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

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4. Fourthly, Satan keeps off the light, by catching away the word after it is sown. This policy of his, Christ expressly discovers: Mat. xiii. 19, ‘When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart.’ Such opportunities the devil doth narrowly watch. To be sure, he will be present at a sermon or good discourse, and if he perceive anything spoken that may endanger his peaceable possession, how busy is he to withdraw the heart, sometime by the sight of the eyes, sometimes by vain thoughts of business, occasions, delights, and what not; and if this come not up to his end, then he endeavours, after men have heard, to justle all out by impertinent discourses, urgencies of employment, and a thousand such divertisements, that so men may not lay the warning to heart, nor by serious meditation to apply it to their consciences.

5. Fifthly, He sometimes snuffs out the light by persecution. Those hearers, Mat. xiii. 20, 21, that had received the word with some workings of affections and joy, are ‘presently offended when persecution, because of the word, ariseth.’ By this he threatens men into an acquiescency in their present condition, that if they ‘depart from iniquity, they shall make themselves a prey,’ [Isa. lix. 15.] Bonds, imprisonments, and hatreds, he suggests, shall abide them, and by this means he scares men from the light.