The devil is exceeding diligent in this: 1. That he may make the soul despair, and say, Now I have used all means in vain, there is no hope. 2. To double the sinner's misery by turning the very remedy into a disease. 3. To show his malice against Christ, and say, I have turned thy own means to thy dishonour.
Consider, therefore, how greatly we are concerned to do the work of God effectually. Means well used are the way to more grace, to communion with God, and to salvation; but ill used, they dishonour and provoke him, and destroy ourselves, like children that cut their fingers with the knife, when they should cut their meat with it.
Tempt. I. Duty is frustrated by false ends: as, 1. To procure God to bear with them in their sin (whereas it is the use of duty to destroy sin). 2. To make God satisfaction for sin (which is the work of Christ). 3. To merit grace (when the imperfection merits wrath). 4. To prosper in the world and escape affliction, Jam. iv. 3 (and so they are but serving their flesh, and desiring God to serve it). 5. To quiet conscience in a course of sin (by sinning more in offering the sacrifice of fools, Eccles. v. 1, 2). 6. To be approved of men (and verily they have their reward, Matt. vi. 5). 7. To be saved when they can keep the world and sin no longer (that is, to obtain that the gospel may all be false and God unjust).
Direct. I. First see that the heart be honest, and God, and heaven, and holiness most desired, else all that you do will want right ends.
Tempt. II. When ignorance or error make men take God for what he is not, thinking blasphemously of him, as if he were like them, and liked their sins, or were no lover of holiness, they frustrate all their worship of him.
Direct. II. Study God in his Son, in his word, in his saints, in his works: know him as described before, chap. iii. direct. iv. And see that your wicked corrupted hearts, or wilful forgetting him, blind not your understandings.
Tempt. III. To come to God in ourselves and out of Christ, and use his name but customarily, and not in faith and confidence.
Direct. III. Know well your sin, and vileness, and desert, and the justice and holiness of God; and then you will see that if Christ reconcile you not, and justify you not by his blood, and do not sanctify and help you by his Spirit, and make you sons of God, and intercede not for you, there is no access to God, nor standing in his sight.
Tempt. IV. The tempter would have you pray hypocritically, with the tongue only, without the heart: to put off God in a few customary words, with seeming to pray (as they do the poor, James ii. with a few empty words) either in a form of words not understood, or not considered, or not felt and much regarded; or in more gross hypocrisy, praying for the holiness which they will not have, and against the sin which they will not part with.
Direct. IV. O fear the holy, jealous, heart-searching God, that hateth hypocrisy, and will be worshipped seriously in spirit and truth, and will be sanctified of all that draw near him, Lev. x. 3; and saith, they "worship him in vain, that draw nigh him with the lips, when the heart is far from him," Matt. xv. 8, 9. See God by faith, as present with thee, and know thyself, and it will awaken thee to seriousness. See Heb. iv. 13; Hos. viii. 12, 13.