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

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4. Fourthly, Satan stirs up hatred against the light from the unavoidable effects of light, which are discovery and manifestation: Eph. v. 13, ‘All things that are reproved are made manifest; for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.’ Now the issue of this manifestation is shame, which however it be the daughter of sin and light, yet would it naturally destroy the sin that bred it; and therefore repentance is usually expressed by being ‘ashamed and confounded:’ but that Satan might avoid this, he turns the edge of shame against the light, which should have been employed against sin. When men therefore have sinned, and are as ‘a thief when he is taken,’ Jer. ii. 26, ready to fall into the hands of shame; for the avoiding of that, they ‘rebel against the light,’ Job xxiv. 13. The ground of this hatred, Christ, in John iii. 20, tells us, is ‘lest their deeds should be reproved,’ and they forced to bear their shame. To this end they are put upon it to hide themselves from shame by lies, pretences, excuses, extenuations, or by any fig-leaf that comes first to hand. And as those that live in hotter regions curse the sun because it scorcheth them, so do these curse the light: and instead of taking its help, raise up an irreconcilable enmity against it; and so run from it.