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

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By these nine devices he keeps the light from ensnared sinners, or them from coming to the light. But if all this cannot draw a curtain before the sun, if its bright beams breaks through all, so that it cannot be avoided, but there will be a manifestation and discovery of ‘the hidden things of darkness,’ then Satan useth all his art and cunning to stir up in the hearts of men their hatred against the light.

This is his second grand piece of policy to keep all in quiet under his command, to which purpose,

1. First, He endeavours to draw on a hatred against the light, by raising in the minds of men a prejudice against the person that brings or offers it. If he that warns or reproves express himself anything warmly or cuttingly against his brother’s sins, this the devil presently makes use of; and those that are concerned think they have a just cause to ‘stop their ears and harden their necks,’ because they conceive that anger, or ill-will, or some such base thing did dictate those, though just, rebukes. The devil turned the heart of Ahab against the faithful warnings of Micaiah upon a deep prejudice that he had taken up against him; for so he expresseth himself to Jehoshaphat, ‘I hate him, for he never prophesieth good unto me,’ 1 Kings xxii. 8. In this case men consider not how justly, how truly, how profitably anything is spoken; but, as some insects that feed upon sores, they pass by what is sound and good, and fix upon that which is corrupt and putrid, either through the weakness and inobservancy of the reprover, or pretended to be such, by the prejudice of the party which doth altogether disable him to put a right construction upon anything.