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

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(5.) Fifthly, Being so quick-sighted, he can understand those particular signs which would escape the observation of the wisest men.99 There are some things small in themselves, and therefore unobserved, which yet to wise men are very great indicia of things. The like may be said of us, in reference to our inclinations, our acceptance or resistance of temptations, which yet he hath curiously marked out.

(6.) Sixthly, No doubt but he hath ways to put us upon a discovery of our thoughts, while we conceal them, as by continuing and prosecuting temptations or suggestions, till our trouble or passions do some way discover how it is with us. By all which it appears that his guessings and conjectures do seldom fail him. It is now time to speak to the other question, which is,

Quest. 2. Whether and how far Satan knows things to come?

Ans. To this I shall return answer in these two conclusions:

Conclusion 1. First, There is a way of knowing future things, which is beyond the knowledge of devils, and proper only to God, Isa. xli. 23; there God puts the competition betwixt himself and idols, about the truth of a deity, upon this issue, that ‘he that can shew the things that are to come hereafter, he is God;’ which because they cannot do, he doth hereby evince them to be no gods. If Satan could truly and properly have done this, he had had a plea for a godhead. In divine predictions two things are to be considered. [1.] The matter foretold; when the events of things contingent, and as to second causes casual, depending upon indeterminate causes, are foretold. [2.] The manner; when these things are not uncertainly, or conjecturally, or darkly, but clearly, certainly, infallibly, and fully predicted. Of this nature are divine predictions, which Satan cannot perform, nor yet the angels in heaven.