Obs. 14. That it is Satan’s endeavour to make men proceed from a distrust of providence to a distrust of their spiritual sonship, or filial interest in God. First, I shall evidence that this is Satan’s design, and next I shall give the reasons of it. The former I shall make good by these several considerations:—
(1.) First, We see it is a usual inference that others make of men whose heart fails them, under an absence or disappearance of all means of help in their distresses. If providence doth not appear for them, they conclude God hath forsaken them. Bildad thus concludes against Job, chap. iv. 6, ‘Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, thy hope, and the uprightness of thy ways?’ Which must not only be understood as an ironical scoff at the weakness of his confidence and hope, as not being able to support him against fainting in his trouble, but as a direct accusation of the falseness and hypocrisy of his supposed integrity, and all the hopes and confidence which was built upon it; and ver. 7 doth evidence, where he plainly declares himself to mean that Job could not be innocent or righteous, it being, in his apprehension, a thing never heard of, that so great calamities should overtake an upright man, ‘Who ever perished, being innocent?’ The ground of which assertion was from ver. 5, ‘It is now come upon thee, and thou faintest.’ That is, distresses are upon thee, and thou hast no visible means of help, but despairest ever to see a providence that will bring thee out; therefore surely thou hast had no real interest in God, as his child. Eliphaz also seconds his friend in this uncharitable censure, ‘If thou wert pure and upright, he would awake for thee,’ Job viii. 6; that is, because he doth thus overlook thee, therefore thou art not pure and upright.
If men do thus assault the comforts of God’s children, we have reason enough to think that Satan will; for besides that we may conclude they are set on work by the devil, and what he speaks by them, he will also by other ways promote, as being a design that is upon his heart; we may be confident, that this being a surmise so natural to the heart of man, he will not let slip so fair an advantage, for the forming of it in our own hearts against ourselves.
(2.) Secondly, The best of God’s children, in such cases, escape it very hardly, if at all; which declares not only the depth and power of that policy, but also how usual it is with Satan to urge the servants of God with it. Job, chap. xix. 25, recovered himself to a firm persuasion of sonship, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ &c.; but by the way his foot had well-nigh slipped, when, ver. 10, 11, he cries out, ‘He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone; he hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies.’ His earnest resolve not to give up his trust in God, and the confidence of his integrity, is sufficient to discover Satan’s eager endeavours to have him bereaved of it.
(3.) Thirdly, Satan’s success in this temptation over the saints of God, who sometime have actually failed, shews how much it is his work to cast down their hopes of interest in God, by overthrowing their trust in his providences. If he attempts this, and that successfully, on such whose frequent experiences might discourage the tempter, and in probability frustrate his undertaking; we have little cause to think that he will be more sparing and gentle in this assault upon those that are more weak, and less acquainted with those clouds and darknesses that overshadow the ways of providence. David, for all the promises that he had received, and notwithstanding the manifold trials that he had of seasonable and unexpected deliverances, yet when he was distressed, he once and again falls into a fear of his soul, and a questioning of God’s favour. He complains as one utterly forsaken, ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’ Ps. xxii. 1. In Ps. lxix., he expresseth himself, ver. 1, ‘sinking in the deep mire,’ as a man that had no firm ground to stand upon, and that his troubles had brought him to fear the state of his soul, not only as deprived of God’s favour—and therefore, ver. 17, begs that his face may be no longer hid—but also as suspecting the loss of it; ver. 18, ‘draw nigh unto my soul, and redeem it.’ Ps. lxxvii., upon the occasion of outward troubles, Asaph falls into such a fit of fear about his spiritual condition, that no consideration of former mercies could relieve him, ‘He remembered God,’ ver. 3, ‘but was troubled;’ he ‘considered the days of old,’ called to remembrance his ‘songs in the night;’ but none of these were effectual to keep him from that sad outcry of distrust, ver. 7, ‘Will the Lord cast off for ever? is his mercy clean gone for ever? hath God forgotten to be gracious?’ &c. Which upon the review, in the composing of the psalm, he acknowledged an unbelieving miscarriage; I said, ‘This is mine infirmity.’
(4.) Fourthly, It is also a common and ordinary thing with most, to entertain misapprehensions of their spiritual condition, when they meet with disappointments of providence. Hence the apostle, Heb. xii. 5, 6, when he would quiet the hearts of men under the Lord’s chastening, doth of purpose make use of this encouragement, that God speaks to them in the rod as to children, and such as are under his care and love, ‘My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord;’ ‘whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth,’ &c. Which certainly tells us thus much, that it is ordinary for men to doubt their sonship because of their afflictions. We may conjecture what the malady is, when we know what is prepared as a medicine. This would not have been a common remedy, ‘that we may be children, though we be scourged,’ if the disbelief of this had not been the usual interpretation of afflictions, and a common distemper.
(5.) Fifthly, We may further take notice, that those disquiets of mind, that were only occasioned by outward things, and seem to have no affinity, either in the nature of the occasion, or present inclination of the party, with a spiritual trouble; yet if they continue long, do wholly change their nature. They that at first only troubled themselves for losses or crosses, forget these troubles and take up fears for their souls.
Sometime this ariseth from a natural softness and timorousness of spirit. Such are apt to misgive upon any occasion, and to say, Surely if I were his child, he would not thus forsake me; his fatherly compassions would some way or other work towards me.
Sometime this ariseth from melancholy, contracted or heightened by outward troubles. These, when they continue long, and pierce deep, put men into ‘a spirit of heaviness,’ which makes them refuse to be comforted. Here the devil takes his advantage. Unlawful sorrows are as delightfully improved by him as unlawful pleasures; they are Diaboli balneum, his bath in which he sports himself, as the leviathan in the waters. When for temporal losses or troubles men fall into melancholy, if they be not relieved soon, then their grief changeth its object, and presently they disquiet themselves, as being out of God’s favour, as being estranged from God, as being of the number of the damned; such against whom the door of mercy is shut, and so cry out of themselves as hopeless and miserable. The observations of physicians afford store of instances of this kind. Felix Platerus gives one, of a woman at Basle who first grieved for the death of her son, and when by this means she grew melancholy, that changed into a higher trouble; she mourns that her sins would not be pardoned, that God would not have mercy for her soul. Another, for some loss of wheat, first vexeth himself for that, and then at last despairs of the happiness of his soul; with a great many more of that kind.[393]
Sometimes a desperate humour doth, from the same occasion, distract men into a fury; of which Mercerus gives one instance from his own knowledge, of a person who, upon the distresses which he met with, fell into a rage against God, uttering speeches full of horror and blasphemy, not fit to be related.[394]