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

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If we knew of nothing of higher concern to us than these, our neglect of greater matters were more excusable; but seeing we are sufficiently instructed that we have more weighty things to look after, such as relate to a certain future estate of happiness or misery, the very discovery of this to a rational being must needs entitle such things to the first and greatest part of his care. He that knows that there is ‘one thing necessary,’ and yet suffers himself to be diverted from the pursuit of that, by ‘troubling himself about many things,’ [Luke x. 41,] is more justly chargeable with folly, than he that neglects his estate, and finds himself no other employment but to pursue feathers in the wind.

Among those things that religion offers to our study, God and our own hearts are the chief. God is the first and last and whole of our happiness; the beginning, progress, and completement of it is from him and in him—for in that centre do all the lines meet; but our heart is the stage upon which this felicity, as to the application of it, is transacted: upon this little spot of earth doth God and Satan draw up their several armies; here doth each of them shew their power and wisdom; this is treated by both; each of them challenge an interest in it; it is attacked on the one side and defended on the other. So that here are skirmishes, battles, and stratagems managed. That man, then, that will not concern himself in his inquiries, how the matter goes in his own heart, what ground is got or lost, what forts are taken or defended, what mines are sprung, what ambuscados laid, or how the battle proceeds, must needs lie under a just imputation of the greatest folly; neither can he be excused in his neglect by the most pressing solicitations of other things that seem to require his attendance upon the highest imaginable pretences of necessity: ‘For what is he profited, that gains the whole world, if he loses his soul?’ [Mark viii. 36.]