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

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2. Secondly, The wickedness of Satan is capable of increase, a magis et minus. Though he be a wicked spirit, and as to inclination full of wickedness, though so strongly inclined that he cannot but sin, and therefore as God is set forth to us as the fountain of holiness, so is Satan called the author and father of sin, yet seeing we cannot ascribe an infiniteness to him, we must admit that, as to acts of sin at least, he may be more or less sinful, and that the wickedness of his heart may be drawn more out by occasions, motives, and provocations; besides, we are expressly taught thus much, Rev. xii. 12, ‘The devil is come down, having great wrath, because his time is short.’ Where we note (1.) That his wrath is called ‘great,’ implying greater than at other times; (2.) That external motives and incentives, as the shortness of his time, prevail with him to draw forth greater acts of fury.

3. Thirdly, Whatsoever occasions do draw out or kindle malice to a rage, Satan hath met with them in an eminent degree, in his own fall and man’s happiness.77 Nothing is more proper to beget malice than hurts or punishments, degradations from happiness. Satan’s curse, though just, fills him with rage and fretting against God, when he considers that from the state and dignity of a blessed angel he is cast down to darkness and to the basest condition imaginable. For the part of his curse, which concerned Satan as well as the serpent, ‘Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shall be thy meat,’ implies a state most base, as the use of the phrase proves: ‘They shall lick the dust of thy feet,’ Isa. xlix. 23; ‘Thine enemies shall lick the dust,’ Ps. lxxii. 9; ‘They shall lick the dust as a serpent,’ Micah vii. 17. Where the spirit is so wicked that it cannot accept the punishment of its iniquity, all punishment is as a poison, and envenoms the heart with a rage against the hand that afflicted it. Thus doth Satan’s fall enrage him, and the more when he sees man enstated into a possibility of enjoying what he hath lost. The envy and pride of his heart boils up to a madness—for that is the only use that the wretchedly miserable can make of the sight of that happiness which they enjoy not, especially if, having once enjoyed it, they are now deprived. This begot the rage and wrath in Cain against Abel, and afterward his murder. The eye of the wicked is evil where God is good. Hence may it be concluded that Satan, being a wicked spirit, and this wickedness being capable of acting higher or lower according to occasions, and with a suitableness thereto, cannot but shew an inconceivable malice against us, our happiness and his misery being such proper occasions for the wickedness of his heart to work upon.