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

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(3.) Thirdly, To both the former may be added another knowledge, which because it is from another spring, I may call it an accessory knowledge, consisting in occasional discoveries made to him, either when God is pleased to make known so much of his mind and purpose, as he employs him, as an instrument or servant, to execute, as he did in the case of Job and Ahab; or when he informs himself from the Scriptures, or catcheth hints of knowledge from the church and the ordinances thereof. If good angels have an increase of knowledge this way, as is evident they have, ‘for to principalities and powers in heavenly places is made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,’ Eph. iii. 10, we cannot but imagine that Satan hath some addition of knowledge from such discoveries. While we are upon this point, it will be necessary to offer some satisfaction to two questions.

Quest. 1. First, Whether Satan knows our thoughts?

Ans. 1. It is undoubtedly God’s prerogative to know the thoughts. He knows them intuitively, which is beyond the power of any creature: Jer. xvii. 9, ‘Who can know it?’ This is a challenge to all, implying the utter impossibility of it to any but to God alone; ‘I the Lord search the heart;’ he knows the most inward thoughts: Rev. ii. 23, ‘I am he which searcheth the reins, and the heart;’ he knows them evidently and certainly: Heb. iv. 13, ‘All things are naked and open95 before him with whom we have to do.’ Those secret thinkings and intendments which are hid from others, and which we ourselves cannot distinctly read, because of their secret intricacy or confusedness, yet the very inside and outside of them are uncased, cut up and anatomised by his eye; in all which expressions God is careful to reserve this to himself, ‘I the Lord do it,’ or ‘I am he, &c., that searcheth;’ and signifies that none else is able to do the like.