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

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(2.) Secondly, His sophistical arguments, by which the danger may be lessened. Of these his quiver is full: as,

[1.] First, He urgeth that the sin tempted to is little. ‘But a little one;’ it is not, saith he, so great a matter as you make it; there are other sins far greater, and these also practised by men that profess as much as you. Thus he would shame us, as it were, out of our fear, by calling it severity, niceness, or an unnecessary preciseness. If this prevail not,

[2.] Secondly, He hath then another argument: Oh, saith he, be it so, that it is a little more than ordinary, yet it is but once; taste or try it; you need not engage yourselves to frequent practice, you may retreat at pleasure. But if the fear of the danger prevail against this, then,

[3.] Thirdly, He labours to put us under a kind of necessity of sinning, and this he pleads as a justification of the evil. It is not altogether right, but you cannot well avoid it. This plea of necessity is large; occasion, example, command of others, strength of inclination, custom, and what not, are pleaded by him in this case. Some particularly reckon them up;191 and rather than some men will acknowledge the evil, they will blame God’s decree, as if they were necessitated by it, or his providence, as Adam, ‘The woman that thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree.’ David’s bloody resolve against the house of Nabal seems to be justified by him, from Nabal’s great ingratitude, ‘In vain have I kept all that this fellow hath in the wilderness,’ &c., 1 Sam. xxv. 21; and as one engaged by a necessity of repaying such wrongs and affronts, doth he determine to cut them off. Aaron, when he was taxed by Moses about the golden calf, excuseth the matter by a pretended necessity of doing what he did upon the violent importunity of such a heady people, Exod. xxxii. 22; and that when Moses was not to be found, ‘Thou knewest the people, that they are set on mischief.’ This that he urged to Moses Satan no doubt had urged to him, and he had acquiesced in it as something that he thought would excuse, or at least mitigate the offence. Yet if the sinner break through this snare,