(3.) Thirdly, This doth his work easily and effectually. He more generally prevails by this course, and with less labour.
Applic. This policy of Satan should advantage us by suggesting fit memorials to us in our expectations of temptation. Though we know not all Satan’s thoughts, yet may we know where and how he will usually make an onset. Our condition will tell us what to look for. The distressed and afflicted may expect a temptation suited to their condition, as of murmuring, repining, revenge, distrust, use of indirect means, despairings, &c. They that have peace and plenty may be sure they shall be tempted suitably, to pride, boasting, covetousness, oppression, contempt of others, security, or whatever may be fit to be ingrafted on that stock. The like may be said of any other different condition. How fairly are we forewarned, by an observation made upon Satan’s proceeding upon these advantages, where to expect him, and how to provide against him.
Let us proceed to a further inquiry, How the devil managed this advantage of Christ’s hunger. He plainly urgeth him with a necessity of providing supplies for himself, spreading before him his desire to eat, and the impossibility of help, in a barren and desolate wilderness: as if he had said, ‘The want of the body is to be provided for; nature and religion consents to this; the wilderness affords no help, ordinary means fail; there is therefore a necessity that some extraordinary course be taken, therefore turn stones to bread; this is not unsuitable to the condition and power of him who is the Son of God.’ At this rate he pleads.
Obs. 7. Observe then, That Satan usually endeavours to run his temptations upon the plea of necessity, and from thence to infer a duty.
When he cannot pretend a fair and direct way to irregular practices, he would break a door and force a way by necessity.
Under this notion of necessity, the devil marshals all those pretences that seem to be of more than ordinary force, in their usual prevalencies. Thus he teacheth men to think they are necessitated, if they be carried by a strong inclination of their own, or if there be an urgency and provocation from others, or if they be in straits and dangers; and sometime he goes so high as to teach men that a necessity is included in the very fabric of their natural principles, by which they presumptuously excuse themselves in being sinful, because by nature they are so, and cannot be changed without special grace. Scarce shall we meet any man with seasonable reproof for his iniquity, but he will plead such kind of necessities for himself,—I could not help it; I was strongly carried; or, I was compelled; I must do so, or else I could not escape such a danger, &c.
The reasons of this policy are these:—
(1.) First, He knows that necessity hath a compulsive force, even to things of otherwise greatest abhorrencies. A treasury of instances is to be had in famines and besieged places, where it is usual to eat unclean things, not only creatures that are vile, but even dung and entrails; nay, so tyrannical is necessity, that it makes inroads into, and conquests upon nature itself, causing ‘the tender and delicate woman, which would not adventure the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, to have an evil eye towards the husband of her bosom, towards her son, and towards her daughter,’ Deut. xxviii. 56. A like force doth it exercise upon the minds and consciences of men. It makes them rise up against their light, it engageth men to lay violent hands upon their own convictions, to stifle and extinguish them. How many mournful examples have we of this kind! How many have apostatized from truth, being terrified by the urging necessities of danger, contrary to the highest convictions of conscience!
(2.) Secondly, Necessity can do much to the darkening of the understanding, and change of the judgment, by the strong influence it hath upon the affections. Men are apt to form their apprehensions according to the dictates of necessity. What they see to be hazardous, they are inclinable to judge to be evil. Men in straits not only violate their reason, but sometime by insensible steps, unknown to themselves, slide into a contrary judgment of things, directly cross to what they have believed and professed. Which persuasion they owe not to any further accession of light, or new discovery of argument; for ofttimes the same arguments which, in the absence of trouble, they have contemned as weak, by the appearance of danger, put on another face and seem strong; but to the prevalency of their fears. And thus many in all ages have altered their judgments and thoughts, not because they knew more, but because they feared more.
The like necessities do men form to themselves from exorbitant and greedy hopes and expectations of a better condition, compared to that wherein they at present are; and the like influence it hath in the alteration of their judgments. Let the bishop of Spalato be an example of this, who loathed the Romish religion first, and in England, whither he came for refuge, writ against it; but saw a necessity, from the disappointment of expectation, to change his mind, returned to Rome again, and persuaded himself that that was true which he had formerly pronounced false; and so writ against the church of England, as before he had done against the church of Rome. To him we may add Ecebolius,[385] of whom Socrates reports, that, according to the various appearings of hazards, he changed his religion several times. Under Constantine, he was a Christian; under Julian, a pagan; and under Jovinian, a Christian again.