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

213 страница из 220

[4.] Fourthly, When men are under the awe and fear of such as carry an authority in their countenances and employments for the discouraging of sin, Satan, as hopeless to prevail, doth not solicit to scandalous iniquities. Much of external sanctity and saintlike behaviour ariseth from hence. The faces and presence of some men have such a shining splendour, that iniquity blusheth and hideth its head before them. Sin dare not do what it would; so great a reverence and esteem of such persons is kept up in the consciences of some, and so great an awe and fear is thence derived to others, that they will not or dare not give way to an insolency in evil. The Israelites were generally a wicked people, yet such an awe they had of ‘Joshua, and the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord,’ Josh. ii. 7, that Satan seemed to be cast out all their days. Who could have thought Joash had been so much under Satan’s power, that had observed his ways all the time of Jehoiada the priest? 2 Chron. xxiv. 2, ‘Then he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.’ Satan was content to let him alone, because Jehoiada’s life and authority did overawe him; but after his death Satan returned to his possession, ‘and the king hearkened to the princes of Judah, and served groves and idols,’ ver. 17. The like is observed of Uzziah, 2 Chron. xxvi. 5. The reverence that he had for Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God, discouraged the tempter from soliciting him to those evils which afterward he engaged him in, ver. 16. Satan is willing, when he perceives the awe and authority of good men stands in his way, rather to suspend the prosecution of his design, than, by forcing it against so strong a current, to hazard the shipwreck of it.