5. Fifthly, All these are but small in comparison of those deliberate determinations which are to be found with most sinners, who are therefore said to sin with a high hand, presumptuously, wilfuly, against conscience, against knowledge; and this ordinarily to be found only among those whom a custom of sin hath hardened and confirmed into a boldness of a wicked way and course. When the spirits of men are thus harnessed and prepared, Satan can, at pleasure almost, form them into a deliberate resolve to cast the commandment behind their back, and to refuse to hearken. When any temptation is offered them, if God say, ‘Ask for the old paths, and walk therein,’ as Jer. vi. 16, they will readily answer, ‘We will not walk therein.’ If God say, ‘Hearken to the sound of the trumpet,’ they will reply, ‘We will not hearken.’ When the people by a course of sinning had made themselves like the wild ass used to the wilderness, then did they peremptorily set up their will against all the reason and consideration that could come in to deter them, though they were told the inconveniences, Jer. ii. 25; that this did unshoe their foot, and afflicted them with thirst and want, yet was the advice slighted. ‘There is no hope,’ said they; there is no expectation that we will take any notice of these pleadings, for we have fixed our resolve, ‘We have loved strangers, and after them will we go.’ So Jer. xliv. 16, ‘As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee, but we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth out of our own mouth.’ A plain and full resolve of will dischargeth all the powers of reason, and commands it silence. And that this is most ordinary among men, may appear by these frequent expressions of Scripture, wherein God lays the blame of all that madness which their lives bring forth upon their will, ‘Ye would not obey,’ ‘ye will not come to me’; ‘their heart is set to do evil,’ &c. It may indeed seem strange that Satan should proceed so far with the generality of men, and that they should do that that should seem so inconsistent with those principles which they retain, and the light which must result from thence; but we must remember that these wills and shalls of wicked men are for the most part God’s interpretation of their acts and carriage, which speaks as much, though it may be their minds and hearts do not so formally mould up their thoughts into such open and brazen-faced assertions. And yet we ought also further to consider, that when the Spirit of God chargeth man with wilfulness, there is surely more of a formal wilfulness in the heart of man than lieth open to our view. And this will be less strange to us when we call to mind,
6. Sixthly, That through the working of Satan the minds of men are darkened, and the light thereof put out by the prevalency of atheistical principles.[193] Something of atheism is by most divines concluded to be in every sin, and according to the height of it in its various degrees, is reason and consideration overturned. There are, it may be, few that are professed atheists in opinion, and dogmatically so, but all wicked men are so in practice. Though they profess God, yet ‘the fool saith in his heart, There is no God,’ [Ps. liii. 1,] and in ‘their works they deny him,’ [Titus i. 16.] This is a principle that directly strikes at the root: for if there be no God, no hell or punishment, who will be scared from taking his delight in sin by any such consideration? The devil, therefore, strives to instil this poison with his temptation. When he enticed Eve by secret insinuations, he first questions the truth of the threatening, and then proceeds to an open denial of it, ‘ye shall not surely die;’ and it is plain she was induced to the sin upon a secret disbelief of the danger. She reckons up the advantages, ‘good for food, pleasant to the eye, to be desired to make one wise;’ wherein it is evident she believed what Satan had affirmed, ‘that they should be as God,’ and then it was not to be feared that they should die. This kind of atheism is common. Men may not disbelieve a Godhead; nay, they may believe there is a God, and yet question the truth of his threatenings. Those conceits that men have of God, whereby they mould and frame him in their fancies, suitable to their humours—which is a ‘thinking that he is such a one as ourselves,’ Ps. 1.—are streams[194] and vapours from this pit, and ‘the hearts of the sons of men are desperately set within them to do evil,’ upon these grounds; much more when they arise so high as in some who say, ‘Doth God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?’ [Ps. lxxiii. 11.] If men give way to this, what reason can be imagined to stand before them? All the comminations of Scripture are derided as so many theological scarecrows, and undervalued as so many pitiful contrivances to keep men in awe.
CHAPTER XIV.
Of Satan’s maintaining his possession.—His first engine for that purpose is his finishing of sin, in its reiteration and aggravation.—His policies herein.
Having explained the five ways by which Satan through the power of lust causeth blindness of mind in tempting to sin, I shall next lay open Satan’s devices for the keeping and maintaining his possession, which are these:—
1. First, He endeavours, after he hath prevailed with any man to commit an iniquity, to finish sin: James i. 15, ‘After if is conceived and brought forth, then it is finished;’ which notes its growth and increase. This compriseth these two things, its reiteration and its aggravation.
(1.) First, Its reiteration is, when by frequent acts it is strengthened and confirmed into a habit. There are various steps, by which men ascend into the seat of the scornful. Nemo repentè turpissimus, It is not one act that doth denominate men ‘wise to do evil.’ In Ps. i. 1 seq., David shews there are gradations and degrees of sin: some walk in the counsel of the ungodly; some by progress and continuance of sin ‘stand in the way of sinners;’ some, by a hardness of heart and fixedness in wicked purposes, ‘sit in the seat of the scornful.’ To this height doth he labour to bring his proselytes; yet he further designs,
(2.) Secondly, That sin may have its utmost accomplishments in all the aggravations whereof it may be capable. He strives to put men upon such a course of sinning as may be most scandalous to the gospel, most ensnaring and offensive to others, most hardening and desperate to ourselves, most offensive and provoking to God. In this he imitates the counsel of Ahithophel to Absalom, when he advised him to go in unto his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel, that so the breach betwixt him and his father might be widened to an impossibility of reconciliation. Thus he labours that sinners should act at such a rate of open defiance against heaven, as if they resolved to lie down in their iniquity, and were purposed never to think of returning and making up their peace with God. That sin may be finished in both these respects, he useth these policies:—
[1.] First, After sin is once committed, he renews his motions and solicitations to act it again, and then again, and so onward till they be perfect and habituated to it. In this case he acts over again the former method by which he first ensnared them, only with such alterations as the present case doth necessitate him unto. Before, he urged for the committing of it but once. How little is he to be trusted in these promises! Now, he urgeth them by the very act they have already done, Is it not a pleasant or profitable sin, to thy very experience? hast thou not tasted and seen? hast thou not already consented? Taste and try again, and yet further; withdraw not thy hand. A little temptation served before, but a less serves now; for by yielding to the first temptation our hearts are secretly inclined to the sin, and we carry a greater affection to it than before; for this is the stain and defilement of sin, that when once committed it leaves impressions of delight and love behind, which are still the more augmented by a further progress and frequent commission, till at last by a strong power of fascination it bewitches men that they cannot forbear; all the entreaties of friends, all their own promises, all their resolves and purposes, though never so strong and serious, except God strike in to rescue by an omnipotent hand, can no more restrain them than fetters of straw can hold a giant. God himself owns it as a natural impossibility, ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin? no more can ye do good,’ [Jer. xiii. 23;] and the reason of that impossibility is from hence, that they are ‘accustomed to do evil.’ Such strong and powerful inclinations to the same sin again are begot in us by a sin already committed, that sometime one act of sin fills some men with as vehement and passionate desires for a further enjoyment, as custom and continuance doth others. Austin reports that Alypius, when once he gave way to the temptation of beholding the gladiators, was bewitched with such a delight, that he not only desired to come again with others, but also before others. Neither is it any great wonder it should be so, when, besides the inclinations that are begot in us by any act of sin to recommit it, sin puts us out of God’s protection, debilitates and weakens our graces, strengthens Satan’s arm, and often procures him further power and commission against us.