This course Satan takes for these reasons:—
First, As this proud and malicious ostentation of his power is some kind of satisfaction to his revengeful humour against God; so, Secondly, He doth hereby raise up himself and his wicked institutions of idolatry into credit and esteem with men. Thirdly, As this is a mockery to true religion, and a scorn cast upon the ways of God’s service, to bring it into disgrace and discredit; so, Fourthly, By this means he hardens the hearts of men against God. This was the consideration by which Pharaoh hardened his heart. When Moses turned his rod into a serpent, changed waters to blood, and did so many signs before him, his magicians did the like; upon which the king might thus reason with himself, that Moses had no other power but what his magicians had, though he might think him a more skilful magician; and therefore there was no reason to believe his message as being from God, seeing his miracles might be no other than the effect of his art to countenance a pretended command from heaven.
Applic. This insolency of Satan may inform us, First, Of the great patience of God, that sees these outrageous mockings, and yet doth not by a strong hand put a stop to them. Secondly, Of the great power and pride of Satan, that he both can—though not without permission from God—and dare attempt things of this nature. Thirdly, The great power of delusion, that can so blind men, that they not only are drawn to act a part in such designs, but believe confidently a divine impulse and heavenly warrant for their so doing. Fourthly, The miserable slavery of such vassals of Satan that are thus led by him, who are therefore sadly to be pitied and lamented, as being under such strong chains of captivity.
Obs. 3. Thirdly, We cannot pass by the art which the devil here useth to set off the temptation, and to make it plausible. He sets before him the world in all its glory. Here observe, That Satan, in his temptations to worldly pleasures, doth usually paint the object with all its utmost beauty.
When I have sometime observed a mountebank upon a stage, giving excessive commendations of a trivial medicine, asserting it good almost for every disease, and with a great many lies and boastings enforcing it upon the credulous multitude, it hath put me in mind of this spiritual mountebankery of the devil. How doth he gull and delude the foolish by laying out the pleasures of sin! and no otherwise doth he keep them at a gazing admiration of worldly pomp, delights, and satisfaction, which he promiseth them from iniquity, than the serpent Scytale doth with passengers, whom she stays, by amazing them with her beautiful colours, till she have stung them.[447] The art of Satan in this matter lies in four things:—
[1.] First, If there be anything that can be called a delight, or may any way conduce to a satisfaction in any sin, he will be sure to speak of it in its highest praises. He not only stretcheth his rhetoric to the height in giving commendations to the most noted pleasures that men propound to themselves, but he seeks out the hidden things of delight, and raiseth in men an itch of desire after the improvement of delight, by the contrivances of wit or art. Thus he tells them of jollity, ravishing mirth, high satisfaction, and, if they will believe him, of unspeakable delight to be had by giving themselves up to the world and the course of it. Nay, he hides nothing that will bear any praise; the least advantage, the smallest gratification that any sin can afford to human desire, he will be sure to speak of it.
[2.] Secondly, He carries on this design by lying. He promiseth more than ever sin can give, and he sends his proselytes out after sin under the highest expectations, and when they come to enjoy it, they often find the pleasure falls short of his boast. He whispers honours, preferments, and riches, in the ear of their hearts, and often pays them with poverty and disgraces, and gives them pro thesauro carbones, stones for bread, a serpent for a fish. Witches give frequent accounts of Satan’s lying promises; he tells them of feasts, of gold, of riches, but they find themselves deluded; he sends them oft hungry away from those banquets, so that they have no more than when a man dreams he eats. He gives that which seems gold in appearance, but at last they find it to be slates or shells. We find in this temptation he is liberal and large in his offers to Christ, and what he requires he will have in present payment, but the reward for the service is future. It is his business to engage men in sin by his promise of advantage, but being once engaged, he takes not himself concerned in honour or ingenuity for performance. Hence doth the Scripture fitly call the pleasures of sin ‘lying vanities,’ a ‘vain show,’ a ‘dream;’ thereby warning men from a forward belief of Satan’s promises, in that they find by experience they shall be at last but lies and disappointments.
[3.] Thirdly, To make his bait more taking, he conceals all the inconveniences that may attend these worldly delights. He offers here the kingdoms of the world to Christ, as if all were made up of pleasure. Those cares, troubles, and vexations that attend greatness and rule, he mentions not; their burden, hazard, and disquiet, he passeth over. Thus in common temptations he is careful to hide from men the miseries that follow these empty pleasures. So that often men do not consider the mischief, till ‘a dart strike through their liver,’ Prov. vii. 23, and till a dear-bought experience doth inform them of their mistakes.
[4.] Fourthly, His power and work upon the fancies of men, is none of the least of his ways whereby he advanceth the pleasures of sin. That he hath such a power, hath been discoursed before, and that a fancy raised to a great expectation makes things appear otherwise than what they are, is evident from common experience. The value of most things depends rather upon fancy than the internal worth of them, and men are more engaged to a pursuit of things by the estimation which fancy hath begat in their minds, than by certain principles of knowledge. Children by fancy have a value of their toys, and are so powerfully swayed by it, that things of far greater price cannot stay their designs, nor divert their course. Satan knows that the best of men are sometimes childish, apt to be led about by their conceits, and apt in their conceits to apprehend things far otherwise than what they are in truth. Hence is it, as one observes,[448] that of thousands of men that return from Jerusalem, or from Mount Sion, or from the river Jordan, scarce can we find one which brings back the admiration which he had conceived before he had seen them. Fancy doth pre-occupate the mind with a high opinion of things; and these exorbitant imaginations pass to such an excess, that men think to find a satisfaction beyond the nature of these pleasures they aim at, which hath these two inconveniences: the one, that this affects and draws as powerfully as if they were all as real and high as they are conceited to be; the other, that sight and fruition takes away the estimation, and by a disappointment doth deaden and dull the affections to what may be really found there. Thus Satan by one deceit makes men believe that sin hath pleasure, which indeed it hath not, and by that belief leads them on powerfully to endeavour an embracement of them, and at last urgeth them with a delusion.
Applic. In opposition to this deceit of the devil, we must learn to esteem worldly delights as low as he would value them high. And to this purpose the Scripture speaks of them in undervaluing language, calling worldly pomp an opinion, a fantasy, a fashion or figure, an imagination rather than a reality; and further enjoins us not to admire these things in others, not to envy them that enjoyment of them, nor to fret at our want of them, much less to be transported with any angry passion about them, nor to concern ourselves in any earnest pursuit of them.[449]