as seemly for the Vpright but injoined as Service and that in the constant practice Rejoyce evermore In every thing give thanks 1 Thess 5. 16 18. Rejoyce in the Lord alway and again I say rejoyce Phil. 4. 4. In the Old Testament God commanded the observation of several Feasts to the Jews these though they had their several respective grounds from God's appointment yet the general design of all seems to have been this that they might rejoyce before the Lord their God Lev. 23. 40. as if God did thereby tell them that it was the comely complexion of Religion and that which was very acceptable to himself that his Children might always serve him in chearfulness of Heart seeing such have more cause to rejoyce than all the World besides They are then much mistaken that think mounful Eyes and sad Hearts be the gretest Ornaments of Religion or that none are serious in the Profession of it that have a chearful Countenance and a rejoycing frame of Spirit 'T is true there is a Joy that is devilish and in Mirth which is madness to which Christ hath denounced a Wo Wo be to them that laugh now for they shall mourn and weep but this is a Joy of another nature a carnal delight in Vanity and Sin by which Men fatten their hearts to
ruine and whatsoever is said against this can be no prejudice to Spiritual holy Joy in God his Favour and Ways 4. Spiritual Comfort is also a badg of our Heavenly Father's kindness As Joseph the Son of his Fathers affections had a special testimony thereof in his party-coloured Coat so have Gods Favourites a peculiar token of his good Will to them when he gives them the Garments of Praise for the Spirit of Heaviness if Spiritual Comfort be so advantagious to us it will be no wonder to see Satan so much rage against it it would be a satisfaction to him to tear these Robes off us to impede so needful a Duty to rob us of so much Strength and to bereave us of the sweet fruits of our Labours Thirdly It further appears that Satan's design is against the Comforts of God's Children by the many advantages he hath against them from the trouble and disquiet of their Hearts I shall reckon up the chief of them As 1. From the Trouble of the Spirit he raiseth confusions and distractions of Mind For 1. 'T is as natural to Trouble to raise up a swarm of muddy Thoughts as to a troubled Sea to cast up Mire and Dirt and hence is that comparison Isa 57. 20. a thousand fearful Surmises evil Cogitations Resolves and Counsels immediatly offer themselves This disorder of Thoughts Christ took notice of in his Disciples when they were in danger Why do thoughts arise in your hearts Luk. 24. 38. And David considered it as matter of great anxiety which called for speedy help Psal 94. 19. In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul Sometimes one fear is suggested then presently another now this doubt perplexeth then another question is begot by the former they think to take this course then by and by they are off that and resolve upon another and as quickly change again to a third and so onward one Thought succeeding another as Vapours from a boyling Pot. 2. Such Thoughts are vexatious and distracting the very Thoughts themselves being the poysonous steams of their running Sores are sadly afflictive and not unfitly called Cogitationes onerosae burdensom Thoughts But as they wrap up a Man in Clouds and Darkness as they puzzle him in his Resolves non-plus him in his Undertakings distract him in his Counsels disturb and hinder him in his Endeavours c. so do they bring the Mind into a labyrinth of confusion What advantage the Devil hath against a Child of God when his heart is thus divided and broken into Shivers 't is easie to imagine And David seems to be very sensible of it when he put up that request Psal 86. 11. Vnite my heart to fear thy Name 2. By disquiet of Heart the Devil unfits Men for Duty or Service Fitness for Duty lies in the orderly temper of Body and Mind making a Man willing to undertake and able to finish his work with comfortable satisfaction if either the Body or Mind be distempered a Man is unfit for such an undertaking both must be in a suitable frame like a well-tun'd Instrument else there will be no melody Hence when David prepared himself for Praises and Worship he tells us his Heart was ready and fixed and then his Tongue was ready also so was his Hand with Psaltery and Harp all these were awakened into a suitable posture That a Man is or hath been in a fit order for Service may be concluded from 1. His Alacrity to undertake a Duty 2. His Activity in the prosecution 3. His Satisfaction afterward right Grounds and Principles in these things being still presupposed This being laid as a foundation we shall easily perceive how the troubles of the Spirit do unfit us for Duty For 1. These do take away all Alacrity and forwardness of the Mind partly by diverting it from Duty Sorrows when they prevail do so fix the Mind upon the present Trouble that it can think of nothing but its Burthen they confine the Thoughts to the pain and smart and make a Man forget all other things as David in his trouble forget to eat his Bread and sick Persons willingly discourse only of their Diseases partly by indisposing for action Joy and Hope are active Principles but Sorrow is sullen and sluggish As the Mind in trouble is wholly imployed in a contemplation of its Misery rather than in finding out a way to avoid it so if it be at leisure at any time to entertain thoughts of using means for recovery yet 't is so tired out with its Burden so disheartned by its own Fears so discouraged with Opposition and Disappointment that it hath no list to undertake any thing by this means the Devil brings the soul into a spiritual Catoche so congealing the Spirits that it is made stiff and deprived of motion 2. Disquiets of Heart unfit us for Duty by hindering our activity in prosecution of Duty The whole Heart Soul and Strength should be engaged in all religious Services but these Troubles are as Clogs and Weights to hinder motion Joy is the dilatation of the Soul and widens it for any thing which it undertakes but Grief contracts the Heart and narrows all the faculties hence doth David beg an enlarged heart as the principle of Activity Psal 119. 32. I will run the way of thy Commandments when thou shalt enlarge my Heart for what can else be expected when the Mind is so distracted with Fear and Sorrow but that it should be uneven tottering weak and confused so that if it do set it self to any thing it acts troublesomly drives on heavily and doth very little with a great deal ado and yet were the unfitness the less if that little which it can do were well done but the Mind is so interrupted in its endeavours that sometimes in Prayer the Man begins and then is presently at a stand and dare not proceed his words are swallowed up he is so troubled that he cannot speak Psal 77. 4. Sometimes the Mind is kept so imployed and fixed on Trouble that it cannot attend in Hearing or Praying but presently the Thoughts are called off and become wandring 3. Troubles hinder our satisfaction in Duty and by that means unfit us to present Duties and indispose us to future Services of of that kind Our satisfaction in Duty ariseth 1. Sometimes from its own lustre and sweetness the conviction we have of its pleasantness and the spiritual advantages to be had thereby these render it alluring and attractive and by such considerations are we invited to their performance as Isa 2. 3. Come ye let us go up to the Mountain of the Lord and he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths Hos 6. 1. Come and let us return unto the Lord for he hath torn and he will heal us he hath smitten and he will bind us up but trouble of Spirit draws a black Curtain over the excellencies of Duty and presents us with
frightful thoughts about it so that we judg of it according to our fears and make it frightful to our selves as if it would be to no purpose rather a mischief than an advantage 2. Sometime our satisfaction ariseth from some special token of Favour which our indulgent Father le ts fall upon us while we are in his work As when he gives us more than ordinary assistance or puts Joy and Comfort into our Hearts And this he often doth to make us come again and to engage afresh in the same or other services as having tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious and that there is a blessedness in waiting for him As in our Bodies he so orders it that the concocted juices become a successive Ferment to those that succeed from our daily Meat and Drink So from Duties performed doth he beget and continue Spiritual Appetite to new undertakings But O how sadly is all this hindered by the disquiet of the Heart The Graces of Faith and Love are usually obstructed if not in their Exercise yet in their delightful Fruits and if God offer a kindness inward sorrow hinders the perception As when Moses told the Israelites of their deliverance they hearkned not for hard bondage If a message of Peace present it self in a Promise or some consideration of Gods merciful disposition yet usually this is not credited Job confesseth so much of himself Job 19. 16. If I had called and he had answered me yet would I not believe that he had hearkened unto my Voice David also doth the like Psal 77. 2 3. My Soul refuseth to be comforted I remember God and was troubled Matter of greatest comfort is often so far from giving ease that it augments the trouble However the Heart is so hurried with its fears and discomposed with grief that it cannot hearken to nor consider nor believe any kind offer made to it By all these ways doth the Devil through the disquiet of Mind unfit the Lord's People for Duty and what a sad advantage this is against us cannot easily be told By this means he may widen the distance betwixt God and us keep our Wounds open make us a reproach to Religion And what not But 3. By these disquiets he pusheth us on to reject all duties for when he hath tyred us out by wearisom endeavours under so great indispositions and unfitness he hath a fair advantage to tempt us to lay all aside Our present posture doth furnish him with arguments he forgeth his Javelings upon our Anvil and they are commonly these three 1. That duties are difficult And this is easily proved from our own experience while we are broken or bowed down with sorrows we make many attempts for duty and are oft beat off with loss our greatest toil helps us but to very inconsiderable performances hence he infers 'T is foolishness to attempt that which is above our strength better sit still then toil for nothing 2. That they are unfruitful and this is our own complaint for troubled Spirits have commonly great expectations from duties at first and they run to them as the impotent and sick people to the Pool of Bethesda with thoughts of immediate ease as soon as they shall step into them but when they have tryed and waited a while siretching themselves upon duty as Elisha's Servant laid the Staff upon the Face of the Shunamites Son and yet there is no voice nor hearing no answer from God no peace then are they presently disatisfied reflecting on the Promises of God and the Counsels of good Men with this Where is all the pleasantness you speak of what advantage is it that we have thus run and laboured when we have got nothing and then 't is easy for the Devil to add And why do you wait on the Lord any longer 3. His last and most dangerous argument is that they are sinful Unfitness for Duty produceth many distractions much deadness wandering thoughts great interruptions and pittiful performances Hence the troubled Soul comes off from duty wounded and halting more distressed when he hath done than when he began upon these considerations that all his service was sin a mocking of God a taking his name in vain nay a very blasphemous affront to a divine Majesty Upon this the Devil starts the question to his Heart whether it be not better to forbear all Duty and to do nothing Thus doth Satan improve the trouble of the mind and often with the designed success For a dejected Spirit doth not only afford the materials of these Weapons which the Devil frames against it but is much prepared to receive them into its own Bowels The grounds of these Arguments it grants and the inferences are commonly consented to so that ordinarily duty is neglected either 1. Through sottishness of Heart or 2. Through frightful fears Or 3. Through desperateness bringing a Man to the very precipice of that Atheistical determination I have cleansed my hands in vain 4. Satan makes use of the troubles of Gods Children as a stumbling-block to others 'T is no small advantage to him that he hath hereby an occasion to render the ways of God unlovely to those that are beginning to look Heaven-ward he sets before them the Sighs Groans Complaints and restless Out-cries of the wounded in Spirit to scare them off from all seriousness in Religion and whispers this to them Will you chuse a Life of Bitterness and Sorrow can you eat Ashes for Bread and mingle your Drink with Tears will you exchange the comforts and contents of Life for a melancholly Heart and a dejected countenance how like you to go Mourning all the day and at night to be scared with Dreams and terrified with Visions will you chuse a Life that is worse than Death and a condition which will make you a terrour to your selves and a burthen to others can you be in love with an heart loaden with grief and perpetual fears almost to distraction while you see others in the mean time enjoy themselves in a contented peace Thus he follows young beginners with his suggestions making them believe that they cannot be serious in Religion but at last they will be brought to this and that 't is a very dangerous thing to be religious overmuch and the high way to dispair So that if they must have a Religion he readily directs them to use no more of it than may consist with the pleasures of Sin and the World and to make an easy business of it not to let Sin lye over-near their Heart lest it disquiet them nor over-much to concern themselves with Study Reading Prayer or hearing of threatning awakening Sermons lest it make them Mad nor to affect the sublimities of Communion with God exercises of Faith and Divine Love lest it discompose them and dash their worldly Jollities out of Countenance A Counsel that is readily enough embraced by those that are almost perswaded to be Christians and the more to confirm them in it he
this Gulph and become nothing to him You see Amnon vexed and sick for his Sister Tamer waxing lean from day to day You see Ahab though a King who had enough to satisfie his Mind in the same condition for Naboth's Vineyard If you say these were wicked Men who rid their Lusts without a Bridle and used the Spur look then upon better Men and you will see too much Rachel so grieves and mourns for want of Children that she professeth her Life inconsistent with her disappointment Give me Children else I die Hanna upon the same occasion weeps and eats not and prays in the bitterness of her Soul and the abundance of her complaint and grief Jeremiah being pressed with discouragements from the contradiction of evil Men calls himself a Man of strife and contention to the whole Earth Jer. 15. 10. his sorrows thence arising had so imbittered his Life that he puts a woe upon his Birth Wo is me my Mother that thou hast born me a Man of Strife Paul had a noble courage under manifold afflictions he could glory in the Cross and rejoice in persecutions nevertheless the greatness of his work the froward perversness and unsteadiness of Professors which put him under fears jealousies and new travel the Miseries of Christians and the care he had for the concerns of the Gospel which was a constant load upon his Mind his Heart like old Eli's trembling still for the Ark of God made him complain as one worn out by the troubles of his Heart 2 Cor. 11. 27. In weariness and painfulness in watchings often in hunger and thirst in fastings often in cold and nakedness Besides those things that are without that which cometh upon me daily the care of all the Churches Who is weak and I am not weak c. For the Jews he had great heaviness and continual sorrow in his Heart and for the Gentiles he had perpetual fears Now though he had a great share of divine Comforts intermixed and a more than ordinary assistance of the Spirit to keep him from sinful discomposure of Spirit at least to such an height as it ordinarily prevails upon others yet was he very sensible of his burthen and doubtless the Devil laboured to improve these occasions to weary out his strength For by these and such like things he frequently vexeth the righteous Souls of the faithful Ministers of the Gospel from day to day so that their hearts have no rest and their hands grow often feeble and they cry out O the burthen O the care being ready to say as Jeremiah chap. 20. 7. O Lord thou hast deceived me and I was decieved I am a derision daily every one mocketh me Thus say they Did we ever think to meet with such disappointments such Griefs from the Wilfulness Pride Weakness Ignorance Pettishness Inconstancy Negligence and Scandals of Friends and such Hatred Contradictions Scorns and Injuries from Enemies Were we free what Calling would we not rather chuse what place would we not rather go to where we might spend the remainder of our dayes in some rest and ease Were it not better to work with our hands for a Morsel of Bread for so might our Sleep be sweet to us at Night and we should not see these sorrows At this rate are good Men sometime disturbed and the anguish of their Spirit makes their Life a burthen 2. Yet is not this all the disturbance that the Devil works upon our hearts by these things though these are bad enough but they have a tendency to further trouble Discomposures of Spirit if they continue long turn at last into troubles of Conscience Though there is no affinity betwixt simple discomposure of Soul and troubles of Conscience in their own nature the objects of the former being things external no way relating to the Souls Interest in God and Salvation which are the objects of the latter yet the effects produced by the prevalency of these disturbances are a fit Stock for the ingrafting of doubts and questionings about our Spiritual condition As Saul's Father first troubled himself for the loss of his Asses and sent his Son to seek them but when he stayed long he forgat his trouble and took up a new grief for his Son whom he feared he had lost in pursuit of the Asses So is it sometime with Men who after they have long vexed themselves for injuries or afflictions c. upon a serious consideration of the working and power of these Passions leave their former pursuit and begin to bethink themselves in what a condition their Souls are that abound with so much Murmuring Rage Pride or Impatience and then the Scene is altered and they begin to fear they have lost their Souls and are now perplexed about their Spiritual estate To make this plain I will give some instances and then add some reasons which will evidence that it is so and also how it comes to be so For Instances though I might produce a sufficient number to this purpose from those that have written of Melancholy yet I shall only insist upon two or three from Scripture Hezekiah when God smote him with Sickness at first was discomposed upon the apprehension of Death that he should so soon be deprived of the residue of his years and behold Man no more with the inhabitants of the World as he himself expresseth it Esay 38. 10. afterward his trouble grew greater He chattered as a Crane or Swallow and mourned as a Dove he was in great bitterness ver 17. and sadly oppressed therewith ver 14. That which thus distressed him was not simply the fear of Death we cannot imagine so pious a Person would so very much disquiet himself upon that single account but by the expressions which he let fall in his complainings we may understand that some such thoughts as these did shake him that he apprehended God was angry with him that the present stroke signified so much to him all circumstances considered for he was yet in his strength and Jerusalem in great distress being at that time besieged by Sennacheribs Army and for him to be doomed to death by a sudden message at such a time seemed to carry much in it and that surely there was great provocation on his part and it seems upon search he charged himself so deeply with his sinfulness that his apprehensions were no less than that if God should restore him yet in the sence of his vileness he should never be able to look up I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my Soul ver 15. which expression implies a supposition of his Recovery and a deep sense of Iniquity and accordingly when he was recovered he takes notice chiefly of Gods love to his Soul and the pardon of his sin which evidently discover where the trouble pinched him Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the Pit of Corruption for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back vers 17.
in time bring on spiritual troubles for if our Comforts be once lost Trouble of Conscience easily follows Where there is nothing to fortify the Heart the poyson of malicious suggestions will unavoidably prevail 2. Discomposures of Soul afford the Devil fit matter to work upon They furnish him with strong objections against sincerity of Holiness by which the peace of Conscience being strongly assaulted is at last overthrown The usual Weapons by which Satan fights against the assurance of Gods Children are the guilt of sins committed and the neglect of Duty and the disturbed Soul affords enough of both these to make a Charge against it self For 1. Where there is much Discomposure there is much Sin If in the multitude of words there wants not Iniquity then much more in the multitude of unruly thoughts A disturbed Spirit is like troubled Water all the Mud that lay at the bottom is raised up and mixeth it self with the Thoughts If any injury or loss do trouble the Mind all the Thoughts are tinctured with Anger Pride Impatience or whatsoever root of bitterness was in the Heart before we view them not singly as the issue of wise Providence but ordinarily we consider them as done by such Instruments and against our selves as malicious spiteful causless ingrateful wrongs and then we give too great a liberty to our selves to rage to meditate revenge to threaten to reproach and what not and if our Disposition have not so strong a natural inclination to these Distempers yet the Thoughts by discomposure are quickly leavened it is the comparison used by the Apostle 1 Cor. 5. 8. to express the power of Malice which is an usual attendant in this service to infect all the Imaginations with a sharpness which makes them swell into exorbitancy and excess hence proceed Revilings Quarrelings c. When the Tongue is thus fermented it is a Fire a World of Iniquity producing more sins than can be reckoned it defileth the whole Body engaging all the faculties in heady pursuit Jam. 3. 6. 2. Discomposures obstruct Duties This is the inconvenience which the Apostle 1 Pet. 3. 7. tells us doth arise from disturbances among Relations if the Wife or Husband do not carry well so that discontents or differences arise their Prayers are hindered Duties then are obstructed 1. In the Act. When the Heart is out of frame Prayer is out of season and there is an aversness to it partly because all good things are in such confusions burthensome to the Humor that then prevails which eats out all desire and delight to spiritual things and partly because they dare not come into Gods presence conscience of their own guilt and awe of God hindring such approaches 2. They obstruct the right manner of Performance straitning the Heart and contracting the Spirit that if any thing be attempted 't is poorly and weakly performed 3. And also the success of Duty is obstructed by discomposure God will not accept such Services and therefore Christ adviseth to leave the Gift before the Altar though ready for offering where the Spirit is overcharged with Offences or angry Thoughts and first to go and be reconciled to our Brother and then to come and offer the Gift it being lost labour to do it before From these sins of Omission and Commission Satan can and often doth frame a dreadful charge against those that are thus concern'd endeavouring to prove by these evidences that they are yet notwithstanding pretence of Conversion in the gall of Bitterness and bond of Iniquity whereby the peace of Conscience is much shaken and the more because also 3. These discomposures of Soul give Satan a fit season for the management of his Accusation Strong Accusations do often effect nothing when the season is unsutable Many a time he hath as much to say against the Comforts of Men when yet they shake all off as Paul did the Viper off his hand and fell no harm But that which prepares the Conscience to receive the Indictment is a particular disposition which it is wrought into by suspicious credulity and fearfulness These make the Heart as Wax to the Seal ready to take any impression that Satan will stamp upon it Now by long disturbances he works the Heart into this Mould very often and upon a double account he gains himself a fit opportunity to charge home his exceptions 1. In that he sets upon the Conscience with his Accusations after the Heart hath been long molested and confused with its other Troubles for then the Heart is weakned and unable to make resistance as at other times An Assault with a fresh Party after a long conflict disorders its Forces and puts all to flight 2. In that long and great discomposures of Mind bring on a distemper of Melancholy for 't is notoriously known by common experience that those acid Humors producing this distemper which have their rise from the Blood may be occasioned by their violent Passions of Mind the Animal Spirits becoming inordinate by long discomposures of Sadness Envy Terrour and fretful Cares and the motion of the Blood being retarded it by degrees departs from its temperament and is infected with an acidity so that Persons no way inclined naturally to Melancholy may yet become so by the disquiets of their troubled Mind Both these ways but chiefly Melancholy the Devil hath his advantage for disturbing the Conscience Melancholy most naturally inclines Men to be solicitous for their Souls welfare but withall disposeth them so strongly to suspect the worst for 't is a credulous suspitious humour in things hurtful and afflicts so heavily with sadness for what it doth respect that when Satan lays before Men of that humour their Miscarriages under their discontents their Impatience Unthankfulness Anger rash Thoughts and Speeches against God or Men c. withall suggesting that such an Heart cannot be right with God after serious thoughts upon Satan's frequently repeated Charge they cry out Guilty guilty and then begins a new trouble for their Unregenerate Estate and their supposed lost Souls 4. In this case usually Satan hath greater liberty to accuse and by his Accusations to molest the Conscience in that Men of discomposed Spirits by the manifold evils arising thence provoke God to desert them and to leave them in Satans hand to be brought into an hour of Temptation Satan's Commission is occasioned by our Provocations and the Temptations arising from such a Commission are usually dreadful they are solemn Temptations and called so after a singular manner for of these I take those Scriptures to be meant Watch and pray that ye enter not into Temptation Mat. 26. 41. And lead us not into Temptation Mat. 6. 13. Such Temptations are not common Temptations and are of unknown force and hazard to the Soul which way soever they are designed either for Sin or Terror For several things do concur in a solemn Temptation As 1. Satan doth in a special manner challenge a Man to the Combate or rather
Ecclesiastes to set forth the chief good shews that felicity consists not in the common abuse of outward things because that brings only vexation but in the fear of God leading to future happiness and in the mean time in a thankful comfortable use of things present without anxiety of Mind Hence doth he fix his conclusion as the result of his experience and often repeats it There is nothing better for a Man than that he should Eat and Drink and that he should make his Soul enjoy good in his Labour Eccles 2. 24. 3. 12 13. 5. 18 19. Not that Solomon plays the Epicure giving advice to eat and drink for to morrow we die nor that he speaks deridingly to those that seek their felicity in this life as if he should say If ye do terminate your desires upon a terrene felicity there is nothing better then to eat and drink c. But he gives a serious positive advice of enjoying the things of this life with cheerfulness which he affirms proceeds from the sole bounty of God as his singular gift It is the gift of God Eccles 3. 13. 't is our portion that is our allowance Eccles 5. 19. for these two expressions our Portion and God's gift they are of the same signification with Solomon here and when a Man hath power to enjoy this allowance in comfort 't is God that answereth him in the joy of his heart ver 20. 'T is plain then that God sows good Seed in his Field the springing up therefore of these Tares of vexation which so generally afflict the Sons of Men must be ascribed to this the Enemy hath done it 3. 'T is also a considerable ground of suspition that Satan can do much in discomposures of Spirit in that sometimes those whose tempers are most cool and calm and whose singular dependance upon and communion with God must needs more strengthen them against these passionate vexations are notwithstanding precipitated into violent commotions Moses was naturally meek above the common disposition of Men and his very business was converse with God whose presence kept his Heart under a blessed awe yet upon the Peoples murmuring he was so transported with fullenness and unbelief at the waters of Meribah Numbers 20. 10 12. that it went ill with him which David thus expresseth Psal 106. 33. they provoked his Spirit so that he spake unadvisedly with his Lips Who can suppose less in this matter than that Satan having him at advantage hurried him to this rashness specially seeing such vehemencies were not usual with Moses and that his natural temper led him to the contrary This hath some affinity with the next consideration Which is 4. That when Men most foresee the occasions of their trouble and do most fear the trouble that might thence arise and most firmly design to keep their hearts quiet yet are they oft forced against all care and resolution upon extravagant heats David resolved and strenuously endeavoured to possess his Soul in Serenity and Patience for what could be more than solemn engagement Psal 39. 1. I said I will look to my ways and what endeavours could be more severe than to keep himself as with Bit and Bridle what care could be more hopeful to succeed than to be dumb with silence yet for all this he could not keep his Heart calm nor restrain his Tongue ver 3. My Heart waxed hot within me while I was musing the Fire burned then spake I with my Tongue Who suspects not the hand of Satan in this 5. 'T is also remarkable that when we have least reason to give way to discomposure when we have most cause to avoid all provocations yet then we have most occasions set before us When we would most retire from the noise of the World for private devotion when we would most carefully prepare our selves for a solemn Ordinance if we be not very watchful we shall be diverted by business disturbed with noises or some special occasion of vexation shall importune us to disquiet our selves when yet we shall observe if we have not these solemn affairs to wait upon we shall have fewer of these occasions of vexation to attend us This cannot be attributed to meer contingency of occasions nor yet to our tempers solely for why they should be most apt to give us trouble when they are most engaged to calmness cannot well be accounted for 't is evidently then Satan that maliciously directs these occasions for they have not a malicious ingeniousness to prepare themselves without some other chief mover at such times as he knows would be most to our prejudice These general considerations amount to more than a suspition that it is much in Satan's power to give disturbances to the Minds of Men yet for the clearer manifestation of the matter I shall shew that he can do much to bring about occasions of discomposure and also to stir up the Passions of Men upon these occasions 1. That occasions are much in his hand I shall easily demonstrate For 1. There being so many occasions of vexation to a weak crasy Mind we may well imagine that one or other is still occuring and while they thus offer themselves Satan needs not be idle for want of an opportunity 2. But if common occasions do not so exactly suit his design he can prepare occasions for such is his foresight and contrivance that he can put some Men without their privity to his intentions or any evil design of their own upon such actions as may through the strength of prejudice misinterpretation or evil inclination be an offence to others and in like manner can invite those to be in the way of these offences I am ready to think there was a contrivance of Satan if we well consider all circumstances to bring David and the Object of his Lust together while Bathshebah was Bathing he might use his Art in private motions to get David up to the Roof of his House But more especially can the Devil prepare occasions that do depend upon the wickedness of his Slaves these are Servants under his command he can say to one God and he goes and to another Come and he comes If contempt or injury affronts or scorns c. be necessary for his present work against any whom he undertakes to disturb he can easily put his Vassals upon that part of the Service and if he have higher imployment for them he ever finds them forward And hence was it that when Satan designed to plunder Job he could quickly perform it because he had the Chaldeans and Sabeans ready at a call 3. If both these should fail him he can easily awaken in us the memory of old occasions that have been heretofore a trouble to us these being raised out of their Graves will renew old disturbances working afresh the same disquiets which the things themselves gave us at first If Satan's power were bounded here and that he could do no more than set before Men occasions of
serious Resolves The chast Person tempted to Uncleanness or the just man to Revenge the humble Person urged to the same Sin that cost him so dear c. They wonder at their own Hearts and while they mistake these Temptations by judging them to be the issues of their own Inclination with astonishment they cry out Oh I had thought that I had mortified these Lusts but what a strange Heart have I I see sin is a strong in me as ever And I have cause to fear my self c. 2. And this is yet a greater trouble because usually Satan takes them at some advantage of an offered occasion or opportunity then he gives them a sudden push and with importunity urgeth them to take the time this often affrights them into Trembling and their Fears do so weaken their purposes that their hazards are the greater in that they are astonished into an Inactivity So that in this case the Men of Might do not readily find their Hands 3. Neither are these motions sudden and transient glances which perish as soon as they are born though it be a very frequent thing with Satan to cast in motions into the Heart for trial sake without further prosecution but he in this case pursues with frequent Repetitions following hard after them to the increase of the Affrightment So that for a long time together Men may be afflicted with these Messengers of Satan to buffet them and though they may Pray earnestly against them that they may be removed yet they find the motions continue upon them Which must needs be an hateful annoyance to an upright Heart that doth know it to be only Satans design to affright much more must it afflict those that do not perceive the Contriver and end of such motions but judg them to be the natural workings of their own evil Heart 4. Satan can also affright Men by immediate impressions of Fear upon their minds He can do much with the imagination especially when Persons are distempered with Melancholy for such are naturally fearful and any impressions upon them have the deepest most piercing operation They are always framing to themselves dismal things and abound with black and dark Conceits surmising still the worst and always incredulous of what is good Hence it is that sometimes Men are seized upon by Fearfulness and Trembling when yet they cannot give any tollerable account of a cause or reason why it should be so with them And others are excessively astonished with the shadows of their own thoughts upon the meanest pretences imaginable That this is the work of Satan doth appear by unquestionable evidence This was that evil Spirit which God sent between Abimelech and the Men of Sechem Judg. 9. 23. God permitted Satan for the Punishment of them both to raise Fears and Jealousies in the Heart of Abimelech against the Men of Sechem and in the Hearts of the Men of Sechem against Abimelech They were mutually afraid of one another and these Fears wrought so far that they were for the prevention of a supposed danger engaged in Treacherous Conspiracies to the real Ruine of them both The evil Spirit that vexed Saul 1 Sam. 16. 14. was nothing else but sudden and vehement fits of Terrour and inward fear which the Devil raised by the working up of his Melancholy For we may observe these Fits were allayed by Musick and also we might see by his disposition out of his fits and by his carriage in them that inward fears were his tormentors for 1 Sam. 18. 9. 't is noted that Saul eyed David that is his jealous fears began to work concerning David of whom 't is said expresly ver 12. that he was afraid because the Lord was with him and when the evil Spirit came upon him his heart was exercised with these fears and accordingly he behaved himself when he cast the Javelin at David with a purpose to slay him Upon any occasion of trouble especially the Devil was at hand to heighten his affrightment insomuch that when the supposed Samuel told him of his Death 1 Sam. 28. 20. he was afraid to such an height that he fell straightway all along on the Earth and there was no strength in him Neither must we suppose that Satan in this kind of working is confined only to wicked Men for there is nothing in this manner of affrightment which is inconsistent with the condition of a Child of God especially when God gives him up to tryal or correction Nay many of Gods Servants suffer under Satans hand in this very manner Let us consider the troubles of Job and we shall find that though Satan endeavoured to destroy his peace by discomposure of Spirit by questioning his integrity by frightful injections of blasphemous thoughts yet all these he vanquished with an undaunted courage the Blasphemy he rejected with abhorrency his integrity he resolved he would not deny so long as he lived his losses he digested easily with a sober composed mind blessed God that gives and takes at pleasure and yet he complains of his fears and his frequent surprisals thereby insomuch that his friends take notice that most of his trouble arose from thence Job 22. 10. a sudden fear troubleth thee and he himself confesseth as much Job 9. 34. let not his fear terrify me but it is not so with me So that it appears that Job's inward distress was mostly from strong impressions of affrighting fears These fears impressed upon the Mind must needs be an unexpressible trouble there is nothing that doth more loosen the Sinews and Joynts of the Soul to the weakening and utter enfeebling of it in all its endeavours than fears it scatters the strength in a moment And besides the present burthen which will bow down the backs of the strongest these fears have a special kind of envious magnanimity in them For 1. they come by fits and have times of more fierce and cruel assaults yet in their intervals they leave the Heart in a trembling fainting posture for the Devil gives not over the present sit till he hath rent them sore and left them as he did the Mans Son in Mark 9. 26. as one dead So that 't is no more to be reckoned compassion and gentleness in Satan toward the afflicted that their fits are not constant than it can be accounted tenderness or kindness in a Tyrant who when he hath racked or tormented a Man as much as strength will bear without killing out of hand gives over for a time that the party might be reserved for new torments 2. These fits usually return at such times as the Party afflicted seems to promise himself some little ease being designed to give the greater disappointment in intercepting his expected comforts Sleep and Meat are the two great refreshments of the distressed these times Satan watcheth for his new onsets Job found it so in both cases his Meal-times were times of trouble Job 3. 24. My sighing cometh that is the fits of sighing return
the Children of God to fall under them For the further opening of them I shall next discover 3. The usual solemn occasions that do as it were invite Satan to give his onset against God's Children and they are principally these Six 1. The time of Conversion He delights to set on them when they are in the straits of a new Birth for then the Conscience is awakned the danger of Sin truly represented fear and sorrow in some degree necessary and unavoidable At this time he can easily overdrive them Where the Convictions are deep and sharp ready to weigh them down a few Grains more cast into the Scale will make the Trouble as Job speaks heavier than the Sand and where they are more easie or gentle yet the Soul being unsetled the thoughts in commotion they are disposed to receive a strong impression and to be turned as Wax to the Seal into a mould of Hopelessness and Desperation That this is one of Satans special occasions we need no other evidence for satisfaction than the common experience of Converts many of them do hardly escape the danger and after their difficult Conquest of the troubles of their Heart which at that time are extraordinarily enlarged do witness that they are assaulted with desperate fears that their sins were unpardonable and sad conclusions against any expectation of favour from the Lord their God These thoughts we are sure the Spirit of God will not bear witness unto because false and therefore we must leave them at Satans door 2. Another occasion which Satan makes use of is the time of solemn Repentance for some great sin committed after Conversion Sometimes God's Children fall to the breaking of their Bones What great Iniquities they may commit through the force of Temptation I need not mention The Adultery and Murther of David the Incest of the Corinthian Peters denial of Christ with other sad Instances in the Records of the Scriptures do speak enough of that These sins considering their hainousness the scandal of Religion the dishonour of God the grieving of his Spirit the condition of the Party offending against Love Knowledg and the various Helps which God affords them to the contrary with other aggravating Circumstances being very displeasing to God their Consciences at least either compelled to Examination by God immediately or mediately by some great Affliction or voluntarily awakening to a serious consideration of what hath been done by the working of its own Light assisted thereunto by quickning Grace 1 Cor. 11. 31 32. call them to a strict account thence follow Fear Shame Self-Indignation bitter Weeping deep Humiliation then comes Satan he rakes their Wounds and by his Aggravations makes them smart the more He pours in Corrosives instead of Oyl and all to make them believe that their Spot is not the Spot of Gods Children that their Back-slidings cannot be healed An occasion it is as suitable to his Malice as he could wish for ordinarily God doth severely testifie his Anger to them and doth not easily admit them again to the sence of his Favour At which time the Adversary is very busie to work up their Hearts to an excess of Fear and Sorrow This was the course which he took with the Incestuous Corinthian taking advantage of his great Transgressions to overwhelm him with too much Sorrow 2 Cor. 2. 7 11. 3. Satan watcheth the discomposures of the Spirits of God's Children under some grievous Cross or Affliction This occasion also falls fit for his design of wounding the Conscience when the Hand of the Lord is lifted up against them and their thoughts disordered by the stroke suggesting at that time God's Anger to them and their sins he can easily frame an Argument from these Grounds That they are not reconciled to God and that they are dealt withal as Enemies David seldom met with outward trouble but he at the same time had a Conflict with Satan about his spiritual condition or state as his frequent deprecations of Divine Wrath at such times do testifie Lord rebuke me not in thy Wrath c. There is indeed but a step betwixt discomposure of Spirit and Spiritual Troubles as hath been proved before 4. When Satan hath prepared the Hearts of God's Children by Atheistical or Blasphemous thoughts he takes that occasion to deny their Grace and Interest in Christ And the Argument at that time seems unanswerable Can Christ lodg in an Heart so full of horrid Blasphemies against him Is it possible it should be Washed and Sanctified when it produceth such filthy cursed thoughts All the troubles of Affrightment of which before are improveable to this purpose 5. Another spiritual occasion for Spiritual Trouble is Melancholy few Persons distempered therewith do escape Satans hands at one time or other he casts his Net over them and seeks to stab them with his Weapon Melancholy indeed affords so many advantages to him and those so answerable to his design that it is no wonder if he make much of it For 1. Melancholy affects both Head and Heart it affords both Fear and Sadness and deformed mishapen delirous imaginations to work upon than which nothing can be more for his purpose For where the Heart trembles and the Head is darkned there every Object is misrepresented the Ideas of the Brain are monstrous appearances reflected from opake and dark Spirits so that Satan hath no more to do but to suggest the new matter of Fear For that Question Whether the Man be Converted c. being once started to a mind already distempered with Fear must of it self it being a business of so high a nature without Satan's further pursuit summon the utmost powers of sadness and misreprehension to raise a Storm 2. Besides the impressions of Melancholy are always strong it is strong in its fears or else Men would never be tempted to destroy themselves it is strong in its mistakes or else they could never perswade themselves of the truth of foolish absurd and impossible Fancies as that of Nebuchadnezzar who by a delusive apprehension believing himself to be a Beast forsook the company of Men and betook to the Fields to eat Grass with Oxen. The imaginations of the Melancholick are never idle and yet straightned or confined to a few things and then the Brain being weakned as to a true and regular apprehension it frames nothing but Bugbears and yet with the highest confidence of certainty 3. These impressions are usually lasting not vanishing as an early Dew but they continue for Months and Years 4. And yet they have only so much understanding left them as serves to nourish their fears If their understanding had been quite gone their fears would vanish with them As the Flame is extinguished for want of Air but they have only knowledg to let them see their misery and sence to make them apprehensive of their pain And therefore will they pray with floods of Tears unexpressible Groanings deepest Sighing and trembling Joynts to be
cry out of themselves as miserable 2. Another piece of his Sophistry is the improving certain false Notions which Christians of the weaker sort have received as proofs of their Unregeneracy or bad Condition As there are Vulgar Errors concerning Natural things so there are Popular Errors concerning Spiritual things These mistakes in a great part have their Original from the Fancies or Misapprehensions of unskilful Men. Some indeed have it may be been preached and taught as Truths others have risen without a Teacher from meer Ignorance being the conclusions and surmises which weak Heads have framed to themselves from the Sayings or Practices of Men which have not been either so cleared from the danger of mistake or not so distinctly apprehended as was necessary These false Inferences once set on foot are traditionally handed down to others and in time they gain among the simple the opinion of undoubted Truths Now where ever Satan finds any of these that are fit for his purpose for to be sure whatever mistake we entertain he will at one time or other cast it in our way he will make it the foundation of an Argument against him that hath received it and that with very great advantage For a falshood in the Premises will usually produce a falshood in the Conclusion And these falshoods being taken for granted the Devil is not put to the trouble to prove them if then he can but exactly fit them to something in the party which he cannot deny he forthwith carries the cause and condemns him by his own concessions as out of his own mouth 'T is scarce possible to number the false Notions which are already entertained among Christians relating to Grace and Conversion much less those that may afterward arise But I shall mention some that Satan frequently makes use of as grounds of Objection 1. 'T is a common apprehension among the weaker sort that Conversion is always accompanied with great fear and terrour This is true in some as hath been said and though none of the Preachers of the Gospel have asserted the universality of these greater measures of Trouble yet the People taking notice that many speak of their deep humiliations in Conversion and that several Authors have set forth the greatness of Distress that some have been cast into on that occasion though without any intention of fixing this into a general Rule have from thence supposed that all the Converted are brought to their Comforts through the flames of Hell Upon this mistake the Devil disquiets those that have not felt these extream Agonies of Sorrow in themselves and tells them that it is a sure sign that they are not yet Converted Though 't is easie for a Man that sees the falshood of the Notion to answer the Argument yet he that believes it to be true cannot tell what to say because he finds he never was under such Troubles and now he begins to be troubled because he was not troubled before or as he supposeth not troubled enough 2. Another false Notion is That a Convert can give an account of the time and manner of his Conversion This is true in some as in Paul and some others whose Change hath been sudden and remarkable though in many this is far otherwise who can better give account that they are Converted than by what Steps Degrees and Methods they were brought to it But if any of these receive the Notion they will presently find that Satan will turn the edge of it against them and will tell them that they are not Converted because they cannot nominate the time when nor the manner how such a Change was wrought 3. Some take it for granted that Conversion is accompanied with a remarkable measure of Gifts for Prayer and Exhortation and then the Devil objects it to them That they are not Converted because they cannot Pray as others or Speak of the things of God so readily fluently and affectionately as some others can Thus the poor weak Christian is baffled for want of Abilities to express himself to God and Men. 4. False Notions about the nature of Faith are a sad stumbling-Block to some Many suppose that Saving Faith is a certain belief that our Sins are Pardoned and that we shall be Saved making Faith and Assurance all one This mistake is the deeper rooted in the Minds of Men because some have directly taught so and those Men of Estimation whose words are entertained with great Reverence by well-meaning Christians For whom notwithstanding this may be pleaded in excuse that they have rather described Faith in its height than in its lowest measures How ever it be those that have no other understanding of the nature of Faith can never answer Satan's Argument if he takes them at any time at the advantage of fear or doubting For then he will dispute thus Faith is a belief that sins are Pardoned but thou dost not believe this therefore thou hast no Faith Oh what numbers of poor doubting Christians have been distressed with this Argument 5. Some take it for a truth that growth of Grace is always visible and the progress remarkable And then because they can make no such discovery of themselves the Devil concludes their Grace to be counterfeit and hypocritical 6. Of like nature are some mistaken signs of true Grace as that true Grace fears God only for his Goodness And then if there be any apprehension of Divine Displeasure impressed upon the Heart though upon the necessary occasion of miscarriage they through the Devils instigation conclude that they are under a spirit of Bondage and their supposed Grace not true or not genuine at least according to that disposition which the New-Testament will furnish a Man withal 'T is also another mistaken sign of Grace That it doth direct a Man to love God singly for himself without the least regard to his own Salvation for that they think is but Self-love Now when a Child of God doth not see his love to God so distinct but that his own salvation is twisted with it Satan gets advantage of him and forceth him to cast away his love as adulterate and selfish Like to this mistake but of an higher strain is that of some That where Grace is true 't is so carried forth to honour God that the Man that hath it can desire God may be honoured though he should be damned God doth not put us to such Questions as these but upon supposition that this is true the grace of most Men will be shaken by the Objection that Satan will make from thence he can and will presently put the mistaken to it Canst thou say thou art willing to go to Hell that God may be glorified If not where is thy Grace From such mistakes as these he disputes against the holiness of the Children of God and 't is impossible but that he should carry the Cause against those who grant these things to be true Satan can undeniably shew them that their Hearts
Sin that is not some way or other committed c. Can such an Heart as thine be the Temple of the Holy Ghost For the Temple of the Lord is Holy and his People are washed and cleansed c. These are all of them strong objections and frequently made use of by Satan as the complaints of the Servants of God do testify who are made thus to except against themselves If our Sins were but the usual failings of the converted we might comfort our selves but they are great they are back-slidings they are against Conscience they are many what can we judge but that we have hitherto deceived our selves and that the work of conversion is yet to do The Objections that are from great Sins or from recidivation or wilful violation of Conscience do usually prevail for some time against the best that are chargable with them they cannot determine that they are converted though they might be so so long as they cannot deny the matter of Fact upon which the accusation is grounded till their true repentance give them some light of better information they are in the dark and cannot answer the Argument Jonah being imprisoned in the Whales Belly for his stubborn rebellion at first concluded himself a Cast-away Jon. 2. 4. Then I said I amccast out of thy Sight Neither could he think better of himself till upon his Repentance he recovered his Faith and Hope of Pardon Yet will I look again toward thy Holy Temple Yea those objections that are raised from the multitude and frequency of lesser failings though they may be answered by a Child of God while his Heart is not overshadowed with the Mists and Clouds of Temptation yet when he is confused with violent commotions within his Heart will fail him and till he can bring himself to some composure of Spirit he hath not the boldness to assert his integrity David was gravelled with this Objection Psal 40. 12. Innumerable evils have compassed me about mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I am not able to look up they are more than the Hairs on my Head therefore my Heart faileth me 2. He aggravates the sinfulness of our condition from the frequency and violence of his own Temptations 'T is an usual thing for him to give a young Converts incessant onsets of Temptation to Sin most commonly he works upon their natural constitution he blows the Coals that are not yet quite extinguished and that have greater forwardness from their own inclination to kindle again as Lust and Passion The first motions of the one though it go no further than those offers and risings up in the Heart and is there damped and kept down by the opposing principle of Grace and the occasional out-breakings of the other which he provokes by a diligent preparation of occasion from without and violent incitations from within furnish him with sufficient matter for his intended accusations and sometimes being as it were wholly negligent of the advantages which our tempers give him or not being able to find any such forwardness to these evils in our Constitution as may more eminently serve his ends he satisfies himself to molest us with earnest motions to any Sins indifferently and all this to make us believe that Sin is not crucified in us Which some are more apt to believe because they observe their Temptations to these Sins to importune them more and with greater vehemency than they were wont to do before and this doth yet the more astonish them because they had high expectations that after their conversion Satan would fall before them and their Temptations abate that their natures should be altered and their natural inclinations to these Sins wholly cease but now finding the contrary they are ready to cry out especially when Satan violently buffets them with this objection We are yet in our Sins and under the dominion thereof neither can it be that we are converted because we find Sin more active and stirring than formerly 't is not then surely mortified in us but lively and strong Though in this case it be very plain that Temptations are only strong and Sin weak and that Grace is faithfully acting its part against the Flesh arguing not that Grace is so very weak but that Satan is more busy than ordinary the Sins are not more than formerly but the Light that discovers them more is greater and the Conscience that resents the Temptation is more tender Yet all this doth not at first give ease to the fears that are now raised up in the Mind they find Sin working in them their expectations of attaining a greater conquest on a sudden and with greater ease are disappointed and the desire of having much makes a Man think himself poor and withal they commonly labour under so much Ignorance or perverse credulity that they conclude they consent to every thing which they are tempted to insomuch that 't is long before these Clouds do vanish and the afflicted brought to a right understanding of themselves 3. From some remarkable appearances of God doth Satan aggravate our sinful condition If God shew any notable act of Power he makes the Beams of that act reflect upon our unworthiness with a dazling Light When Peter saw the Power of Christ in sending a great multitude of Fishes into his Net having laboured all Night before and caught nothing it gave so deep an impression to the conviction of his vileness that he was ready to put Christ from him as being altogether unfit for his Blessed Society Depart saith he from me for I am a sinful Man If God discover the Glorious Splendor of his Holiness 't is enough to make the holiest Saints such as Job and Isaiah to cry out they are undone being Men of unclean Lips and to abhor themselves in Dust and Ashes The like may be said of any discovery of the rest of the Glorious Attributes of God Of all which Satan makes this advantage that the Parties tempted should have so deep a consideration of their unworthiness as might induce them to believe as if it were by a Voice from Heaven that God prohibits them any approaches to him and that they have nothing to do to take Gods Name within their Mouths And though these remarkable discoveries of God either by his acts of Power and Providence or by immediate impressions upon the Soul in the height of contemplation have ordinarily great effects upon the Hearts of his Children but not of long continuance yet where they strike in with other Arguments by which they were already staggered as to their Interest in God they mightily strengthen them and are taken for no less than Gods own determination of the question against them But this is not all the use that Satan makes of them for from hence he sometimes hath the opportunity to raise new accusations against them and to tax them with particular crimes which in a particular manner seem to prove them Unregenerate For what
worst than the first So also 2 Pet. 2. 20. To this purpose is that of Soloman concerning the danger of continuance in sin after many Reproofs Prov. 29. 1. He that being often reproved hardneth his Neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy These and many such like Scriptures Satan hath in readiness which he plies home upon the Consciences of those that are troubled with the sense of Sin telling them That their Hearts and Ways being continually evil notwithstanding all the Courses that God hath taken to reclaim them that they having so long neglected so great Salvation or that after having seemed to entertain it became more sinful than before Which they will easily believe because they are now more sensible of Sin and more observant of their Miscarriages than formerly There can be no question but they are given up to vile Affections and like the Ground that bears nothing but Briers and Thorns they are rejected and nigh unto Cursing whose end is to be Burned The Wound that is made with this Weapon is not so easily healed as some others already mentioned because though Satan do unduly wrest these Passages to such failures in the Children of God as have little or no affinity with them for they only speak of falling into open prophaneness with contumacy yet they that have deep Convictions accompanied with great Fears do usually think that there are none worse than they are And though they will grant that some others have more flagitious lives yet they think they have Hearts so desperately wicked that they must needs be under as great hazards as those whose Lives seem to be worse 4. There is but one Argument more that carries any probability of proof for everlasting Condemnation and that is from an hard and impenitent Heart How Satan will manage himself to make a Child of God believe that he hath such an Heart is our last observation relating to his Sophistry And it is this He unjustly aggravates the discomposures of the spirits of those that are troubled for Sin and from thence draws his Arguments of irrecoverable Damnation pleading that their Hearts are Seared Hardned uncapable of Repentance and consequently of Heaven That final Impenitency will conclude Damnation is certain and that some have been given up to such a judicial hardness long before Death that they could not Repent may not only be evidenced from the Threatning of God to that purpose Mat. 13. Make the Heart of this People fat c. but also from the sad Instances of Pharaoh of whom 't is said that God hardned his Heart and the Jews who were blinded Rom. 11. 8. God hath given them the Spirit of slumber Eyes that they should not see and Ears that they should not hear But still the Art lieth in this How to make a Child of God believe that it 's so with him For this purpose he must take him at some advantage he cannot terrifie him with this Argument at all times While he is acting Repentance with an undisturbed settled frame of Heart 't is not possible to make him believe he doth not or cannot Repent for this were to force him contrary to sense and experience But he must take him at some season which may with some probability admit of his Plea and nothing is more proper for that design than a troubled Heart so that he hath in this case two things to do 1. He disquiets the Soul into as great an height of Confusion as he can That 2. When he hath melted it into heaviness and torn it into pieces he may work upon its distractions There are many things that fall out in the case of great anxiety of Mind that are capable of improvement for the accomplishment of this design As 1. Distracting troubles bring the Heart under the stupidity of Amazement Their thoughts are so broken and disjoynted that they cannot unite them to a composed settled resolution in any thing they can scarce joyn them together to make out so much as might spell out their distinct desires or endeavours they scarce know what they are doing or what they would do 2. They also poyson the thoughts with harsh apprehensions against God Great distresses make the thoughts sometimes recoil against the Holy Lord with unseemly questionings of his Goodness and Compassion and this puts Men into a bad sullen humour of untowardness from whence through Satan's improvement arise the greatest plunges of dispair 3. Most usually in this case the greatest endeavours are Fruitless and Dissatisfactory Satan though he be no friend to Duty doth unseasonably urge them to Repent and Pray but 't is because they cannot do either with any satisfaction and then their Failures are matter of Argument against them For it they resolve to put themselves upon a more severe course of Repentance and accordingly begin to think of their sins to number them or to aggravate them they are usually affrighted from the undertaking by the hainous appearance of them they cannot they dare not think of them the remotest glimps of them is terrible to an affrighted Conscience the raising of them up again in the Memory like the rising of a Ghost from the Grave is far more astonishing than the first prospect of them after Commission So true is that of Luther If a Man could see Sin perfectly it would be a perfect Hell If they set themselves to beg their Pardon by earnest Prayer they are so distracted and confused in Prayer that their Prayers please them not they come off from the Duty more wounded than when they began Or if in any measure they overcome these difficulties so that they do pray and confess their Iniquities then they urge and force a sorrow or compunction upon themselves but still to a greater dissatisfaction For it may be and this usually happens in greater Distresses they cannot weep nor force a tear or if they do still they judg their sorrow is not deep enough nor any way suitable to the greatness of their sin 4. To all these Satan sometimes makes a further addition of trouble by injecting blasphemous thoughts Here he sets the Stock with an intention to Graff upon it afterward When all these things are thus in readiness then comes he to set fire to the Train and thus he endeavours to blow up the Mine Is not thy Heart hardned to everlasting destruction How canst thou deny this Art thou not grown stupid and senseless of all the hazards that are before thee Here he insists upon the amazement and confusion of their Spirit and 't is very natural for those that are drunk with the Terrours of the Almighty to think themselves stupid because of the distraction of their thoughts I have known several that have pleaded that very Argument to that purpose Satan goes on What greater evidence can there be of an hardned Heart than Impenitency Thou canst not mourn enough Thou hast not a tear for thy sins though thou couldst weep enough formerly upon
unseasonable interruption of something at present more concerning us Thus he makes the suggestion of Good things the hindrance of Prayer or Hearing Some will say This is a perplexing case that in things good or lawful in themselves Men should be in such dangers and will thereupon desire to know how they may distinguish Satans Contrivances and Motions from those that have no dependance upon him or are from the Spirit of God In answer to this 1. Let us when we fear thus to be circumvented look well to what Impressions are upon our Spirit when we are moved to what may be lawful For togâ—ther with the motion if it be Satans we shall find either a corrupt reason and end privatly rising up in our Mind or we may observe that our hearts are out of order and perversly inclined this is oft unseen to our selves When the Disciples moved Christ to bring down fire from Heaven if they had considered the present revengful selfish frame of their Spirits which our Lord tells them they were ignorant of they might easily have known that the motion had proceeded from Satan Secondly The concurrent Circumstances of the thing or Action are to be seriously weighed for from thence we may take a right measure of the conveniency or inconveniency of the proceeding in it What is from Satan it will be either unseasonable as to the Time Place and Person or some other thing will appear that may give a discovery As here Christ refuseth to turn Stones to Bread because not only the way and manner of the Proposal doth sufficiently lay open the Design but also the Circumstances of Christ's condition at that time shewed the motion to be unseasonable and inconvenient for if Satan had urged the necessity of it for the satisfaction of his hunger Christ could have answered that the experience that he had of Gods support for forty days together was sufficient to engage him to rely yet further upon him If he had urged farther that by this means he might have had a full proof of Gods love and care or of his Sonship It was at hand to tell him that it was needless to seek a further evidence when God had given one so full a little before If again he had pleaded it to have been an useful occasion to give a testimony of his Power to the satisfaction of others He could have told him that it had been impertinent to have done it then when he was in the Wilderness where none could have the benefit of it So that nothing Satan could have propounded as a reason for that Miracle but it might have been repelled from a consideration of his present condition The Instruction that may be gathered from this is That we must not entertain thoughts of doing lawful things without a due enquiry into the temper of our own Hearts and a full consideration of all Circumstances round about with the probable tendencies and consequences of it But may some say If I judge such a motion to be a thing lawful which doth proceed from Satan What am I to do I answer 1. Consider whether the Good be necessary or not if it be necessary 't is a duty and not to be forborn only the abuses are to be watched against and avoided Secondly If it be a duty Consider whether it be seasonable or unseasonable necessary or not as to the present time if it be not it may be suspended and a fitter opportunity waited for Thirdly If it be only lawful and not necessary we ought to abstain from it wholly after the example of David Psal 39. 2. who abstained even from Good that is from lawful bemoanings of himself or complainings against Absalom that had rebelled against him because it was not necessary and the circumstances of his condition considered very dangerous lest vent and way being given he might have been easily drawn to speak passionately or distrustfully against God and foolishly against Providences That the thing unto which Satan moved Christ was lawful hath been noted Next let us consider what Ends Satan might propound to himself in this Motion and we shall see as hath been said that he did not so narrow and contract his design as that only one thing took up his Intentions but several Hence have we this Observation That in one single Temptation Satan may have various Aims and Designs Temptation is a complicated thing a many-headed Monster Satan hath always many things in his Eye First In every Temptation there is a direct and principal design a main thing that the Devil would have Secondly There are several things subservient to the main design as steps degrees or means leading to it the lesser still making way for the greater If Satan design Murther he lays the Foundation of his work in inward Grudgings and Hatreds next he gives Provocations by reproachful Words or disdainful Carriages and Behaviours as our Saviour notes in the expressions of Racha and Fool and so by degrees enticeth on to Murther The like we may observe in the lusts of Uncleanness and other things Thirdly Besides these there are usually Reserves something in ambushment to watch our Retreats for Satan considers what to do in case we repel and refuse his motion that so he may not altogether labour in vain A contrary extreme watcheth those that fly from a Temptation Pride Security Self-Confidence and Boasting are ready to take them by the Heel So truly may it be said of Satan that he knoweth the way that we take if we go forward he is there if backward we may also perceive him on the left hand he is at work and on the right hand 〈◊〉 is not idle All these we may particularly see in this Temptation in Hand He had a main design of which more presently he prepares means and seconds to help it forward such were those pleas of necessity and conveniency which the hunger and want of Christ did furnish him withall and there wanted not the reserves of Presumption and Self-neglect in case he resisted the motion The Reasons of this Policy are these First When Satan tempts he is not certain of his prevalency even when the probabilities are the greatest and therefore doth he provide himself with several things at once that if the tempted Party nauseat one thing there may be another in readiness that may please his Palat. God gives this advice to the Spiritual Seedsmen In the Morning sow thy Seed and in the Evening withhold not thine Hand for thou knowest not what shall prosper whether this or that Satan that Seedsman of the Tares imitates this and because he knows not what shall prosper therefore doth he use variety Secondly Where many things are at once designed 't is an hundred to one they will not all return empty 'T is much if many snares miss he that hath broken one or two may not only be inticed with a third Temptation as being either wearied out with the
distrustfully question and deny the other He clave the Rock but can he provide Flesh can â—e give Bread Strange unbelief that sees and acknowledgeth Omnipotency in one thing and yet denies it in another Fifthly Providence hath been an old Question 't is an Atheism that some have been guilty of to deny that God ordereth all affairs relating to his Children here below who yet have not so fully extinguished their natural Impressions as to dare to deny the being of God That God is they confess but withal they think that he walketh in the Circuit of Heaven and as to the smaller concerns of Men neither doth good nor evil This being an old Error to which most are but too inclinable and the more because such things are permitted as the punishment of his Children and their Tryals while others have all their heart can wish as seem scarce consistent with that love and care which Men look for from him to his Servants they are apt enough to renew the thoughts of that perswasion upon their Minds for which the failure of ordinary ways of help seems to be an high probability that he keeps himself unconcerned and therefore there seems to be no such cause of relyance upon him The Psalmist so expresseth that Truth Men shall say Verily there is a God that judgeth in the Earth that it is discovered to be a special retrivement of it by many and signal convincing Evidences from that distrust of God and his Providences that Men usually slide into upon their Observation of the many seeming failures of outward means of help Secondly The other Branch of the Observation That from a distrust of Providence he endeavours to draw them to an unwarrantable attempt for their relief is as clear as the former Sarai being under a distrust of the promise for a Son because of her Age gave her Hand-maid to Abraham that in that way the Promise seeming to fail she might obtain Children by her David because of the many and violent pursuits of Saul not only distrusted the Promise thinking he might one day perish by him but resolves to provide for his own safety by a speedy escape into the Land of the Philistines a course which as appears by the Temptations and evils he met with there was altogether unwarrantable That from a distrust Men are next put upon unwarrantable Attempts is clear from the following Reasons First The affrightment which is bred by such distrusts of Providences will not suffer Men to be idle Fear is active and strongly prompts that something is to be done Secondly Yet such is the confusion of Mens minds in such a case that though many things are propounded in that hurry of thoughts they are deprived usually of a true Judgment and deliberation so that they are oppressed with a multitude of thoughts as David on the like occasion takes notice in the Multitude of my thoughts within me c. and as he expresseth the case of Sea-men in a Storm they are at their wits end Thirdly The desparing grievance of Spirit makes them take that which comes next to hand as a drowning Man that grasps a Twig or Straw though to no purpose Fourthly Being once turned off their Rock and the true stay of the Promise of God for help whatever other course they take must needs be unwarrantable If they once be out of the right way they must needs wander and every step they take must of necessity be wrong Fifthly Satan is so Officious in an evil thing that seeing any in this condition he will not fail to proffer his help and in place of Gods Providence to set some unlawful Shift before them Sixthly And so much the rather do Men close in with such overtures because a sudden fit of passionate fury doth drive them and out of a bitter kind of despite and crossness as if they meditated a revenge against God for their disappointment they take up an hasty wilful resolve to go that way that seems most agreeable to their passion saying with King Joram What wait we upon the Lord any longer for We will take such a course let come on us what will The Service which the Observation well digested may perform for us is very fully contained in an advice which David gives on the like occasion Psal 37. 34. which is this Wait on the Lord and keep his way Failures of ordinary means should not fill us with distrust neither then should we run out of God's way for help He that would practise this must have these three things which are comprehended in it First He must have full perswasions of the Power and Promise of God I do not mean the bare hear-say that God hath promised to help and that he is able to deliver but these Truths must be wrought upon the heart to a full Assurance of them and then we must keep our Eye upon them for if ever we lose the Sight of this when troubles beset us our Heart will fail us and we shall do no otherwise than Hagar who when her Bottle of Water was spent and she saw no way of supply sate down gave up her Son and self for lost and so falls a weeping over her helpless condition This was that Sight of God in regard of his Power Goodness Faithfulness and Truth which are things Invisible which kept up the Heart of Moses that it sunk not under the pressure of his fears when all things threatned his ruine Secondly He that would thus wait upon God had need to have an equal Ballance of Spirit in reference to second causes Despise or Neglect them he may not when he may have them for that were intollerable presumption and so to center our Hopes and Expectations upon them as if our welfare did certainly depend upon them is an high affront to Gods Omnipotency and no less than a sinful idolizing of the Creature but the engagements of our Duty must keep carefully to the first and the consideration of an Independency of an Almighty Power as to any subordinate means or causes must help us against the other miscarriage When all means visible fail us we must look to live upon Omnipotent Faithfulness and Goodness which is not tyed to any thing but that without all means and contrary to the Powers of second Causes can do what he hath promised or sees fit Thirdly There is no waiting upon God and keeping his way without a particular trust in God to this we are not only warranted by frequent Commands Trust in the Lord I say Trust in the Lord but highly encouraged to it under the greatest Assurances of help Psal 37. 5. Trust in him and he shall bring it to pass Trust in the Lord and do Good and verily thou shalt be fed ver 3. The Lord shall help and deliver them because they trust in him And this we are to do at all times and in the greatest Hazards and with the highest Security I laid me
may have Impulses from Satan upon pretences of Zeal as the Disciples had when they called for Fire from Heaven In these Impulses Satan doth not so act the Heart of Man as the Spirit of God doth whose Commands in this case are irresistible but he only works by altering the disposition of our Bodies in a Natural way and then having sitted us all he can for an Impression he endeavours to set it on by strong perswasions Some memorable instances of these Impulses might profitably illustrate this Math. Parisiensis takes notice of a Boy in Anno. 1213. of whom also Fuller makes mention who after some loss which the Christians had received in the War against the Turks went up and down Singing this Rithme Jesus Lord Redeem our Loss Restore to us thy Holy Cross And by this means he gathered a Multitude of Boys together who could not by the severest Menaces of their Parents be hindred from following him to their own ruine Another instance of a strange Impulse we have in Josephus one Jesus the Son of Ananus about four years before the Destruction of Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles begins to cry out Woe Woe to the East and West to Man and Woman c. And could by no means be restrained Night or Day and when his Flesh was beaten off his Bones he begged no pity nor ease but still continued his usual crying Seventhly God doth also by his Spirit teach his People in bringing things to their remembrance Satan also in imitation of this can put into the Minds of Men with great readiness and dexterity Promises or Sentences of Scripture insomuch that they conclude that all such actings are from the Spirit of God who as they conclude set such a Scripture upon their Heart thus dealt Satan with Christ he urgeth the Promise upon him wherein upon the matter he doth as much as when he secretly suggests such things to the Heart without an audible Voice In this way of craft Satan doth very much resemble the true work of the Spirit 1. In the readiness and quickness of suggesting 2. In seeming exact suiting Scripture suggested with the present occasion and 3. In the earnestness of his urging it upon the Fancies of Men. Yet when all this is done they that shall seriously consider all ends Matter and Circumstances will easily observe it is but the cunning work of a Tempter and not from the Holy Spirit Observe also That whatever be the various ways of Satans imitation yet the matter which he works and practiseth upon is still Scripture to this he confines himself First Because the Scriptures are generally among Christians received as the undoubted Oracles of God the Rule of our Lives and Duties and the Grounds of our hope It would be a vain and bootless labour to impose upon those that retain this belief the sayings of the Turkish Alcoran the Precepts of Heathen Philosophers or any other thing that may carry a visible estrangement from or contradiction to Scripture he could not then possibly pretend to a Divine Instruction nor could he so transform himself into an Angel of Light but by using this covert of Divine Command Promise or Discovery he can more easily beget a belief that God hath said it and that there is neither Sin nor Danger in the thing propounded but Duty and Advantage to be expected and this is the very thing that makes way for an easy entertainment of such delusions Poor Creatures believe that is all from God and that they are acted by his Spirit and that with such confidence that they contemn and decry those as ignorant of Divine Mysteries and of the Power of God who are not so besotted as themselves Secondly The Scriptures have a Glorious irresistible Majesty in them peculiar to themselves which cannot be found in all that Art or Eloquence can contribute to other Authors 'T is not Play-Book Language nor Scraps of Romances that Satan can effect these cheats withal and therefore we may observe that in the highest delusions Men have had pretences of Scripture and their strong perswasions of extraordinary discoveries have striken Men into a reverence of their profession because of the Scripture Words and Phrases with which their boldest follies are woven up for let but Men enquire into the reason of the prevalency of Familism of old upon so vast a number of People as were carried away with it and they shall find that the great Artifice lay in the Words they used a language abstracted from Scripture to signify such conceits as the Scripture never intended Hence were their expressions always high soaring and relating to a more excellent and mystical interpretation of those Divine Writings This may be observed in David George Hen. Nicholas and others who usually talk of being consubstantiated with God taken up into his Love of the Angelical Life and a great deal more of the same kind The Ranters at first had the like Language and the Quakers after them affected such a câ—nting Expression And we may be the more certain of the truth of this observation that such a kind of speaking which borrows its Majesty from the Stile of the Scripture is of moment to Satans design because we find the Scripture it self gives particular notice of it the false Teachers in 2 Pet. 2. 18. are discribed among other things by their swelling words of Vanity which the Syriack rendrs to be a proud and lofty way of speaking the original signifies no less they were words swelled like Bladders though being pricked they be found to be empty Sounds and no Substance There are indeed swelling words of Atheistical contempt of those who as the Psalmist speaks set their Mouths against Heaven but this passage of Peter as also the like in Jude ver 16. signify big Swoln words from high pretensions and fancies of knowing the mind of God more perfectly for they that use them pretend themselves Prophets of God ver 1. and as to their height in profession are compared to Clouds highly soaring and in 2 Cor. 11. 14. they are said to be transformed into the Apostles of Christ and to the Garb of the Ministers of Righteousness And that which is more this particular design of Satan is noted as the rise of all No marvel for Satan himself is transformed into an Angel of Light Having seen the reasons why Satan chuseth Scripture as his Tool to work by I shall next shew to what base designs he makes it subserve First He useth this Artifice to beget and propagate erronious Doctrines Hence no opinion is so vile but pretends to Scripture as its Patron The Arrians pretend Scripture against the Divinity of Christ The Socinians Pelagians Papists yea and those that pretend to Inspirations for their Rule and disclaim the binding force of those antiquated declarations of the Saints conditions as they call them yet conform all their sayings to the Scripture expression and endeavour to prove their mistakes
Duty then he objects They draw nigh me with their Lips but their Heart is far from me If he sees them dull and without Consolation at the Lord's Supper then to be sure they hear of him he that eats and drinks unworthily eateth and drinketh Damnation to himself If he find him bemoaning that he is not so apprehensive of Mercies or Judgments as he would be then he sets home some such Scripture as this This Peoples Heart is waxed gross and their Ears are dull of hearing c. These Scriptures are frequently perverted by Satan from the true and proper meaning of them I have had complaints from several dejected Christians of these very Scriptures urged upon them to their great trouble when yet it was evident that none of these were truly applyed by Satans Temptation against them These things give us warning not to take any thing of this Nature upon trust If Satan can so imitate the Spirit of God in applications of Scripture and bringing it to our remembrance we have great reason to beware lest we be imposed upon by Satan's Design clothed in Scripture Phrase not that I would have Men esteem the secret setting of Scripture upon their Minds to be in all cases a delusion and to be disregarded as such Some indeed there are that so severely remark the weaknesses of Professors of Religion that they raise up a scorn to that which is of most necessary and serious use because the Devil prevails with some Hypocrites to guild themselves with Scripture phrase and others through imprudent inadvertency are unknown to themselves beguiled by Satan to misapplications of Scripture to their own estate or to other things they therefore decry all the inward workings of the Heart as Fancy or affected singularity these do but the Devils work But that the Spirit of God whom Satan treacherously endeavours to imitate doth set home Scripture Commands Threatnings and Promises upon the Hearts of his People is not only attested by the Experience of all that are inwardly acquainted with the ways of God but is one of the great Promises which Christ hath given for the comfort of his People in his absence Joh. 14. 26. But the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father shall send in my Name he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you This then being granted as a firm unshaken Truth our care must be in discovering and avoiding Satan's counterfeit using of Scripture and in this we should be more wary First Because we are not so apt to suspect what we meet with in such a way when 't is brought to us in the Language of Scripture Secondly And those that are not exercised in the Scripture will he at a sad loss as not knowing how to extricate themselves from such difficulties as may arise to them from Satan's Sophistry Thirdly Wariness is also more necessary because we are inclinable to believe what suits our Desires and Conscience awakened is averse to the rejecting of that which answers its fears You may say What is there of direction for us in this Case The Answer is ready Two things are given us in Charge 1. That we be wisely suspicious A facile hasty credulity is treacherous Christ forbids when he foretels the rising of false Christ's Math. 24. 26. the forwardness of a sudden belief taxing thereby those that are presently taken with every new appearance 'T is childish to be carryed with every Wind we are warned also of this 1 Joh. 4. 1. Believe not every Spirit 2. We are commanded to bring all Pretences whatsoever to Tryal though immediate Revelation or Vision be pretended or extraordinary Commission yet must all be brought to the Touch-Stone we must prove all things 1 Thes 5. 21. and try those that say they are Apostles Rev. 2. 2. Nay the Spirits are to be tryed whether they be of God 1 Joh. 4. 1. You will say How must we try I Answer God hath given a Publick Sufficient and Certain rule which is the Scripture and all must be tryed by that so that if there be Impulses or Discoveries or Remembrances of Scripture upon any it must not be taken for granted that they are of God because they pretend so high for so we shall make Satan Judg in his own Cause but lay all to the Line and Plummet of the written Word and if it answer not that call it confidently a delusion and reject it as accursed though it might seem in other regards to have been suggested by an Angel from Heaven But it will be said Satan pretends to this Rule and it is Scripture that is urged by him I Answer though it be so yet he useth not Scripture in its own Intendment and Sense for the discovery of his unfaithful dealing First Compare the Inference of the suggestion with other Scriptures If it be from a dark Scripture compare it with those that are more plain and in every case see whether the general Current of the Scriptures speak the same thing for if it be from Satan he either plays with the Words and Phrases from doubtful and equivolent terms making his conclusion or his citation will be found Impertinent or which is most usual contrary to Truth or Holiness if any of these appear by a true examination of the Import of the Scripture which he seeks to abuse or by comparing it with the Scope and Genius of other Scriptures you may certainly pronounce that it is not of God but Satan's deceit Secondly Consider the tendency of such Suggestions Let no Man say that this will come too late or that it is an after game I do not mean that we should stay so long as to see the Effects though this is also a certain discovery of Satan's knavery in his highest pretences the Phanatick Furies of the German Enthusiasts do now appear plain to all the World to have been Delusions by their End Fruits and Issue But that while these Conclusions are obtruded upon us we should observe to what they tend which we shall the better know if all Circumstances round about be considered Sometimes Satan doth covertly hint his Mind and send it along with the suggestion sometimes our condition will enough declare it and there is no case but it will afford something of discovery if seriously pondered If he either prompt us to Pride Vain-Glory or Presumption or that our condition sway us that way it will be sufficient ground of Suspition that 't is Satan that then urgeth Promises or Priviledges upon us If we are of a wounded Spirit inclined to Distrust or if we be put on to despair it is past denyal that 't is Satan that urgeth the Threatnings and presseth the Accusations of the Law against us He that gathers Stones Timber Lime and such Materials together as are usually imployed in Building doth discover his intention before he actually Build his
which strike not at the root as one observed of himself that instead of denying a sinful Motion he began to dispute whether it came from Satan of his own inclination and so instead of quenching the Fire he busied himself to enquire whence it came Men deal with Temptations in this case as they who being asked whether they will buy such a Commodity hastily answer no but yet call back the Party again and ask whence it came or what it must cost and by such intanglements of Curiosity engage themselves at last to buy it Eve failed by such an inconsiderate conference with Satan for the abrupt beginning of the Serpents Speech Yea hath good said ye shall not eat c. and the summing up of the Arguments which prevailed with her to eat when the Woman saw that the Tree was good for Food and pleasant to the Eyes c. do clearly evidence that there was more discourse than is there expressed and that also tending to ascertain the Goodness Pleasantness and Profit of the Fruit. This kind of disputing is always unlawful and dangerous for it is but a wanton dallyance with a Temptation a playing upon the hole of the Asp and commonly ends in a sinful complyance Thirdly There is a disputing of a deliberating and parlying indifferency this is when the Devil puts a thought of Sin into their Minds and while they seem not to be forward to imbrace it leaves it to further conâ—ideration and then they float betwixt resolved and unresolved betwixt pro con being at a great dispute within themselves what is best to be done whether the conveniencies on the one hand will weigh down the inconveniencies on the other this in cases of apparent Sin is a wicked â—alting betwixt two always unlawful Fourthly There are also treacherous partial arguings wherein the Heart akes part with Satan These are those debates that are to be found in Natural Men about the doing or not doing of sinful things This looks so like the Combat betwixt the Flesh and the Spirit that it hath occasioned an enquiry how they may be distinguished each from other 'T is generally concluded that in that strife of the Natural Man the Light of the Understanding and Conscience gives opposition to the bent of the Affections and the same faculties though sanctifyed in part in the Regenerate are the Parties that give opposition each to other but with this principal difference that in this strife of the Flesh and Spirit the Man takes part with God whereas in the other the Affections take the Devils part and in a malignant averseness to the Light strive to put it out and to get over the conviction of Conscience so that the Man strives to Sin and to stop the Mouth of such objections as come into the contrary this kind of disputing is always sinful Fifthly There is yet a disputing in a strict Sense which is a full and solemn debating of a Satanical injection by giving it the full hearing and admitting Satan to be a Respondent to our objections Of this it is queried how far it may be convenient and how far inconvenient because we see Christ in this place did not thus dispute with Satan and yet we find instances in Scripture of some Holy Men that have been unavoidably engaged to dispute a Temptation to the utmost To Answer this Query I shall Secondly shew in what cases it may be necessary or convenient to enter the Lists with Satan in an Holy arguing and in what cases it is inconvenient and dangerous There are four cases in which we may dispute a Temptation First When the Motion is of things doubtful and disputable whether they be lawful or not Here it cannot be avoided for albeit as the Apostle adviseth Rom. 14. 1. doubtful disputations are not to be imposed upon others so as to tye them up to our perswasions yet in these things every Man before he can act clearly is to endeavour his own satisfaction in the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the thing that so he may be fully perswaded in his own Mind ver 5. And he gives two strong reasons of this ver 22 23. 1. From the rack and trouble which otherwise the Man may be put upon while his Conscience unsatisfied condemneth him in that which by a contrary practice he alloweth 2. In that this condemnation of Conscience while he doth that the lawfulness whereof he believeth not is an evidence of his Sin as well as an occasion of his trouble Secondly Disputings have place when a Temptation hath taken hold upon the thoughts and so far possessed it self that our corruption riseth up in the defence of the Suggestion Satan will not quit that hold though he be an intruder without our leave till he be beat out of his Quarters The Apostle Eph. 6. implies so much by that expression of quenching the fiery Darts of Satan It is not proper to understand it of a refusal of the first Motion of Sin though Interpreters do usually make it comprehensive both of the keeping out of the Dart and the plucking it out because this evidently supposeth that the Dart hath pierced the Soul and now begins to burn and enflame which will require more labour for the quenching of it than a refusal of the first Motion would put us to As when Fire hath taken hold upon our Houses we shall be forced to bring Water for the extinguishing of the Flame which before it had broke out upon the Building an ordinary care might have prevented And this we further taught by a distinction which the same Apostle useth in the same place of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 standing and withstanding We must keep off the Temptation that it enter not by standing against the Assault in a peremptory refusal but if it do enter then we must be put to it by a force of holy arguing to pull out the Arrow and to withstand it Thirdly Much more need have we of disputing when the present Temptation is a Motion of such a Sin which we are habituated unto and have long practised for these kind of sinful Motions are not cast out easily In this case David adviseth his Enemies Psal 4. who had for a long time loved Vanity and sought after leasing that by communing with their own Heart and by disputing against their sinful Practices they should bring themselves under an Holy awe and by that means stop the course of their sinning ver 4. This indeed is the great thing that Sinners are called to by God to ponder their Estate to consider their ways to study the evil and danger of Sin to examin themselves and to reason together with God about the wickedness and ingratitude of their Actions and about the contrary loveliness blessedness and happiness of the ways of God that so they may be brought to repentance all which are done only by a serious arguing of their case and hazard Fourthly It is convenient and
Deut. 6. 6. These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine Heart and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand and they shall be as frontlets between thine Eyes c. Whether the later part of the Command is to be understood literally as the Jews apprehended and practised though some think otherwise is not necessary to be asserted seeing 't is granted by all that they were to have the Commands of the Law so ready in their Minds and Memories as if they had been written on their Hands and upon their Foreheads That God designed this precept for the resistance of Sin and Temptation cannot be doubted and that the advantage which might hence arise to them was not only the information of their Minds in point of Sin and Duty is as unavoidable for that and more is intended by that part of the Injunction These words which I command thee shall be in thine Heart but when besides this information which the knowledg of the Law would afford them and their humble complyance with it as just and good which would enable them to say Thy Law O Lord is within my Heart he further enjoyns them the quick and ready remembrances of these Laws as if they were frontlets between their Eyes and signs on their Hands it can signify no less than this that in so doing they would be able to resist those Motions by which Satan would seek to engage them to the violation of these Commands Neither need we to doubt hereof when Christ himself hath so fully taught us by his own Example in resisting Temptations the particular use of the remembrance of the Law In the New Testament the Apostle is most express in this matter Eph. 6. 17. Take the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God where not only the use of Scripture-Commands and Promises against Satan's Suggestions is taught but also the high avail and potency of this Weapon in reference to its end 't is called a Sword and in that comparison it shews the active resistance which may be made by it and 't is called not a Sword of Flesh for the Weapons of our Warfare are not Carnal but of the Spirit to shew how mighty it is in repelling Satan Secondly Another Evidence of its usefulness is from the success which the Children of God have had in the right management of this Weapon 'T is observable that while Christ answered by Scripture Satan was silenced and had not what to reply to the Answer but was forced to betake himself to a new Temptation David in many places highly magnifies the Power of the Command in the success he had by it Psal 17. 4. He shews how available it was to preserve him in his common converse from the sinful Snares laid before him concerning the works of Men by the word of thy Lips I have kept me from the Paths of the destroyer In Psal 18. 22 23. he tells us that he was shielded from the Sins of his inclination and love which are hardest to prevent by the opposition that he gave to the Motions of them in setting up the Statutes of God against them All his Judgments were before me and I did not put away his Statutes from me I was also upright before him and I kept myself from mine Iniquity In Psal 119. 11. He puts his Probatum est upon the Head of this Receit and speaks of it as his constant refuge Thy Word have I hid in my Heart that I might not sin against thee In Psal 37. 31. He speaks of it as a tryed case of common experience to all the Children of God The Law of God is in his Heart none of his steps shall slide I shall add to this the Experience of Luther When saith he the Motions of the Flesh do rage the only remedy is to take the Sword of the Spirit that is the Word of Salvation and to fight against them of this I my self have good experience I have suffered many great passions and vehement but so soon as I laid hold of any place of Scripture and stay'd my self upon it as upon an Anchor straightway my Temptations did vanish away which without the Word had been impossible for me to endure though but a little space much less to overcome Thirdly The Excellency of this remedy will further appear from these following reasons First In that it is an Vniversal Remedy there can be no Temptation either of seducement or of affrightment but the Scripture will afford a suitable Promise or Command to repel it So that it like the Flaming Sword in the Cherubims hand at Paradise turns every way to guard the Soul I need not give instances of its Power against sinful Motions having done that already and of such Temptations which war against the peace of the Soul I need but say this in the general that as the Nature of such Temptations is to disguise God and to render him dreadful to us in the appearances of Wrath and incompassionate Implacableness and this Luther sets down as a certain rule So have we in Scripture such declarations of the Mind and tender Inclinations of God and such full and clear Promises to assure us of this and those so adapted to every case to every kind of hard thought which we might take up against him that we may find enough in them to break all those malicious misrepresentations of Satan and to keep up in our Mind right thoughts of God which if we will adhere to not suffering such Promises to be wrested out of our hands nor our Hearts to give way to malignant impressions of Cruelty Revenge or Unmercifulness in God though we be cast into Darkness into the Deeps we may find some Bottom on which to fix such beginnings of Hope as may at last grow up to a Spirit of rejoicing in God our Saviour and in this case when our Heart and Satan dictate to us that God is our Enemy we ought as it were to shut our Eyes to refuse to hearken to our own Sense and Feeling and to follow the Word but if we once give up the word of Promise 't is impossible the wound of Conscience should be healed with any other consideration Secondly This Remedy is comprehensive of most other Remedies against Satan's Temptations In Eph. 6. There are several other peices of Spiritual Armour recommended and yet there is such a manifest mutual respect betwixt this and those that any may conclude that however they be distinguished in their Names yet they are conjoyned in their Operation the Girdle so far as it relates to truth of Judgment and Opinion depends on the word of Scripture for Information the Shoes which are defensive resolves to walk with a steedy Foot in the ways of Religion notwithstanding the hardships that attend Holiness are prepared to us by the comfortable and peace-bringing Promises of the Gospel the Righteousness which is our Breast-Plate is only set forth and