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

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I shall first give some account of his malice, by which it shall appear we do not wrong the devil in calling him malicious, the truth of which charge will evidence itself in the following particulars:—

1. First, The devil, though a ‘spirit,’ yet is a proper subject of sin. We need no other evidence for this than what doth by daily experience result from ourselves. We have sins which our spirits and hearts do act, that relate not to the body, called ‘a filthiness of the spirit,’ in contradistinction to the ‘filthiness of the flesh,’ [2 Cor. vii. 1.] It is true, it cannot be denied but that those iniquities which have a necessary dependence upon the organs of the body, as drunkenness, fornication, &c., cannot properly, as to the formality of the act, be laid at Satan’s door, though as a tempter and provoker of these men he may be called the father of these sins; yet the fore-mentioned iniquities, which are of a spiritual nature, are properly and formally committed by him, as lying, pride, hatred, and malice. And this distinction Christ himself doth hint: John viii. 44, ‘When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own,’ where he asserts such spiritual sins to be properly and formally acted by himself. The certainty of all appears in the epithets given him—‘the wicked one,’ ‘the unclean spirit;’ as also those places that speak his fall, ‘They kept not their first estate,’ Jude 6; ‘The angels that sinned,’ 2 Peter ii. 4. If sins spiritual are in a true and proper sense attributed to the devil, then also may malice be attributed to him.