[2.] Secondly, You must keep up in your hearts high and honourable thoughts of God, yea, of his mercy and goodness, and where you cannot see your way, or God’s way, before you, yet, as it were by a kind of implicit faith, must you believe that he is holy and good in all his ways.
[3.] Thirdly, Though you may read your sins or God’s displeasure in them, and accordingly endeavour to humble yourselves and call yourselves vile, yet must it be always remembered that eternal love or eternal hatred is not to be measured by them.
[4.] Fourthly, Restrain complainings. It is indeed an ease to complain; ‘I will speak,’ saith Job, ‘that I may be refreshed,’ chap. xxxii. 20; notwithstanding a vent being given, it is difficult to keep within bounds. Our complainings entice us to distrust, as may appear in Job, who took a boldness this way more than was fit, as chap. x. 3, ‘Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, and that thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands?’
All this hath been said in the opening of the temptation itself. Now must I consider the motive that Satan used to bring on the temptation by, ‘If thou be the Son of God,’ &c.
The question that is here moved by some is, whether Satan really knew or truly doubted Christ to be the Son of God. Several learned men think that he was in doubt,[397] and the reasons are variously conjectured. Cyprian conceives that the unity of the two natures in one person did blind him; he knew it to be impossible that the divine nature should hunger, and might think it strange that the human nature should fast so long.[398] Cornelius a-Lapide thinks that Satan knew that there should be two natures united in one person, and that this occasioned Satan’s fall, while he proudly stomached the exaltation of the human nature; but he imagines Satan’s doubt arose from a doubtful sense of that phrase, ‘This is my beloved Son,’ as not knowing whether Christ were the natural or an adopted son of God.
But notwithstanding these apprehensions, others conceive that Satan knew very well who Christ was, and that being privy to so many things relating to him, as the promises which went before and directly pointed out the time, the angel’s salutation of Mary at his conception, the star that conducted the wise men to him, the testimony from heaven concerning him, with a great many things more, he could not possibly be ignorant that he was the Messias and the Son of God by nature. Neither doth that expression, ‘If thou be the Son of God,’ imply any doubting, seeing that that is usually expressive of the greatest certainty and assurance, as in the speech of Lamech, ‘If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,’ that is, as certainly he shall be avenged; so Satan might use it to this sense, ‘If, or seeing thou art the Son of God.’ Now, whereas it may seem strange that he should set upon Christ, if he knew who he was, I have answered that before, and shall here only add that though Satan did believe Christ to be the Son of God, yet so strongly did the power of malice work in him, that he would have had him to have doubted that he was not so. From all this we have this observation,
Obs. 15. That the great design of Satan is to weaken the assurance and hopes of the children of God in their adoption.
This is the masterpiece of his design, the very centre in which most of his devices meet. We may say of him as Esau said of Jacob, ‘Is he not rightly called Jacob, a supplanter?’ [Genesis xxvii. 36;] he first stole away our birthright at the creation, and now he seeks to take away our blessing in Christ the Redeemer.
The reasons of this undertaking I shall not here insist on. It is sufficiently obvious that the greatest perplexity and sorrow ariseth to the children of God from hence, and that a troop of other spiritual evils, as impatience, fury, blasphemy, and many more, doth follow it at the heels, besides all that inability for service, and at last plain neglect of all duty. All I shall further do at this time shall be to shew in a few particulars, from Satan’s carriage to Christ in this temptation, how and after what manner he doth manage that design, in which note:—
(1.) First, That it is his design to sever us from the promise, and to weaken our faith in that. When Eve was tempted, this was that he aimed at, that she should question the good earnest of the prohibition, ‘Hath God said so?’ Was he real in that command, that you should not eat at all? &c. The like he doth to Christ, ‘Is it true? or can it be so as that voice declared, that thou art the Son of God?’