[1.] From his nature. He is a blasphemous spirit, and withal so malicious, that whatsoever is in his cursed mind he will be ready to vent upon all occasions.
[2.] From his practice; for where he can obtain the rule over men’s imaginations, as in some distracted persons, and those that are distempered with fevers, he usually makes them vomit forth oaths, cursings, and blasphemies, and this he doth to some that, while they have had the use of their reason, have not been observed to give their tongue the liberty of swearing or cursed speaking.
[3.] From his professed design in the case of Job, concerning whom he boasted to God himself that he would make him curse him to his face, and accordingly tempted him by his wife to curse God and die.
[4.] From the sad experience of those that have suffered under this sad affliction: for many have complained of blasphemous thoughts; and those whom he cannot conquer he will thus trouble. Neither need we think it strange that the devil can impress blasphemies upon the imaginations of men against their wills, when we consider that he could make Saul, in his fits, to behave himself like an inspired person, and cause him to utter things beyond and unsuitable to his disposition, after the rate and manner of those raptures which idolatrous priests used to be transported withal. Bacchatur vates. [Virgil.][335] This, in 1 Sam. xviii. 10, is called Saul’s prophesying, when the ‘evil spirit from the Lord vexed him;’ and is the same with that which is spoken concerning Baal’s priests: 1 Kings xviii. 29, ‘They prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice’—that is, they were exercised with trances and rapturous furies, in which they uttered strange sounds and speeches. How easily, then, may Satan possess the fancies of men with blasphemies! so that the unwilling may be troubled with them, and those that are deprived of the benefit of reason, may, from the power of the impression upon their imagination, vent them with a kind of unwillingness.
Melancholy persons do very frequently meet with this kind of trouble, Satan having a great power upon their imagination, and great advantages, from the darkness of that humour, to make the fear arising from such thoughts the more astonishing, and to delude them into an apprehension that they are guilty of all that passeth through their thoughts, and also to work this perplexity to more dismal effects. In these kind of men he doth play the tyrant with such injections, abusing them to such a height as if they were his vassals and slaves, whose thoughts and tongues were in his and not their own keeping; and so strongly doth he possess them with this perplexity sometimes, that all the counsels, reasonings, or advice of others cannot in the least satisfy or relieve them; yet, notwithstanding, I have known several under this affliction who, when by physic the state of their bodies hath been altered, have found themselves at ease immediately, the trouble gradually and insensibly ceasing of itself.
Others there are that have great vexation from these thoughts, and these are commonly such as by some long and grievous pain, sickness, or other crosses, have their spirits fretted and imbittered; then is Satan ready to suggest that God is cruel or regardless of his people; and these thoughts are the more dreadful because fretting and murmuring spirits have a natural tendency to think harshly of God; so that Satan in this case doth with the more boldness obtrude these suggestions upon them, finding so great a forwardness toward such imaginations, and also with greater severity he doth reflect upon them, as being in some likelihood compliant and consenting.
When other persons—not so concerned as these two sorts of men above mentioned—are assaulted with blasphemous thoughts, the fits are less permanent, and, because they easily discover the design and author of them, not highly affrightful, though still troublesome.
The burden of these injections are much like the former, very sadly afflicting. For who can easily bear the noise of Satan while he shouts continually into their ears odious calumnies and blasphemous indignities against God? David could not hear wicked men blaspheme God but it was ‘as a sword in his bones,’ exceeding painful. The impressions of nature, that teach us to revere and honour God; the power of education, that confirms these impressions; the persuasion of faith, that assures us of the reality and infinite excellency of a Godhead; and the force of love, that makes us more sensibly apprehensive of any injury or dishonour done to him whom we love above all;—all these do suffer by these violent incursions of Satan, and the sufferer finds himself to be pained and tortured in these noble parts. How grievous must it be to a child of God to have his ear chained to these intolerable, ingrateful reproaches!—especially when we consider that the devil will in this case utter the most dreadful blasphemies he can devise, which will still add to the affliction—for even those men that through habit can well bear ordinary petty oaths, will yet startle at outrageous prodigious swearing—and therefore whatever covert and consequential blasphemies may be to some men, these impudent, hideous abuses of the holy and just God must needs sadly trouble those that are forced to hear them. And the more constant the greater trouble. Who would not be weary of their lives that must be forced to undergo this vexation still without intermission? And yet the devil can advance the trouble a little higher by the apparatus or artificial[336] dread which he puts upon the temptation in the manner of the injection; as the roaring of the lion increaseth terror in the beasts of the field, who without that would tremble at his presence; and as the thundering and lightning at the giving of the law increased the fear of Israel, so when Satan is upon this design, he shakes as it were the house, and makes a noise that the fright may be increased.
3. Suspicious fears of being excluded out of God’s eternal decree of election is another of his affrightments. This is when Satan boldly takes upon him to determine God’s secret counsel concerning any man; peremptorily asserting that he is none of God’s elect. In which case he often doth only inject the suspicion confidently, without offer of proof; or if he use arguments, they never amount to a proof of his assertion; neither is it possible they should, for these are among ‘God’s secrets,’ and out of Satan’s reach, though possibly they may prove the person to be not converted at present. So that this kind of trouble differs exceedingly from those disquiets of temptation which frequently men suffer about their state of regeneration. And indeed the question should not be confounded, it being of great concern to men when their peace is assaulted to be able to observe the difference betwixt these two assertions, ‘Thou are not elected,’ and ‘Thou art not yet regenerated.’ Seeing—the latter being granted—there yet remains a hope of the probability or possibility of that man’s conversion afterwards. The suspicions of non-conversion are more common, and not so dangerous; nay, in unregenerate persons the fears of their being yet in that condition, being joined with diligence and care to avoid the danger, are necessary and advantageous; but the former being granted, all hopes are, together with that concession, laid off, which must needs make the affrightment intolerable. In this we may observe,
[1.] That Satan, for the better management of this design, doth not only inject these suspicions in the most dreadful language—as, ‘Thou art a lost and damned wretch, hopelessly miserable to all eternity; God hath not elected thee to life, but prepared for thee, as a vessel of wrath, the lake of fire and brimstone for ever,’ &c.—but also he doth assert them with the highest peremptoriness imaginable, as if he had authority from God to pronounce a sentence of condemnation against a man. This must needs amaze the afflicted unspeakably.