Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations / In Three Parts

by Richard Gilpin

[3.] The third piece of Satan’s sophistry from whence he raiseth false conclusions, is his misrepresentation of God. In this he directly crosseth the design of the Scriptures, where God in his nature and dealings is so set forth, that the weakest, the most afflicted and tossed, may receive encouragement of acceptance, and of his fatherly care over them in their saddest trials. Yet withal, lest men should turn his grace into wantonness, and embolden themselves in sin because of his clemency, the Scriptures sometimes give us lively descriptions of his anger against those that wickedly presume upon his goodness, and continue so to do. Both these descriptions of God should be taken together, as affording the only true representation of him. He is so gentle to the humbled sensible sinner, that ‘he will not break their bruised reed, nor quench their smoking flax,’ [Mat. xii. 20.] And so careful of health that, for their recovery, he will not leave them altogether unpunished, nor suffer them to ruin themselves by a surfeit upon worldly comforts; yet with ‘the froward he will shew himself froward,’ Ps. xviii. 26. And ‘as for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity,’ Ps. cxxv. 5. He will ‘put out the candle of the wicked,’ for he sets them in ‘slippery places, &c., so that they are cast down into destruction, and brought into desolation as in a moment; they are consumed with terrors,’ [Ps. lxxiii. 19.] Now Satan will sometimes argue against the children of God, and endeavour to break their hopes by turning that part of the description of God against them, which is intended for the dismounting of the confidence of the wicked, and the bringing down of high looks. By this means he wrests the description of God to a contrary end, and misrepresents God to a trembling afflicted soul. This he doth,

First, By misrepresenting his nature. Here he reads a solemn lecture of the holiness and justice of God, but always with reflection upon the vileness and unworthiness of the person against whom he intends his dart. And thus he argues: Lift up thine eyes to the heavens, behold the brightness of God’s glory: consider his unspotted holiness, his infinite justice. The heavens are not clean in his sight; how much more abominable and filthy then art thou! His eyes are pure, he cannot wink at nor approve of the least sin; how canst thou then imagine, except thou be intolerably impudent, that he hath taken such an unclean wretch into his favour? He is a jealous God, and will by no means acquit the guilty; canst thou then with any show of reason conclude thyself to be his child? He beholds the wicked afar off; he shuts out their prayer; he laughs at their calamity; he mocks when their fear comes; and therefore thou hast no cause to think that he will hear thy cry, though thou shouldst make many prayers. It cannot be supposed that he will incline his ear. It is his express determination, that if any man regard iniquity in his heart, the Lord will not hear his prayer. This, and a great deal more will he say. And while Satan speaks but at this rate, we may call him modest, because his allegations are in themselves true, if they were applied rightly. Sometimes he will go further, and plainly belie God, speaking incredible falsehoods of him: but because these properly appertain to a higher sort of troubles, of which I am next to speak, I shall not here mention them. However, if he stops here, he saith enough against any servant of God that carries a high sense of his unworthiness. For being thus brought to the view of these astonishing attributes, he is dashed out of countenance, and can think no other, but that it is very unlikely that so unworthy a sinner should have any interest in so holy a God. Thus the devil affrights him off, turning the wrong side of the description of God to him; and in the meantime hiding that part of it that speaks Gods wonderful condescensions, infinite compassions, unspeakable readiness to accept the humble, broken-hearted, weary, heavy-laden sinner, that is prostrate at his footstool for pardon. All which are on purpose declared in the description of God’s nature, to obviate this temptation, and to encourage the weak.

Second, He misrepresents God in his providence. If God chastise his children by any affliction, Satan perversely wrests it to a bad construction, especially if the affliction be sharp, or seem to be above their strength, or frequent, and most of all if it seem to cross their hopes and prayers; for then he argues, These are not the chastisements of sons. God indeed will visit their transgressions with rods, but his dealing with thee is plainly of another nature, for he ‘breaketh thee with his tempests,’ And whereas he corrects his sons that serve him in measure, thou art bowed down with thy trouble to distress and despair: but he will lay no more upon his sons than they are able to bear. He will not always chide his servants; but thou art afflicted every morning. And besides, if thou wert pure and upright, surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous: for to his sons he saith, ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee; and thou shalt glorify me,’ Ps. l. 15. Hence comes the complaint of many, that they are not regenerated, because they think God deals not with them as with others. Oh, say they, we know God chastiseth ‘every son whom he receiveth;’ but our case is every way different from theirs, our troubles are plagues, not rods; our cry is not heard, our prayers disregarded, our strength faileth us, our hearts fret against the Lord, so that not only the nature and quality of our affections, but the frame of our heart under them, in not enduring the burden,—which is the great character of the chastisement of sons, Heb. xii. 7,—plainly evinceth that we are under God’s hatred, and are not his children. This objection, though it might seem easy to be answered by those that are not at present concerned, yet it will prove a difficult business to those that are under the smart of afflictions. How much a holy and wise man may be gravelled by it, you may see in Ps. lxxii., where the prophet is put to a grievous plunge upon this very objection; ver. 14, ‘All the day long have I been plagued, and chastised every morning.’

And yet in all this Satan doth but play the sophister, working upon the advantages which the nature of the affliction and the temper of men’s hearts do afford him. For, 1. Afflictions are a great depth, one of the secrets of God, so that it is hard to know what God intends by them. 2. The end of the Lord is not discovered at first, but at some distance, when the fruits thereof begin to appear. 3. The mind of the afflicted cannot always proceed regularly in making a judgment of God’s design upon them: especially at first, when it is stounded by the assault, and all things in confusion; faith is to seek, patience awanting, and love staggering. After it hath recollected itself, and attained any calmness to fit it for a review of the ways of God and of the heart, it is better enabled to fix some grounds of hope: Lam. iii. 19-21, ‘This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope,’ 4. Afflictions have a light and a dark side, and their appearances are according to our posture in which we view them: as some pictures, which if we look upon them one way, they appear to be angels, if another way, they seem devils. 5. Some men in affliction do only busy themselves in looking upon the dark side of affliction. Their disposition, either through natural timorousness or strong impressions of temptation, is only to meditate terrors, and to surmise evils. These men out of the cross can draw nothing but the wormwood and the gall, while others, that have another prospect of them, observe mixtures of mercy and gentleness, and do melt into submission and thankfulness. These, considered together, are a great advantage to Satan in disputing against the peace of God’s afflicted children, and it often falls out, that as he doth misrepresent God’s design, so do they, urged by temptation, upon that account misjudge themselves.

Third, He also misrepresents God in the works of his Spirit. If God withdraw his countenance, or by his Spirit signifies his displeasure to the consciences of any, if he permit Satan to molest them with spiritual temptations, presently Satan takes occasion to put his false and malignant interpretation upon all; he tells them that God’s hiding his face is his casting them off; that the threatenings signified to their conscience are plain declarations that their present state is wrath and darkness; that Satan’s molestations by temptations shew them to be yet under his power; that the removal of their former peace, joy, and sensible delight which they had in the ways of God is beyond contradiction an evidence that God hath no delight in them, nor they in him; that their faith was but that of temporaries, their joy but that of hypocrites, which is only for a moment. How often have I heard Christians complaining thus: We cannot be in a state of grace; our consciences lie under the sense of God’s displeasure, they give testimony against us, and we know that testimony is true, for we feel it. It is true, time was when we thought we had a delight in hearing, praying, meditating, but now all is a burden to us, we can relish nothing, we can profit nothing, we can remember nothing. Time was when we thought we had assurance, and our hearts rejoiced in us; sometimes we have thought our hearts had as much of peace and comfort as they could hold, now all is vanished, and we are under sad fears; if God had had a favour to us, would he have dealt thus with us? Thus are they cheated into a belief that they never had any grace; they take all for granted that is urged against them; they cannot consider God’s design in hiding his face, nor yet can they see how grace acts in them under these complainings; how they express their love to God in their desires and pantings after him, in their bewailing of his absence, in abhorring and condemning themselves, &c.; but their present feeling—and an argument from sense is very strong—bears down all before it.

Thus doth Satan frame his arguments from misrepresentations of God, which, though a right view of God would easily answer them, yet how difficult it is for a person in an hour of temptation to dispel, by a right apprehension of the ways of the holy God, doth abundantly appear from Ps. lxxvii., where the case of Asaph, or whoever else he was, doth inform us—1. That it is usual for Satan, for the disquieting of the hearts of God’s children, to offer a false prospect of God. 2. That this overwhelms their hearts with grief, ver. 3. 3. That the more they persist in the prosecution of this method, under the mists of prejudice, they see the less, being apt to misconstrue everything in God to their disadvantage, ver. 3, ‘I remembered God, and was troubled.’ 4. The reason of all that trouble lies in this, that they can only conclude wrath and desertion from God’s carriage toward them. 5. That till they look upon God in another method, and take up better thoughts of him and his providences, even while they carry the appearance of severity, they can expect no ease to their complainings. For before the prophet quitted himself of his trouble, he was forced to acknowledge his mistake, ver. 10, in the misconstruction he made of his dealings, and to betake himself to a resolve of entertaining better thoughts of God, ver. 7. His interrogation, ‘Will the Lord cast off for ever?’ &c., shews indeed what he did once think, being misled by Satan, but withal that he would never do so again. ‘Will the Lord cast off for ever?’ is not here the voice of a despairing man, but of one that, through better information, hath rectified his judgment, and now is resolved strongly to hold the contrary to what he thought before: as if he should say, It is not possible that it should be so; he will not cast off for ever, and I will never entertain such perverse thoughts of God any more. 6. But before they can come to this, it will cost them some pains and serious thoughts. It is not easy to break these fetters, to answer this argument, but they that will do so must appeal from their present sense to a consideration of the issues of these dealings upon other persons, or upon themselves at other times; for the prophet, ver. 5, ‘considered the days of old, and the years of ancient times;’ and ver. 6, he also made use of his own experience, calling to remembrance that after such dealings as these, God by his return of favour gave him ‘songs in the night.’

[4.] Another common head from whence this great disputant doth fetch his arguments against the good condition and state of God’s servants, is their sin and miscarriages. Here I shall observe two or three things in the general concerning this, before I shew how he draws his false conclusions from thence. As,

First, That with a kind of feigned ingenuity[344] he will grant a difference betwixt sin and sin—betwixt sins reigning and not reigning, sins mortified and not mortified; betwixt the sins of the converted and the unconverted; and upon this supposition he usually proceeds. He doth not always, except in case of great sins, argue want of regeneration from one sin; for that argument, This is a sin, therefore thou art not a convert, would be easily answered by one that knows the saints have their imperfections; but he thus deals with men: These sins whereof thou art guilty are reigning sins, such as are inconsistent with a converted estate, and therefore thou art yet unregenerated.

Second, He produceth usually, for the backing of his arguments, such scriptures as do truly represent the state of men unsanctified; but then his labour is to make the parties to appear suitable to the description of the unregenerate. And to that purpose he aggravates all their failings to them; he makes severe inquiries after all their sins, and if he can charge them with any notorious crime, he lays load upon that, still concluding that a regenerate person doth not sin at such a rate as they do.

Third, This is always a very difficult case; it is not easy to answer the objections that he will urge from hence; for, (1.) If there be the real guilt of any grievous or remarkable scandal which he objects, the accused party, though never so knowing, or formerly never so holy, will be hardly put to it to determine anything in favour of his estate. [1.] The fact cannot be denied. [2.] The Scripture nominates particularly such offences as render a man unfit for the kingdom of God. [3.] Whether in such cases grace be not wholly lost, is a question in which all are not agreed. [4.] However, it will be very doubtful whether such had ever any grace. The Scripture hath given no note of difference to distinguish betwixt a regenerate and unregenerate person in the acts of murder, adultery, fornication, &c. It doth not say the regenerate commits an act of gross iniquity in this manner, the unregenerate in that, and that there is a visible distinction betwixt the one and the other, relating to these very acts. And whatever may be supposed to be the inward workings of grace in the soul, while it is reduced to so narrow a compass as a spark of fire raked up in ashes, yet the weight of present guilt upon the soul, when it is charged home, will always poise it toward the worst apprehensions that can be made concerning its state. Former acts of holiness will be disowned under the notion of hypocrisy; or if yet owned to be true, they will be apt to think that true grace may be utterly lost. Present acts of grace they can see none, so that only the after-acts of repentance can discover that there is yet a being and life of grace in them, and till then they can never answer Satan’s argument from great sins. But, (2.) In the usual infirmities of God’s children the case is not so easy. For the Scriptures give instances of some whose conversations could not be taxed with any notorious evils; who, though they were not ‘far from the kingdom of God,’ yet were not ‘of the kingdom of God,’ [Mark xii. 34:] a freedom then from great sins is not pleadable as an undoubted mark of grace. And if others that are not converted may have no greater infirmities than some that are, the difference betwixt the one and the other must depend upon the secret powers of grace giving check to these infirmities and striving to mortify them; and this will be an intricate question. The apostle, Rom. vii. 15, notes indeed three differences betwixt the regenerate and unregenerate in this case of sins of infirmity. [1.] Hatred of the sin before the commission of it: ‘What I hate, that do I.’ [2.] Reluctancy in the act: ‘What I would, that do I not.’ [3.] Disallowance after the act: ‘That which I do, I allow not.’ Yet seeing natural light will afford some appearances of disallowance and reluctancy, it will still admit of further debate whether the principles, motives, degrees, and success of these strivings be such as may discover the being and power of real grace.