Читать книгу Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations. In Three Parts онлайн

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[5.] Fifthly, The reality of devils and their malignity hath been the opinion of heathens. For there is nothing more common among them than the belief of inferior deities, which they called δάιμονες or δαιμόνια, that is, devils; and notwithstanding that they supposed these to be mediators to the supreme gods, yet they learned to distinguish them into good and evil.164 The Platonists thought that the souls of tyrants after death became lemures and larvæ, that is, hurtful devils; and at last the name devil became of so bad a signification, that to say, ‘thou hast a devil,’ was reproach and not praise; but what these groped at in the dark, the Scripture doth fully determine, using the word devil only for a malignant spirit.

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Of Satan’s cunning and craft in the general.—Several demonstrations proving Satan to be deceitful; and of the reasons why he makes use of his cunning.

We have taken a survey of our adversary’s strength, and this will open the way to a clearer discovery of his subtlety and craft, which is his great engine by which he works all his tyranny and cruelty in the world, to the ruin or prejudice of the souls of men; of which the apostle in 2 Cor. ii. 11 speaks, as a thing known by the common experience of all discerning persons. His way is to overreach and take advantages, and for this end he useth devices and stratagems, which is a thing so ordinary with him, that none can be ignorant of the truth of it: ‘We are not ignorant of his devices.’