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

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[3.] Thirdly, Our adversary is content to forbear, when he perceives that a restraining grace doth lock up the hearts and hands of men. When ‘a stronger than he cometh,’ who can expect less but that he should be more quiet? That God doth restrain men sometime when he doth not change them, needs no proof; that Satan knows of these restraints, cannot be denied. Who can give an account of these communings and discourses that are betwixt God and Satan concerning us? His pleadings in reference to Job were as unknown to Job, till God discovered them, as his pleadings concerning ourselves are to us. Besides, who can tell how much of God’s restraining grace may lie in this, of God’s limiting and straitening Satan’s commission? Now the devil hath not so badly improved his observations, but that he knows it is in vain to tempt where God doth stop his way and tie up men’s hands. Abimelech was certainly resolved upon wickedness when he took Sarah from Abraham, Gen. xx. 2, and yet the matter is so carried for some time, how long we know not, as if the devil had been asleep, or forgot to hasten Abimelech to his intended wickedness; for when God cautions him, ‘he had not come near her,’ ver. 4. The ground of all this was neither in the devil’s backwardness nor Abimelech’s modesty, but Satan lets the matter rest, because he knew that ‘God withheld him, and suffered him not to touch her.’