Thus have we seen Satan’s sophistry in the management of those five grand topics from whence he draws his false conclusions against the children of God, pretending to prove that they are not converted; or at least if they be in a state of grace, that they in that state are in a very bad, unsuitable condition to it. For if his arguments fall short of the first, they seldom miss the latter mark. This was his first engine. Now follows,
II. The other engine by which he fixeth these conclusions, which, though it be not argumentative, yet it serves to sharpen all his fallacies against the comforts of God’s children—this is fear, which, together with his objections, he sends into the mind. That Satan can raise a storm and commotion in the heart by fear, hath been proved before. I shall now only in a few things shew how he doth forward his design by astonishing the heart with his frightful thunderings.
[1.] His objections being accompanied with affrightments, they pass for strong undeniable arguments, and their fallacy is not so easily detected. Fear, as well as anger, darkens reason, and disables the understanding to make a true, faithful search into things, or to give a right judgment. As darkness deceives the senses, and makes every bush affrightful to the passenger, or as muddied waters hinder the sight, so do fears in the heart disable a man to discover the silliest cheat that Satan can put upon it.
[2.] They are also very credulous. When fear is up, any suggestion takes place. As suspicious incredulity is an effect of joy,—the disciples at first hearing that Christ was risen, ‘for joy believed it not’—so suspicious credulity is the effect of fear. And we shall observe several things in the servants of God that shew a strange inclination, as it were a natural aptitude, to believe the evil of their spiritual estate which Satan suggests to them. As, first, There is a great forwardness and precipitancy in the heart to close with evil thoughts raised up in us. When jealousies of God’s love are injected, there is a violent hastiness forthwith—all calm deliberation being laid aside—to entertain a belief of it. This is more than once noted in the Psalms. In this case, David acknowledgeth this hasty humour, ‘I said in my haste,’ Ps. xxxi. 22, and cxvi. 11. This hasty forwardness to determine things that are against us without due examination, Asaph calls a great weakness: ‘This is my infirmity,’ Ps. lxxvii. 10. Second, There is observable in those that are under spiritual troubles, a great kind of delight, if I may so call it, to hear threatenings rather than promises, and such discourses as set forth the misery of a natural state, rather than such as speak of the happiness of the converted; because these things, in their apprehension, are more suitable to their condition, and more needful for them, in order to a greater measure of humiliation, which they suppose to be necessary. However, thus they add fuel to the flame. Third, They have an aptitude to hide themselves from comfort, and with a wonderful nimbleness of wit and reasoning, to evade and answer any argument brought for their comfort, as if they had been volunteers in Satan’s service to fight against themselves. Fourth, They have also so great a blasting upon their understanding, that Satan’s tempting them to doubt of their good estate is to them a sufficient reason to doubt of it; and that is ground enough for them to deny it, because Satan questions it.
[3.] These fears make all Satan’s suggestions strike the deeper; they point all his arrows and make them pierce, as it were, ‘the joints and marrow;’ they poison and envenom them, to the great increase of the torment and hindrance of the cure; they bind the objections upon them, and confirm them in a certain belief that they are all true.
We have now viewed Satan’s engines and batteries against the servants of the Lord, for the destruction of their joy and peace, by spiritual troubles; but these are but the beginnings of sorrows, if compared with those distresses of soul which he sometimes brings upon them. Of which next.
CHAPTER IX.
Of his fourth way to hinder peace, by spiritual distresses. 1. The nature of these distresses; the ingredients and degrees of them. Whether all distresses of soul arise from melancholy. 2. Satan’s method in working them; the occasions he makes use of, the arguments he urgeth, the strengthening of them by fears. 3. Their weight and burden explained in several particulars.—Some concluding cautions.
The last sort of troubles by which Satan overthrows the peace of the soul, are spiritual distresses. These are more grievous agonies of soul, under deepest apprehensions of divine wrath, and dreadful fears of everlasting damnation, differing in nature and degree from the former sorts of troubles; though in these Satan observes much-what the same general method which he used in spiritual troubles last mentioned. For which cause, and also that these are not so common as the other, I shall speak of them with greater brevity. Herein I shall shew—1. Their nature; 2. Satan’s method in working them: 3. Their weight and burden.