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

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Of Satan’s perverting our reason.—His second way of blinding.—The possibility of this, and the manner of accomplishing it directly, several ways; and indirectly, by the delights of sin, and by sophistical arguments; with an account of them.

II. Secondly, The second way by which Satan blinds us through the power of lust is by perverting and corrupting our reason, drawing it to approve of that which it first disapproved. That our lusts have such a power upon the understanding to make such an alteration, need not seem strange to those that shall consider that the Scripture, propounding the knowledge of the highest mysteries, doth positively require, as a necessary pre-requisite to these things, that we ‘lay aside all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness,’ James i. 20,—in these terms, noting the loathsome defilement of our lusts,—that so we may ‘receive the engrafted word;’ strongly implying that our lusts have a power to elude and evade the strongest reasons, and to hinder their entertainment: which our Saviour notes to have been also the cause of the Jews’ blindness, ‘How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another?’ John v. 44. Their lusts of honour stood in their light, and perverted their reason.