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

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[2.] Secondly, That malice must needs be great that seeks its own fuel, and provides or begs its own occasions, and those such as give no proper provocation to his anger. Of this temper is his malice. He did thus with Job: he begs the commission, calumniates Job upon unjust surmises, presseth still for a further power to hurt him, insomuch that God expressly stints and bounds him—which shews how boundless he would have been if left to his own will—and gives him at last an open check, Job ii. 3, wherein he lays open the malice of his heart in three things: [1.] His own pressing urgency: ‘Thou movedst me;’ [2.] His destructive fury: no less would serve than Job’s utter destruction; [3.] Job’s innocency: all this without cause: ‘Thou movedst me to destroy him without cause.’

[3.] Thirdly, That malice must needs be great that will pursue a small matter. What small game will the devil play rather than altogether sit out! If he can but trouble, or puzzle, or affright, yet that he will do, rather than nothing; if he can, like an adder in the path, but bite the heel, [Gen. xlix. 17,] though his head be bruised for it, he will notwithstanding busy himself in it.