Chapter XVII
Satan’s deceits against religious services and duties.—The grounds of his displeasure against religious duties.—His first design against duties is to prevent them.—His several subtleties for that end, by external hindrances, by indispositions bodily and spiritual, by discouragements; the ways thereof, by dislike; the grounds thereof, by sophistical arguings.—His various pleas therein.
Our next work is to take notice of the spite and methods of the serpent against the ways of worship and service. That these are things against which his heart carries a high fury, and for the overthrow of them employs no small part of his power and subtlety, needs no proof, seeing the experience of all the children of God is an irresistible evidence in this matter. I shall therefore first only set forth the grounds of his displeasure and earnest undertakings against them, before I come to his particular ways of deceit, which are these:—
1. First, By this means, if he prevail, he deprives us of our weapons. This is a stratagem of war which we find the Philistines practised against Israel: they took away all their smiths, lest the Hebrews should make them swords or spears; hence was it that in the battle there was ‘neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan,’ 1 Sam. xiii. 19, 22. The word of God is expressly called ‘the sword of the Spirit,’ [Eph. vi. 17.] 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 armoury, wherein hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men,’ Cant. iv. 4; and the apostle expressly calls them ‘weapons of our warfare,’ 2 Cor. x. 4, of purpose given us for ‘the pulling down of strongholds,’ 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 Samson’s were, our strength is departed, and we become weak as other men, [Judges xvi. 17,]—we are open to every incursion and inroad that he pleaseth to make against us.
2. Secondly, If he hinders these, he intercepts our food and cuts off our provisions. The word is called ‘milk, sincere milk of the word.’ It is that by which we are born, nourished, and increase; it is our cordial and comfort. Christ indeed is ‘the bread of life,’ and the fountain of all our consolations, but the word and prayer are the conduit pipes that convey all to us. If these be cut, we ‘fade as a leaf,’ we languish, we consume and waste, we become as a ‘skin-bottle in the smoke,’ ‘our moisture as the drought in summer,’ our ‘soul fainteth,’ ‘our heart faileth, and we become as those that go down to the pit’; so that if the devil gain his design in this, he hath all. Give him this, and give him the kingdom also. This is the most compendious way of doing his work, and that which saves him a labour in his temptations. The strongest holds, that cannot otherwise be taken, are easily subdued by famine; and, like fig-trees with their ripe figs when they are shaken, ‘even fall into the mouth of the eater,’ Nahum iii. 12. If our spiritual food fail us, of our own accord we yield up ourselves to any lust that requires our compliance.
3. Thirdly, Besides these, there is no design whereby Satan can shew more malice and spite against God. He doth all he can to maintain a competition with the Almighty. His titles of ‘the god of the world,’ ‘the prince of the power of the air,’ shew what in the pride of his heart he aspires to, as well as what by commission God is pleased to grant him. These duties of worship and service are the homage of God’s children, by which they testify the acknowledgments of his deity. By wresting these out of our hands, Satan robs God of that honour, and makes the allegiance of his servants to cease. If he could do more against God, doubtless he would; but seeing he hath not ‘an arm like God,’ and so cannot pull him out of heaven, by this means he sets up himself as the god of the world, and enlargeth his territories, and staves off the subjects of the God of heaven from giving him ‘the honour due to his name;’ and that the devil in these endeavours is carried on by a spite against God, as well as by an earnest desire of the ruin of souls, may be abundantly evidenced by his way of management of that opposition that he gives to the duties of service and worship. I shall only, to make out this, instance in three things:—(1.) That where the devil prevails to set up himself as an object of worship, there he doth it in a bold, insolent, presumptuous imitation of God’s appointments in the ways of his service. He enjoins covenants, seals, sacrifices, prayers, and services to his miserable slaves, as may appear by undoubted histories, of which more in due place. (2.) He never acknowledgeth the truth of God’s ways, but with an evil mind and upon design to bring them under contempt. His confessions have so much of deceit in them that Christ would not accept them; and therefore we read that when the devil was sometime forward to give his testimony to Christ, as Mark i. 25, ‘I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God,’ Jesus rebuked him, and commanded him to hold his peace. He clearly saw that he confessed him not to honour him, but by such a particular acknowledgment to stir up the rage and fury of the people against him. To this end Satan, in Acts xvi. 17, many days together publicly owns Paul and Silas, ‘These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.’ Though he spake truth, yet had he a malicious aim in it, which he accordingly brought about by this means; and that was to raise up persecution against them, and to give ground to that accusation which they afterwards met withal; ver. 21, ‘That they taught customs which were not lawful to be received.’ But (3.) his particular spite against God in seeking to undermine his service is further manifested in this, that the devil is not content to root out the service due to God, but when he hath done that, he delights to abuse those places where the name of God was most celebrated, with greatest profanations. I shall not in this insist upon the conjecture of Tilenus,[198] that Sylva Dodonœa, a place highly abused by the devil, and respected for an oracle, was the seat or a religious place of Dodanim, mentioned in Gen. x. 4; nor upon that supposal, mentioned also by the same author, that the oracle of Jupiter Hammon was the place where Cham [Ham] practised that religious worship which he learned in his father’s house. We have at hand more certain evidences of the devil’s spite. Such was his abuse of the tabernacle by the profane sons of Eli, who profaned that place with their uncleanness and filthy adulteries. Such was his carriage to the ark while it was captivated by the Philistines. Of like nature were his attempts against the temple itself. Solomon in his latter days was tempted to give an affront to it: he built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, 1 Kings xi. 7, in the very sight and face of the temple; but afterward he prepared to defile the temple itself. Gilgal and Beth-aven are places of such high profanation, that the prophet Hosea, chap. ix. 15, tells them ‘all their wickedness was in Gilgal,’ none of their abominations were like to those; and in chap. iv. 15, they are dehorted from going to Gilgal or Beth-aven; and yet both these places had been famous for religion before.[199] Gilgal was the place of the general circumcision of the Israelites that were born in the wilderness; there was their first solemn passover kept after their entering into the land. Bethel was a place where God as it were kept house, ‘the house of God.’ Here Jacob had his vision. But the more famous they had been for duties of worship, the devil sought to put higher abuses upon them, so that Gilgal became ‘an hatred,’ and Bethel became a Beth-aven, ‘an house of vanity.’
4. Fourthly, Satan is the more animated to undertake a design against the ways of religious service, because he seldom or never misseth at least something of success. This attempt is like Saul and Jonathan’s bow, that ‘returned not empty,’ [2 Sam. i. 22.] In other temptations sometimes Satan comes off baffled altogether, but in this work, as it was said of some Israelites, ‘he can throw a stone at an hair’s breadth, and not miss,’ Judges xx. 16. He is sure in one thing or other to have the better of us. His advantage in this case is from our unsuitableness to our service. What we do in the duties of worship, requires a choice frame of spirit. Our hearts should be awed with the most serious apprehensions of divine majesty, filled with reverence, animated with love and delight, quickened by faith, clothed with humility and self-abhorrency, and in all the procedure of duties there must be a steady and firm prosecution under the strictest watchfulness. Of this nature is our work, which at the first view would put a man to a stand, and out of amazement force him to say, ‘Who is sufficient for these things? who can stand before such an holy Lord God?’ But when we come to an impartial consideration of our manifold weaknesses and insufficiencies in reference to these services, what shall we say? we find such a narrowness of spirit, such ignorances, sottishness, carelessness of mind, thoughts so confused, tumultuous, fickle, slippery, and unconstant, and our hearts generally so deceitful and desperately wicked, that it is not possible that Satan should altogether labour in vain or catch nothing. This being then a sure gain, we may expect it to be under a most constant practice.
5. Fifthly, If he so prevails against us that the services of worship become grossly abused or neglected, then doth he put us under the greatest hazards and disadvantages. Nothing so poisonous as duties of worship corrupted; for this is to abuse God to his face. By this, not only are his commands and injunctions slighted, as in other sins, but we carry it so as if we thought him no better than the idols of the heathens, that have ‘eyes and see not, that have ears and hear not.’ To come without a heart, or with our idols in our heart, is it anything of less scorn than to say, ‘Tush, doth the Most High see?’ Besides, he hath given such severe cautions and commands in these matters as will easily signify the aggravation of the offence. You see how sharply God speaks of those that came to inquire of the Lord with ‘the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face,’ Ezek. xiv. 4, 7, ‘I will answer them according to the multitude of their idols; I will answer them by myself.’ Saul’s miscarriage in offering sacrifice, 1 Sam. xiii. 13, was that great offence for which God determined to take the kingdom from him. God’s severity against Nadab and Abihu, his stroke upon Uzziah, do all shew the hazard of such profanations. But, above all, that danger which both Old and New Testament speak of—the hardening of the heart, blinding the eyes, dulling the ears, that men should not hear nor see nor be converted and saved, but that the word should, instead of those cordial refreshing smells which beget and promote spiritual life in the obedient, breathe forth such envenomed, poisonous exhalations when it is thus abused and profaned, that it becomes ‘the savour of death unto death’—is most dreadful. No wonder, then, if Satan be very busy against these holy things, when, if he catch us at an advantage of this nature, it proves so deadly and dangerous to us; for what can more please him that makes it his delight and employment to destroy?
All these reasons evince that Satan hath an aching tooth against religious services, and that to weaken, prevent, or overthrow them is his great endeavour. Here then especially may we expect an assault, according to the advice of Sirach: Ecclus. ii. 1, 2, ‘My son, when thou enterest God’s service, stand fast in righteousness and fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation.’
What are the subtleties of Satan against the holy things of God, I am next to discover. Duties and services are opposed two ways: (1.) By prevention, when they are hindered. (2.) By corruption, when they are spoiled. He hath his arts and cunning, which he exerciseth in both these regards:—
1. First, then, Of Satan’s policy for the preventing of religious services. He endeavours by various means to hinder them. As,
(1.) First, By external hindrances. In this he hath a very great foresight, and accordingly he foresees occasions and opportunities at a distance, and by a long reach of contrivance he studies to lay blocks and hindrances in the way. Much he doth in the dark for this end that we know not. As God hath ‘secrets of wisdom that are double to that which is known,’ Job xi. 6, so also hath Satan many ways and actings that are not discerned by us. His contrivances of businesses and avocations long aforehand are not so observed by us as they might be. Where he misseth of his end it comes not to light, and often where he is successful in his preventions we are ready to ascribe it to contingencies and the accidental hits of affairs, when indeed the hand and policy of Satan is in it. Paul, that was highly studied and skilful in Satan’s devices, observing how his purposes of coming to the Thessalonians were often broken and obstructed, he knew where the blame lay, and therefore instead of laying the fault upon sickness, or imprisonments, or the oppositions of false brethren—which often made him trouble beyond expectation—he directly chargeth all upon Satan: 1 Thes. ii. 18, ‘We would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us.’ At the same rate, understanding the purposes of faithful men for the promoting the good of men’s souls, he often useth means to stop or hinder them. Some have observed, having a watchful and jealous eye over Satan, that their resolves and endeavours of this nature have usually been put to struggle sore in their birth when their purposes for worldly affairs and matters go smoothly on without considerable opposition.
(2.) Secondly, He makes use of indispositions to hinder service; and here he works sometimes upon the body, sometimes upon the soul, for both may be indisposed.
[1.] First, Sometimes he takes the advantage of bodily indispositions. He doth all he can to create and frame these upon us, and then pleads them as a discharge to duty. If he can put the body into a fit of drowsiness or distemper, he will do it: and surely he can do more this way than every one will believe—he may agitate and stir the humours. Hence some have observed more frequent and stronger fits of sleepiness and illness to come upon them on the days and times that require their attendance upon God, than on other days; when they shall be lively, active, and free of dulness upon common occasions—at sports, songs, interludes—when they shall not have the like command of themselves in the exercises of worship. Surely it was more than an ordinary drowsiness that befell the apostles, Mat. xxvi. 41. He had told them the seriousness of the occasion, that he was ‘betrayed,’ that his ‘soul was exceeding sorrowful even to the death:’ these were considerations that might have kept their eyes from slumber. When they sleep, he awakens them with a piercing rebuke, ‘Could ye not watch with me one hour?’ and adds to this an admonition of their own danger, and the temptation that was upon them, and yet presently they are asleep again, and after that again. Strange drowsiness! But he gives an excuse for them, which also tells us the cause of it: the ‘spirit is willing’—their hearts were not altogether unconcerned—‘but the flesh,’ that is, the body, that was ‘weak’—that is, subject to be abused by Satan, who brought them into a more than ordinary indisposition, as is noted ver. 43, ‘their eyes were heavy.’
[2.] Secondly, The soul hath also its indispositions, which he readily improves against duty to hinder it. As,
First, It is capable of a spiritual sluggishness and dulness, wherein the spiritual senses are so bound up, that it considers not, minds not, hath no list nor inclination to acts of service. What a stupefaction are our spirits capable of! as David in his adultery seems not to mind nor care what he had done. In like manner are some in a lethargy; as the prophet speaks, they ‘care not to seek after God.’ Bernard hath a description of it: Contrahitur animus, subtrahitur gratia, defervescit novitius fervor, ingravescit torpor fastidiosus, The spirit is contracted, grace withdrawn, fervour abates, sluggishness draws on, and then duties are neglected.
Secondly, The spirit is indisposed by a throng of worldly affairs, and these oft jostle out duty. Christ tells us they have the same influence upon men that gluttony and drunkenness have, and these unfit men for action. ‘Take heed,’ saith Luke xxi. 34, ‘to yourselves, lest at any time your heart be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life.’ These then may at so high a rate overcharge the souls of men so as to make them frame excuses: ‘I have bought a farm or oxen,’ and therefore ‘I cannot attend;’ and by this means may they grow so neglective that the ‘day of the Lord may come upon them at unawares.’
Thirdly, Sometimes the soul is discomposed through passion, and then it is indisposed, which opportunity the devil espying, he closeth in with it. Sometime he ‘blows the fire,’ that the heat of anger may put them upon a carelessness. Sometimes he pleads their present frame as an unfitness for service, and so upon a pretence of reverence to the service, and ‘leaving the gift at the altar’ till they be in a better humour, many times the gift is not offered at all, 1 Pet. iii. 7. The apostle directs husbands to manage their authority over their wives with prudence, for the avoiding of brawls and contentions: ‘Ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour to the wife as the weaker vessel;’ the reason of which advice he gives in these words, ‘that your prayers be not hindered.’ Prayers are hindered partly in their success when they prevail not, partly they are hindered when the duty of prayer is put by and suspended; and this doubtless the apostle aims at, to teach us that contentious quarrellings in a family hinder the exercise of the duty of prayer. Elisha, 2 Kings iii., discomposed himself in his earnest reproof of Jehoram, for with great vehemency he had spoken to him: ver. 13, 14, ‘What have I to do with thee? get thee to the prophets of thy father. Were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat, I would not look toward thee, nor see thee.’ But when he set himself to receive the visions of God, he calls for a minstrel, ver. 15, the reason whereof, as P[eter] Martyr and others suppose,[200] was this, that however what he spake 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. Music 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. Knowledge is the eye and guide of the soul. If there be darkness there, all acts which depend upon better instruction must cease. The disciples’ ignorance of Scriptures brought in their unbelief. Christ notes that as the fountainhead of all their backwardness: Luke xxiv. 25, ‘O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.’ In like manner, if men are not clear or knowing in the ways and necessities of duty and service, the devil can easily prevail with them to forbear and neglect. Prejudice riseth up to justify the disregard of duty, and offers reasons which it thinks cannot be answered.
(3.) Thirdly, Satan endeavours to prevent duty by discouragements. If he can make the ‘knees feeble,’ and the ‘hands hang down,’ he will quickly cause activity and motion to cease. The ways by which he endeavours to discourage men from the duties of service are these:—
[1.] First, He sets before them the toil and burden of duty. If a man sets his face toward heaven, thus he endeavours to scare him off: Is not, saith he, the way of religion a dull, melancholy way? Is it not a toil—a tedious task? Are not these unreasonable injunctions: ‘Pray continually,’ ‘Pray without ceasing,’ ‘Preach in season and out of season’? This suggestion, though it be expressly contrary to command, yet being so suitable to the idle and sluggish tempers of men, they are the more apt to take notice of it, and accordingly they seek ways and shifts of accommodating the command to their inclinations. In Amos viii. 5, the toil of sabbaths and festival services, as they thought it, makes them weary of the duty, ‘When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?’ These men thought their services tedious and entrenching upon their callings and occupations: Mal. i. 13, ‘They said, Behold, what a weariness is it!’ looking upon it as an insufferable burden, nay they proceeded so far as to snuff at it. Now when the devil had so far prevailed with them, it was easy to put them upon neglect; which, as the place cited speaks, presently followed upon it, they ‘brought the torn, and the lame, and the sick for a sacrifice.’ Satan first presented these services as a wearisome burden, 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,’ ver. 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 ways of the Lord, ‘his yoke is indeed easy, his burden 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.
[2.] Secondly, He endeavours to discourage them, from the want of success in the duties of worship. When they have waited long and sought the Lord, then he puts them upon resolves of declining any further prosecution, as he did with Joram at the siege of Samaria; ‘Why wait I upon the Lord any longer?’ 2 Kings vi. 33, said he, after he had expected deliverance a long time without any appearance of help. When Saul saw that God ‘answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets,’ 1 Sam. xxviii. 6, 7, the devil easily persuaded him to leave off the ordinary ways of attendance upon God, and to consult with the witch of Endor. The profane persons mentioned in Mal. iii. 14, that had cast off all regard to his laws, all respect to his ordinances, were brought to this pitch of iniquity by the suggestions of want of success; they said, ‘It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept his ordinances, and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?’ It seems they were like the people spoken of in Isa. lviii. 2, 3: they had fasted and prayed, and God delayed to answer them, which they looked upon as a disobligement from duty, and that which they could peremptorily insist upon as a reason which might justify their neglect. ‘Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?’ Neither doth this discouragement fall heavy only upon those whose hearts are departed already from God, who might be supposed to be forward to embrace any excuse from his service; but we shall find it bears hard upon the children of God. David was ready to give over all, as a man forsaken of God: Ps. xxii. 1, 2, ‘Why hast thou forsaken me? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.’ We may clearly gather from his expressions that this temptation had sorely bruised him, and that upon God’s delay of answer, he was ready to charge an unrighteousness upon God’s carriage toward him; for in that he adds that he kept his ground, and did not consent to it—as the words following, ‘But thou continuest holy,’ do imply—it shewed what the devil was objecting to him. And elsewhere, in Ps. lxix. 3, when he had cried and was not answered, he began to be ‘weary, and his eyes failed; nay, his flesh and heart failed;’ his spirit sunk, as a man almost vanquished and overcome with the temptation.
[3.] Thirdly, This our adversary raiseth up discouragements to us from the unsuitableness of our hearts to our services. Herein he endeavours to deaden our hearts, to clog our spirits, to hinder and molest us, and then he improves these indispositions and discomposures against the duty, in which he hath a double advantage; for (1.) He deprives us of that delight in duty which should whet on our desires to undertake it, so that we come to the Lord’s table as old Barzillai, without a taste or relish of what we eat or drink. When we come to hear, ‘the ear that trieth words,’ as the palate tasteth meat, finds no savour in what is spoken; and this Satan can easily do by the inward deadness or disquiet of the heart, even as the anguish of diseases takes away all pleasures which the choicest dainties afford; as Job observes, ‘When a man is chastened with pain upon his bed, his life abhors bread, and his soul dainty meat,’ chap. xxxiii. 20. And when a man is brought to loathe his duties, as having nothing of that sweetness and satisfaction in them which is everywhere spoken of, a small temptation may put him upon neglect of them. (2.) He hath plausible and colourable arguments by which he formeth an opinion in the minds of men, that in cases of indisposition they may do better to forbear than to proceed. He tells them they ought not to pray or present any service while they are so indisposed, that no prayer is acceptable where the Spirit doth not enliven the heart and raise the affections; that they do but take his name in vain, and increase their sin, and that they should wait till the Spirit fill their sails: and to say the truth, it is a great difficulty for a child of God to hold his feet in such slippery places. How many have I known complaining of this, and persuading themselves verily that they might do far better to leave off all service than to perform them thus! And scarcely have I restrained them from a compliance with Satan, by telling them that indispositions are no bar to duty, but that duty is the way to get our indispositions cured; that duty is absolutely required, and dispositions to be endeavoured; and that it is a less offence to keep to duty under indispositions, than wholly upon that pretence to neglect it; and indeed, where these indispositions are bemoaned and striven with, the services are often more acceptable to God than pleasing to ourselves. The principle is truly spiritual and excellent, a foundation of sapphires and precious stones, upon which, if we patiently wait, he will build a palace of silver; for that service is more spiritual that is bottomed and carried on by a conscientious regard to a command, when there are no moral motives from sense and comfort concurring, than that which hath more of delight to encourage it, while the power of the command is less swaying and influential.
[4.] Fourthly, Men are oft discouraged from a sense of unworthiness of the privilege of duty, a kind of excess of humility, which principally relates to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and prayer. The accuser of the brethren tells them that they have nothing to do to take the name of God in their mouths; that it is an insufferable presumption. 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 than openly beg it. The publican [Luke xviii. 10, seq.] 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 kindness 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 ourselves 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, it 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 threatening begets a fear, and they are driven off long, and debar themselves unnecessarily from their mercies.
(4.) Fourthly, Satan endeavours to hinder duty by bringing them into a dislike and loathing of duty. This is a course most effectual. Dislike easily bringeth forth aversation, and withal doth strongly fix the mind in purposes of neglect and refusal. The devil bringeth this about many ways; as,
[1.] First, By reproaches and ignominious terms. It was an old trick of the wicked one to raise up nicknames and scoffs against the ways of God’s service, thereby to beget an odium in the hearts of men against them. ‘The seat of the scornful’ is a chair that Satan had reared up from the beginning. By this art—when ‘God was known in Jewry, and his name was great in Israel’—were the heathens kept off from laying hold on the covenant of God. He rendered them and the ordinances of worship ridiculous to the nations. The opprobrium of circumcision, and their unreasonable faith, as the heathens thought it, upon things not seen, was a proverb in every man’s mouth, Credat Judœus Apella—non ego.[201] The Jews were slandered with the yearly sacrifice of a Grecian. And Apion affirms that Antiochus found such a one in a bed in the temple; and that they worshipped an ass’s head in the temple. Apion slandered the Jews with ulcers in their privy parts every seventh day; hence he derives sabbath, of sabatosis, which with the Egyptians signifies an ulcer.[202]
Lysimachus slandered the Jews in Egypt as leprous church-robbers; and that their city was hence called Hierosola.[203] When the Gentiles were called into the fellowship of the gospel, it was aspersed with the like scoffs and flouts. It was frequently called a sect, a babbling and strange and uncouth doctrine, Acts xxviii. 22; besides a great many lies and forgeries that were invented to make it seem odious; and by this means it was ‘everywhere spoken against,’ Acts xvii. 18, 20. Machiavel, that propounded the policy of full and violent calumniations to render an adversary odious, knowing that how unjust soever they were, yet some impression of jealousy and suspicion would remain, had learned it of this old accuser, who had often and long experienced it to be a prevalent course, to bring the services of God under dislike, Calumniare fortiter; aliquid adhœrebit. David, speaking of what befell himself in this kind, Ps. lxix. 9-12, that his zeal lay under reproach; his weeping and fasting became a proverb; and that in all these he was ‘the song of the drunkard,’ he expresseth such apprehensions of the power of this temptation upon the weak, that he doth earnestly beg that Satan might not make it a snare to them: ver. 6, ‘Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake: let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake.’ And further declares it, as a wonderful preservation and escape of this danger, that notwithstanding these reproaches, he had not declined his duty: ver. 13, ‘But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, Lord.’ Paul seems to speak his sense of this piece of policy; his imprisonment administered matter of reproach to his profession. Though his cause were good, yet he suffered trouble as ‘an evil-doer,’ 2 Tim. ii. 9. This he knew the devil would improve to a shame and disgrace unto the service of God, and therefore he chargeth Timothy to be aware of that temptation: 2 Tim. i. 8, ‘Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner.’ And ver. 16, he takes notice of Onesiphorus, that had escaped that snare, and was not ‘ashamed of his chain.’ And we have the greater reason to fear the danger of this art, when we find that the tempter made use of it to turn away the affections of the Capernaumites from Christ himself: Mat. xiii. 57, when he had preached in their synagogues to the applause and astonishment of all his hearers, the devil, fearing the prevalency of his doctrine, finds out this shift to bring them to a dislike of him and his preaching: ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? And they were offended in him.’
[2.] Secondly, Duties are brought under dislike by the hazards that attend them. The devil leaves it not untold what men shall meet with from the world if they ‘run not with them into excess of vanity’ and neglect. If bonds, imprisonments, banishments, hatreds, oppositions, spoiling of goods, sufferings of all kinds will divert them, he is sure to set all these affrightments before them; which though they do not move some from their steadfastness—such as Daniel, whose constancy in duty was not pierced by the fear of lions; and the three children, who would not decline the ways of the Lord for the terror of a fiery furnace—yet these considerations prevail with most; as Christ notes, in those that received seed in stony places, whose joy in the word was soon blasted, and they offended at the ways of duty, ‘when tribulation and persecution because of the word arose,’ Mat. xiii. 21. Christ pronouncing him blessed that should ‘not be offended in him,’ because of the dangers of his service, shews that the escape of such a temptation is not a common mercy, Mat. xi. 6. And if we shall observe Paul’s practice upon his first undertaking of the ministry, when ‘it pleased God to call him to preach his Son Christ among the heathen,’ Gal. i. 16, we shall see, (1.) That he was aware of such objections as these; (2.) That flesh and blood are apt to comply with them, and to take notice of them; (3.) And that the best way to avoid them is to stop the ears against them, and not to hearken to them or consult with them; (4.) And that he that must do it to purpose, must, without delay, immediately resolve against such hindrances; it being most difficult for men that will be inclining to such motions, and hearkening to what the devil offers, under pretence of self-preservation, to disengage themselves after they have suffered their souls to take the impression.
[3.] Thirdly, The meanness of religious appointments, as to the outward view, is also made use of to beget a loathing of them. In this the devil hath this advantage, that however they are all ‘glorious within,’ and ‘as the curtains of Solomon,’ yet are they, as to their outward appearance, like ‘the tents of Kedar,’ without any of that pomp and splendour which the sons of men affect and admire. Christ himself, when he had veiled his glory by our flesh, was of no exterior ‘form or beauty.’ The ministration of his word, which is ‘the sceptre of his kingdom,’ seems contemptible, and a very ‘foolishness to men;’ insomuch that Paul was forced to make an apology for it, in that it wanted those outward braveries of ‘excellency of speech and wisdom,’ by shewing it was ‘glorious in its power,’ and was indeed a ‘hidden wisdom’—though not like that ‘wisdom which the princes of wisdom’ and philosophy affected—‘among such as were perfect,’ 1 Cor. ii. 1,4, 6. The sacraments, both of the Old and New Testament, seemed very low and contemptible things to a common eye; neither need we any other evidence to shew that men are apt to disrelish them, and to entertain strange thoughts of them upon this very account, than this, that some raise up batteries against these ordinances upon this ground, that because they seem low and mean to them, therefore they think it improbable that God should have indeed appointed them to be used in the literal sense, or that at best they are to be used as the first rudiments of Christianity, and not enjoined upon the more grown Christians. Neither may I altogether pass over that remarkable humour that is in some, to give additional ornaments of outward garb and form for the greater honour and lustre of these injunctions of Christ; so that while they endeavour to shew their greatest respects to them, they betray their inward thoughts to have carried some suspicion of their reality because of their plainness; and by this means, whilst they endeavour to put an honour upon Christ’s institutions, they really despise them, and shew their respects to their own inventions. But that we may be further satisfied that Satan works by this engine, let us consider that of 1 Cor. i. 23. The Jews were for signs from heaven to give a credit and testimony to that doctrine which they would receive. The Greeks, who were then the only people for learning, were for philosophical speculations and disputes. Now, saith the apostle, the doctrine of the gospel, which is the preaching of Christ crucified, because it came not within the compass of what both these expected, therefore the devil so wrought upon this advantage, that both contemned it; ‘It was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness.’ Of this also he speaks more fully, 2 Cor. xi. 3, where he shews that the minds of the Corinthians were ready to be corrupted with error against the plain import of the gospel; and that which they took offence at was its simplicity. They looked upon it as contemptible, because not containing such gorgeous things as might suit a soaring and wanton fancy. Now he resolves all this into a cheat of Satan, taking the advantage of this, as he did upon Eve from the seeming inconsiderableness of the prohibition of eating a little fruit, to persuade them that so mean a thing as the gospel could not be of God. ‘I fear,’ saith he, ‘lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.’
[4.] Fourthly, The sins of professors, through the craft of Satan, beget a loathing of these holy things. If God loathe his own appointments, and ‘cannot bear them,’ because of the iniquities of those that offer them, no wonder if men be tempted to disgraceful apprehensions of them, when they observe some that pretend a high care and deep respect for them live profanely. The sins of Eli’s sons wrought this sad effect upon the people, that men, for their sakes, abhorred the offerings of the Lord, 1 Sam. ii. 17. Those that fell off to error, and thence to abominable practices, ‘caused the way of truth to be evil spoken of,’ 2 Pet. ii. 2. The priests that departed out of the way, ‘caused many to stumble at the law,’ Mal. ii. 8. Nay, so high doth Satan pursue this sometimes, that it becomes an inlet to direct atheism.
[5.] Fifthly, Satan also works mightily in the profane dispositions of men, and acts that principle to a disregard and weariness of the services of God. A flagitious wicked life naturally leads to it. Those that ‘eat up God’s people as bread,’ Ps. xiv. 4, ‘called not upon God.’ This eats out at last the very exterior and formal observation of religious duties. In this Satan bends his force against them, (1.) By heightening the spirits of men to an insolent defiance of God by a continued prosperity. He draws out the pride and vanity of their spirits to a bold contempt: ‘Who is the Lord that we should serve him? We are lords; we will come no more at thee; our tongues are our own,’ &c., Jer. ii. 31. Thus they ‘set their mouths against heaven.’ Eliphaz tells us this, as the usual carriage of those that lived in peace and jollity: Job xxi. 15, ‘Therefore say they unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways: who is the Almighty that we should serve him?’ (2.) By hiding from them the necessities of duty. Job speaking of the hypocrite, chap. xxvii. 10, describes him by these neglects of duty, ‘Will he delight himself in the Almighty? will he always call upon God?’ Of this he gives the reason, ver. 9, ‘He will call and cry when trouble comes upon him.’ When distresses make duties necessary, then he will use them; in his ‘affliction he will seek him early,’ Hosea v. 15; as the Israelites did, Ps. lxxviii. 34, ‘When he slew them, then they sought him, and enquired early after God.’ But when he is not thus pinched—and Satan will endeavour in this case, that he be as far from the rod of God as he can make him—he gives over seeking God and loathes it, nay, accounts it as ridiculous so to do; they ‘mock at his counsel,’ and contemn his advice of waiting upon him.
[6.] Sixthly, Satan picks quarrels in men at the manner of performance of duty. When duty cannot be spoken against, then he endeavours to destroy it by the modes, circumstances, and way of performance: as (1.) If those that act in them discover any weakness—as who doth not, when he hath done his best?—this he endeavours to blemish the duty withal. The bodily presence of Paul was objected against him, as being ‘contemptible,’ and his ‘speech as weak,’ [2 Cor. x. 10;] but the design of that objection lay higher, the devil thereby endeavouring to render the duties of his ministry as contemptible, and not to be regarded. (2.) If the circumstances please not, he teacheth them to take pet with the substance, and, like children, to reject all, because everything is not suitable to their wills. (3.) If it be managed in any way not grateful to their expectations, if too cuttingly and plain, then they think they be justified to say they hate it, as Ahab did Micaiah; if any way too high or abstrusely, then likewise they fling off. On this point the devil persuaded many of Christ’s followers to desert him, John vi. 66, because he had spoken of himself in comparisons that they judged too high. When he said he was that ‘bread that came down from heaven,’ ver. 58, they said ‘that was a saying not to be borne;’ and on that occasion ‘they went back, and walked no more with him.’
[7.] Seventhly, The devil brings a nauseating of the duties of worship, by a wrong representation of them, in the carriage and gestures of those that engage in them. It seems strange to some that are but as idle spectators to observe the postures of saints, seriously lifting up their eyes to heaven, or humbly mourning and smiting on their breasts. These the devil would render ridiculous, and as the suspicious managements of an histrionical or hypocritical devotion; as men at a distance beholding the strange variety of actions and postures of such as dance, being out of the sound of their music, shall think them a company of madmen and frantic people. Such perverse prospects doth he sometimes afford to those that come rather to observe what others do, than to concern themselves in such duties, that, not seeing their private influences, nor the secret spring that moves them, they judge them foolish, and from thence they contract an inward loathing of the duties themselves.
(5.) Fifthly, In order to the hindering or preventing of duty, Satan useth to impose upon men by fallacious arguings: and by a piece of his sophistry he endeavours to cheat them out of their services. I shall note some of his remarkable dealings in this kind: as,
[1.] First, He heightens the dignity of God’s children, upon a design to spoil their duty. He tells them they are ‘partakers of the divine nature,’ [2 Pet. i. 4;] that they are ‘in God and Christ,’ and have the communications of his Spirit, and therefore they need not now drink of the cistern, seeing they enjoy the fountain; and that these services, in their attainments, are as useless as scaffolds are when once the house is built. To prosecute this he takes advantage, (1.) of the natural pride of their hearts. He puffs them up with conceits of the excellency of their condition—a thing which all men are apt to catch at with greediness upon the least imaginary grounds, 1 Cor. viii. 7; Col. ii. 18. If a man have but a little knowledge, or have attained to any vain speculations, he is presently apt to be vainly ‘puffed up by his fleshly mind.’ The same hazard attends any conceited excellency which a man apprehends he hath reached unto. Those monsters of religion, mentioned by Peter and Jude, that made no other use of the ‘grace of God’ but to ‘turn it into wantonness,’ Jude 4; yet were they so tumefied with the apprehensions of their privileges, that whilst they designed no other thing than plain licentiousness and a wantonness in the lusts of the flesh, yet it seems they encouraged themselves and allured others from a supposed liberty which their privileges gave them; and to this purpose had frequently in their mouths ‘great swelling words of vanity,’ 2 Pet. ii. 18, even whilst they ‘walked after their own lusts,’ Jude 16. (2.) To strengthen their proud conceits, the devil improves what the Scriptures speak of the differences of God’s children—that some are spiritual, some are carnal; some weak, others strong; some perfect, some less perfect; some little children, some young men, some fathers, 1 Cor. ii. 1; Phil. iii. 15; 1 John ii. 12, 13. The end of all this is to make them apprehend themselves Christians of a higher rank and order, which also makes way consequently for a further inference, viz., that there must needs be immunities and privileges suitable to these heights and attainments. To this purpose (3.) he produceth those scriptures that are designed by God to raise up the minds of men to look after the internal work and power of his ordinances, and not to centre their minds and hopes in the bare formal use of them, without applying their thoughts to God and Christ, unto whom they are appointed to lead us. Such as these scriptures: Rom. ii. 28, ‘He is not a Jew which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter.’ And Rom. vi. 7, we should ‘serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.’ 2 Cor. v. 16, ‘Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.’ Eph. iv. 13, ‘He gave some apostles, and some prophets,’ &c., ‘for the perfecting of the saints, ... till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man.’ By a perverse interpretation of these, and some other scriptures of like import, he would persuade them that the great thing that Christ designed by his ordinances was but to ‘train up the 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 lie waste, and in many places ‘the way to Zion did mourn.’
[2.] Secondly, He will sometimes confess an equality of privilege among the children of God, and yet plead an inequality of duty. That God is as good and strong to us, and that we have all an equal advantage by Christ, he will readily acknowledge; but then, when we should propound the diligence of the saints in their services for our pattern, as of David’s ‘praying seven times a-day,’ Daniel’s three times, Anna’s serving God with fastings and prayers night and day, &c.,[204] he tells us these were extraordinary services, and as it were works of supererogation, more than the command of God laid upon them. So that we are not tied to such strictness; and we, being naturally apt to indulge ourselves in our own ease, are too ready to comply with such delusions. And by degrees men are thus brought to a confident belief that they may be good enough, and do as much as is required, though they slacken their pace, and do not fast, pray, or hear so often as others have done.
[3.] Thirdly, Another sophism of his is to heighten one duty, to the ruin of another. He strives to make an intestine war among the several parts of the services we owe to God; and from the excellency of one, to raise up an enmity and undervaluing disregard of another. Thus would he sever as inconsistent those things that God hath joined together. As among false teachers, some say, ‘Lo, here is Christ,’ and others, ‘Lo, he is there;’ so we find Satan dealing with duties. He puts some upon such high respects to preaching, that, say they, Christ is to be found here most frequently, rather than in prayer or other ordinances; others are made to have the like esteem for prayer: and they affirm in this is Christ especially to be met withal; others say the like of sacraments or meditation. In all these Satan labours to beget a dislike and neglect of other services. Thus, in what relates to the constitution of churches, he endeavours to set up purity of churches, to the destruction of unity, or unity to the ruin of purity. A notable example hereof we have in the Euchytæ, a sect of praying heretics, which arose in the time of Valentinian and Valens, who, upon the pretence of the commands of Christ and Paul for praying continually, or without ceasing and fainting, owned no other duty as necessary; vilifying preaching and sacraments as things at best useless and unprofitable.[205] The like attempts he makes daily upon men, where though he prevail not so far as to bring some necessary duties of service into open contempt, yet he carries them into too much secret neglect and disregard, Luke xviii. 1; 1 Thes. xv. 17.
[4.] Fourthly, He improves the grace of the gospel to infer an unnecessariness of duty; and this he doth not only from the advantage of a profane and careless spirit in such as presumptuously expect heaven, though they mind not the way that leads to it; for with such it is usual, as one observes,[206] 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 ‘magnify the grace of God,’ he always took care to fence against such perverse reasonings, severely rebuking and refelling such objections: as in Rom. iii. 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. vi. 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 Satan’s subtlety, 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 hindered; and what he will not give, cannot be obtained; and therefore it were needless to seek after anything.’ Much to the same purpose do many argue, if they be predestinated to salvation, they shall be saved, though they do never so little; if they be not predestinated, they shall not be saved, though they do never so much. In all which inferences the devil proceeds upon a false foundation of severing the means and the end, which the decree of God hath joined together; but the main of the design is to hide the necessity of duty from them.
[5.] Fifthly, By urging a necessity or conveniency for suspending or remitting duties. In temptations to sin, he doth from a little draw on the sinner to more; but in omissions of duty he would entice us from much to little, and from little to nothing. Very busy he is with us to break or interrupt our constant course of duty. Duties in order and practice, are like so many pearls upon one string; if the thread be broken, it may hazard the scattering of all. If we be once put out of our way, we are in danger to rove far before we be set in our rank again. To effect this, (1.) he will be sure to straiten or hinder us in our opportunities if he can, and then to plead necessity for a dispensation. It is true indeed, necessities, when unavoidable—as the issue of providence rather than our negligence—may excuse an omission of duty, because in such cases, God accepting the will for the deed, will have mercy and not sacrifice. But necessity is most-what[207] a pretence or cover to the slothfulness of professors, and the devil will do all he can to gratify them in that humour, and to prepare excuses for them from such hindrances or interruptions as business or disturbances can make; yet if these be not in readiness, he will (2.) endeavour to take off our earnestness by suggesting to us our former diligence, that we at other times have been careful and active; or (3.) by setting before us the greater negligence of those that are below us. The meaning of both which insinuations is to this one purpose, that we may make bold with some omissions, without any great hazard of our religious intentions, or scandal and offence to others. Now if he can by any of these ways bring us to any abatement of our wonted care and exercise, he will then still press for more, and from fervency of spirit to a cold moderation; from thence he will labour to bring us down to seldom performances; from thence, to nothing. The spiritual sluggard that will be overcome to some neglects, shall be found a companion at last to a waster, Prov. xviii. 9, and will be brought to a total neglect of all. The church of Ephesus, Rev. ii. 4, 5, may sadly give proof of this; they left their first love, and from thence declined so far that at last God was provoked to ‘remove the candlestick out of its place.’
[6.] Sixthly, Satan puts tricks upon men in order to the hindering of duty, by putting us from a service presently needful, with the proposal of another, in which, at that time, we are not so concerned. In several duties of Christianity there is a great deal of skill required to make a right choice, for present or first performance; and to have a right judgment to discover the times and seasons of them, is matter of necessary study. Our adversary observing our weaknesses in this, when no other art will prevail, endeavours to put us upon an inconvenient choice, when he cannot make us neglect all. As (1.) by engaging us in a less duty, that we may neglect a greater; he is willing that we, as the Pharisees, should ‘tithe mint and anise,’ upon condition that we ‘neglect the greater things of the law.’ This was the fault of Martha, Luke x. 41, who busied herself in making entertainment for Christ’s welcome, and in the meantime neglected to hear his preaching: which, as he notes, was the only necessary duty of that time; ‘one thing’ is necessary. She is not blamed for doing that which was simply evil in itself—for the thing she did was a duty—but for not making a right choice of duty; for that rebuke, ‘Mary hath chosen the better part,’ is only a comparative discommendation; as Austin interprets, Non tu malam, sed illa meliorem, The thing thou doest is not evil, if it had not put thee upon a neglect of a greater good. (2.) He sometimes puts men upon what is good and necessary, but such as they cannot come at without sin. Thus sacrificing in itself was a necessary duty; and such was Saul’s condition, that it concerned him at that time to make his peace with God, and to inquire his mind. Yet when the devil upon that pretence put him upon offering a sacrifice, he put him upon no small transgression, 1 Sam. xiii. 13. The like game Satan sometimes plays with private Christians, who are persuaded beyond their station and capacity in reference to some ordinances of God. (3.) He sometimes puts men upon dangerous undertakings in pursuit of their fancy, of gaining an advantage for some service; and so are they turned out of the way of present obedience, in grasping at opportunities of duty out of their reach. Saul spared the sheep and oxen of the Amalekites for sacrifice, 1 Sam. xv. 15, 22, when obedience had been more acceptable than sacrifice. (4.) There is a further cheat in the choice of duty, when Satan employs them to provide for duties to come, to the neglect of duties presently incumbent upon them; whereas we are more concerned in that which at present is necessary, than in that which may be so for the future; which is a mistake, like that of caring for the morrow, while we use not what God puts in our hand for to-day.
Chapter XVIII
_Satan’s second grand design against duties is to spoil them. (1.) _In the manner of undertaking, and how he effects this. (2.) In the act or performance, by distracting outwardly and inwardly. His various ways therein, by vitiating the duty itself. How he doth that. (3.) After performance, the manner thereof.
The chief of Satan’s ways for the hindering and preventing of duty have been noted; what he comes short in this design he next labours to make up, by spoiling and depraving them: and this he doth endeavour three ways:—
I. 1. First, By putting us upon services in such a manner as shall render them unacceptable and displeasing unto God, and unprofitable to us: as by a careless and rash undertaking of service. We are commanded to ‘take heed’ to ourselves ‘how we hear’ or pray; and to ‘watch’ over our hearts, that they be in a fit posture for meeting with God, because the heart in service is that which God most looks at, and our services are measured accordingly. If then by a heedless undertaking we adventure upon them, not keeping our ‘foot when we go into the house of God,’ Eccles. v. 1, we offer no other than ‘the sacrifice of fools,’ and give occasion to God to complain that we do but ‘draw near to him with our lips, while our hearts are far from him.’
2. Secondly, The like spoil of duty is made when we adventure upon it in our own strength, and not in the strength of Christ. Satan sees the pride of our heart, and how much our gifts may contribute to it, and how prone we are to be confident of a right performance of what we have so often practised before; and therefore doth he more industriously catch at that advantage to make us forget that our ‘strength is in God,’ and that we cannot come to him acceptably but by his own power. Christians are often abused this way. When their strength is to seek, duty is oft perversely set before them, that they may act as Samson did when his locks were cut, who thought to ‘shake himself, and to go out as at other times,’ and so fell into the hands of the Philistines, [Judges xvi 20.]
3. Thirdly, If he can substitute base ends and principles, as motives to duty, instead of these that God hath commanded, he knows the service will become stinking and loathsome to God. Fasting, prayers, alms, preaching, or any other duty may be thus tainted, when they are performed upon no better grounds than ‘to be seen of men,’ or out of envy, or to satisfy humour, or when from custom, rather than conscience. How frequently did the prophets tax the Jews for this, that they fasted to themselves! and brought forth fruit to themselves! How severely did Christ condemn the Pharisees upon the same account! telling them that in hunting the applause of men, by these devotions, they had got all the reward they were like to have.
4. Fourthly, When we do our services unseasonably, not only the grace and beauty of them is spoiled; but often are they rendered unprofitable. There are times to be observed, not only for the right management of common actions, but also for duties. What is Christian reproof, if it be not rightly suited to season and opportunity? The same may be said of other services.
5. Fifthly, Services are spoiled, when men set upon them without resolutions of leaving their sins. While they come with their ‘idols in their heart,’ and ‘the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face, God will not be inquired of by them,’ Ezek. xiv. 3. He requires of those that present their services to him, that at least they should not affront him with direct purposes of continuing in their rebellions against him; nay, he expects from his servants that look for a blessing in their duties, that they come with their ‘hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and their bodies washed with pure water,’ Heb. x. 22. If they come to hear the word, they must ‘lay aside all filthiness, and superfluity of naughtiness,’ James i. 21; if they pray, they must ‘lift up pure hands,’ 1 Tim. ii. 8; if they come to the Lord’s Supper, they must eat that feast ‘with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,’ 1 Cor. v. 8. And albeit, he may accept the prayers of those that are so far convinced of their sins—though they be not yet sanctified—that they are willing to lay down their weapons, and are touched with a sense of legal repentance; for thus he heard Ahab, and regarded the humiliation of Nineveh: yet while men cleave to the love of their iniquity, and are not upon any terms of parting with their sins, God will not look to their services, but abhor them. For thus he declares himself, Isa. i. 11, ‘To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? Bring no more vain oblations. I cannot away with them, it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting,—my soul hateth them, they are a trouble to me, I am weary to bear them: when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear.’ The ground of all this is, that their heart was no way severed from the purposes of sinning, ‘Your hands are full of blood,’ ver. 15. Satan knowing this so well, he is willing that they engage in the services of God, if they will keep up their allegiance to him, and come with intentions to continue wicked still; for so, while he cannot prevent the actual performance of duty,—which yet notwithstanding he had rather do, because he knows not but God may by that means some time or other rescue these slaves of Satan out of his hand, —he makes their services nothing worth, and renders them abominable to God.
6. Sixthly, In the manner of undertaking duties are spoiled, when men have not a submissive ingenuity[208] in them, by giving themselves up to the direction and disposal of the Almighty; but rather confine and limit God to their wills and desires. Sometimes men by attempting of services to God, think thereby to engage God to humour them in their wills and ways. With such a mind did Ahab consult the prophets about his expedition to Ramoth-Gilead; not so much seeking God’s mind and counsel for direction, as thinking thereby to engage God to confirm and comply with his determination. With the same mind did Johanan and the rest of the people consult the Lord concerning their going down to Egypt, Jer. xlii. 5. Though they solemnly protested obedience to what God should say, ‘whether it were good or evil;’ yet when the return from God suited not with their desires and resolutions, they denied it to be the command of God; and found an evasion to free themselves of their engagement, Jer. xliii. 2. Such dealings as these being the evident undertakings of a hypocritical heart, must needs render all done upon that score to be presumptuous temptings of God; no way deserving the name of service.
II. Secondly, Not only are services thus spoiled in those wrong grounds and ways of attempting, or setting about them, but in the very act or performance of them. While they are upon the wheel—as a potter’s vessel in the prophet—they are often marred; and this Satan doth two ways. (1.) By disturbing our thoughts, which should be attentive and fixed upon the service in hand. (2.) By vitiating the duty itself.
1. First, By distracting or disturbing our thoughts. This is a usual policy of Satan. Those fowls which came down upon Abraham’s sacrifice are supposed by learned expositors to signify those means and ways by which the devil doth disorder and trouble our thoughts in religious services, Gen. xv. 12. And Christ himself compares the devil stealing our thoughts from duty, to the ‘fowls of the air,’ that gather up the seed as soon as it is sown, Mat. xiii. 4. There are many reasons that may persuade us that this is one of his masterpieces of policy. As (l.) in that the business of distraction is oft easily done. Our thoughts do not naturally delight in spiritual things, because of their depravement; neither can they easily brook to be pent in or confined so strictly as the nature of such employments doth require; so that there is a kind of preternatural force upon our thoughts, when they are religiously employed; which as it is in itself laborious, like the stopping of a stream, or driving Jordan back, so upon the least relaxing of the spring, that must bend our thoughts heavenward, they incline to their natural bend and current; as a stone rolled up a hill, hath a renitentia, a striving against the hand that forceth it, and when that force slackens it goes downward. How easily then is it for Satan to set our thoughts off our work! If we slacken our care never so little, they recoil and tend to their old bias; and how easy is it for him to take off our hand, when it is so much in his power to inject thoughts and motions into our hearts, or to present objects to our eyes, or sounds to our ears, which by a natural force raiseth up our apprehension to act, for in such cases non possumus non cogitare; we cannot restrain the act of thinking, and not without great heedfulness can we restrain the pursuit of those thinkings and imaginations. (2.) Satan can also do it insensibly. Our distractions or rovings of thoughts creep and steal upon us silently, we no more know of it when they begin than when we begin to sleep, or when we begin to wander in a journey, where oft we do not take ourselves to be out of the way, till we come to some remarkable turning. (3.) And when he prevails to divide our thoughts from our duty, he always makes great advantage, for thus he hinders at least the comfort and profit of ordinances. While we are busied to look to our hearts, much of the duty goeth by, and we are but as those that in public assemblies are employed to see to the order and silence of others, who can be scarce at leisure to attend for their own advantage. Besides, much of the sweetness of ordinances are abated by the very trouble of our attendance. When we are put to it, as Abraham was, to be still driving away those fowls that come down upon our sacrifice, the very toil will eat out and eclipse much of the comfort. Thus also he at least provides matter to object against the sincerity of the servants of God; and will assuredly find a time to set it home upon them to the purpose, that their hearts were wandering in their services. Thus he further gets advantage for a temptation to leave off their duty, and will not cease to improve such distractions as we have heard to an utter overthrow of their services. Nay, if he prevail to give us such distractions as wholly takes away our minds and serious attentions from the service, then is the service become nothing worth, though the outward circumstances of attendance be never so exact and saint-like. Who could appear in a more religious dress than those in Ezek. xxxiii. 31, who came and sat, and were pleased with divine services, as to all outward discovery, as God’s people; yet was all spoiled with this, that their hearts were after their covetousness?
Now this distraction Satan can work two ways.
(1.) First, By outward disturbances. He can present objects to the eyes on purpose to entice our thoughts after them. The closing of the eyes in prayer is used by some of the servants of God to prevent Satan’s temptations this way. And we find, in the story of Mr Rothwel, that the devil took notice of this in him, that he ‘shut his eyes to avoid distraction in prayer;’[209] which implies a concession in the devil, that by outward objects he useth to endeavour our distraction in services. The like he doth by noises and sounds. Neither can we discover how much of these disturbances, by coughings, hemmings, tramplings, &c., which we hear in greater assemblies, are from Satan, by stirring up others to such noises. We are sure the damsel that had an unclean spirit, Acts xvi., that grieved and troubled Paul, going about these duties with her clamours, was set on by that spirit within her, to distract and call off their thoughts from the services which they were about to undertake. Besides the common ways of giving trouble to the servants of God in outward disturbances, he sometimes, though rarely, doth it in an extraordinary manner; thus he endeavoured to hinder Mr Rothwel from praying for a possessed person, by rage and blaspheming. The like hindrance we read he gave Luther and others; and truly so strict an attendance in the exercise of our minds, spiritual senses and graces, is required in matters of worship, and so weak are our hearts in making a resistance or beating off these assaults, that a very small matter will discompose us, and a smaller discomposure will prejudice and blemish the duty.
(2.) Secondly, He distracts or disturbs us also by inward workings, and injections of motions, and representations of things to our minds: and as this is his most general and usual way, so doth he make use of greater variety of contrivance and art in it. As,
[1.] First, By the troublesome impetuousness and violence of his injections, they come upon us as thick as hail. No sooner do we put by one motion but another is in upon us. He hath his quiver full of these arrows, and our hearts, under any service, swarm with them; we are incessantly infested by them and have no rest. At other times, when we are upon worldly business, we may observe a great ease and freedom in our thoughts; neither doth he so much press upon us; but in these Satan is continually knocking at our door, and calling to us, so that it is a great hazard that some or other of these injections may stick upon our thoughts, and lead us out of the way; or if they do not, yet it is a great molestation or toil to us.
[2.] Secondly, He can so order his dealings with us, that he provokes us sometimes to follow him out of the camp, and seeks to ensnare us by improving our own spiritual resolution and hatred against him; even as courage, whetted on and enraged, makes a man venture some beyond the due bounds of prudence or safety. To this end he sometimes casts into our thoughts hideous, blasphemous, and atheistical suggestions, which do not only amaze us, but oftentimes engage us to dispute against them, which at such time is all he seeks for; for whereas in such cases we should send away such thoughts with a short answer, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ we by taking up the buckler and sword against them are drawn off from minding our present duty.
[3.] Thirdly, He doth sometimes seek to allure and draw our thoughts to the object by representing what is pleasant and taking. (1.) He will adventure to suggest good things impertinently and unseasonably, as when he puts us upon praying while we should be hearing; or while we are praying, he puts into our hearts things that we have heard in preaching. These things, because good in themselves, we are not so apt to startle at, but give them a more quick welcome. (2.) He also can allure our thoughts by the strangeness of the things suggested. Sometimes we shall have hints of things which we knew not before, or some fine and excellent notions, so that we can scarce forbear turning aside after them to gaze at them; and yet when all is done, except we wholly neglect the duty for them, they will so vanish, that we can scarce remember them when the duty is over. (3.) Sometimes he suits our desires and inclinations with the remembrances of things that are at other times much in our love and affection; and with these we are apt to comply, the pleasure of them making us forget our present duty. Thoughts of estates, honours, relations, delights, recreations, or whatever else we are set upon at other times, will more easily prevail for audience now.
[4.] Fourthly, He hath a way to betray and circumvent us by heightening our own jealousies and fears against him; and here he outshoots us in our own bow, and by a kind of overdoing makes us undo our desired work. For where he observes us fearful and watchful against wandering, he doth alarm us the more: so that (1.) instead of looking to the present part of duty, we reflect upon what is past, and make inquiries whether we performed that aright, or whether we did not wander from the beginning. Thus our suspicions that we have miscarried bring us into a miscarriage: by this are we deceived, and put off from minding what we are doing at present. Or (2.) an eager desire to fix our thoughts on our present service doth amaze and astonish us into a stupid inactivity, or into a saying or doing we know not what; as ordinarily it happens to persons, that out of a great fearfulness to offend in the presence of some great personages, become unable to do anything right, or to behave themselves tolerably well; or as an oversteady and earnest fixing the eye weakens the sight, and renders the object less truly discernible to us.
[5.] Fifthly, Sometimes the exercise of fancy acting or working according to some mistake which we have entertained as to the manner of performance, doth so hold our thoughts doing, that we embrace a cloud or shadow when we should have looked after the substance. I will give an instance of this in reference to prayer, which, I have observed, hath been a snare and mistake to some, and that is this: because in that duty the Scripture directs us to go to God, and to set him before us, therefore have they thought it necessary to frame an idea of God in their thoughts, as of a person present to whom they speak. Hence their thoughts are busied to conceive such a representation; and when the shadow of imagination vanisheth, their thoughts are again busied to inquire whether their hearts are upon God. Thus by playing with fancy, they are really less attentive upon their duty.
[6.] Sixthly, Satan can lay impressions of distraction upon men before they come to religious services, which shall then work and shew their power to disturb and divide our hearts, which is by a strong prepossession of the heart with anything that we fear, or hope, or desire, or doth any way trouble us. These will stick to us, and keep us company in our duties, though we strive to keep them back. And this was the ground of the apostle’s advice to the unmarried persons, to continue in single life,—times of persecution and distress nearly approaching,—that they might ‘attend upon the Lord without distraction,’ 1 Cor. vii. 37; implying that the thoughtfulness and more than ordinary carefulness which would seize upon the minds of persons under such straits and hazards, would unavoidably follow them in their duties, and so distract them.
2. Secondly, The other way, besides this of distraction, by which Satan spoils our duties in the act of performance, is by vitiating duty itself; and this he commonly doth three ways.
(1.) First, When he puts men upon greater care for the outward garb and dress of a service than for the inward work of it. He endeavours to make some devotionaries deal with their duties, as the pharisees did with their cups, washing and adorning the outside, while the inside is altogether neglected. Thus the papists generally are for the outward pomp and beauty of services, being only careful that all things should have their external bravery, as the tombs of the prophets were painted and beautified, which yet were full of rottenness. And the generality of Christians are more taken up with this than with the service of the heart. Paul was so sensible of this snare in the work of preaching, where ordinarily men cared for ‘excellency of speech or wisdom,’ 1 Cor. ii. 2, that he determines another course of preaching; not notions, or rhetoric, and enticing words, but the doctrine of Christ crucified in sincerity and plainness, 1 Cor. ii. 2. It is not indeed the outward cost and fineness of ordinances that God regards. ‘Incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country,’ Jer. vi. 20, are not to any purpose where the heart doth not most design a spiritual service; for these are rather a satisfaction to the humours of men than to please God: an offering to themselves rather than to him. And therefore is it, that what Jeremiah confessed they did, (chap. vi. 20,) in buying incense and the sweet cane, Isaiah (chap, xliii. 24) seems to deny, ‘Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money’—that is, though thou didst it, yet it was to thyself, rather than to me: I accepted it not, and so was it all one as if thou hadst not done it.
(2.) Secondly, Duties and services are more apparently vitiated by human additions; a thing expressly contrary to the second commandment, and yet is there a strange boldness in men this way, which sometimes riseth to such a height, that the plain and clear commands of God are violated under the specious pretence of decency, order, and humility; and nothing doth more take them than what they devise and find out. Satan knows how displeasing this is to God, and how great an inclination there is in men to be forward in their inventions and self-devised worship, that he can easily prevail with the incautious. This was the great miscarriage of the Jewish nation all along the Old Testament; and of the pharisees, who, though they declined the idolatries of their fathers, yet were so fond upon their traditions, that they made their worship vain, as Christ tells them. And this humour also in Paul’s time was insinuating itself into Christians, managed by a great deal of deceit [Col. ii. 8] and ‘show of wisdom,’ ver. 23, which accordingly he doth earnestly forewarn them of. There are indeed several degrees of corrupting a service or ordinance by human additions, according to which it is more or less defiled: yet the least presumption this way is an offence and provocation.
(3.) Thirdly, Duties are vitiated in their excess. Natural worship, which consists in fear, love, faith, humility, &c., can never be too much, but instituted worship may. Men may preach too much, and pray too long—a fault noticed by Christ in the pharisees; they made ‘long prayers’—Even in duties, a man may be righteous overmuch. Timothy was so in his great pains and over-abstemious life, to the wasting of his strength—which the apostle takes notice of, and adviseth against it, ‘Drink no longer water,’ &c., [1 Tim. v. 23.] The Corinthians were so, when out of a high detestation of the miscarriage of the incestuous person, they were backward to forgive him, and to receive him into the church again. Peter is another instance to us of excess, John xiii. 8. First, in a modest humility, he refuseth to let Christ ‘wash his feet;’ but after understanding the meaning of it, then he runs to the other extreme, and offers not ‘only his feet, but his hands and his head.’ When the servants of God are conscious of defects in their services, as if they would make amends for these by the length and continuance of their services, they are easily drawn into an excess every way disadvantageous to themselves and the service.
III. Thirdly, When Satan’s designs do not take to spoil the duties, either by the manner of the attempt or in the act, he then seeks to play an after-game, and endeavours to spoil them by some after-miscarriage of ours in reference to these services. As,
(1.) First, When he makes us proud of them. We can scarce perform any service with a tolerable suitableness, but Satan is at hand to instil thoughts of applause, vainglory, and boasting: and we readily begin to think highly of ourselves and performances; as if we were better than others, whom we are apt to censure as low and weak in comparison of ourselves. Though this be an apparent deceit, yet it is a wonder how much the minds, even of the best, are apt to be tainted with it; even where there are considerable endeavours for humility and self-denial, these thoughts are apt to get too much entertainment. Now though we run well, and attain some comfortable strength and watchfulness in the services of God; yet if they be afterward fly-blown with pride, or if we think to embalm them with praises, or reserve them as matter of ostentation; though they be angels’ food, yet, like the manna of the Israelites when kept too long, they will putrify and breed worms, and so be good for nothing, after that we have been at the pains of gathering it.
(2.) Secondly, When well-performed services are perverted to security, then are they also spoiled. We are ready to say of them, as the rich man of his abundance, ‘Soul, take thine ease: thou hast much laid up for many years,’ [Luke xii. 19.] Satan is willing, for a further advantage, that we think ourselves secure from him; and as after a full meal we are apt to grow drowsy, so after services we are apt to think ourselves out of harm’s way. The church after a high feast with Christ, presently falls asleep, and highly miscarries in security and neglect, Cant. v. 2. By this means do the best of saints sometimes lose the things they have wrought, and throw down what they formerly built up.
NOTE.
Agreeably to Note at the beginning, there will be found below the more specific title page of Part II.—G.
DÆMONOLOGIA SACRA:
OR, A
TREATISE
OF
Satans Temptations:
The Second Part.
CONTAINING
The manifold Subtilties and Stratagems of Satan, for the corrupting of the minds of Men with Error; and for the destruction of the Peace and Comfort of the Children of God.
By R. G.
London, Printed by J. D. for Richard Randel, and Peter Maplisden, Booksellers in New-Castle upon Tine, 1677.
Chapter I
That it is Satan’s grand design to corrupt the minds of men with error—The evidences that it is so—And the reasons of his endeavours that way.
Next to Satan’s deceits in tempting to sin and against duty, his design of corrupting the minds of men by error calls for our search; and indeed this is one of his principal endeavours, which takes up a considerable part of his time and diligence. He is not only called in Scripture an ‘unclean spirit,’ but also a ‘lying spirit,’ [1 Kings xxii. 22,] and there are none of these cursed qualifications that lie idle in him. As by his uncleanness we may easily conjecture his attempts upon the will and affections to defile them by lust; so by his lying we may conclude that he will certainly strive to blind the understanding by error. But a clear discovery of this we may have from these considerations:—
I. 1. First, From God’s interest in truth, in reference to his great designs of holiness and mercy in the world. Truth is a ray and beam of him who is the Father of lights.[210] All revealed truths are but copies and transcripts of that essential, archetypal truth. Truth is the rod of his strength, Ps. cx. 2, the sceptre of his kingdom, by which he doth subdue the hearts of men to his obedience and service in conversion. Truth is that rock upon which he hath built his church, the foundations are the prophets and apostles, Eph. ii. 20—that is, the doctrine of the prophets and apostles, in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. Truth is that great depositum committed to the care of his church, which is therefore called the pillar of truth, 1 Tim. iii. 15; because as princes or rulers put their proclamations on pillars for the better information of their subjects, so doth his church hold out truth to the world. Holiness is maintained by truth, our ways are directed by it, and by it are we forewarned of Satan’s devices, John xvii. 17. Now the prince of darkness carrying himself in as full an opposition to the God of truth as he can in all his ways, God’s interest in truth will sufficiently discover the devil’s design to promote error; for such is his hatred of God, that, though he cannot destroy truth, no more than he can tear the sun out of the firmament, yet he will endeavour by corrupting the copy to disgrace the original. Though he cannot break Christ’s sceptre, yet by raising error he would hinder the increase of his subjects; though he cannot remove the rock upon which the church is built, he will endeavour to shake it, or to interrupt the building, and to tear down God’s proclamation from the pillar on which he hath set it to be read of all; and if we can conceive what a hatred the thief hath to the light, as it contradicts and hinders his designs, we may imagine there is nothing against which the devil will use greater contrivances than against the light of truth. He neither can nor will make a league with any, but upon the terms that Nahash propounded to the men of Jabesh-Gilead—that is, that he may ‘put out their right eye,’ and so ‘lay it for a reproach upon the Israel of God,’ 1 Sam. xi. 3. It is the work of the Holy Spirit ‘to lead us into truth,’ and by the rule of contraries it is the devil’s work to lead into error.
2. Secondly, Though the Scripture doth charge the sin and danger of delusion and error upon those men that promote it to the deception of themselves and others, yet doth it chiefly blame Satan for the great contriver of it, and expressly affirms him to be the grand deceiver. Instruments and engineers he must make use of to do him service in that work, but still it is the devil that is a lying spirit in their mouths; it is he that teacheth and prompts them, and therefore may they be called, as Elymas was by Paul, the children of the devil, Acts xiii. 10, or, as Cerinthus of old, the first-born of Satan, πρωτότοκον τοῦ Σατανᾶ.
The church of Corinth, among other distempers, laboured under dangerous errors, against which when the apostle doth industriously set himself, he doth chiefly take notice, (1.) Of the false teachers, who had cunningly wrought them up to an aptitude of declining from the ‘simplicity of the gospel.’ These he calls false apostles, as having no commission from God, and Satan’s ministers, 2 Cor. xi. 13, 15; thereby informing us who it is that sends them out and employs them upon this errand. (2.) He especially accuseth Satan as the great contriver of all this evil. If any shut their eyes against the light, he gives this for the principal cause, that ‘the god of the world blinded their minds,’ 2 Cor. iv. 4. If any stumbled at the simplicity of the gospel, he presently blames the ‘subtlety of the old serpent’ for it, 2 Cor. xi. 3. When false doctrine was directly taught, and varnished over with the glorious pretexts of truth, still he chargeth Satan with it, ver. 14, ‘No marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light;’ where he doth not only give a reason of the corrupting or the adulterating the word of God by false apostles, as vintners do their wines by mixtures; a metaphor which he makes use of, chap. ii. 17, καπειλεύοντα; that they learned it of Satan, ‘who abode not in the truth, but was a liar from the beginning;’ but also, he further points at Satan, to furnish us with a true account of the ground of that cunning craft which these deceitful workers used, while they metamorphosed themselves, by an imitation of the way and manner, zeal and diligence of the apostles of Christ, they were taught by one who had exactly learned the art of imitation, and who could, to all appearance, act to the life the part of an angel of light. And to take away all objection or wonder, that so many with such seeming earnestness and zeal should give up themselves to deceive by false doctrine, he tells us that this hath been the devil’s work from the first beguiling of Eve, ver. 3, and that as he then made use of a serpent for his instrument, so ever since in all ages he hath made so often and so much use of men as his emissaries, that it should now neither seem a marvel, nor a great matter to see the devil at this work by his agents, οὐ Θαυμαστόν, οὐ μέγα, ver. 14, 15.
3. Thirdly, That this is Satan’s great design, may be further cleared from the constant course of his endeavours. The parable of the tares, Mat. xiii. 25, shews that Satan is as busy in sowing tares, as the master of the field is in sowing wheat. That by tares, not errors in the abstract, but men are to be understood, is evident from the parable itself; but that which makes men to be tares is sin and error; so that, in a complex sense, we are taught how diligent the devil, who is expressly signified by the enemy, ver. 39, is in that employment: much of his time hath been taken up that way. ‘There were false prophets,’ saith Peter, 2 Epist. ii. 1, ‘and there shall be false teachers; that is, so it was of old, and so it will be to the end. The shortest abstract of Satan’s acts in this matter would be long and tedious; judge of the rest by a few instances.
In the apostles’ times how quickly had the devil broached false doctrine. That it was necessary to be circumcised, was early taught, Acts xv. 1. In Col. ii. 8, the vain deceit of philosophy, traditions, and the elements of the world, which were the body of Mosaical ceremonies, are mentioned as dangerous intrusions; and in ver. 18, the worshipping of angels, as it seems, was pleaded for, with no small hazard to the church. The denial of the resurrection is expressly charged upon some of the Corinthian church, 1 Cor. xv. 12; and that ‘the resurrection is past already,’ 2 Tim. ii. 18, is affirmed to have been the doctrine of Hymeneus, Philetus, and others. But these are comparatively little to that gross error of denying Christ, Jude 4, or ‘that Jesus is the Christ,’ 1 John ii. 22, or ‘Jesus Christ is come in the flesh,’ 1 John iv. 3, which are branded for antichristian errors, and were boldly asserted by many false prophets that were then ‘gone out into the world;’ and to such a height came they at last, that they taught the lawfulness of ‘committing fornication, and to eat things offered to idols,’ Rev. ii. 20. All these falsehoods took the boldness to appear before all the apostles were laid in their graves: and if we will believe what Austin tells us [De Hæeres.] from Epiphanius and Eusebius, there were no less than ten sorts of heretical Antichrists in the apostle John’s days, the Simonians, Menandrians, Saturnalians, &c. This was an incredible increase of false doctrine in so short a time, and in the times and preachings of the apostles themselves, whose power and authority, one would think, might have made Satan ‘fall before them as lightning.’ What progress, then, in this work of delusion might be expected when they were all removed out of the world! They left, indeed, behind them sad predictions of the power of delusion in after times: ‘Of yourselves shall men arise, speaking perverse things.’ ‘After my departing shall grievous wolves enter,‘ &c., Acts xx. 30. ‘The Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith,’ 1 Tim. iv. 1; and Paul, 2 Thes. ii. 3, prophesies of a general apostasy, upon the revealing of ‘the man of sin,’ and the ‘mystery of iniquity,’ and that these should be ‘perilous times,’ 2 Tim. iii. 1. To the same purpose, John mentions the coming of the great Antichrist as a thing generally known and believed, 1 John ii. 18. But before all these, Christ also had fully forewarned his servants of false Christs, the power and danger of their delusion, and of the sad revolt from the faith which should be before his second coming, Mat. xxiv. 24. And as we have heard, so have we seen; all ages since the apostles can witness that Satan hath answered the prophecies that were concerning him. What a strange increase of errors hath been in the world since that time! Irenæus and Tertullian made catalogues long since; after them Epiphanius and Eusebius reckoned about eighty heresies; Austin, after them, brings the number to eighty-eight. Now though there be just exceptions against the largeness of their catalogues, and that it is believed by many that there are several branded in their rolls for heretics that merely suffer upon the account of their name and nation, for Barbarism, Scythism, Hellenism are mustered in the front; and others also stand there for very small matters, as the quarto-decimani, &c., and that some ought altogether to be crossed out of their books; yet still it will appear that the number of errors is great, and that all those hard names have this general signification, that the devil hath made a great stir in the world by error and opinion. Aftertimes might also be summoned in to speak their evidence, and our own knowledge and experience might, without any other help, sufficiently instruct us, if it were needful, of the truth of this, that error is one of Satan’s great designs.
II. Secondly, Let us next look into the reasons which do so strongly engage Satan to these endeavours of raising up errors. If we set these before us, it will not only confirm us in our belief that this is one of his main employments—for if error yield him so many advantages for the ruin of men and the dishonour of God, there can be no doubt of his readiness to promote it. This also may be of use to put us in mind who it is that is at work behind the curtain, when we see such things acted upon the stage, and consequently may beget a cautious suspicion in our minds against his proceedings. The reasons are such as these:—
1. First, Error is sinful, so that if Satan should be hindered in his endeavours for any further mischief than the corrupting of any particular person, yet he will reckon that he hath not altogether lost his labour. Some errors, that overturn fundamentals of faith, are as deadly poison, and called expressly ‘damnable’ by the apostle, 2 Pet. ii. 1. These heresies are by Paul, Gal. v. 20, recounted among ‘the works of the flesh,’ of which he positively affirms, that ‘they that do such things cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’ Those that are of a lower nature, that do not so extremely hazard the soul, can only be capable of this apology, that they are less evil; yet as they are oppositions to truth, propounded in Scripture for our belief and direction, they cease not to be sins, though they may be greater or less evils, according to the importance of those truths which they deny, or the consequences that attend them; and if we go yet a step lower, to the consideration of those rash and bold assertions about things not clearly revealed, though they may possibly be true, yet the positiveness of avouchments and determinations in such cases, where we want sufficient reason to support what we affirm—as that of the pseudo-Dionysius for the hierarchy of angels, and some adventurous assertions concerning God’s secret decrees, and many other things of like nature—are by the apostle, Col. ii. 18, most severely taxed for an unwarrantable and unjust presumption, in setting our foot upon God’s right; as if such men would by violence thrust themselves into that which God hath reserved for himself—for so much the word intruding—ἐμβατεύειν—imports. The cause of this he tells us is the arrogancy of corrupt reason, the fleshly mind—suitable to that expression, Mat. xvi. 17, ‘Flesh and blood hath not revealed it.’ The bottom of it is pride, which swells men to this height; and the fruit, after all these swelling attempts, is no other than as the apples of Sodom, dust and vanity, ‘intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.’ If then Satan do but gain this, that by error, though not diffused further than the breast of the infected party, truth is denied, or that the heart be swelled into pride and arrogancy, or that he hath hope so to prevail, it is enough to encourage his attempts.
2. Secondly, But error is a sin of an increasing nature, and usually stops not at one or two falsehoods, but is apt to spawn into many others—as some of the most noxious creatures have the most numerous broods; for one error hath this mischievous danger in it, that it taints the mind to an instability in every truth; and the bond of steadfastness being once broken, a man hath no certainty where he shall stay: as a wanton horse, once turned loose, may wander far. This hazard is made a serious warning against error: 2 Pet. iii. 17, ‘Beware lest ye, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.’ One error admitted, makes the heart unsteady; and besides this inconvenience, error doth unavoidably branch itself naturally into many more, as inferences and conclusions resulting from it, as circles in water multiply themselves. Grant but one absurdity, and many will follow upon it, so that it is a miracle to find a single error.[211] These locusts go forth by bands, as the experience of all ages doth testify, and besides the immediate consequences of an error, which receive life and being together with itself, as twins of the same birth, we may observe a tendency in errors, to others that are more remote, and by the long stretch of multiplied inferences, those things are coupled together that are not very contiguous. If the Lutherans—it is[212] Dr Prideaux his observation—admit universal grace, the Huberians introduce universal election, the Puccians natural faith, the Naturalists explode Christ and Scriptures at last as unnecessary. This is then a fair mark for the devil to aim at; if he prevails for one error, it is a hundred to one but he prevails for more.
3. Thirdly, Satan hath yet a further reach in promoting error, he knows it is a plague that usually infects all round about; and therefore doth he the rather labour in this work, because he hopes thereby to corrupt others, and infected persons are commonly the most busy agents, even to the ‘compassing of sea and land to gain proselytes’ to their false persuasions. This harvest of Satan’s labour is often noted in Scripture. ‘They shall deceive many,’ Mat. xxiv. 24; ‘Many shall follow their pernicious ways,’ 2 Pet. ii. 2. How quickly had this leaven spread itself in the church of Galatia, even to Paul’s wonder! Gal. i. 6, ‘I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel.’ Instances of the spreading of error are frequent. Pelagianism rose about the year 415, but presently spread itself in Palestine, Africa, Greece, Italy, Sicily, France, and Britain. Arianism, like fire in straw, in a little time brought its flame over the Christian world, and left her wondering at herself that she was so suddenly become Arian. Socinianism had the like prevalency; Lælius privately had sowed the seeds, and after his death, Faustus Socinus, his nephew, did so bestir himself, that within ten years after his confident appearing, whole congregations in Sarmatia submitted themselves to his dictates, as Calovius affirms,[213] and within twenty or thirty years more several hundreds of churches in Transylvania were infected, and within a few years more the whole synod was brought over to subscribe to Socinianism. We have also instances nearer home. After the Reformation, in the reign of Edward VI., how soon did popery return in its full strength when Queen Mary came to the crown! which occasioned Peter Martyr, when he saw young students flocking to mass, to say, ‘that the tolling of the bell overturned all his doctrine at Oxford,’ Hæc una notula omnem meam doctrinam evertit. And of late we have had the sad experience of the power of error to infect. No error so absurd, ridiculous, or blasphemous, but, once broached, it presently gained considerable numbers to entertain it.
4. Fourthly, Error is also eminently serviceable to Satan for the bringing in divisions, schisms, rents, hatreds, heart-burnings, animosities, revilings, contentions, tumults, wars, and whatsoever bitter fruits, breach of love, and the malignity of hatred can possibly produce. Enough of this might be seen in the church of Corinth. The divisions that were amongst themselves were occasioned by it, and a great number of evils the apostle suspected to have been already produced from thence, as debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults, 2 Cor. xii. 20. He himself escaped not from being evilly entreated by those among them that were turned from the simplicity of the gospel. The quarrelsome exceptions that they had raised against him he takes notice of. They charged him with levity, in neglecting his promise to come to them, 2 Cor. i. 17. They called him carnal, one that walked according to the flesh, chap. x. 2: they taunted him as a contemptible fellow, ver. 10. They undervalued his ministry, which occasioned, not without great apology, a commendation of himself; nay, they seemed to call him a false apostle, and were so bold as to challenge him for a proof of Christ speaking in him, 2 Cor. xiii. 3.
If the devil had so much advantage from error that was but in the bud, and that in one church only, what may we imagine hath he done by it, when it broke out to an open flame in several churches! What work do we see in families when an error creeps in among them! The father riseth up against the son, the son against the father, the mother against the daughter, the daughter against the mother. What sad divided congregations have we seen! what fierceness, prejudices, slanders, evil surmises, censurings, and divisions hath this brought forth! what bandying of parties against parties, church against church, hath been produced by this engine! How sadly hath this poor island felt the smart of it! The bitter contests that have been betwixt presbyterian and independent, betwixt them and the episcopal, makes them look more like factious combinations, than churches of Christ. The present differences betwixt conformists and nonconformists, if we take them where they are lowest, they do daily produce such effects as must needs be very pleasing and grateful to the devil, both parties mutually objecting schism, and charging each other with crime and folly. What invectives and railings may be heard in all companies, as if they had been at the greatest distances in point of doctrine! But whosoever loseth, to be sure the devil gains by it. Hatreds, strife, variance, emulations, lyings, railings, scorn, and contempt, are all against the known duty of brotherly kindness, and are undoubted provocations against the God of love and peace. What can we then think of that can be so useful to Satan as error, when these above-mentioned evils are the inseparable products of it? The modestest errors that ever were among good men are still accompanied with something of these bitter fruits. The differences about meats and days, when managed with the greatest moderation, made the strong to despise the weak as silly, wilful, factious humorists; and, on the contrary, the weak judged the strong as profane, careless, and bold despisers of divine institutions; for so much the apostle implies, Rom. xiv. 3, ‘Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not, judge him that eateth.’ But should we trace error through the ruins of churches, and view the slaughters and bloodshed that it hath occasioned, or consider the wars and desolations that it hath brought forth, we might heap up matter fit for tears and lamentations, and make you cease to wonder that Satan should so much concern himself to promote it.
5. Fifthly, The greatest and most successful stratagem for the hindering a reformation, is that of raising up an army of errors. Reformation of abuses, and corruptions in worship or doctrine, we may well suppose the devil will withstand with his utmost might and policy, because it endeavours to pull that down which cost him so much labour and time to set up, and so crosseth his end. They who are called out by God to ‘jeopard their lives in the high places of the field,’ Judges v. 18, undertake a hard task in endeavouring to check the power of the mighty, whose interest it is to maintain those defilements which their policy hath introduced, to fix them in the possession of that grandeur and command which so highly gratifies their humours, and self-seeking aspiring minds. But Satan knowing the strength of that power which hath raised them up to oppose, with spiritual resolution, the current of prevailing iniquity, usually provides himself with this reserve, and comes upon their backs with a party of deluded, erroneous men, raised up from among themselves, and by this means he hopes either to discourage the undertakers for reformation, by the difficulty of their work, which must needs drive on heavily when they that should assist prove hinderers, or at least to straiten and limit the success; for by this means, (1.) He divides the party, and so weakens their hands. (2.) He strengthens their enemies, who not only gather heart from these divisions, seeing them so fair a prognostic of their ruin, but also improve them, by retorting them as an argument, that they are all out of the way of truth. (3.) The erroneous party in the rear of the reformers do more gall them with their arrows, even bitter words of cursed reviling, and more hazard them with their swords and spears of opposition, than their adversaries in the front against whom they went forth. In the meanwhile, they that stand up for truth are as corn betwixt two millstones—oppressed with a double conflict, beset before and behind.
This hath been Satan’s method in all ages. And indeed policy itself could not contrive anything that would more certainly obstruct reformation than this. When the apostles, who in these last days were first sent forth, were employed to reform the world, to throw down the ceremonies of the Old Testament and heathen worship, Satan had presently raised up men of corrupt minds to hinder their progress. What work these made for Paul at Corinth, and with the Galatians, the epistles to those churches do testify. The business of these men was to draw disciples after them from the simplicity of the gospel, nay, to another gospel; and this they could not do but by setting up themselves, boasting of the Spirit, carrying themselves as the apostles of Christ, and contemning those that were really so, insinuating thereby into the affections of the seduced, as if they zealously affected them, and that Paul was but ‘weak and contemptible,’ nay, their very ‘enemy, for telling them the truth,’ [Gal. iv. 16.] What unspeakable hindrance must this be to Paul! What grief of heart, what fear and jealousy must this produce! He professeth he was afraid lest he had ‘bestowed upon them labour in vain,’ Gal. iv. 11; and that he did no less than ‘travail of them in birth the second time,’ ver. 19. If one Alexander could do Paul so much evil by ‘withstanding his words,’ that he complains of him, and cautions Timothy against him, 2 Tim. iv. 24; if one Diotrephes, by ‘prating against John with malicious words,’ prevailed with the church, that they ‘received him not, nor the brethren,’ 3 John 10, what hurt might a multitude of such be able to do!
In the primitive times of the church, after the apostles’ days, when those worthies were to contest with the heathen world, the serpent ‘cast out of his mouth water, as a flood, after the woman,’—which most interpret to be a deluge of heresies, and some particularly understand it of the Arian heresy,—that he might hinder the progress of the gospel; which design of his did so take, that many complaints there were of hindering the conversion of the heathens, by the errors that were among Christians. Epiphanius tells us that pagans refused to come near the Christians, and would not so much as hear them speak, being affrighted by the wicked practices and ways of the Priscillianists. Austin complains to the same purpose, that loose and lascivious heretics administered matter of blaspheming to the idolatrous heathens.
In after-times, when religion grew so corrupt by popery, that God extraordinarily raised up Luther, Calvin, and others in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to discover those abominations, and to bring back his people from Babylon, the devil gave them no small trouble by a growth of errors, so that they were forced to fight against the papists before and those Philistines behind; insomuch that reformation attained not that height and universality which might rationally have been expected from such blessed undertakings. This was the conjecture of many, particularly of our countryman Dr Prideaux,[214] that if these fanatic enthusiasts, which with so great a scandal to the gospel then brake forth, had not retarded and hindered those glorious proceedings, that apocalyptical beast of Rome had been not only weakened and wounded, but utterly overthrown and slain. In particular cities, where any of the faithful servants of Christ endeavoured to detect the errors of popery, these instruments of Satan were ready to join with the common adversary in reproaches and disturbances. How they opposed Musculus at Augusta, and with what fierceness they called him viper, false prophet, wolf in sheep’s clothing, &c., you may see in those that write his life. How these men hindered the gospel at Limburg against Junius, at Zurich against Zuinglius, at Augsburg against Urbanus Regius, you may also see in their lives.[215] In all which, and others of like nature, you will still find, (1.) That there was never a reformation begun, but there were erroneous persons to hinder and distract the reformers; (2.) That these men expressed as great hatred against the reformers, and oftentimes more, than against the papists; and were as spitefully bitter in lies, slanders, and scorns against them, as the papists themselves.
6. Sixthly, Satan can also make use of error either to fix men in their present mistaken ways and careless course, or as a temptation to atheism. Varieties of opinions and doctrines do amuse and amaze men. While one cries, ‘Lo, here is Christ,’ and another, ‘Lo, he is here,’ men are so confounded that they do not know what to choose. It is one of the greatest difficulties to single out truth from a crowd of specious, confident pretences, especially seeing truth is modest, and oftentimes out-noised by clamorous, bold error; yea, sometimes out-vied by the pretensions of spirit and revelation in an antiscriptural falsehood. At what a loss is an unskilful traveller where so many waves[216] meet! While one party cries up this, another that, mutually charging one another with error, they whose hearts are anything loosened from a sense and reverence of religion, are easily tempted to disbelieve all. Thus error leads to atheism, and lays the foundation for all those slanderous exceptions against Scripture by which godless men usually justify themselves in their religion. Now though all wicked men are not brought to this, because the consciences of some do so strongly retain the sentiments of a deity, that all Satan’s art cannot obliterate those characters; yet the consideration of the multitude of errors doth rivet them in the persuasion of the truth and goodness of that way of religion wherein they had been educated. Papists are hardened by this; and though they have no reason to boast of their unity among themselves, as they have been often told, and now of late by Dr Stillingfleet,[217] who hath manifested that their divisions among themselves are as great, and managed with as great animosity, as any amongst us; yet are their ears so beaten with the objection of sects and schisms elsewhere, that they are generally confirmed to stay where they are. Besides, this is a stumbling-block which the devil throws in the way of poor ignorant people. If they are urged to a serious strictness in religion, they are affrighted from it by the consideration of sects and parties, and the woeful miscarriages of some erroneous persons that at first pretended to strictness, imagining that strictness in religion is an unnecessary, dangerous thing, and that the sober, godly Christians are but a company of giddy, unsettled, conceited, precise persons, who will in a little time run themselves into madness and distraction, or into despair. And thus out of fear of schism or error, they dare not be religious in good earnest; but content themselves with ‘drawing near to God with their mouths, and confessing him with their lips, whilst their hearts are far from him, and in their works they deny him,’ [Titus i. 16.]
There is such a propensity in the hearts of men to be staggered by the multitude and boldness of errors, that the apostle Paul expresseth a sense of it, and seems tenderly careful to avoid that blow, which he knew Satan would readily give through that consideration, by the apology that he makes for God in his holy, wise, providential permission of them, 1 Cor. xi. 19, ‘There must be heresies among you.’ His intent is not barely to put them off with this, that heresies are unavoidable, but to satisfy them that there is a necessity of them, and that they are useful, as God’s furnace and fan, to purify and to cleanse, that ‘they which are approved may be made manifest.’ The like care he hath in 2 Tim. ii. 19, 20, upon the mention of the error of Hymeneus and Philetus, where he obviateth the offence that might arise by reason of their apostasy, partly by removing the fears of the upright, in affirming their safety whatever became of other men, seeing ‘the foundation of God standeth sure,’ and partly by declaring it no more suitable or dishonourable for God to permit the rise of errors in his church, than for great men to have in their houses not only ‘vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; some to honour, and some to dishonour.’ By these very apologies it appears that Satan by this device of error designs to shake men’s faith and to drive them from their religion.
7. Seventhly, Neither can this, that corrupt doctrines bring forth corrupt practices, be of any less weight with Satan, or less engaging for the pursuit of this design, than any of the forementioned reasons.
Corrupt doctrines are embraced as the very truth of God by the deluded; and one way or other, directly or consequentially, they lead on practice, and that with the highest security and confidence, as if they were very truths indeed.
The devil then hath this great advantage by error, that if he can but corrupt the minds of men, especially in the more weighty and fundamental points of religion, then by a great ease and without any more labour he hath gained them to the practice of whatsoever these corrupted principles will lead unto. No course can be taken that with greater expedition and prevalency can introduce profane debaucheries than this. Thus he conquers parties and multitudes, as a victorious general takes cities and whole countries, by surrender; whereas his particular temptations to sin are but inconsiderable, less successful picqueerings[218] in comparison; and when he hath once corrupted the understandings of men, he hath by that means a command over their consciences, and doth not now urge to evil in the notion of a devil or tempter, but as an angel of light, or rather as a usurper of divine authority. He requires, he commands these wicked practices as necessary duties, or at least gives a liberty therein, as being harmless allowances. This difference was of old observed in Satan’s management of persecution and error, that in the former he did compel men to deny Christ, but by the latter he did teach them. In persecutione cogit homines negare Christum, nunc docet.
That the lives and practices of men are so concerned by corrupt doctrines, may appear to any that are but indifferently acquainted with Scripture or history. We are told by the apostle Paul that faith and conscience stand so related to each other that they live and die together, and that when the one is shipwrecked the other is drowned for company, 1 Tim. i. 19. In Phil. iii. 2, he seems severely harsh against those of the concision; he calls them dogs, ‘Beware of dogs; beware of evil workers.’ The reason of which expression I apprehend lies not so much in these resemblances, that dogs spoil the flock by devouring, or that they are fawning creatures, or that they are industrious in prosecution of their prey,—though in all these particulars false teachers may be compared to dogs, for they spare not the flock, they compass sea and land to gain disciples, and they entice them with fair speeches,—but rather he intends the similitude to express the profane life and carriage of these seducers, for dogs are filthy creatures, to a proverb, ‘The dog to his vomit.’ And common prostitutes, for their uncleanness, were called dogs in the Old Testament. So some expound Deut. xxiii. 18, ‘The hire of a whore, or the price of a dog.’ And we have full and clear descriptions of seducers from their wicked and abominable practices: 2 Peter ii. 10, ‘They that walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government; presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities: ver. 14, ‘Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; an heart exercised with covetous practices; cursed children:’ ver. 18, ‘They allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness.’ Jude 4, ‘There are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation; ungodly men, turning the grace of God into lasciviousness:’ ver. 16, ‘These are murderers, complainers, walking after their own lusts,’ &c. 2 Tim. iii. 2-5, ‘Men shall be lovers of their own selves; covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; of this sort are they which creep into houses.’ All which do set forth heretical persons as the most scandalous wicked wretches that we shall meet with; grossly filthy in themselves, corrupted in all the duties of their relations, natural and civil; defiled in all the ways of their converse with men.
Neither are these wicked practices issuing from gross errors to be looked upon as rare, accidental, or extraordinary effects thereof, but as the natural and common fruits of them; for Christ makes this to be the very special property and note whereby false prophets may be discovered, Mat. vii. 16, ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes off thorns, or figs off thistles?’ &c. These fruits were not their doctrines, but their lives; for to know false prophets by false doctrines is no more than to know false doctrine by false doctrine. If any object that many false teachers appeared in the shape of seeming holiness and strictness of life, they may be answered from Christ’s own words; for there he tells us, to avoid mistakes, that their first appearance, and it may be the whole lives of some of the first seedsmen of any error, is under the form of sanctity: ‘They come to you in sheep’s clothing,’ in an outward appearance of innocency and plausible pretences; but then he adds, that their fruits afterward will discover them. A tree at its first planting is not discovered what it is, but give it time to grow to its proper fruitfulness, and then you may know of what kind it is; so that we need not affirm that damnable doctrines produce wicked lives in all that entertain them at the very first. It is enough for discovery if there be a natural consequential tendency in such doctrines to practical impieties, or that at last they produce them, though not in all, yet in many.
And that this matter hath been always found to be so, all history doth confirm. Such there were in the apostles’ days, as is evident by their complaints. Such there were in the church of Pergamos: Rev. ii. 14, ‘Thou hast them that hold the doctrine of Balaam; who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel; to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.’ There were also the Nicolaitans, of whom Christ declares his abhorrency, ver. 15. In the church of Thyatira there was the ‘woman Jezebel, who taught and seduced many’ of that church to the like abominable doctrines and practices, ver. 20. Besides these, the apostle John was troubled with the abominable Gnostics, [and] the filthy Carpocratians, who taught that men must sin and do the will of all the devils, or else they could not evade principalities and powers, who would no otherwise be pleased to suffer them to escape to the superior heavens. Of these men and their licentious doctrine doth he speak, 1 John iii. 6, &c., 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’ days. 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 profaneness behind them, by reason of whom, according to Peter’s prophecy, 2 Peter ii. 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 profaneness of swearing, drinking, adultery, and the defying of a godly life; and this, under the unreasonable boast of spirit and perfection.[219] The heavens may blush and the earth be astonished at these things! But in the meantime Satan hugs himself in his success, and encourageth himself to further attempts in propagating error, seeing it brings in so great a harvest of sin.
8. Eighthly, In this design of false doctrine Satan is never altogether out; if he cannot thus defile their lives, yet it is a thousand to one but he obstructs their graces by it. What greater hindrance can there be to conversion than error! The word of truth is the means by which God, through his Spirit, doth beget us; it is part of that image of God that is implanted in us: it 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 error; neither can truth take place or have its effect upon a soul forestalled with a contrary falsehood. Falsehood in possession will keep truth at the door. Neither is conversion only hindered by such errors as directly contradict converting truths, but also by collateral non-fundamental errors; as they fill the minds of men with prejudice against those that profess another persuasion, so that for their own beloved error’s 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. It is no small matter in Satan’s 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 error, 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 error possess itself of the strength of the spirit, and in the meantime 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; it is only grace that doth that: Heb. xiii. 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 sense is the original, in 1 Tim. vi. 4, ‘Doting about questions,’ or growing diseased, because of the earnest prosecution of opinions, Νοσῶν περὶ ζητήσεις.
9. Ninthly, Error 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 devil’s hatred against both soul and body. The blessings of prosperity and peace do attend the triumphal chariot of truth: Ps. lxxxv. 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, error 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 lie, and worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator! God left not the church of Pergamos and Thyatira without severe threatenings for the error of the Nicolaitans: Rev. ii. 16, ‘Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly.’ Ver. 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 threatening 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 Arian heresy. How is Satan pleased to labour in a design that will kindle the wrath of the Almighty!
Chapter II
Of the advantages which Satan hath, and useth, for the introduction of error; 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 bias of the mind. What things do bias 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. ii. 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,
1. 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 enchantments or witchcraft.
That Satan is a cunning sophister, and can put fallacies upon the understanding; that by subtle objections or arguments he can obtrude a falsehood 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 a 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 it 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 error effectually, without missing his end, that have prepared themselves for that spiritual judgment by a special provocation; and for aught 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: It is a delusion with a kind of magical enchantment; so Calvin, Gal. iii. 1: 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 enchantments 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 error upon the mind, and persuades with such efficacy that it is embraced with confidence, defended strenuously, and propagated zealously.’[220]
A particular account of the way and manner by which the devil doth this, is a task beyond sober inquiry. 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.
(1.) First, There are several scriptures which assert a power in Satan to bewitch the minds of men into error, 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. iii. 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 critics note,[221] is borrowed from the practice of witches and sorcerers, who use by secret powers to bind the senses, and to effect mischiefs. It 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 error. Neither can anything 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 persuasion 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 withal he seems to be surprised 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.[222]
Next to this, let us a little consider that famous scripture in 2 Thes. ii. 9-11, ‘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 lie.’ 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 suitable concomitant inward power; for by ‘power’ I do not understand, as some, [Piscator and Sclater,] a power of shewing signs and doing wonders, as if the apostle had said, ἐν δυνάμει σημέιων καὶ τεράτων, 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 ourselves in this interpretation, if we compare it with Rom. xv. 19,[223] 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 persuasive; 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—κατ’ ἔνέργειαν τοῦ Σατανᾶ. The strange inexpressible strength of it seems to stand in need of many words for explanation. He calls it ‘all power’—ἐν πάσῃ δυνάμει—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, It 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 it 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.[224] Fifthly, The proof of all is manifest in the quality of the errors entertained, for they are palpable gross lies, and yet believed as the very truths of God, and they are in such weighty points as do evidently determine the soul to ruin, ‘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 lies, 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 Kings xxii. 21, ‘And there came forth a spirit and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him.... I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade 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 of spiritual witchcraft, where it pleaseth the Lord to permit to Satan the exercise of his power, ‘Thou shalt persuade, and prevail also.’ But that which I would observe here, is something relating to the manner of his proceeding in these delusions. He attempted to deceive the false prophets, and by them to delude Ahab; and both, by being a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophets, which necessarily, as Peter Martyr observes, implies, (1.) That Satan had a power so strongly to fix upon their imaginary[225] faculty the species, images, or characters of what was to be suggested, that he could not only make them apprehend what he presented to their minds, but also make them believe that it was a divine inspiration, and consequently true; for these false prophets did not speak hypocritically what they knew to be false, but what they confidently apprehended to be true, as appears by the whole story. (2.) He could irritate and inflame their desires to publish these their persuasions to the king, after the manner of divine prophecies. (3.) He had a further power of persuading Ahab that his prophets spake truth.[226]
That passage of Rom. i. 28, ‘God gave them over to a reprobate mind,’ doth give some account how men are brought by the devil into these false persuasions. A reprobate mind is a mind injudicious, a mind that hath lost its power of discerning—Νοῦς ἀδοκιμός. It is plain then that he can so besot and blind the mind that it shall not be startled at things of greatest absurdity or inconveniency.
If any yet further inquire how he can do these things; we must answer, that his particular ways and methods in this case we know not: only it may be added, that, Eph. iv. 17, Paul tells us he can make their ‘minds vain, and darken their understandings.’ By mind, Νοὸς, the seat of principles is commonly understood. By understanding, Διάνοια, the reasoning or discursive faculty, which is the seat of conclusions: so that his power seems to extend to the obliterating of principles, and can also disable them to make right inferences, insomuch that he wants nothing that may be necessary to the begetting of strong persuasions of any falsehood which he suggests, according to what is intimated, Gal. v. 3, ‘This persuasion cometh not of him that called you’—that is, not of God, but of the devil.
From all these scriptures then it appears that this spiritual fascination is a power in Satan, which he exerts, by special commission, upon those that receive not the truth in the love of it, by which he can so strongly imprint falsehoods upon their minds, that they become unable to discern betwixt truth and a lie, and so by darkening their understanding, they are effectually persuaded to believe an error.
(2.) Secondly, There is yet another proof of this spiritual witchcraft, from the consideration of the effects of it upon the deluded, and the uncouth, strange, unnatural way of its proceeding. Let all particulars of this kind be put together, and it will not be found possible to give any other rational account of some errors than that of extraordinary delusion.
[1.] First, Let us take notice of the vileness and odiousness of some errors that have prevailed upon men. Some have been plainly sottish, so evidently foolish that it cannot be imagined that men that entertained them had at that time the use of reason, or any competent understanding. This very consideration the prophet Isaiah insists upon largely, chap. xliv. 9-21, where he taxeth them smartly for the senseless doltishness of their error in worshipping idols. He tells them the matter of it is the work of nature, a cedar, oak, or ash, that they themselves possibly had planted, and the rain did nourish it, ver. 14. He tells them also that the form of it was from the art of the workman, the smith, or carpenter: ver. 12, 13, ‘The smith with the tongs both worketh in the coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh it with the strength of his arms.... The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with a compass.’ He further minds them, that without any reverence they make use of the residue of the materials out of which they formed their idol to common services of dressing their meat and warming themselves. ‘He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire,’ ver. 16. Then he accuseth them of sottishness, in that the ‘residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down to it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god,’ ver. 17. And from all this he concludes, that seeing this is so directly contrary to common reason and understanding—which in the ordinary exercise of it would easily have freed them from such a dotage; for if they had but ‘knowledge or understanding to say, I have burnt part of it in the fire; I have baked bread, and shall I make the residue an abomination?’ ver. 19, they could not have been so foolish. It must, then, of necessity be a spiritual infatuation. ‘Their eyes were shut that they cannot see, and their hearts, that they cannot understand,’ ver. 18. ‘A deceived heart hath turned him aside,’ ver. 20. Other errors there are that lead to beastly and unnatural villanies, such as directly cross all the sober principles of mankind, the natural principles of modesty, the most general and undoubted principles of religion and holiness, as when adulteries, swearing, ranting, going naked, cruelties, murders, outrageous confusions and madness, are clothed with pretences of spirit, revelation, freedom in the use of the creature, exercise of love, and having all things common, &c.: of which sad instances have been given more than once. Let any sober man consider how it could come to pass, that men that have reason enough to defend them against such furies, and the knowledge of Scripture, which everywhere—with the greatest happiness imaginable and highest earnestness—doth prohibit such practices as most abominable, and doth direct to a sober, just, modest, humble, inoffensive life, should entertain notwithstanding, such errors as transform men into beasts, monsters, or rather devils, and religion into the grossest impieties; and all this as the perfection and top of religious attainment commanded in the word of God or by his Spirit, and well-pleasing to most holy and pure divine majesty! Let it, I say, be left to the consideration of men how it should be, without some such extraordinary cause as hath been mentioned.
[2.] Secondly, Let it be observed also, that some errors bring with them some extraordinary, strange, unnatural, unusual actions, and put men into such odd garbs, postures, and behaviours, that it is easy to see they are acted by a force or power not human. Some have been carried to do things beyond whatsoever might have been expected from the age and capacities of the parties; as ecstasies, trances, and quakings of little children; their prophesying and speaking Scripture threatenings after such fits. Some have been acted in a way of ecstatical fury; as Montanus, of whom Eusebius witnesseth,[227] 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 wondered 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.’[228] Some have been carried into childish and ridiculous actions: such was the behaviour of Jo. Gilpin in his delusion at Kendal in Westmoreland; as his going to the fiddler’s house, playing upon a bass 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.[229]
Such things as these are as spiritual marks and characters engraven upon errors, by which a diabolical power, moving and acting such deluded creatures, like so many puppets, is evidently discovered.
[3.] 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, it is more than suspicious that it is not any probability of truth or excellency in the error 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 a 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 errors,—what else can be apprehended to be the cause but a powerful satanical delusion?
[4.] Fourthly, Add we to these the consideration of the suddenness of the prevalency of such errors against plain and evident truths, which is a circumstance taken notice of by the apostle: Gal. i. 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 men’s affections prevent their discoveries; at the first view they are taken, before they understand what the error is, and they are persuaded before they know.
[5.] Fifthly and lastly, That the earnestness of the prosecution by which they maintain and propagate the error is a kind of unnatural fury, which hurries men with violence into an unyielding stiffness, 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 enamoured with, and violent in the pursuit of errors that are sottish or devilish, 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 errors is more than can be well expressed; but he hath besides other advantages which he noway neglects: among which,
2. 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 knowledge 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 juggler to endeavour the deception of those that know and see the ways of his conveyances as well as himself. That our knowledge is imperfect, I shall prove and explain in the following particulars:—
[1.] First, The Scripture plainly asserts it. The greatest number of men which are in an unregenerate estate are expressly 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 knowledge, unripe, imperfect. The apostle doth so express it, 1 Cor. xiii. 9, ‘We know in part, we prophesy in part.’ In the explanation of this, he compares our attainments in this world to the understanding, thoughts, and speakings of children, ver. 11: concludes, ver. 12, that all our knowledge gives us but a dark, imperfect reflection of things: ‘we see through a glass darkly.’
[2.] Secondly, Men that have had the clearest heads, and have been at the greatest pains in their inquiries 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.[230] Chytræus, in humble modesty, goes a little further: ‘My dearest knowledge,’ saith he, ‘is to know that I know nothing;’ and it will be a clear demonstration of that man’s ignorance that boasts of his knowledge; his own mouth will prove against him that ‘he knows nothing as he ought to know,’ [1 Cor. viii. 2.]
[3.] 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 anything of common business; as, that Christ died for sinners; that without faith it is impossible to please God; that without holiness no man shall see his face, &c. Yet, as Peter speaks, 2 Pet. iii. 16, ‘There are many things that are hard to be understood,’ δυσνόητά τινα. There are difficulties, depths, and mysteries. Some things, whereof we have but dark touches in Scripture, though enough to let us know that such things there are, and, to humble us for our ignorance, are in their own nature sublime, bounded on all sides with rocks and precipices, where our near and bold approaches are prohibited: such are those things that concern the decrees of God, the Trinity, &c. Other things are dark and uncertain to us, from their very proximity to us—as some are pleased to fancy the reason. Such are the nature, faculties, and workings of our own souls within us—which we cannot directly see, as the eye sees not itself, and do but, as it were, guess by dark reflections. Some things in Scripture are accidentally obscure to us that were plain to those that heard them first, to whom they were spoken and written; for now to the understanding of a great many passages there is necessary the knowledge of the tongues in which they were dictated, of the histories of those times to which they severally related; as also of the particular customs of the Jewish nation, which gave a mould and form to a great many Scripture assertions; all which were easy and familiar to those that knew the exact propriety of such languages, were acquainted thoroughly with such histories, customs, usages, and manner of speakings; and besides all these, the application of general rules to particular cases—where a little circumstance may make a great alteration—is full of puzzle and intricacy; insomuch that some have thought that there are several cases of conscience that are not yet fully determined, and that are like so to remain.[231]
[4.] Fourthly, Neither is the nature of knowledge itself without an argument to prove the insufficiency of our knowledge. To know is properly to understand things by their causes, or at least by their effects, and to make a right result of particulars from a general maxim. Such a kind of knowledge is necessary in religion, for setting aside some particulars of mysterious height, about which God hath set bounds, lest men in presumptuous boldness should adventure to ‘break through unto the Lord to gaze;’ and some things which are the principles of nature, or their next results, which are, upon that score, beyond all need of inquiry—in all which it is enough to believe that what the Scripture saith is true, without asking a further account; yet in other things the Scripture gives us the grounds, reasons, and proofs of what it declares or asserts, as may appear by infinite examples; so that to know Christ died, or that we are justified by faith, or that Christ shall come to judgment, without a knowledge of the grounds and reasons of these things, is indeed but gross ignorance. The like may be said of the knowledge of general precepts, without the knowledge of their necessary application.
But how few are there that do thus know! The greatest part of men satisfy themselves with the bare affirmations of Scripture, and they resolve all into this, that the word of God saith so, or that it is the will of God it should be so, without further inquiry.
And as for others, though they may know the reasons of many things, yet are there a vast number of particulars whose reasons we know not, though the Scripture may contain them; and as for consequences, and the application of general rules, their just limitation, and the enumeration of the cases wherein they are true or false, it is that that keeps the wits of men upon the rack perpetually.
[5.] Fifthly, The unsuitableness of our capacities to those objects of knowledge may be particularly considered as a further confirmation of our ignorance. The incapacity of the vulgar is generally observed. Some we find so grossly ignorant, that they are incapable to comprehend the easiest matters; and this makes their persuasion to some plain truths so very difficult, that when they are, as it were, ‘brayed in a mortar’ by a multitude of unreasonable[232] arguments, yet their ignorance ‘departs not from them,’ but they will stubbornly hold the conclusion of their own fancy, whatever become of the premises. Those that are of a higher form, and seem to understand a great many particulars in religion, are ordinarily unable to conjoin all truths into one entire proportionable body: they heap up several notions that they hear here and there, but know not their consistencies; insomuch that they either are like children, who know all the letters of the alphabet, without the skill to frame words or sentences out of them, being unable to give an account how their notions are related one to another, or to the whole; or if they attempt such a thing, they hang inconsistent things on the same thread, and do but humano capiti cervicem jungere equinam. If these instances, and a great many more of like kind, were not at hand, yet the very condescensions of our great prophet the Lord Jesus, and of his disciples in their ways of teaching, do evince that the capacities of men are low—that they are ‘dull of hearing, children in understanding.’ The course they took was to instruct them in a plain, familiar way, by parables and examples. Thus were they ‘fed as babes in Christ,’ according to the apostle’s similitude, with ‘milk, and not with strong meat, because they were not able to bear it,’ 1 Cor. iii. 1. And yet Christ sometimes complained that this would not do. For so he speaks, John iii. 12, ‘If I have told you earthly things,’ that is, divine truth in earthly and common similitudes, ‘and ye believe not,’ i.e., cannot apprehend them, ‘how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?’ How unable, then, would you be to understand these truths if I should speak in language and expression properly suited to their natures? A great check to our slowness of apprehension.
But possibly some may expect higher matters from those that are exalted above the common rank of men by the repute they have of learning. And indeed it cannot be denied but such have very great advantages for the widening of their capacities; yet are they not such as wholly take away the distemper, but still so much incapacity may be seen in them as will sufficiently justify the charge of imperfection in knowledge against the most learned. Let us bring in some instances, and it will be evident:
(1.) The greatest errors that have most disturbed the church in all ages have had their rise from learned men. The names of their authors are marked upon their foreheads. These known errors are so many, that they fill whole volumes. The result of which consideration will be this, that learned men have often been very dangerously mistaken.
(2.) The present contentions and disputes of men, managed on all hands with so much earnestness, wherein one party triumphs over another, and all, in their own apprehensions, are victorious. Instead of conquests by arguments and answers, each party is but more confirmed in its own apprehensions; and yet the one-half is certainly wrong, and perhaps in many things both parties are mistaken. This, I say, sufficiently shows the incapacities of the learned; for if every capacity were truly correspondent to truth, there would be no more disputes nor differences.
(3.) The most learned find the business of their own persuasion and satisfaction in many truths, in which common people have no scruple nor doubt, very difficult; because they see more objections to be answered, and more of the weakness of arguments than others do; but this shews their capacities are not so large as some would think.
(4.) Let us once for all consider that which seems to be the highest evidence for knowledge and understanding in the learned, and we shall find, upon just examination, it is no more than an argument of their ignorance. What is there wherein they seem more acute and eagle-eyed than in their distinctions, by which they would give us the most minute differences of things, and appear so exact as if they would divide an atom, and give everything its just weight and measure? But let us consider that, though all distinctions are not unprofitable, their multitude is become oppressive and troublesome, and more time must be spent in learning terms and words of art than things; and their nicety and subtlety so great, that they rather darken truth, and give occasion to bold spirits to undertake the defence of any paradox. Nay, if we could sever these clearly from their abuses, yet, seeing it is certain there are more distinctions of terms than things, they will evince that our knowledge is more verbal than real, and that often for a mountain of words we have but a molehill of substantial matter. Nay, seeing we make but a sorry shift at best by these artifices to come to some rude conceptions of things, which otherwise we cannot in any tolerable manner comprehend, it is as great a proof of our imperfection in knowledge, as the necessary use of staves and crutches is an evidence of lameness. If I should pass from this to the consideration of the multitude beyond all number of books that are written, we shall find them but so many proclamations of our ignorance; for if we could believe them all to contain so many wholesome precepts of necessary truth, which yet we cannot rationally imagine, this would imply that the greatest part wanted these informations; and that common ignorance is not only a general distemper, but also a distemper hard to be cured, that stands in need of such multitudes of instructors and such varieties of helps. But if we believe that among this infinite number of volumes there are thousands of lies, millions of unproved conjectures, millions of millions of idle, unprofitable fancies, then do we in express terms pronounce them guilty of ignorance, and of ignorance so much the more dangerous, by how much the more bold it is to avouch itself in the light, and to obtrude itself upon the belief of others, who, instead of being better informed by it, shall but increase their own blindness. Were there nothing to be said but this, that there are such a vast multitude of commentators upon the Bible, which do all pretend to expound and explain it, it would of necessity admit of these conclusions:—[1.] That the Bible hath in it things so dark, or at least our capacities are so dull, that there is need of great endeavours to explain the one, or assist the other. [2.] That the knowledge of men is imperfect; for if all or most men could certainly interpret the Scripture, there needed not so many volumes, but that one or two might have signified as much as now whole libraries can do.
The imperfection of our knowledge being thus laid open, it is easy to see what advantages the devil may make out of it for the promoting of error; for it must now become our wonder, not that any man errs, but that all do not. We find it easy to impose anything upon children; it is an easy matter for a trifle to cheat them out of all they have. Surely then Satan may do as much by men, who are but ‘children in understanding.’ The apostle, Eph. iv. 14, puts us in mind of this hazard under that very similitude, ‘that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.’ How fitly doth he resemble us to children! Their weaknesses are, [1.] Want of discerning; they see not the true worth of things. [2.] Credulity; they believe all fair speeches and specious promises: and the hazard of both these is in this, that it makes them unconstant, uncertain, and fickle; and such are we made by our ignorance, so little do we truly discern, so apt are we to believe every pretence, for the simple believes every word, Prov. xiv. 15; that, as the apostle’s metaphors do tell us, we are easily tossed from one conceit or opinion to another, as a ship is by the waves, or a feather in the wind. κλυδονιζόμενοι καὶ περιφερόμενοι.
3. Thirdly, A third advantage which the devil takes against us in his design of error, is the bias of the mind. Were our understandings purely free, in a just and even balance toward all things propounded to its deliberation and assent, though it were imperfect in its light, the danger were the less; but now, in regard of the bent and sway it is under, it is commonly partial, and inclined to one side more than to another, and yet the matter were the less, if only one or two noted things had the power of setting up a false light before the mind; but there are many things that are apt to do us this mischief, which have the same effect upon us that bribes have upon persons interested in judgment, which not only tempts them to do wrong, but so blinds their eyes that they know not they do so, or at least not in so great a measure. The mind is biassed,
(1.) First, Naturally to error rather than truths. The corruption of our nature is general, and doth not only dispose the will and affections to practical iniquities, but doth also incline the understanding to error and misapprehension. And that seems to be the ground of Christ’s assertion against the Jews: John v. 43, ‘I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.’ Which implies that men are naturally more prone to believe an impostor, than one that speaks the most certain and profitable verities; and besides this general inclination to vanities and lies, there are, if some think right, some errors that are formally engraven in the nature of fallen man—as that opinion to be saved by works.[233] For not only do all men that have any apprehensions of a future eternal state resolve that question of obtaining salvation into works as the proper cause,—and indeed no other could have been imagined, if the Scripture had not revealed the redemption by the blood of Jesus—but the Jews in John vi. 28, when they propound that question, ‘What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?’ take it for granted, that works of some kind or other are the causes of happiness. Possibly some impression of that notion, while it was a truth, as in the state of innocency it was, may yet remain upon our natures, though by the fall the case is altered with us.
(2.) Secondly, The mind is biassed by bodily temper and complexional inclination. The varieties of complexions introduce varieties of humours and dispositions; and the understanding being necessitated to look through these, as so many coloured glasses, is apt to judge, that is, to misjudge, according to the misrepresentation of objects.
(3.) Thirdly, Sometimes habitual acquirements have the same influence upon the understanding that natural humours have. The arts and sciences we study, our ways of education and employment, are but so many prejudicate prepossessions that do secretly taint the mind.
(4.) Fourthly, There are also accidental inclinations, which, though not customary, have the force of a second nature, because their working is violent and impetuous, and these, which are from a wounded conscience or excesses of melancholy, have a bias more than ordinary; they lay violent hands upon the understanding, and with a mighty torrent run it down. So that if an error be offered that is suitable to such fears or misapprehensions, it can scarce miss of success. The extraordinary turbulences of some other passions, as anger, love, &c., have the like effect.
(5.) Fifthly, Vicious habits do so much bias the mind, that the understanding must needs be defiled by them. Nothing can more prepare the mind to a wicked error than a wicked life. An error of indulgence being so grateful to corruption may readily find favour with the understandings of those that know not to do good, because they have accustomed themselves to do evil.
(6.) Sixthly, There are external things that have no less power on the understanding than any of the foregoing; and these are custom, education, and interest. These stick so close, and work so subtly, that though there are few that are not, in disputable cases, influenced by them, yet none are able or willing to take notice how and by what steps they do engage them to pass sentence against truth. And indeed that man must have a singular measure of suspicious watchfulness and clear integrity that is not deceived by them. And the best way to keep clear of the mischief that these may do us, is to be severe in our suspicions on that side to which custom and interest have their tendencies.
(7.) Seventhly, I might note that there is something considerable to this purpose in the nature of spirits. Some spirits are unfixed and volatile, and these are soon altered by their own unsteadiness. Others are tenacious and unflexible; and if such be first set wrong, it is not an easy thing that will reduce them to truth. Others are soft and ductile, persuaded by good words as soon as strong arguments. And again, some are of such a rough, sour, contradictious temper, that they will sooner choose to run wrong than comply with the persuasions of those that offer truth, even for that reason, because they are persuaded to it; so that the truth which, if none had minded them, they of themselves would have embraced, they will now refuse when it is pressed upon them, out of a cross and thwarting humour, because they hate nothing more than to do as they are bidden.
To come a little nearer, let us consider how these things shew their power upon the mind to sway and incline it. It is indeed true, that in things that are clearly and strongly propounded to the understanding, it cannot but judge according to the evidence of truth, and cannot be guided by the will to judge contrary; nay, the will—though in things purely speculative it may retain its averseness, as also in things practical, while they are considered only as what may be done before the understanding hath come up to its final resolve, determining that such things must or ought to be done—cannot but follow the light and information of the understanding, and that according to the proportion of its conviction; so that though in some cases a man would have things otherwise than he believes them to be, yet he cannot believe what he will, neither can he refuse to will what is certainly represented to be good and necessary. Tantum quisque vult, quantum intelligit se velle debere. Notwithstanding all this, the forementioned particulars may so bias the mind that it shall not act truly and steadily, as we may see in these three particulars:
[1.] First, In things clearly demonstrated to the understanding, though the will cannot directly oppose, nor prevail to have them judged false, yet it can indirectly hinder the procedure of the understanding, and divert it from fixing its consideration upon the truth, or from working itself into positive determinations for bringing it into practice. Intellectus sequitur voluntatem quoad exercitium, non quoad specificationem. Thus many that cannot but believe there is a God, and that his law is true, being biassed by their lusts, the power of pleasures or interest, &c., do prevail upon their understandings to take up other objects of consideration; so that they are said to forget God, and to cast his commandments behind their backs, as also not to remember their latter end, though they cannot but believe that they shall die. Truth may be imprisoned and fettered, where it cannot be slain. We read of ‘holding the truth in unrighteousness,’ Rom. i. 18, which was this, that those heathens of whom the apostle speaks, by reason of their vicious inclinations and practices, though they could not obliterate those notices of equity and religion that were imprinted on their minds, yet they kept them at under, as captives in a dungeon, and suffered them not to rise up in a just practical improvement. Now the wrong that is done to truth this way is not only by rendering it unfruitful and useless at present, but hereby the devil hath his advantage in the gaining of time to gather together more forces against that truth, and by frequent onsets of contrary arguings, especially upon the advantage of the mind’s indifferency and remissness, begot by long and often diversions, to set another face upon it, and by degrees to overturn former persuasions. This was the very case of the heathens in the place last cited, who, being first swayed by their impieties, became unwilling to give way to those dictates of light and justice which they had; and having thus gratified their lusts, the devil further prevailing with them to find evasions from the power of those truths, they began to make unsuitable inferences from these premises, which they could not deny, and so became sottish and vain in their reasonings, ‘changing the glory of the uncorruptible God, into an image made like unto corruptible man.’ And by such practices against truth, they at last changed the truth into a lie, ver. 25, and at long-run obliterated the knowledge of God out of their minds. This is Satan’s old method of overturning truth at last, by diverting the mind from receiving the present powerful impressions of those principles.
[2.] Secondly, But in things doubtful, where there is not a clear certainty what is truth, but contrary opinions strive with such equal confidence, that it is difficult to determine which hath the conquest, there the mind may be so swayed by its bias that it may give approbation to error; nay, where, upon a fair and indifferent trial, truth hath the greater appearance of strength, and error nothing else than little shadows or appearances of reason to shelter itself under; yet that way may the mind be inclined by the aforesaid things. We have a more easy and facile belief for what we would have than for what we would not. Though there is nothing more noted by common experience than this, that men are usually drawn aside by humours, inclinations, interests, and education, &c., to judge well of that which an unprejudiced person would easily see to be weak, unjust, ridiculous, or unreasonable; yet how these considerations and tempers do exert their force upon the understanding to draw it into a compliance, or by what secret art they can heighten probabilities, and lessen objections; or by what insensible progress they move, that men thus carried do not perceive that they are under such a force, is not so very discernible. How often may we observe men, that are rational enough to discover the pitiful shifts and poor allegations of others, with such gravity and confidence, where their own interests are concerned, to offer such low reasonings and extravagant impertinences, that all that hear them are ready to laugh at their folly; and yet they themselves entertain no less than persuasions of the invincibleness of their arguings. They so eagerly desire what they would establish, that they think anything is enough to justify it, and are apt to imagine that their shifts and excuses appear as strong to others as to themselves. I have known some that, by the sway of interest, have changed their opinions in religious matters, and have really become otherwise persuaded than they had been formerly, and not as some who, for advantage, will knowingly take up what they cannot believe to be true, and have not been able to say that they have met with new arguments or new answers to objections, but I know not how arguments, which they had contemned, and laid by for weak, began to look big upon them. The arguments by which their former persuasion was upheld grew insensibly feeble in their hands; the one revived, gathered strength, after they had a little cherished them, by thinking there might be something in them, though before they knew all the particulars, and could not instance in anything which they had not formerly notified and answered; and the other sort of arguments grew weaker and weaker, till at last they parted with all good conceit of them; so that such a change was but as the turning of the tables. That which acted behind the curtain, and wrought this change of the fancy, could be no other than some of the forementioned things that biassed their mind; for where the arguments, pro and con, were the same, the alteration of opinion, where men are not so wicked as to go directly against their own light, must of necessity be imputed to the different positions of external things, and the different humours and inclinations begot by them, even as the different stations of men in the prospect of some pictures represent them variously; one way they give the shape of a beautiful face, another way they express the ugly deformity of a devil; or as different reflections of the sunbeams upon the same object clothe it with several colours. The Scripture doth also give us notice of this advantage which the devil takes from the inclinations of men to lead them into mistakes. That of Micah ii. 11, ‘If a man, walking in the spirit of falsehood, do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; he shall even be the prophet of this people,’ hath this for its foundation, that, let the error be never so gross and palpable, as if a man should prophesy a liberty for drunkenness, if it be suitable to the sway of people’s humours, it will readily enough be embraced, ‘he shall be a prophet to this people,’ that is, such a prophet will easily prevail with such a people; their vicious inclinations fit them for any impression of a suitable error. The apostle Paul also found this too true in the heresies of his own times; for he tells us that seducers had learned that cunning from the devil to draw men to error by the sway of their lusts: 2 Tim. iii. 6, ‘They creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, and led away with divers lusts;’ as also 2 Tim. iv. 6, he prophesies of the future use of this stratagem, ‘After their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers.’ So that the usual prevalency of error was and is from the underground working of lusts, humours, habits, and inclinations, which make men willing to entertain an opinion, which can but gratify them with a suitableness or fitness.
[3.] Thirdly, Where the forementioned particulars of inclination, natural or acquired humours, custom, education, &c., do neither divert the understanding, nor engage it to close with error; yet often do they discover how powerfully they can bias the mind, in that these prevail with men to modify and mould a truth according to the bent or form of their inclinations; as a bowl which is skilfully aimed at a mark, goes nevertheless by a compass which its bias forceth it unto, according to the risings or fallings of the ground it meets with in the way. Men may arrive at real truth in the main, and yet may shape it according to their humours. For instance, let us consider the different modes or forms in which the same truth is represented under the workings of different tempers. A melancholy person conceives of all things under such reflections as fear and sadness do usually give. If he consider God, he looks upon him in the notion of greatest severity and justice; if upon the ways of duty, he colours them all in black, and can scarce account anything piety which is not accompanied with sadness and mourning; if he calls his soul to a reckoning, his conclusions concerning himself are sad, doleful, or at best suspicious. On the contrary, a hilarious, cheerful temper censures all sadness for sullenness, and is apt to accuse those that go mourning in their way for unthankful murmurers and unbelieving complainers; it interprets God’s favourable condescensions to the weak in the greatest latitude, and is easily persuaded to those things that are upon the utmost brink of liberty, to which others of a more timorous disposition dare not approach for fear of offending. This puts a higher excellency upon the duties of praise, as the other upon fasting and mourning. Those men that are morose and severe, they are apt to think that God ‘is such an one as themselves;’ and though they acknowledge there is such a grace as charity, yet under a pretence of strictness they cannot believe they are bound to exercise it towards any that are under any failing of which they judge themselves to be free; and therefore such men are usually very difficult in all cases wherein condescension is to be used; they are hard to be reconciled, and after the miscarriage of any person, are not easily satisfied of their repentance; and in cases of dissent from their way and practice of religion, they are commonly censorious, and conclude the worst. They again that are naturally mild and gentle, under a pretence of charity and meekness, are apt to become remiss in their carriages towards any brother; and because ‘charity thinks not evil,’ they model their acknowledged duty into the form of their own disposition, and so think they must ‘see, and yet not perceive;’ and instead of covering the ‘infirmities’ of a brother, they have a mantle to cast over every transgression. At the same rate also do they frame their conceptions of God, as if he was so merciful that he would scarce reckon any abomination to be above the height of an ordinary infirmity. These are apt to think that the mercies of God, so much praised in Scripture, signify little less than an indulgence in transgression far above what precisians are apt to imagine; and that it is as easy to obtain forgiveness from God for any offence, as it is to say, ‘The Lord be merciful to me a sinner.’ Those that accustom themselves to the delights of the senses are apt to bend the way of their religion to that humour; and think that nothing can be solemn in worship that is not set out with garnishings that may please the eye or ear. Nay, it is observable enough that religion borrows some taint or shape from the various studies and sciences of men; in some, as in many of the fathers, we may see religion dipped in Platonism or Peripateticism. Some introduce the distinctions and definitions of philosophy, others compel all scriptures to submit to the laws of strict logical analysis. Thus, according to the various mediums that men look through, are truths discoloured and dressed up in several shapes. It is easy from these instances to imagine that Satan must have a great advantage against us, in point of error, from the bias of the mind.
4. Fourthly, Adventurous curiosity is another general advantage by which he works. This ariseth partly from a desire of knowledge, and partly from pride; and both these make way for his design.
A desire after knowledge is natural, and withal very bewitching. Divinum est scire quam-plurima, To know hath something in it more than ordinary. This is noted in Job xi. 12, ‘Vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt.’ Though he be foolish, yet he affects wisdom, and the very delight of knowing doth engage men to curious prying searches, though with much labour and hazard. Of this temper were the Athenians: Acts xvii. 21, ‘They spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing;’ not barely in telling news, but in inquiries after new notions and discoveries, and this made them willing to hear Paul, as ‘a setter forth of strange gods, and a new doctrine.’
When this desire after knowledge is animated with pride, as oft it is, for ‘knowledge puffeth up,’ then it is more dangerous. When men are upon a design to seem higher than others, to be singular, to see more than what all men see, to be admired, to out-talk their neighbours, what adventures will they not make! How fair do they lie open to any conceit that may serve this end!
That Satan labours to improve this curiosity is without doubt; he carefully affords fuel to this burning, and diligently blows it up into a flame. The first temptation had that ingredient in it, ‘Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,’ [Gen. iii. 5.] And we see it was a great enticement to Eve: that which would make ‘one wise’ was therefore desirable. The blame of Israel’s first idolatry seems to be laid at this door: Deut. xxxii. 17, ‘They sacrificed to gods whom they knew not,’ to new gods that came newly up; implying that they were drawn aside from their old established way of worship by a curiosity to try the new ways of the heathens. And so great a hand hath this generally in errors, that Paul, 2 Tim. iv. 3, makes this itch after novelty the great ground of that defection from truth which he foresaw was coming, ‘They shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears,’ Pruritus aurium est scabies ecclesiarum. This itch of the ear is the usual forerunner of a scab in the church, because it doth dispose men to receive any kind of teacher. God indeed doth sometimes take the advantage of our natural curiosity for our good. By this means many of John’s hearers, who went out into the wilderness to him, as to a ‘strange sight,’ as those words imply, ‘What went ye out into the wilderness to see?’ [Mat. xi. 7,] were converted. By this means, the gospel afterwards made a large progress, as we see commonly new teachers affect most at first; for when men grow acquainted with their gifts, their admiration decays, and the success of their labours is not so great many times. The devil also observing the prevalency of curiosity, and that men are more pleased with new notions than with old truths, he endeavours also to plough with this heifer, and oft makes a great harvest by it. There is yet another advantage more that he sometimes useth, and that is,
5. Fifthly, Atheistical debauchery. When men by long custom in sinning have arrived to habitual carelessness and presumption, then they become practical atheists. Their vicious habits work upon their understandings to obliterate all principles. When men are gone so far, they are fit engineers for Satan; for while they disbelieve all things, they can, to serve a design or to head a party, take up any opinion, and pretend the greatest seriousness in the propagating it, though in the meantime they secretly laugh at the credulity of the vulgar.
These men let out themselves and all their parts to the devil, and he knows how to make use of them, to bring on the delusion and deception of others. Many ages have given examples of such. Those seducers mentioned in the New Testament were, some of them, of this rank, and therefore called ‘deceitful workers,’ [2 Cor. xi. 13.] Such as were not really under those persuasions which they thought to fix upon others, but upon design, transformed themselves into the apostles of Christ; such as served not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies, and yet by good words and fair speeches deceived the hearts of the simple: Rom. xvi. 18, ‘Who, through covetousness, with feigned words, made merchandize of men,’ 2 Pet. ii. 3. Balaam was such, and the woman Jezebel, that called herself a prophetess, Rev. ii. 20. Such was the Archbishop of Spalato,[234] who for advantage could at pleasure take up and lay down his religion. Such a one was the false Jew, not so long since discovered in this place, who being a Romish emissary, pretended to be a Jew converted; and seeking a pure church, under that vizor, designing to overthrow, by private insinuations, the faith of the simple, uncautious admirers![235] By such instruments Satan works where he hath opportunity.