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

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This, before I come to the particulars, I shall prove and illustrate in the general, by the gradual procedure of these few following considerations:—

First, All the malice, power, cruelty, and diligence of which we have spoken, with all the advantages of multitude, order, and knowledge, by which these cruel qualifications are heightened—these are but his furniture and accomplishment which fit him for his subtle contrivances of delusion, and make him able to deceive; neither hath he any rise of his power and knowledge but in reference to deceit. In Eph. vi. 11, 12, which is a place wherein the apostle doth of purpose present Satan in his way of dealing with men, his whole practice is set forth under the term and notion of arts and wiles: ‘that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.’ This is the whole work of Satan, against which the furniture of that spiritual armour is requisite; and lest any should think that his power or wickedness are other distinct things in him, which are to be provided against by other means of help, he presently adds, that these are no otherwise used by him but in order to his wiles and cunning, and therefore not to be looked upon as distinct, though indeed to be considered in conjunction with his subtlety and cunning, as things that make his wiles the more dangerous and hazardous: ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places;’ which words do but strengthen the apostle’s warning and caution about the forementioned wiles, which are therefore the more carefully to be observed and watched against, because his power is so great that he can contrive snares with the greatest skill and art imaginable; and his wickedness is so great, that we cannot expect either honesty or modesty should restrain him from making the vilest and most disingenuous proposals, nor from attesting a conveniency or goodness in his motions, with the highest confidence of most notorious lying.