All these are but instances of Satan’s silent insinuation, by which he secretly steals the affections, and through these taints the judgment. Next follows,
A second plot upon the affections, which is an endeavour to entangle them by the external garb of error. In this he works by two contrary extremes, that he may the better prevail with men’s different dispositions.
[1.] First, He sometimes clothes a false doctrine with the most pompous, gorgeous, delightful attire, that, like Solomon’s harlot, it may entice those that are pleased with the highest gratifications of the senses, ‘I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with fine linen of Egypt,’ &c. Most men that are given up to an animal life cannot be pleased with any religion but such as may most please the senses. They so disrelish the simplicity of the gospel—which is, notwithstanding, its particular mark and honour, 2 Cor. xi. 3—that they cannot persuade themselves they do anything in religious worship except they abound in costly ceremonious observances. Thus do some interpret that fear of the heathens, which first put them upon images and outward representations of their gods. They were afraid they should not have any religion to their own satisfaction, except they proceeded in such a course as might make their senses sure that they were doing something, primus in orbe deos timor fecit. The devil, knowing well the force of external beauties in religion, prepared the way to idolatry by it. They had their costly temples, some of them admirable for antiquity and magnificence, enriched with gifts and offerings, excellent for matter and workmanship, adorned with images, lamps, beds, and tables of gold, beautified by art, and natural pleasantness of situation; they had also their groves in the most pleasant and delightful places, as that of the Daphne, besides292 Antiochia, which was environed with tall cypress trees ten miles about, and within adorned with the sumptuous temples of Apollo and Diana’s sanctuary. In these places they had their music and solemn festivals, which were sometimes extraordinary for cost and continuance. Antiochus at Daphne continued an incredible solemnity, with a vast train and costly preparation, for thirty days’ together; and that nothing might be wanting, they had their annual feasts, sacrifices, rites, the adornments of their priests, their white garments, their coats of divers colours, their mitres, &c.; in a word, nothing was lacking that might please the eye or ear. And doubtless the devil found this course very successful to win the affections of men to Gentilism. And if it were not for this consideration, it might be admired that the Jews, who were instructed in the true worship of God, should, notwithstanding, be so prone to idolatry, and so hardly drawn from it; but surely their strong inclinations that way proceeded from a natural delight that men have in a sensual religion, which, by a powerful witchcraft, doth enchant them to an excess of love. The same method the devil takes in popery. The chief enticement lies in its glorious external appearance. All their religious places are dressed up in the highest bravery, they are beautified with images and pictures, with lights and costly adornments; they abound in rites, ceremonies, gestures, and observances, and all this is but to dazzle the eyes, and to win a reverence in men to their worship; and accordingly they practise in these exterior things on purpose to ravish men’s affections; their children are brought up to a confirmed delight and resolution for popery, by pleasing them with shows, pictures, representations, processions, and grateful observances. If a stranger of another religion come among them, then, as their first essay, they shew them all their play-things, that their affections may be tickled with the outward pomp and ornament of their way, for they know by experience that a glittering outside and a great deal ado of bodily labour is the all of most men’s religion. If it have but body enough, they never inquire whether it have spirit or life within. A dead carcase in robes, that may put them to the exercise of their postures and ceremonious compliments, doth make up a more grateful religion for a carnal man than a living, spiritual service, that necessarily will put them upon inward care and watchfulness in the constant exercise of holy spiritual graces, without affording any considerable gratification to the senses. Hence is it truly more difficult, and yet inwardly more beautiful and glorious, to pray in faith and humility, even in short breathings after God, than to say a thousand Ave Marias, or to perform a task of ordinary penance. But as those that have no children of their own delight themselves in playing with a monkey or baboon, so those that know not how to worship God in spirit and truth seek to satisfy themselves in the performance of external gesture and ceremony.
[2.] Secondly, On the other hand he sometimes is willing that an error should affect an excess of plainness and simplicity. In this he takes advantage of those expressions in Scripture, wherein the gospel is commended for its simplicity; and the inventions of men, under the pretences of wisdom, humility, and neglecting of the body, are condemned. Upon this ground he runs men upon such an excess of dotage, that they never think the things of God are rightly managed but when they are brought down to a contemptible silliness. By this means he arms conceited ignorant men with exceptions against learning, and the necessary decencies of language in preaching; and with them they are the only preachers, and most likely to be inspired, that use least study and preparation for their work. It is indeed very true that the affected fooleries of a bombast style or starched discourse, and needless citations of sentences for ostentation, without any true advantage to the matter in hand, are things very pedantic, and exceedingly unsuitable to the gravity of the work of the ministry, and renders it very ungrateful to a pious mind; but this contrary folly makes the solemn ordinances of God so nauseous and contemptible, that it often makes way, by Satan’s cunning improvement of the temptation, to an atheistical rejection of all worship. In the meantime it is wonderful to observe how some persons please themselves with this conceit, that their way of worship is plain, and that they speak what immediately comes into their mind; and though it be nonsense or contradictions, which sufficiently evidenceth that it is nothing of kin to the Spirit’s inspirations, which they utter, yet it is argument enough to them that their opinions and ways are right, because they proceed in a designed neglect of all necessary order, and under pretence of the simplicity of the gospel they reduce all they do to childish silliness. Neither is this all the mischief which the devil raiseth out of this conceit, for the contempt and disuse of the sacraments may in great part be ascribed to it. Those erroneous ways of worship that are most noted for decrying those institutions of Christ, have this for their plea, that the worship which God is best pleased with is spiritual, and that all bodily services and external observations are things that God stands not upon, such as profit little, and were no further in use, but to recommend an internal spiritual communion with God; so that the more they reject these things, they persuade themselves they have a more true understanding of the design of God in religion. Either of these ways Satan makes use of for the befooling of men into a humour of pleasing themselves with error. But,
[3.] Thirdly, He hath of old endeavoured to cloud and enervate the doctrine of the Bible by traditionary fables. We meet with many passages to this purpose. Sometimes he sets up unwritten traditions, not only of equal authority to the written word, but as completions and perfections of it. This he practised among the Jews with such success, that the traditions of the elders were of greater force with them than the commands of God, as Christ himself noted of them, Mat. xv. 13. Of these unwritten traditions, which they called ‘the law by the word of mouth,’ feigned by them to be given to Moses when he was in the mount, and so delivered from hand to hand, the apostles gave many warnings, and signified the hazards that truth stood in by them through the cunning of Satan; as Col. ii. 8, ‘Beware lest any man spoil you through the traditions of men;’ 1 Tim. i. 4, ‘Neither give heed to fables, and endless genealogies;’ Titus i. 14, ‘Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of men;’ 2 Tim. iv. 4, ‘And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.’
The papists at this day give the same entertainment to this device that the Jews did of old; they boast as high of their traditions, and are every whit as fabulous and foolish in them as they were. Satan in his attempts upon the Gentiles to confirm them in their false worship, though he kept up the substance of this design, yet he was necessitated to alter the scene a little, that he might more handsomely accommodate it to their condition; and therefore he set up amongst them fabulous imitations of the truths and ordinances of the Scripture, insomuch that there is scarce any grand mystery or remarkable history or ordinance mentioned in the Scripture but we may find something among the heathens in tradition or practice that doth allude to it. What traditionary imitations had they of the creation recorded in the book of Genesis! That of Ovid concerning the chaos and first beginning of things is known to every schoolboy. The Phœnicians in their theology give an odd account of it from their Taautus, to this purpose:293 ‘That the first beginnings of all things were a dark, disordered chaos, and the spirit of the dark air; hence proceeded moth, that is, mire, from thence issued the seeds and generation of all creatures in earth and heaven,’ &c. The wickedness of men before the flood—mentioned Gen. vi. 1, 2—is fabulously related in an ancient book, falsely ascribed to Enoch, wherein the watchmen or angels are reported to take them wives of the daughters of men, and that from thence was the race of giants.294 For the description of paradise, the heathens had the poetical fiction of the Elysian fields; as they had the story of Deucalion, instead of Noah’s ark and the deluge. The story of Lot’s wife was abused by the fiction of Orpheus his wife, suddenly snatched from him for looking back. The history of Samson was turned into their story of Hercules and his ten labours. From the sun standing still in Joshua and Hezekiah’s time, came that fiction of Jupiter’s doubling the night, that he might enjoy Alcmena. In some of these disguises of sacred story, they go so near in name and circumstances, that it is past doubt they imitated the true history, which they corrupted. For instance, Herodotus relates that Sethon, king of Egypt and priest of Vulcan, was helped by his god from heaven against Sennacherib, which plainly relates to Hezekiah king of Judah, and the wonders that God did for him.295 So in imitation of Uriah’s letters to Joab for his own destruction, we have in Homer and others the story of Prœtus sending letters to Jobatas by Bellerophon, wherein his death was commanded; the near affinity of the names Joab and Jobatas, shews with what heifer the devil ploughed. The history of Abraham’s offering up Isaac is by Porphyry applied to Saturn, who saith he was by the Phœnicians called Israel; he had by Anobreth one only son called Jeud,—an evident allusion, saith Godwyn, [Antiq., lib. iv. cap. 3,] to Gen. xxii. 2, where Isaac is in the Hebrew called Jechid, that is, an only-begotten,—him he offered up on an altar purposely prepared. Here not only the matter, but the names, do clearly shew that Abraham’s story is imitated in this. The like imitation I might shew to have been among the heathen of doctrinal truths, as of the sacred mystery of the Trinity. In Peru they worship the father, son, and brother; as also their Tangatauga, which they say was one in three, and three in one.296 But their imitation of ordinances is everywhere remarkable, so that I need say nothing of their temples, priests, sacrifices, and other religious rites; only the devil’s imitation of the sacraments of the New Testament deserves particular observation. Instances of an apish imitation of baptism are everywhere obvious, and that of the Lord’s supper or Christian communion was frequently resembled in the chief Peruvian feasts, where they carried small loaves of bread in great platters of gold, of which all present received and ate little pieces, and this as a sign of honour and profession of obedience to their gods and the ingua.297 Not unlike to this were those morsels of paste which the Mexicans used in their religious feasts, which they laid at their idol’s feet, consecrating them by singing and other ceremonies, and then they called them the flesh and bones of their god Vitziliputzli, alluding directly to that of our Saviour, ‘This is my body,’ &c., insomuch that Acosta thought the devil mocked their transubstantiation by it. This was distributed among all, and was eaten with a great deal of reverence, fear, and devotion.298
We may see by those instances that in these fabulous imaginations of truth the devil hath industriously traded, and that which he aimed at in this design may easily be conjectured to be,
[1.] The despiting and discrediting of truth. He renders it by this means suspicious of some forgery; as if the Scripture were no better than an uncertain tradition, as if, at the best, it were doubtful whether Scripture or these traditionary fables had better authority.
[2.] He further intends the entanglement of the affections to error by this device; for he doth, as it were, take the spoils of the tabernacle to adorn his Dagon withal; and without doubt the heathens were very much hardened in Gentilism by these traditionary stories. Hence one observes,299 the devil imitated the history of the miracle done in favour of Hezekiah, that the Scriptures might lose their credit and authority, and that the glory of such a wonder might be transferred to their idols; and the consequence of both these is,
[3.] To deprive the truth of its convincing power upon the consciences of men. The principles of Scripture convince by the evidence of their truth. If that truth be questioned by the substitution of another competitor, it presently loseth its force, and the commands thereof are disregarded upon a supposition of its uncertainty.
[4.] Another of his ways to betray the understanding by the affections, is by putting men upon an accommodation of truth to a compliance with parties differing from it. And this hath been so much the more successful, because it hath begun, and been carried on, upon the most specious pretences. The avoiding of offences, the smoothing of the way of religion for the gaining of the contrary minded, the preservation of peace and unity, are pleas very plausible; and really, upon the account of these things, the Scripture, both by its precepts and examples, hath recommended to us condescensions and brotherly forbearances. The Jews, who were dissatisfied at the first publication of the liberty from the yoke of Mosaical ceremonies purchased for us by Christ, were indulged in the use of circumcision, and observance of the difference of meats for a long time, till they might be the better satisfied in the truth. These pretences the devil makes use of to undermine truth. And pleasing his agents with the honour of a pious design—and it may be at first really so intended by them—he prevails with them, not only for a present condescension to men of contrary practice, but to cast the principles of truth into such a fixed mould that they may carry a more near resemblance to those opinions which they do most directly oppose. The appearance of sanctity, peaceableness, prudence, and successfulness in such an undertaking, doth exceedingly animate the well-meaning designers, which Satan, in the meantime, carries them beyond all bounds, and so dangerously fixeth an unnatural representation of truth, that it loseth its own splendour, and settles at last upon unsafe notions. Thus by the continuance of such a compliance, error begins to recruit its forces, and is as likely to draw over truth wholly to its side—by the argument of resemblance, and the consequences following thereupon—as truth is wholly to extirpate and conquer error. And if it do not that, succeeding ages, that minded not the first design, finding things so continued to them, in deep reverence to their predecessors, form their prudential condescensions into perverse opinions.
If we follow the tract of time from the first preaching of the gospel, we may find Satan’s footsteps all along. In the apostles’ times, when the believing Jews were tolerated necessarily till time and experience might fully convince them in their observation of the law of Moses, which was certainly given of God, and so might very easily occasion an opinion of the continuance of it, Acts xv. 1, 5, though the apostles did not at all accommodate the standing precepts of the New Testament to carry a perpetual resemblance of that opinion, neither did they still countenance that practice, but did seasonably and fully declare against it, exhorting Christians ‘to stand in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free,’ Gal. v. 1, 2, yet Satan was busy to take advantage of the present forbearances, which the Holy Ghost had directed them unto; insomuch that instead of convincing all the dissenters by that lenity, some dissenters waxed bold to persuade the Christians ‘to another gospel.’ But after their days the devil pursued this design with greater scope; for instance, in Constantine’s time, when the Gentiles flocked into the church with dirty feet and in their old rags, they were tolerated in some old customs of Gentilism, and upon a design to win them, they made bold to bend the doctrine of the gospel toward their former usages; they thought indeed it was best to wink at things, and not to bear too hard upon them at first, but that, tolerating a lesser evil, they might avoid a greater inconvenience; and withal they deemed they had done great service to the church and Christian religion, if they could any way divert the heathen from worshipping their idols. And to effect this the easilier, they seemed to cherish their customs and rites of worship, as consonant in the general to the principles of Christianity, only they excepted against the object of their worship as unlawful, so that upon the matter they did no more than change the name. The manifold inconveniences that followed this kind of dealing, they did not discover at first; but besides the infecting the simplicity of Christian religion with the dirt and dregs of paganism, which they might easily have seen, time hath since discovered that here the devil secretly laid the chief foundations of popery.
Whosoever shall impartially compare the rites, customs, usages, and garbs of popery, with those of paganism, will to his admiration find such an exact agreement and consonancy, that he must necessarily conclude that either paganism imitated popery, or popery imitated paganism; but the latter is true, and that these corruptions in religion by popery came in by a designment of conforming Christianity to heathenism, though it may be upon pious intentions at first, is no difficult thing to evince; for besides that the rites of paganism were more ancient, and so could not be borrowed from popery, which came long after, the Scripture did foretell a great defection from truth which should be in the ‘last days,’ and this under a profession of religion; and the things particularised are such as shew that the defection should carry an imitation of paganism: for no less seems to be signified by 1 Tim. iv. 1, ‘The Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;’ that is—as Mr Mede, whose interpretation I follow,300 doth prove—doctrines concerning devils or demons: as in Heb. vi. 2, we have the phrase of ‘doctrines of baptisms,’ which must needs signify doctrines concerning baptisms; the Gentile theology of demons is the thing which Paul prophesies should be introduced into Christianity. How clearly this relates to popery may be evident to any that doth not wilfully blind himself by prejudice. Their doctrine of demons was this: they supposed two sorts of gods, supreme and inferior; the supreme they supposed did dwell in the heavenly lights, sun, moon, and stars, without change of place; these they judged were so sublime and pure, that they might not be profaned with the approach of earthly things, and that immediate approaches to them were derogatory to their sovereignty. The inferior order of gods they imagined were of a middle sort, betwixt the supreme beings and men, as participating of both. These they called mediators and agents, and supposed their business was to carry up men’s prayers to God, and to bring down blessings from God upon men. These were in Scripture called Baalim, and by the Greeks demons; to this purpose Austin and others speak.301
Now these demons they supposed were the souls of dead men, that had been more than ordinarily famous in their generation. Thus Ninus made an image to his father Belus after he was dead, and caused him to be worshipped. Hermes confesseth that Æsculapius, grandfather to Asclepius, and Mercury, his own grandfather, were worshipped as gods of this order. Abundance of instances I might produce to this purpose; but to go on, these demons, because to them was committed the care of terrestrial affairs, as Celsus argues against Origen, and because of the help and advantage that men might receive from them, they supposed it gratitude and duty to worship them, and this worship they performed at their images, sepulchres, and relics. To this purpose Plutarch tells us of Theseus his bones, and Plato of the θῆκαι or shrines of their demons.302
How evident is it that the papists in their doctrine and practice about the invocation of saints and angels, have writ after this copy, and that they are the men that have introduced this doctrine of demons, the thing itself declares without further evidence. Had the heathens their dead heroes for agents betwixt the supreme gods and men? so have the papists their dead saints to offer up their prayers. Did the heathen expect more particular aids from some of these demons in several cases than from others? so do the papists. Instead of Diana for women in labour, and Æsculapius for the diseased, they have their St Margaret and St Mary for travailing; Sebastian and Roch against the pestilence; Apollonia against the toothache; St Nicholas against tempests, &c. Did the heathen pray to these demons for their aid? so do the papists to their saints, as their breviaries, rosaries, and Lady’s psalters testify. Had the heathen their feasts, their statas ferias to their demons? so have the papists. Had they their Februalia et Proserpinilia with torches and lights? so have the papists their Candlemas with lights. Did the heathen erect images and pillars, or keep the ashes and shrines of their demons? so do the papists; the one had processions and adorations, so have the other; and a great many more things there are wherein popery keeps a correspondence with heathenism. To this purpose you may read enough in Monsieur de Croy, ‘Of the Three Conformities.’
To make it yet more clear that the corruptions in religion by popery came in by the design of suiting Christian religion to paganism, I shall in a testimony or two shew you that they professedly avouched the design. Gregory the Great writes chidingly to Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, who it seems was no forward man in this matter to this purpose,303 ‘Thou shouldst have considered that thou didst converse chiefly with the Gentiles, to whom pictures are instead of reading, to the end that no offence be given them under colour of lawful zeal, wherewith thou art not cunningly endued.’ And in another epistle to Mellitus,304 he adviseth, ‘That the honours and offerings which the heathens gave to their demons should be transferred to the martyrs and their relics,’ and gives this reason for it, ‘It is impossible,’ saith he, ‘to cut off all at once from stubborn minds.’305 Eusebius also endeavours to persuade to Christianity by this argument, that the Christians’ custom of honouring the memories of the martyrs, and solemnly assembling at their sepulchres, did agree with the custom of the Gentiles of doing the like honour to their demons, and having mentioned what Hesiod speaks concerning Plato’s opinion, that their champions became demons after death, helpers and protectors of men—for which cause they were worshipped at their sepulchres as gods; he adds to this purpose, that ‘if these honours had been given to the favourites of God, and champions of true religion, it had been well enough;’ and for this shews the example and custom of Christians then to go to the tombs of martyrs, there to pray in honour of their blessed spirits. And although at first they might be more modest in honouring the martyrs than now they are, according to that of Austin, ‘These observances at the tombs of martyrs,’ saith he, ‘are only ornaments of their memories, not sacrifices to them as to gods.’306 Yet this soon slid into greater abuse, insomuch that Lud. Vives,307 in his notes on that chapter, blames those of his own time for worshipping saints as gods, and tells us he cannot see the difference betwixt the opinion concerning saints, as generally practised, and that of the heathens concerning their gods. I might add the positive acknowledgment of Beatus Rhenanus, Jacobus de Voragine, concerning the burning of candles to the Virgin Mary, which custom they confess was borrowed from the heathens, with a respect to the frowardness of paganism, and a design not to exasperate them, that they might gain them.
I might also shew that the mischief of this design, of accommodating truth to a compliance with different parties, hath not only shewn itself in introducing strange actions and ceremonies, but hath also discovered itself in leavening men’s judgments in reference to opinion. Calvin conjectures308 that those confident assertions of the powers of nature were first occasioned by an over-officious willingness to reconcile the doctrine of the Scripture with the opinions of philosophy; and that men being unwilling to run the hazard of the scorn which they might meet with in contradicting the general received principles of philosophers, were willing to form the doctrine of truth relating to human ability accordingly. Abundance of instances of this kind may be given. Whence came the doctrine of purgatory, but from hence? It is but Plato’s philosophy Christianised by the Roman synagogue.309 He divided all men into three ranks: the virtuous, who are placed by him in the Elysian fields; the desperate ungodly, these he adjudgeth to everlasting fire; and a third sort, betwixt the perfectly virtuous and the desperately wicked, he sendeth to Acheron, to be purged by punishment. All of this Eusebius makes mention of at large.310 That the papists derived their purgatory from hence is generally affirmed by protestants—nay, not only in these cases, but in very many more, corruptions have entered into Christianity by an over-eager endeavour to make the doctrine of the Scriptures to run even with the sayings and assertions of the schools of philosophers; a thing complained of old by Tertullian, who plainly affirmed the philosophers to be the patriarchs of the heretics.311 To which agrees that observation of Dr Owen, that those who either apologised for Christians, or refuted the objections of the heathens against Christianity, frequently cited the opinions or sentences of the philosophers, and accommodated them to their purpose, that so they might beget in their adversaries more friendly persuasions towards the Christian religion, by evidencing that the mysteries thereof were not absurd, nor dissonant from reason, seeing they might be justified by the sayings of their own philosophers. And ‘here was laid, in this design and its prosecution, (and surely it pleased its undertakers not a little,) the foundation of that evil which religion hath since groaned under, that men made bold with the tremendous mysteries of Christianity, to accommodate them unwarily to the notions of the Gentiles.’312 And this the apostle Paul foresaw in that caution he gave, Col. ii. 8, ‘Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.’ Certainly the snare is neither unusual nor weak, where the caution is so serious. It is a thing naturally pleasing, to be the inventor of any new thing, or to make new discoveries in religion, to raise new hypotheses, or to adventure in unbeaten paths, for a reconcilement of religion to any notion or practice famous for its antiquity, or pretence to beauty and decency. Men hug themselves when they can make several things to hit right, and an exact suiting of parallels is instead of demonstration. By this foolish delight the devil makes men bold to make essays; and what doth answer their humour passeth current for undoubted truth.
[5.] He doth sometime blind the understanding, by working up the affections to such an earnest opposition to some error, that in a forward haste they cast the mind upon a contrary extreme; so that through a hasty, violent avoidance of one error, they are cast upon a contrary, and, it may be, as dangerous as that they fly from. And this the devil doth with great ease, having the plausible pretence of zeal and care to truth, wherein the affections being highly engaged, the mind in a careless confidence doth easily overshoot the truth, which commonly lies in the middle, and thinks it doth well enough if it gives the greatest contradiction to the error now to be abominated. Men in this case, having their eyes only fixed upon what they would avoid, consider not so much whither they are going, as from what they go. So that seeking, as men in a fright, to avoid the pit that is before them, they run backward into another behind them.
This is such a noted stratagem of Satan, that all men take notice of it in the general, though all men do not improve the discovery for their own particular caution. The wisest of men are often so befooled by their violent resistance of an untruth, that they readily overshoot themselves and miss the mark. The fathers, in the heat of dispute, said many things so inconveniently, that those who come after do see and lament these hasty oversights, and have no other way to salve their credit but by giving this observation in excuse for them. And it may be observed that some errors which have risen from this root at first have so strongly fixed themselves, that they have grown up to the great annoyance of the truth; while the contrary errors that did occasion them are forgotten, and their memories are perished. I shall but instance in one instead of many, and that shall be Arianism. How sadly prevalent that hath been in its time, all men know that know anything of church history. The Christian world once groaned under it. But that which gave the first occasion to Arius to fix himself in that error was the doctrine of Alexander, who, discoursing of the unity in the Trinity too nicely, seemed to justify the error of Sabellius, who had taught, as also Noetus before, that there was but one person in the Trinity, called by divers names of Father, Son, and Spirit, according to different occasions; the Trinity, according to his doctrine, being not of persons, but of names and functions. While Arius was dissatisfied with this account of the Trinity, he ran to a contrary extreme; and that he might give the highest proof of a Trinity of persons, he affirmed that Jesus Christ had a beginning, and that there was a time when he was not, &c. Thus Socrates speaks of the rise of that heresy.313
We might further follow the footsteps of this device, and trace it in most opinions; where we might find the humour of running to a contrary extreme hath still either set up a contrary error, or at least leavened the truth with harsh and unjustifiable expressions and explanations. The disputes betwixt faith and works have been thus occasioned and aggravated. Some speak so of faith, as if they slighted works; others so urge a necessity of works, as if they intended to make faith useless. Some talk of grace, to an utter contempt of morality; others, on the contrary, magnify morality to the annihilating of grace. Some in their practice acquiesce in the outward performance of ordinances: if they pray or receive the sacraments, though never so formally, they are at peace, supposing they have done all that is required; others observing the mistake, and knowing that God looks more to the performance of the soul and spirit than to the act of the body, upon a pretence of worshipping God in spirit, throw off the observation of his ordinances altogether. Neither is there anything that doth more generally and apparently undo us in the present dissensions, as many have complained, than men’s violent overdoing and running to contrary extremes.
[6.] Satan makes use of rewards or punishments, on the one hand to bribe, or on the other to force the affections, and they being strongly possessed, easily prevail with the understanding to give sentence accordingly. Men are soon persuaded to take that for truth which they see will be advantageous to them. Some men indeed take up with a profession of truth, which yet their hearts approve not; but the advantages they have by their profession, do silence their dissatisfactions; these are said to use the profession of truth as ‘a cloak of covetousness,’ 2 Thes. ii. 5. But others go further, and are really brought to an approbation of that doctrine or way that makes most for their profit, their minds being really corrupted by a self-seeking principle. They persuade themselves, where there is any contest about doctrines, that that doctrine is true which is gainful, and will accordingly dispute for it. Hence that expression in 1 Tim. vi. 5, ‘supposing that gain is godliness.’
To this may be added, that the affections are quickly sensible of the ease and sensual gratifications of any doctrine, and these are usually thrown into the same scale to make more weight. Men have naturally a good liking to that doctrine that promiseth fair for ease, liberty, gain, and honour; and this hath made it a usual piece of Satan’s business in all ages to gild an error with outward advantages, and to corrupt the mind by secret promises of advancement.
On the other side, he labours as much to prejudice truth, by representing it as hazardous and troublesome to the professors of it. And this not only affrights some from an open confession of the truth they believe, but also, by the help of the affections, doth persuade some to believe that to be an error, which unavoidably brings persecution with it. By this engine are the minds of men turned about to think well or ill of a doctrine presented to them. This is so well known that I shall forbear a further prosecution of this head, and go to the next course that Satan takes to corrupt the judgment by the affections; which he doth,
[7.] By stirring up some particular passions, which in opinions do usually more influence the understanding. And here I shall only insist upon these two, pride and anger, with the peculiar means that Satan hath to engage them in his service.
That pride and anger are the two usual firebrands of contention and fountains of error, all ages have acknowledged and bewailed. These two companions in evil do so darken the mind, that the miserable captive in whom they domineer is carried blindfold, he knows not whither, nor how. Pride usually begins, and anger follows with all its forces, to justify what pride hath undertaken. Hence the apostle, in 1 Tim. vi. 4, rakes up all the concomitant filth of error, as envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, and perverse disputings of men, and lays them at the door of pride: ‘He is proud, knowing nothing.’
For the engaging of these two thieves, that rob the understanding of its light, Satan hath many artifices in readiness. Pride, which is forward enough of itself, is soon excited by laying before it an opportunity of a seeming rare discovery, or of advancing the glory of knowledge above the common pitch, of being seen and admired as more excellent than others, &c.: for upon such unworthy grounds have some dared to adventure upon strange notions; yet there is nothing that doth more firmly engage it than contention or dispute: for though the proper end of disputation be the sifting out of truth, yet such is man’s pride, and Satan’s advantage by it, that it seldom attains its true end in those that are engaged. Bystanders that keep their minds calm and unbiased, may receive more satisfaction than the contenders themselves; and there needs no other evidence of this than the common experience which men have of our frequent contentions; where we have confutations, answers and replies, and yet still all parties continue in their opinions without conviction. So that they that would unfeignedly seek truth, in my mind, take not the best course in their pursuit, that presently engage themselves in a public dispute; for the usual heats that are begot in a contention alienate their minds from a just impartiality, and the dust they raise blinds their eyes, that they discern not truly. Let us look into this artifice of engaging pride by disputation, and by it the judgment. First we find that when a humour of contending is raised, certain truths are neglected, as to their improvement and practice; for so much of the strength of the soul is laid out upon disputable questions, that little is left for more weighty matters. Secondly, In disputes men’s credit is so concerned, that it is a most difficult thing to preserve a faithful regard to verity, especially where they are managed with affronts and contumelies. They that by calm handling might be induced to acknowledge a mistake, will scarce come near that point of ingenuity, when they must be called fool, knave, or ass for their labour. Hence ordinarily, though they profess otherwise, men seek rather victory than truth. Thirdly, In disputes pride and passion are usually heightened, and the stronger the passions are the weaker is the judgment. Eager altercations bring a confusion, both upon the matter of which they dispute and upon the understanding that should judge. Fourthly, In the heat of disputation, when the mind is inflamed, men usually behave themselves like those in a fray, where they snatch and throw anything that comes to hand, and never mind where it hits; they will affirm or deny anything that may seem any way to bring them off. Fifthly, These assertions being once affirmed must be maintained, and so errors and contentions increase without end. Disputes fix a man in his persuasion, and do, as it were, tie him to the stake, so that right or wrong he will go through with it. Sixthly, Some dispute in jest against their present judgment, and yet at last dispute themselves into a belief of what they wantonly at first affirmed; as some tell lies so long, that at length they believe them to be true. Seventhly, A sadder mischief often follows a disputing humour, which is a hazard of the loss of all truth. Men dispute so long till they suspect all things, and after a long trade of scepticism turn atheists.314
After the same manner doth the devil engage anger in all disputes and controversies, for it keeps company with pride, wherever there is a provocation. And besides this, anger stirring up injuries and wrongs, hath often engaged men, as it were in revenge, to change their opinion, and to take up another way or doctrine. Nay, often that simple mixture of pride and anger which we call emulation, hath privately tainted the integrity of mind, and prepared it for the next fair opportunity of error. This is noted of Arius, by Theodoret, that when Alexander was chosen bishop of Alexandria, he envied him the preferency, and from thence sought occasions of contention, which after a little while the devil brought to his hand, as we have heard.315
So great is the power of these two passions over the understanding, that we have cause to wonder at their success. Seldom or never can it be shewn that any ringleader in error was not visibly tainted with pride, or not apparently soured with discontents and emulation.
[8.] To these ways of blinding the understanding by the affections I shall add but one more, which is this: Satan endeavours mainly to adorn an error with truth’s clothing. He takes its ornaments and jewels to dress up a false doctrine, that it may look more lovely and dutiful; I mean that he designs, where errors are capable of such an imitation, to put them into the way, method, garb, and manner which truth doth naturally use. If truth be adorned with zeal, order, strictness, or have advantageous ways of managing itself, error must straightway imitate it in all these things; and though he that looks near may easily discern that it is not the natural complexion of error, but an artificial varnish, and such as doth no more become it than a court dress doth become a coarse, clownish, country person—for you may at first look usually discover the wolf under sheep’s clothing, and under the garb of the apostles of Christ you may see the ministers of Satan—yet are the credulous usually affected with these appearances. If they find a professed strictness, a seeming severity, an imitation of the ways of truth, or of the fruits thereof, they commonly seek no further, but judge that to be truth which doth the things that truth doth; and if error can handsomely stand in competition with truth, upon a pretence of being as effectual in good works, and doing things of themselves lovely and of good report, it doth much gain upon the good liking of those whose consideration leads them not much further than fair appearances. I shall only exemplify this by the art and policy which Julian used to set up paganism, and to ruin Christianity; and those who have observed the ways which he took to gain his end, will readily acknowledge he was as well skilled in advancing error and suppressing truth as any whosoever, and knew exactly to suit his designs to men’s inclinations. He observing that Christian religion had some particular things in its practice and way which made its face to shine, as that it had persons solemnly set apart by ordination for teaching the mysteries of the gospel, and for managing the public worship of God; that these persons were to be grave in their carriage, and exemplary in a strict holy conversation; that the constitutions of religion appointed certain necessary and effectual ways of discipline, for punishment, and restoring of offenders, and bringing them to repentance; that it took care of the comfortable maintenance of those that had given up themselves to the ministry of the word and prayer; that it also enjoined a relief of the poor and strangers, &c.: taking notice, I say, of these excellencies in Christianity, and how lovely they were in the eyes of their enemies, he appointed the like constitutions for paganism, and ordained that the idol temples should be suited in conveniency and comeliness to Christian churches: that there should be seats and desks for the chief doctors and readers of Gentilism, who at set times were to exhort the people and pray with them; and that colleges and monasteries should be erected for them, and for the relief of the poor and strangers; he commanded discipline and penances for the chastisement of offenders; he required that their priests should seriously give up themselves to the worship of God, as also their families, that they should not frequent shows and taverns, nor practise any infamous trade and art. Thus Sozomen reports him,316 and gives us a copy of his letter to Arsacius, high priest of Galatia, to this purpose; and all this he did to bring Gentilism into credit with the vulgar, whom he had observed to be affected to Christianity for its order, strictness, and government.
Yet is not this the only instance that may be given in this kind: for observe but any error that by schism sets up for itself in a distinct party, and you shall see that though it departs from the truth of the church, and from its communion, yet still, as the Israelites did with the Egyptians, it carries away with it these jewels of the church, and keeps to some considerable part of the church’s way, though modified according to its own bent, that it might have a lustre with it, to make it taking with others.
These eight particulars are the most remarkable ways of Satan whereby the affections are gained to a good liking of error, and by them the judgment secondarily corrupted to call it truth.
Satan’s attempts against the peace of God’s children evidenced—(1.) By his malice; (2.) From the concernment of peace to God’s children; what these concerns are, explained. (3.) From the advantages which he hath against them by disquieting their minds—1. Confusion of mind; 2. Unfitness for duty, and how; 3. Rejection of duty; 4. A stumbling-block to others; 5. Preparation of the mind to entertain venomous impressions, and what they are; 6. Bodily weakness; 7. Our miseries Satan’s contentment.
We have viewed the ways of Satan by which he tempts to sin, by which he withdraws men from duty and service, by which he corrupts the mind through error. It only now remains that something be spoken of his attempts against the peace and comfort of the children of God.
That it is also one of Satan’s 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.
1. 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. It 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—heightened 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,’ [2 Peter ii. 4,]—will not, cannot leave this part of our happiness unattempted. He endeavours to supplant us of our birthright, of our blessing, of our salvation, and the comfortable hopes thereof. From his common employment 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 διάβολος, a calumniator. The Spirit intercedes for us; Satan is κατήγορος τῶν ἀδελφῶν, ‘the accuser of the brethren, who accuseth them before God night and day,’ Rev. xii. 10. The Spirit is our comforter; Satan is our disturber, a Beelzebub who is ever raking in our wounds, as flies 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. ii. 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 overreach and defraud the unskilful, πλεονεκτηθῶμεν; and the reason of this caution was the known and commonly experienced subtlety of Satan, ‘for we are not ignorant of his devices,’ implying that he will, and frequently doth lie at catch to take all advantages against us. Some indeed restrain these advantages to ver. 10,317 as if Paul 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. Others318 restrain this advantage which he waited for to ver. 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 man’s 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.
2. Secondly, Of such concern is inward spiritual peace to us, that it is but an easy 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. iii. 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,’ John xvi. 33; and that, being ‘justified by faith, they have peace with God,’ and sometimes ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory,’ 1 Peter i. 8; and this they may the more confidently expect, because ‘the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace,’ &c., Gal. v. 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 loins ‘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. xvii. 22; all which are intended by that expression, Neh. viii. 10, ‘The joy of the Lord is your strength;’ it 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. iv. 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 garrison, φρουρήσει—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. Rejoicings are not only recommended as seemly for the upright, but enjoined as service, and that in the constant practice: ‘Rejoice evermore;’ ‘In everything give thanks,’ 1 Thes. v. 16, 18; ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, rejoice,’ Phil. iv. 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 rejoice before the Lord their God,’ Lev. xxiii. 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 cheerfulness of heart, seeing such have more cause to rejoice than all the world besides. They are then much mistaken that think mournful eyes and sad hearts be the greatest ornaments of religion, or that none are serious in the profession of it that have a cheerful countenance and a rejoicing frame of spirit. It is true, there is a joy that is devilish, and a mirth which is madness, to which Christ hath denounced a woe: ‘Woe be to them that laugh now, for they shall mourn and weep,’ [Luke vi. 25]; but this is a joy of another nature, a carnal delight in vanity and sin, by which men fatten their hearts to ruin; 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 badge of our heavenly Father’s kindness. As Joseph, the son of his father’s affections, had a special testimony thereof in his parti-coloured coat, so have God’s favourites a peculiar token of his good-will to them when he gives them ‘the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness,’ [Isa. lxi. 7.] If spiritual comfort be so advantageous 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.
3. 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.) It 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. lvii. 20; a thousand fearful surmises, evil cogitations, resolves, and counsels immediately 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?’ Luke xxiv. 38. And David considered it as matter of great anxiety, which called for speedy help: Ps. xciv. 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 boiling pot. (2.) Such thoughts are vexatious and distracting, the very thoughts themselves, being the poisonous steams of their running sores, are sadly afflictive, and not unfitly called cogitationes onerosæ, burdensome thoughts. But as they wrap up a man in clouds and darkness, as they puzzle him in his resolves, nonplus 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, it is easy to imagine. And David seems to be very sensible of it when he put up that request, Ps. lxxxvi. 11, ‘Unite 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-tuned 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, Ps. xlv. 1, 2, and cviii. 1, 2. 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,
First, 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 burden; they confine the thoughts to the pain and smart, and make a man forget all other things, as David in his trouble ‘forgot to eat his bread,’ [Ps. cii. 4]; 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 employed 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 it is so tired out with its burden, so disheartened by its own fears, so discouraged with opposition and disappointment, that it hath no list to undertake anything. By this means the devil brings the soul into a spiritual catoche,319 so congealing the spirits, that it is made stiff and deprived of motion.
Second, 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 anything 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: Ps. cxix. 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 itself to anything, it acts troublesomely, 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,’ Ps. lxxvii. 4. Sometimes the mind is kept so employed and fixed on trouble, that it cannot attend in hearing or praying, but presently the thoughts are called off, and become wandering.
Third, Troubles hinder our satisfaction in duty, and by that means unfit us to present duties, and indispose us to future services 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. ii. 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.’ Hosea vi. 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 judge of it according to our fears, and make it frightful to ourselves, 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 lets 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,’ [1 Pet. ii. 3,] 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 oh 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 hearkened not for hard bondage,’ [Exod. vi. 9.] If a message of peace present itself in a promise, or some consideration of God’s merciful disposition, yet usually this is not credited. Job confesseth so much of himself: Job xix. 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: Ps. lxxvii. 2, 3, ‘My soul refuseth to be comforted; I remembered 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 tired us out by wearisome 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 javelins 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, it is foolishness to attempt that which is above our strength, better sit still than 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 tried, and waited a while, stretching themselves upon duty, as Elisha’s servant laid the staff upon the face of the Shunammite’s son, and yet there is no voice nor hearing, no answer from God, no peace, then are they presently dissatisfied, 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 it 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 pitiful 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,’ [Ps. lxxiii. 13.]
Fourth, Satan makes use of the troubles of God’s children as a stumbling-block to others. It 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 heavenward; he sets before them the sighs, groans, complaints, and restless outcries of the wounded in spirit, to scare them off from all seriousness in religion, and whispers this to them, ‘Will you choose 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 melancholy 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 choose a life that is worse than death, and a condition which will make you a terror to yourselves and a burden to others? can you be in love with a heart loaden with grief, and perpetual fears almost to distraction, while you see others in the meantime 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 it is a very dangerous thing to be religious overmuch, and the highway to despair; 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 lie over-near their heart, lest it disquiet them; nor overmuch to concern themselves with study, reading, prayer, or hearing of threatening, 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 persuaded to be Christians; and the more to confirm them in it, he sticks not sometime to asperse the poor troubled soul with dissimulation—where that accusation is proper, for the devil cares not how inconsistent he be with himself, so that he may but gain his end—affirming all his seriousness to be nothing but whining hypocrisy. So that whether they judge these troubles to be real or feigned, his conclusion is the same, and he persuades men thereby to hold off from all religious strictness, holy diligence, and careful watchfulness.
Fifth, A further use which the devil makes of these troubles of spirit is, to prepare the hearts of men thereby to give entertainment to his venomous impressions. Distress of heart usually opens the door to Satan, and lays a man naked, without armour or defence, as a fair mark for all his poisoned arrows; and it is a hundred to one but some of them do hit. I shall choose out some of the most remarkable, and they are these:—
[1.] After long acquaintance with grief he labours to fix them in it. In some cases custom doth alleviate higher griefs, and men take an odd kind of delight in them; Est quædam etiam dolendi voluptas. It is some pleasure to complain, and men settle themselves in such a course, their finger is ever upon their sore, and they go about telling their sorrows to all they converse with—though to some this is a necessity, for real sorrows, if they be not too great for vent, will constrain them to speak—yet in some that have been formerly acquainted with grief, it degenerates at last into a formality of complaining; and because they formerly had cause so to do, they think they must always do so. But besides this, Satan doth endeavour to chain men to their mourning upon two higher accounts320: 1. By a delusive contentment in sorrow, as if our tears paid some part of our debt to God, and made amends for the injuries done to him. 2. By an obstinate sullenness and desperate resolvedness they harden themselves in sorrow, and say as Job, chap. vii. 11, ‘I will not refrain my mouth, I will speak in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?’
[2.] Another impression that men’s hearts are apt to take, is, unthankfulness for the favours formerly bestowed upon them. Their present troubles blot out the memory of old kindnesses. They conclude they have nothing at all, because they have not peace. Though God heretofore hath sent down from on high, and taken them out of the great waters, or out of the mire and clay where they were ready to sink; though he hath sent them many tokens of love, conferred on them many blessings; yet all these are no more to them, so long as their sorrows continue, than Haman’s wealth and honour was to him, so long as Mordecai the Jew sat at the king’s gate. Thus the devil oft prevails with God’s children, to deal with God as some unthankful persons deal with their benefactors; who, if they be not humoured in every request, deny the reality of their love, and despise with great ingratitude all that was done for them before.
[3.] By inward griefs, the heart of the afflicted are prepared to entertain the worst interpretation that the devil can put upon the providences of God. The various instances of Scripture, and the gracious promises made to those that ‘walk in darkness and see no light,’ do abundantly forewarn men from making bad conclusions of God’s dealings, and do tell us that God in design, for our trial and for our profit, doth often hide his face ‘for a moment,’ when yet his purpose is to ‘bind us up with everlasting compassions.’ Now the devil labours to improve the sorrows of the mind to give a quite contrary construction. If they are afflicted, instead of saying, ‘Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy will come in the morning,’ [Ps. xxx. 5,] or that ‘for a little while God hath hidden himself,’ he puts them to say, ‘this darkness shall never pass away.’ If the grief be little, he drives them on to a fearful expectation of worse; as he did with Hezekiah, Isa. xxxviii. 13, ‘I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones; from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.’ If God purpose to teach us by inward sorrows our pride of heart, carelessness, neglect of dependence upon him, the bitterness of sin, or the like, the devil will make us believe, and we are too ready to subscribe to him, that God proclaims open war against us, and resolves never to own us more. So did Job, chap. xix. 6, ‘Know now that God hath overthrown me, and compassed me with his net;’ how often complained he, ‘thou hast made me as thy mark, thou hast broken me asunder, thou hast taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces’! So also Heman, Ps. lxxxviii. 14, ‘Why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?’
[4.] Upon this occasion the devil is ready to envenom the soul with sinful wishes and execrations against itself. Eminent saints have been tempted in their trouble to say too much this way. Job solemnly cursed his day: Job iii. 3, ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived,’ &c. So also Jeremiah, chap. xx. 14, ‘Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child is born unto thee; and let that man be as the cities which God overthrew, and repented not.’ Strange rashness! what had the day deserved? or wherein was the messenger to be blamed? Violent passions hurried him beyond all bounds of reason and moderation. When troubles within are violent, a small push sets men forward; and when once they begin, they are carried headlong beyond what they first intended.