[3.] These discomposures of soul give Satan a fit season for the management of his accusation. Strong accusations do often effect nothing when the season is unsuitable. Many a time he hath as much to say against the comforts of men, when yet they shake all off, as Paul did the viper off his hand, and feel no harm, [Acts xxviii. 3.] But that which prepares the conscience to receive the indictment is a particular disposition which it is wrought into by suspicious credulity and fearfulness. These make the heart, as wax to the seal, ready to take any impression that Satan will stamp upon it. Now, by long disturbances, he works the heart into this mould very often, and upon a double account he gains himself a fit opportunity to charge home his exceptions. 1. In that he sets upon the conscience with his accusations after the heart hath been long molested and confused with its other troubles; for then the heart is weakened, and unable to make resistance as at other times. An assault with a fresh party after a long conflict disorders its forces, and puts all to flight. 2. In that long and great discomposures of mind bring on a distemper of melancholy; for it is notoriously known by common experience that those acid humours producing this distemper, which have their rise from the blood, may be occasioned by their violent passions of mind, the animal spirits becoming inordinate by long discomposures of sadness, envy, terror, and fretful cares, and the motion of the blood being retarded, it by degrees departs from its temperament, and is infected with an acidity, so that persons no way inclined naturally to melancholy may yet become so by the disquiets of their troubled mind.
Both these ways, but chiefly melancholy, the devil hath his advantage for disturbing the conscience. Melancholy most naturally inclines men to be solicitous for their souls’ welfare; but withal disposeth them so strongly to suspect the worst—for it is a credulous, suspicious humour in things hurtful—and afflicts so heavily with sadness for what it doth respect, that when Satan lays before men of that humour their miscarriages under their discontents, their impatience, unthankfulness, anger, rash thoughts, and speeches against God or men, &c., withal suggesting that such a heart cannot be right with God, after serious thoughts upon Satan’s frequently repeated charge, they cry out, Guilty, guilty; and then begins a new trouble for their unregenerate estate, and their supposed lost souls.
[4.] In this case usually Satan hath greater liberty to accuse, and by his accusations to molest the conscience, in that men of discomposed spirits, by the manifold evils arising thence, provoke God to desert them, and to leave them in Satan’s hand to be brought into an hour of temptation. Satan’s commission is occasioned by our provocations, and the temptations arising from such a commission are usually dreadful. They are solemn temptations, and called so after a singular manner; for of these I take those scriptures to be meant, ‘Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation, Mat. xxvi. 41; ‘And lead us not into temptation,’ Mat. vi. 13. Such temptations are not common temptations, and are of unknown force and hazard to the soul, which way soever they are designed, either for sin or terror. For several things do concur in a solemn temptation. As, 1. Satan doth in a special manner challenge a man to the combat, or rather he challenges God to give him such a man to fight with him, as he did concerning Job. This Christ tells us of, Luke xxii. 31, ‘Simon, Satan hath desired to have you.’ The word signifies a challenging or daring—ἐξαιτεῖσθαι; and it seems the devil is oft daring God to give us into his hand, when we little know of it. 2. There is also a special suitableness of occasion and snare to the temper and state of men. Thus he took Peter at an advantage in the high priest’s hall; and in the case we now speak of he takes advantage of men’s provocations and melancholy. 3. There is always a violent prosecution, which our Saviour expresseth under the comparison of sifting, which is a restless agitation of the corn, bringing that which was at the bottom to the top, and shuffling the top to the bottom, so that the chaff or dirt is always uppermost. 4. And to all this there is divine permission, Satan let loose, and we left to our ordinary strength, as is implied in that expression, ‘He hath desired to have you that he might sift you.’ Now then, if the devil have such ground to give God a challenge concerning such men, and if God do, as he justly may, leave such men, whose bitterness of spirit hath been as ‘a smoke in his nostrils all the day,’ [Isa. lxv. 5,] in Satan’s hand, he will so shake them that their consciences shall have no rest. And this he can yet the more easily effect, because,
[5.] Discomposures of spirit have a particular tendency to incline our thoughts to severity and harshness, so that those who have had long and great disturbances upon any outward occasions—of loss, affliction, or disappointment, &c.—do naturally think, after a solemn review of such troubles, harshly of God and of themselves. They are ready to conclude that God is surely angry with them in that he doth afflict them, or that they have unsanctified hearts in that their thoughts are so fretful and unruly upon every inconsiderable petty occasion. It is so ordinary for men under the weight of their trouble, or under the sense of their sin, to be sadly apprehensive of God’s wrath and their soul’s hazard, that it were needless to offer instances: let David’s case be instead of all. That his troubles begot such imaginations frequently, may be seen throughout the book of the Psalms. We never read his complaints against persecuting enemies, or for other afflictions, but still his heart is afraid that God is calling sin to remembrance. In Ps. xxxviii. he is under great distress, and tells how low his thoughts were: he was ‘troubled,’ greatly ‘bowed down;’ he ‘went mourning all the day long;’ he expresseth his thoughts to have been that ‘God had forsaken him,’ ver. 21: and his hopes, though they afterward revived, were almost gone; he cries out of his sins as having ‘gone over his head,’ and become ‘a burden too heavy for him,’ ver. 4, and therefore sets himself to confess them, ver. 18. He trembles at God’s anger, and feels the ‘arrows of God sticking fast in him,’ ver. 2. But what occasioned all this? The psalm informs us, God had visited him with sickness, ver. 7. Besides that—for one trouble seldom comes alone—his friends were perfidious, ver. 11; his enemies also were busy laying snares for his life, ver. 12. Now his thoughts were to this purpose, that surely he had some way or other greatly provoked God by his sins, and therefore he fears wrath in every rebuke, and displeasure in every chastisement, ver. 1. The like you may see in Ps. cii., where the prophet upon the occasion of sickness, ver. 3, 23, and the reproach of enemies, ver. 8, is under great trouble, and ready to fail except speedy relief prevent, ver. 2: the reason whereof was this, that he concluded these troubles were evident tokens of God’s indignation and wrath; ‘because of thine indignation and thy wrath,’ ver. 10. From these five particulars we may be satisfied that it cannot be otherwise, and also how it comes to be so, that sometime trouble of conscience is brought on by other discomposing troubles of the mind. For if these take away the comforts which supported the soul, and afford also arguments to the devil to prove a wicked heart, and withal ‘a fit season’ to urge them to a deep impression, God in the meantime standing ‘at a distance,’ and the thoughts naturally inclined to conclude God’s wrath from these troubles, how impossible is it that Satan should miss of disquieting the conscience by his strong, vehement suggestions of wickedness and desertion!
In our inquiries after Satan’s success in working these discomposures of mind, we have discovered, 1. That the disturbances thence arising are great; 2. That they have a tendency to trouble of conscience. There is but one particular more to be spoken of, relating to his success in this design, and that is,
(3.) These disturbances are much in Satan’s power. Ordinarily he can do it at pleasure, except when God restrains him from applying fit occasions, or when, notwithstanding these occasions, he extraordinarily suspends the effect, which he frequently doth when men are enraged under suffering upon the account of the gospel and conscience; for then, though they be bound up under affliction and iron, yet the ‘iron enters not into the soul;’ though they are troubled, they are not distressed. These extraordinaries excepted, he can as easily discompose the spirits of men as he can by temptation draw them into other sins; which may be evidenced by these considerations:
[1.] We may observe that those whose passionate tempers do usually transport them into greater vehemencies, are never out of trouble. Their fits frequently return, they are never out of the fire, and this is because Satan is still provided of occasions suitable to their inclinations.
[2.] Though God, out of his common bounty to mankind, hath allowed him a comfortable being in the world, yet we find that generally the sons of men, under their various occupations and studies, are wearied out with vexations of spirit. This Solomon, in Ecclesiastes, discovers at large in various employments of men, not exempting the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge: chap. i. 18, ‘In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow:’ nor pleasures nor riches, for by all these he shews that a man is obnoxious to disquiets; so that the general account of man’s life is but this: chap. ii. 23, ‘All his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night.’ That it is so, is testified by common experience past denial; but how it comes to be so, is the inquiry. It is either from God, or from Satan working by occasions upon our tempers. That it is not from God, is evident; for though sorrow be a part of that curse which man was justly doomed unto, yet hath he appointed ways and means by which it might be so mitigated that it might be tolerable without discomposure of spirit; and therefore Solomon, designing in his Ecclesiastes to set forth the chief good, shews that felicity consists not in the common abuse of outward things, because that brings only vexation, but in the fear of God leading to future happiness, and in the meantime in a thankful, comfortable use of things present without anxiety of mind. Hence doth he fix his conclusion, as the result of his experience, and often repeats it: ‘There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour,’ chap. ii. 24, iii. 12, 13, and v. 18, 19. Not that Solomon plays the epicure, giving advice ‘to eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,’ nor that he speaks deridingly to those that seek their felicity in this life, as if he should say, ‘If ye do terminate your desires upon a terrene felicity, there is nothing better than to eat and drink,’ &c. But he gives a serious positive advice of enjoying the things of this life with cheerfulness, which he affirms proceeds from the sole bounty of God as his singular gift: ‘It is the gift of God,’ chap. iii. 13; ‘it is our portion’—that is, our allowance, chap. v. 19, for these two expressions, ‘our portion,’ and ‘God’s gift,’ they are of the same signification with Solomon here; and when a man hath power to enjoy this allowance in comfort, it is God that ‘answereth him in the joy of his heart,’ ver. 20. It is plain, then, that God ‘sows good seed in his field;’ the springing up, therefore, of these tares of vexation, which so generally afflict the sons of men, must be ascribed to this, ‘the enemy hath done it,’ [Mat. xiii. 28.]
[3.] It is also a considerable ground of suspicion that Satan can do much in discomposures of spirit, in that sometimes those whose tempers are most cool and calm, and whose singular dependence upon, and communion with God, must needs more strengthen them against these passionate vexations, are notwithstanding precipitated into violent commotions. Moses was naturally meek above the common disposition of men, and his very business was converse with God, whose presence kept his heart under a blessed awe; yet, upon the people’s murmuring, he was so transported with sullenness and unbelief, at the waters of Meribah, Num. xx. 10-12, that ‘it went ill with him;’ which David thus expresseth, Ps. cvi. 33, ‘They provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips.’ Who can suppose less in this matter than that Satan, having him at advantage, hurried him to this rashness—specially seeing such vehemencies were not usual with Moses, and that his natural temper led him to the contrary? This hath some affinity with the next consideration, which is,
[4.] That when men most foresee the occasions of their trouble, and do most fear the trouble that might thence arise, and most firmly design to keep their hearts quiet, yet are they oft forced, against all care and resolution, upon extravagant heats. David resolved and strenuously endeavoured to possess his soul in serenity and patience;—for what could be more than that solemn engagement? Ps. xxxix. 1, ‘I said I will look to my ways;’ and what endeavours could be more severe than to keep himself ‘as with bit and bridle’? what care could be more hopeful to succeed than to be ‘dumb with silence’?—yet for all this he could not keep his heart calm nor restrain his tongue: ver. 3, ‘My heart waxed hot within me; while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue.’ Who suspects not the hand of Satan in this?