CHAPTER XVII.
Of Satan’s subtlety in urging that of Ps. xci. 11, 12, to Christ.—Of his imitating the Spirit of God in various ways of teaching.—Of his pretending Scripture to further temptation.—The reasons of such pretendings, and the ends to which he doth abuse it.—Of Satan’s unfaithfulness in managing of scriptures.—Cautions against that deceit.—The ways by which it may be discovered.
The ways of Satan, hitherto insisted on, to engage Christ in this act of presumption, were secret insinuations and underhand contrivances: but that which he openly and expressly urged to this purpose, was an argument drawn from the promise of God, though sadly abused and misrepresented, ‘He shall give his angels charge concerning thee,’ &c. This we are next to consider, in which, as cited by him, we may easily see, (1.) That Satan affected an imitation of Christ, in the way of his resistance. Christ had urged Scripture before, and now Satan endeavours to manage the same weapon against him. (2.) It is observable that Scripture is the weapon that Satan doth desire to wield against him. In his other ways of dealing he was shy, and did but lay them in Christ’s way, offering only the occasion, and leaving him to take them up; but in this he is more confident, and industriously pleads it, as a thing which he could better stand to and more confidently avouch. (3.) The care of his subtlety herein, lay in the misrepresentation and abuse of it, as may be seen in these particulars: [1.] In that he urged this promise to promote a sinful thing, contrary to the general end of all Scripture, which was therefore written ‘that we sin not.’ [2.] But more especially in his clipping and mutilating of it. He industriously leaves out that part of it which doth limit and confine the promise of protection to lawful undertakings, such as this was not, and renders it as a general promise of absolute safety, be the action what it will. It is a citation from Ps. xci. 11, 12, which there runs thus, ‘He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.’ These last words, ‘in all thy ways,’ which doth direct to a true understanding of God’s intention in that promise, he deceitfully leaves out, as if they were needless and unnecessary parts of the promise, when indeed they were on purpose put there by the Spirit of God, to give a description of those persons and actions, unto whom, in such cases, the accomplishment of the promise might be expected; for albeit the word in the original, which is translated ‘ways’— דרכים—doth signify any kind of way or action in the general, yet in this place it doth not; for then God were engaged to an absolute protection of men, not only when they unnecessarily thrust themselves into dangers, but in the most abominably sinful actions whatsoever; which would have been a direct contradiction to those many scriptures wherein God threatens to withdraw his hand and leave sinners to the danger of their iniquities; but it is evident that the sense of it is no more than this, ‘God is with you, while you are with him.’ We have a paraphrase of this text, to this purpose, in Prov. iii. 23, ‘Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stumble:’ where the condition of this safety, pointed to in the word ‘then,’ which leads the promise, is expressly mentioned in the foregoing verses, ‘My son, let them’—that is, the precepts of wisdom—‘not depart from thine eyes.... Then’—not upon other terms—‘shalt thou walk in thy way safely.’ The ways then in this promise, cited by Satan, are the ways of duty, or the ways of our lawful callings. The fallacy of Satan in this dealing with Scripture is obvious, and Christ might have given this answer, as Bernard hath it, That God promiseth to keep him in his ways, but not in self-created dangers, for that was not his way, but his ruin; or if a way, it was Satan’s way, but not his.[428] (3.) To these two, some add another abuse, in a subtle concealment of the following verse in Ps. xci., ‘Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder.’ This concerned Satan, whose cruelty and poisonous deceits were fitly represented by the lion and the adder, and there the promise is also explained to have a respect to Satan’s temptations—that is, God would so manage his protection, that his children should not be led into a snare.
Hence observe, Obs. 13. That Satan sometimes imitates the Spirit of God by an officious pretence of teaching the mind of God to men.
This our adversary doth not always appear in one shape. Sometime he acts as a lion or dragon, in ways of cruelty and fierceness; sometimes as a filthy swine, in temptations to bestial uncleanness and sensual lusts; sometime he puts on the garb of holiness, and makes as if he were not a spiritual adversary, but a spiritual friend and counsellor. That this is frequent with him, the apostle tells us: 2 Cor. xi. 14, ‘Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.’ Angels of light are those blessed spirits sent forth to minister for the good of the elect, whose ministry God useth not only for our preservation from bodily hurts, but also for prevention of sin and furtherance of duty. Satan, as wicked as he is, doth counterfeit that employment, and takes upon him to give advice for our good, pretending to teach us in the truth, or to direct and further us in our endeavours.[429]
That he designs an imitation of God and his Spirit, may be discovered by expressing a great many particulars of God’s ways and appointments, wherein Satan, as God’s ape, partly out of mockery and scorn, partly upon other grounds of advantage to his intendments, doth counterfeit the current coin of the Lord’s establishments by a very close imitation. But I shall here confine myself to the point of teaching and instruction, wherein how he proceeds, we shall the better understand by considering how many ways God hath of old, and now still doth use in declaring his mind to his people. The sum of all we have, Heb. i. 12. Heretofore he signified his mind in ‘divers manners’ by the prophets, and ‘in these last days by his Son,’ in all which we shall trace the steps of Satan.
(1.) First, God revealed himself sometime by voice; as to Abraham, Moses, and others. The devil hath dared to imitate this. There want not instances of it; in the temptation, which is now under explanation, he did so; and his confessing Christ, ‘I know thee who thou art,’ [Mat. i. 24,] &c., doth shew that he is ready enough to do it at any time for advantage. Sprenger tells us a story of the devil’s preaching to a congregation in the habit and likeness of a priest, wherein he reproved sin, and urged truth, and seemed no way culpable for false doctrine; but I suspect this for a fabulous tale. However, it is undeniable that he sometime hath appeared to men with godly exhortations in his mouth, of living justly, and doing no man wrong, &c.,[430] except we resolve to discredit all history, and the narrations of persons, and some such are known to some in this auditory, who solemnly affirm they have met with such dealing from him.
(2.) Secondly, God hath sometime revealed himself to men in ecstasies and trances; such as was that of Paul: Acts xxii. 17, ‘I was in an ecstasy or trance,’ γενέσθαι με ἐν ἐκστάσει. This also hath the devil imitated. Mohammed made this advantage of his disease, the epilepsy or falling-sickness, pretending that at such times he was in an ecstasy, and had converse with the angel Gabriel. But what he only in knavery pretended, others have really felt. The stories of Familists and deluded Quakers are full of such things. They frequently have fallen down and have lain as in a swoon, and when they have awaked, told wonderful stories of what they have heard and seen.
(3.) Thirdly, Visions and dreams were usual things in the Old Testament, and famous ways of divine revelation; but Satan was not behind in this matter. His instruments had their visions too. In Ezek. xiii. 7 we have mention of vain visions and lying divinations; and such satanical dreams are also noted, Deut. xiii. 1, ‘If there arise among you a dreamer of dreams.’ Those days of confusion, that are not yet out of memory, afforded store of these. While unstable, giddy-headed people began to dote on novelties and questions in religion, they gave opportunity to Satan to beguile them; for he taking advantage of their nauseating of old truths, and their expectation of sublime discoveries, which had sufficiently prepared them for any impression, did so overwork their fancies that they easily conceited themselves to have had divine revelations, and nothing was more ordinary than to hear stories of visions and dreams. And this spread further by a kind of infection, for it grew into a religious fashion; and he was not esteemed that had not something of this nature to experience. And though the folly and impertinences of such things generally, and sometime the apparent wickedness of them, as contradicting truth and the divine rules of holiness, were sufficient discoveries that Satan’s hand was in them, yet until time, experience, and the power of God had cooled the intemperate heat of this raving humour, it continued in the good liking and admiration of the more inconsiderate vulgar. And sometime those from whom more seriousness and consideration might have been expected fell into a reverence for these pretences in others, and helped forward this spiritual witchcraft by their countenance and arguings, often abusing that text in Acts ii. 17, ‘Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams,’ by applying it to a justification of these apparently foolish dotages. And indeed the effect hath discovered they were no better, for many of those things which with great confidence were avouched as certain, were by time proved to be false. Many things were useless, vain, ridiculous, and some were brought to lament and confess their folly after they proceeded far in these ways; and at last, when the former opportunities were worn out, Satan grew weary of that design as being no longer proper to be insisted on. There is now a great calm, so that it is but seldom that we hear of such things talked of. It were needless to give particular instances, when you may at your leisure fetch them from hundreds of pamphlets commonly known.
(4.) Fourthly, One of the most noted ways by which God discovered his mind was that of inspiration, by which some eminent persons, called therefore prophets, spake the will of God ‘as they were moved or acted by the Spirit of God,’ [2 Peter i. 21.] The devil had also his false prophets. Such are frequently taxed in the Old Testament, and foretold in the New: ‘False Christs, and false prophets shall arise,’ Mat. xxiv. 24; ‘There were false prophets among the people, as there shall be false teachers among you,’ 2 Peter ii. 1. Many false teachers are gone out into the world. Such a one was Montanus in Tertullian’s time, David George, John of Leyden, Hacket, our countryman, were such, and a great many such there have been in all ages. It is notoriously known that Satan hath thus inspired poor, possessed wretches, who have uttered threatenings against sin and woe to sinners. The sayings of such possessed creatures have not long since been gathered into a volume and published, as containing very persuasive arguments to repentance and amendment of life.[431] Besides these, our own times afford too many examples of this kind. Many have put on the guise of the old prophets in a foolish though adventurous imitation of their actions and prophecies. Some have in our streets resembled Jonah in Nineveh, ‘Yet forty days,’ &c. Some fancied to walk naked like Isaiah; others have come with their earthen pitchers and broken them, imitating these and other types by which God in his true prophets foresignified his judgments to come; in all which actions and garbs, with much earnestness, and in an affected tone, they have called out for repentance in a confident denunciation of woes and miseries, with a bold limiting of the time of forty days, that the same might carry a parallel to Jonah’s prophecy, and sometime giving—which is the surest way—an unlimited, uncertain time. How the devil acts in these matters, and by what ways he seduceth them to believe they are inspired of God, or have real visions and revelations, it is not my business now to inquire; only let those that think such things strange, consider that the devil hath the advantage of deep fanciful apprehensions and a working melancholy in such persons, by which he can easily work them to conceit anything, and confidently believe what they have conceited.