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

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2. Secondly, We have reason to suspect that he may have ways of deceit and imposture upon our senses. The deceits of the senses are so much noted, that some philosophers will scarce allow any credit to be given them; not that they are always deceitful, but that they are often so, and therefore always suspicious.181 The soul hath no intelligence but by the senses. It is then a business of easy belief, that Satan may not altogether slight this advantage, but that when he sees it fit for his purpose, he may impose upon us by the deception of our eyes and ears. We little know how oft our senses have disguised things to us. In a pleasing object, our eyes may be as a magnifying or multiplying glass. In the first temptation Satan seems to have wrought both upon the object and also upon the senses; she ‘saw it was good for food and pleasant.’ Who can question but that she saw the fruit before? But this was another kind of sight, of more power and attraction. An instance of Satan’s cunning in both the forementioned particulars we have from Austin, relating the story of his friend Alypius, who by the importunity of his acquaintance consented to go to the theatre, yet with a resolve not to open his eyes, lest the sight of these spectacles should entice his heart; but being there, the noise and sudden shouting of the multitude prevailed so far with him that he forgot his resolution; takes the liberty to see what occasioned the shouting, and once seeing, is now so inflamed with delight that he shouts as the rest do, and becomes a frequenter of the theatre as others.182 What was there to be seen and heard he knew before by the relation of others; but now being present, his eyes and ears were by Satan so heightened in their offices, that those bloody objects seemed pleasant beyond all that had been reported of them, and the lust of his heart drawn out by Satan’s cunning disposal of the object and senses.