(4.) Fourthly, The direction doth imply an argumentative, proper, and fit use of Scripture commands or promises. We see Christ urged not any scripture indifferently, but he used fit words, and chose to himself select smooth stones out of this brook to sling against this spiritual Goliath. Every temptation had an answer that doth most fully and properly confront it. He regarded the main of the temptation, and suffered not himself to be diverted from that prosecution, by engaging himself in that which might have been perplexed and controversial, though he had a fit opportunity to reprove Satan for a dishonest craft of representing scripture in a sense of his own making, and so might have rejected the temptation of casting himself down, as leaning upon a false foundation, in that God did not promise in Ps. xci. to preserve any that should presumptuously expect a protection while they run out of God’s ways; yet he waived this answer, and opposed the assault by a plain scripture which chargeth the contrary duty.
Secondly, Having seen what this direction doth imply in these things that are to be removed from the sense and intendment of it, I shall next, for ascertaining of the reality and importance of it, shew that temptations are to be resisted by Scripture arguments, by these two evidences:—
(1.) First, God’s recommending of the commands of Scripture for such a purpose: Deut. vi. 6, ‘These words which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes,’ &c. Whether the latter part of the command is to be understood literally, as the Jews apprehended and practised, though some think otherwise, is not necessary to be asserted, seeing it is granted by all that they were to have the commands of the law so ready in their minds and memories, as if they had been written on their hands and upon their foreheads. That God designed this precept for the resistance of sin and temptation cannot be doubted, and that the advantage which might hence arise to them was not only the information of their minds, in point of sin and duty, is as unavoidable; for that and more is intended by that part of the injunction, ‘These words which I command thee, shall be in thine heart;’ but when? Besides this information, which the knowledge of the law would afford them, and their humble compliance with it, as just and good, which would enable them to say, ‘Thy law, O Lord, is within my heart;’ he further enjoins them the quick and ready remembrances of these laws, as if they were ‘frontlets between their eyes, and signs on their hands.’ It can signify no less than this, that in so doing they would be able to resist those motions by which Satan would seek to engage them to the violation of these commands. Neither need we to doubt hereof, when Christ himself hath so fully taught us, by his own example, in resisting temptations, the particular use of the remembrance of the law. In the New Testament the apostle is most express in this matter: Eph. vi. 17, ‘Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,’ where not only the use of Scripture commands and promises against Satan’s suggestions is taught, but also the high avail and potency of this weapon in reference to its end. It is called a sword, and in that comparison it shews the active resistance which may be made by it; and it is called, not a sword of flesh, for ‘the weapons of our warfare are not carnal,’ but ‘of the Spirit,’ to shew how mighty it is in repelling Satan.
(2.) Secondly, Another evidence of its usefulness is from the success which the children of God have had in the right management of this weapon. It is observable that while Christ answered by Scripture, Satan was silenced, and had not what to reply to the answer, but was forced to betake himself to a new temptation. David in many places highly magnifies the power of the command, in the success he had by it; Ps. xvii. 4, he shews how available it was to preserve him in his common converse from the sinful snares laid before him, ‘Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer.’ In Ps. xviii. 22, 23, he tells us that he was shielded from the sins of his inclination and love, which are hardest to prevent, by the opposition that he gave to the motions of them, in setting up the statutes of God against them; ‘All his judgments were before me, and I did not put away his statutes from me; I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity.’ In Ps. cxix. 11, he puts his probatum est upon the head of this receipt, and speaks of it as his constant refuge, ‘Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.’ In Ps. xxxvii. 31, he speaks of it as a tried case of common experience to all the children of God, ‘The law of God is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide.’ I shall add to this the experience of Luther, when, saith he, in Epistle to the Galatians, ‘the motions of the flesh do rage, the only remedy is, to take the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of salvation, and to fight against them; of this I myself have good experience; I have suffered many great passions and vehement, but so soon as I laid hold of any place of Scripture, and stayed myself upon it, as upon an anchor, straightway my temptations did vanish away, which without the word had been impossible for me to endure, though but a little space, much less to overcome.’[489]
(3.) Thirdly, The excellency of this remedy will further appear from these following reasons:—
[1.] First, In that it is a universal remedy. There can be no temptation, either of seducement or of affrightment, but the Scripture will afford a suitable promise or command to repel it. So that it, like the flaming sword in the cherubim’s hand at paradise, turns every way to guard the soul. I need not give instances of its power against sinful motions, having done that already, and of such temptations which war against the peace of the soul. I need but say this in the general, that as the nature of such temptations is to disguise God, and to render him dreadful to us, in the appearances of wrath and incompassionate implacableness—and this Luther sets down as a certain rule—so have we in Scripture such declarations of the mind and tender inclinations of God, and such full and clear promises to assure us of this, and those so adapted to every case, to every kind of hard thought which we might take up against him, that we may find enough in them to break all those malicious misrepresentations of Satan, and to keep up in our mind ‘right thoughts of God;’ which if we will adhere to, not suffering such promises to be wrested out of our hands, nor our hearts to give way to malignant impressions of cruelty, revenge, or unmercifulness in God, though we be cast into darkness, into the deeps, we may find some bottom on which to fix such beginnings of hope, as may at last grow up to a spirit of rejoicing in God our Saviour; and in this case, when our heart and Satan dictate to us that God is our enemy, we ought, as it were, to shut our eyes, to refuse to hearken to our own sense and feeling, and to follow the word; but if we once give up the word of promise, it is impossible the wound of conscience should be healed with any other consideration.
[2.] Secondly, This remedy is comprehensive of most other remedies against Satan’s temptations. In Eph. vi., there are several other pieces of spiritual armour recommended, and yet there is such a manifest mutual respect betwixt this and those, that any may conclude that however they be distinguished in their names, yet they are conjoined in their operation. The girdle, so far as it relates to truth of judgment and opinion, depends on the word of Scripture for information; the shoes, which are defensive resolves to walk with a steady foot in the ways of religion, notwithstanding the hardships that attend holiness, are prepared to us, by the comfortable and peace-bringing promises of the gospel; the righteousness which is our breastplate, is only set forth and wrought out to us by the Scripture and its ordinances; faith which is our shield, and hope which is our helmet, they neither of them act without the warrant and encouragement of it; and whereas other parts of the armour are defensive, this of the Scripture is compared to the sword, which not only defends, but also offends and beats back the enemy. If the matter be seriously considered, all these parts of armour are but these two, the graces of the Spirit—faith, hope, patience in their sincere exercise, and the word of Scripture as the instrument by and in which they shew their operations; so that all this armour being put to use, in every particular temptation, it amounts to no more than this we are speaking of, viz., that sinful motions are to be rejected by a believing, sincerely resolute opposing of them, with arguments from the word of God.
[3.] Thirdly, Scripture, as it is the word and command of the great King of heaven, hath a daunting and commanding authority over the consciences of men. ‘Where the word of a king is, there is power,’ Eccles. viii. 4, and such is the majesty of a divine law, that it hath power over the consciences of those that are yet in their sins, and can wound, affright, constrain, and bind even the rebellious; so that so long as they retain any of their natural impressions of a divine power, they have some awe for his commands, which may be seen and argued, where it would be least expected, from the enragement of the hearts of sinners, when ‘sin by the commandment,’ accidentally, ‘becomes exceeding sinful,’ Rom. vii. 13, 14. For as that outrageous fierceness doth arise from the contrariety that is betwixt a carnal heart and a spiritual law; so that contrariety would never work if the authority of that law, having a power to restrain, and give check to the corruption of the heart, were not some way owned by the conscience; for where no countermanding law is owned, there can be no irritating, provoking restraint. This it can do to the vilest of men; but of how much more power may we imagine the word to be with good men, whose hearts tremble at the word, when they ‘bind the law upon their heart,’ and charge their consciences with it? It is surely ‘quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword,’ [Heb. iv. 12;] nor doth it only, by unlovely affrightments, terrify them from sin, but by commanding duty make the heart in love with it, so that it becomes a delightful satisfaction to be preserved from the snare.[490]
[4.] Fourthly, There is no argument that can be used against temptations that can be more afflictively discouraging to Satan. Satan, as bad as he is, cannot but believe those truths which he knows, and he knows that there are many truths in Scripture which respect him, as threatenings of punishment and divine vengeance; he believes these things and trembles, James ii. 19. His unavoidable knowledge or remembrance of these things begets horror in him, he cannot but be under a dread of these truths. What can be supposed so to wound him as the bringing these things to memory, by urging the command of God against him? Dr Arrowsmith[491] gives two instances of this kind, the one of Christopher Haas in Sweedland—from the epistle dedicatory to the five tomes of Brentius’s works—the other of Daniel Cramer, rector of a school at Stettin in Germany; on both which the devil made a bold attempt in a personal appearance; from the first, demanding a catalogue of his sins in writing; from the other, demanding a paper in which one of the students had obliged himself to Satan’s service; they both referred him to that text of Gen. iii. 15, ‘The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent.’ And this was retorted upon him with such a strong exercise of faith, that he presently desisted the suit and vanished.
[5.] Fifthly, This weapon cannot easily he wrested out of our hands. When we urge a divine prohibition against a temptation, what can he say in answer? he cannot deny it to be the word of God, or to be true, or that we are not obliged to it. He made none of these returns to Christ, but, by his silence, owned that it was God’s holy command obliging us to duty. Neither dares he stand upon these exceptions to us, except he find our faith inclined to waver, or our minds weak and wounded by inward troubles of spirit; and when he puts on a boldness to deny Scripture to be the word of God, or that it signifies God’s real intendments in his threatening—for by begetting unbelief of the truth of Scripture, and by suggesting hopes of escape and pardon, notwithstanding the violation of the commands of it, he wrests, when he doth prevail, this weapon out of our hands—yet he is forced to fetch a compass, and by many previous insinuations to make his way to these atheistical assertions. Thus he did with Eve, first, finding her a little inclinable, he dropped in privily something that might argue the improbability of the threatened penalty, and then at last positively denied it. But now if we hold to this, that ‘the command is true and holy, and just and good,’ he cannot wrest our plea from us.