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

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1. First, Satan useth a clamorous importunity, and doth so follow us with suggestions, that what way soever we turn they follow us. We can think nothing else, or hear nothing else, they are ever before us.

2. Secondly, He worketh this disturbance in our thoughts by levying a legion of temptations against us—many at once, and of several kinds, from within, from without, on every side. He gathers all, from the Dan to the Beersheba of his empire, to oppress us with a multitude; so that while our thoughts are divided about many things, they are less fixed and observant in any particular.

3. Thirdly, He sometimes endeavours to weary us out with long solicitations: as those that besiege a city, when they cannot storm, endeavour to waste their strength and provisions by a long siege. His design in this is to come upon us, as Ahithophel counselled Absalom, when we are ‘weary and weak-handed’ by watching and long resistance.

4. Fourthly, But his chief design is to take the advantage of any trouble, inward or outward, and by the help of this he dangerously discomposeth and distracts our counsels and resolves. If any have a spirit distempered, or lie under the apprehensions of wrath, it is easy for him to confound and amaze such, that they shall scarce know what they do or what they think. The like advantage he hath from outward afflictions, and these opportunities he the rather takes, for these reasons:—