That this is one of his grand stratagems may be sufficiently evinced from the infinite number of errors that pretend to Scripture warrant. Those that are above or beyond Scripture, which acknowledge no dependence upon it, are but few and rare, and indeed among Christians error cannot well thrive without a pretence of Scripture. Men would have enough to do to persuade themselves to such errors, but it would be impossible to make a party or persuade others. Such errors would presently be hissed out of the world. Upon this account is it that atheism skulks and conceals itself, except where generally tolerated profaneness gives it more than ordinary encouragement, which is not to be ascribed to any shame-faced modesty that atheisms can be supposed to nourish, but to the general dislike of others, who so stick to the authority of the Bible that they reject all direct contradictions to it with great abhorrency. Hence also it is that some erroneous persons are forced to contradictions in their practice against their professed principles, because they find it impossible to propagate their errors without some pretence or other to Scripture. They that would undermine those sacred records are forced to make use of their authority for proof of what they would say. The papists have a quarrel at them, and envy them the title of perfection and perspicuity, upon design to introduce traditions, and to set up the pope’s judicial authority in matters of faith; and when they have said all they can to subject the Scriptures to the pope’s determination, they are forced at last to be beholden to the Scriptures to prove the pope’s determination. They would prove the Scriptures by the church, and then the church by the Scriptures, which is a circle they have been often told of, and of which some of the wiser sort among themselves are ashamed. Others also that will not allow the Scriptures to be a general standing rule are yet forced to make it, in some cases, a rule to themselves, and eagerly plead it to be so to others. They that pretend to be above ordinances, and decry outward teachings as unnecessary or hurtful, yet they teach outwardly, because they see they are not able to enlarge the empire of error without such teaching. Those very errors that make it their chief business to render the Scriptures no better than an old almanack, they yet seek to Scripture to countenance their blasphemous assertions; and if they get any scrap or shred of it that may by their unjust torture be wrested to speak any such thing, or anything toward it, they think all their follies are thereby patronised, 2 Pet. iii. 16; and commonly such men either fix upon such places as give warning of the necessary concomitances of the spirit and heart with the outward act of service; and from hence, separating what God hath joined together, they set up spiritual sabbaths, spiritual baptism, spiritual worship, to cry down and cashier the external acts of such ordinances, or they pretend kindred to Scripture, as prophesying or foretelling those new administrations which they are about to set up. Let H. Nicholas be an instance of this, who, though he decried the service of the law under God the Father, and the service of the belief under Christ, and in the room of both these would set up another administration under the Spirit; yet, that he might be the better believed, he applied several scriptures to his purpose, as prophetically foretelling H. Nicholas and his services, and would have men imagine that he was that ‘angel flying in the midst of heaven with the everlasting gospel,’ Rev. xiv. 6; and that prophet inquired after by the Jews: John i. 21, ‘Art thou that prophet?’ and that ‘man ordained to judge the world,’ Acts xvii. 31; and that the times of his dispensation were the times of perfection and glory spoken of in 1 Cor. xiii. 9, and Heb. vi. 1. The like pretences for new administrations had Saltmarsh and several others.
Satan, fixing his foot upon this design, and taking advantage of men’s ignorance, curiosity, and pride, &c., it is impossible to tell what he may do. He hath introduced many heresies already, and none knows what may be behind. Many passages of Scripture are dark to the wisest of men, a great many more are so to the common sort of Christians. A great many wits are employed by him as adventurers for new discoveries, and a small pretence is ground enough for a bold undertaker to erect a new notion upon; and a new notion in religion is like a new fashion in apparel, which bewitcheth the unsteady with an itch to be in it before they well understand what it is; so that it is alike impossible to stint the just number of errors, as to adjust the various pretences from Scripture upon which they may be countenanced. Leaving, therefore, this task to those that can undertake it, I shall only note a particular or two of Satan’s cunning in affixing an error upon Scripture.
[1.] First, In any grand design of error, he endeavours to lay the foundation of it as near to truth as he can; but yet so that, in the tendency of it, it may go as far from it as may be, as some rivers, whose first fountains are contiguous, have notwithstanding a direct contrary course in their streams. For instance, in those errors that tend to overthrow the doctrine of the gospel concerning Christ and ordinances—and these are things which the devil hath a great spite at—he begins his work with plausible pretences of love and admiration of Christ and grace; he proceeds from thence to the pretence of purer enjoyments; from thence to a dislike of such preachers and preaching as threaten sin and speak out the wrath of God against iniquity, and these are presently called legal preachers, and the doctrine of duty a legal covenant. Having them once at this point, they easily come to immediate assistances and special gifts, which they pretend to have above others. Being thus set up, they are for free grace and the enjoyment of God in spirit. From thence they come to Christian liberty, and by degrees duties are unnecessary. There is no Christ but within them; and being freed from the law, whatever they do is no transgression. This is a path that Satan hath trodden of old, though now and then he may vary in some circumstances, and be forced to stop before he come to the utmost of his journey. You may observe this method in the late errors of New England,[236] in the Familists of Germany, and in those of Old England; in all which at the long-run men are led as far from Scripture as darkness is from light. Now this is not only to be seen in a progressive multiplication of errors, but often may we perceive the same subtlety of Satan in a simple error, as when he takes up part of a truth which should stand in conjunction with another, and sets it up alone against its own companion, where we shall have the name and pretence kept up, but the thing quite destroyed. God requires services of men, and prescribes to their use prayer, hearing, sacraments; but because in these God is dishonoured when men only draw near with their lips, he further tell us, ‘that he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is of the flesh,’ &c., [Rom. ii. 28.] This part are some men so fixed upon, that they think they are discharged of the other, and in practice go quite from these duties; and yet still they profess they are for ordinances and the worship of God. Just so are some men for Christ, but then it is but the name, not the thing; they own Christ, they say, but then it is Christ in them, and Christ come in their flesh, but not that Christ that died at Jerusalem as a sacrifice for the sins of men.
[2.] Secondly, Satan takes great care that an error be, in all the ways of its propagation, clothed with Scripture phrases; and the less the error can pretend to any plausible ground of Scripture, the more doth he endeavour to adorn it with Scripture language: I understand this chiefly of such errors as are designed for the multitude: so that though Scripture be not used to prove the error, yet are deceivers taught to express their conceptions by it, and to accommodate the words and sentences of it to their purposes; for besides pride and confidence, scriptural eloquence is a necessary ingredient to make a powerful deluder. Observe the ringleaders of errors, and you shall find that ordinarily such have at first been studious of the Scriptures; and though never able to digest them, yet when they turned their ears from truth, they have carried their Scripture language, which they had before brought themselves unto by long custom, away with them, and still retain it, and express their opinions by it.
Now this is a great advantage to Satan. For, first, By this means the ignorant multitude are often caught without any more ado. If they hear Scripture expressions, they are apt to think that all is truth which is spoken by them; and they the rather believe it, because they will imagine such teachers to be well versed in Scripture, and consequently either so honest or so knowing that they neither can nor will delude them. Secondly, There is a majesty in Scripture which, in some sense, doth stick to the very expressions of it. Men may perceive that generally hearers are more affected with Scripture eloquence than with play-book language. It hath, as it were, a charm in the words, which makes the ear attentive more than a quaint discourse, starched up in the dress of common rhetoric. One gives us an observation to that purpose of his own preaching,[237] and so may many others. While, then, men hear such language, they have a reverence to it. And as physicians cover their pills with gold that the patient might more willingly take them, so do men often swallow down error without due consideration, because conveyed to them in a language which they respect.
(2.) Secondly, Satan’s second care for the advancement of error, after he hath given it all the countenance he can from Scripture, is to gild it over with specious pretences. He sets it off with all the bravery he can, and then urgeth that as an argument of its truth. Men are apt to judge that what doth better their spiritual condition cannot be a lie or delusion; and the argument were the more considerable, if the advantages were such as he pretends them to be; but the very noise and boast of advantages please the unwary, without a due inquiry into their reality. The apostle, in Rom. xvi. 18, reduceth all this policy of the deceiver to two heads: (1.) Good words, χρηστολογίας—words that set out the profit and advantage of the thing; (2.) And fair speeches, εὐλογίας—speeches that flatter the condition of the party. His art, as to the first of these, is to tell them that the notions offered to them are special discoveries, rare mysteries, which have been hidden from others; and thence infers, that it must of necessity conduce much to their happiness and spiritual perfection to know and embrace them. Those that troubled the church in Paul’s days with false doctrines, used this sleight of boasting, as appears by that expression in 1 Tim. vi. 20, ‘oppositions of science.’ It seems they called their opinions, though they were but profane and vain babblings, by the name of ‘science’ or ‘knowledge,’ implying that all others, even the apostles themselves, were in the dark, and came short of their illumination. The like we have in Rev. ii. 24 of that abominable prophetess Jezebel, who recommended her blasphemous, filthy doctrines under the name of ‘depths,’ profundities or hidden knowledge, though the Spirit of God told that church they were not such; but if depths, they were ‘depths of Satan’—as it is added there by way of correction—and not of the Spirit of God. We may trace these footsteps of Satan in all considerably prevailing errors; for what hath been more common than to hear men speak of the designs they have been carrying on under the specious titles of Christ’s coming to set up a righteous kingdom, the church’s coming out of Babylon and out of the wilderness, the dawning of the day of the Lord, the day of reformation, ‘the time of the restitution of all things,’ with abundance of brags of the same kind? I shall add no particular instance of this nature, but a few strains of H. Nicholas, with whom such high promising vaunts were ordinary. His service of love he compares to the ‘most holy;’ whereas John’s doctrine of repentance was but a preparation to the holy, and the service of Christ he allowed to be no more than as the holy of the temple. This his service he calls ‘the perfection of life, the completion of prophecies, the perfect conclusion of the works of God, the throne of Christ, the true rest of the chosen of God, the last day, the sure word of prophecy, the new Jerusalem,’ and what not.
If we make further inquiry into the nature of these fair promising mysteries, we shall find that Satan most frequently pitcheth upon these three:—
[1.] First, He befools men into a belief that the Scriptures do, under the veil of their words and sentences, contain some hidden notions that are of purpose so disguised that they may be locked up from the generality of men, at least from learned and wise men; and that these rarities cannot be discerned from the usual significations of the words and phrases, as we understand other books of the same language, but they fancy these sacred writings to be like the writings of the Egyptians,[238] by which they absconded[239] their mysteries, especially like that kind of writing, whereby under words of common known sense they intended things which the words themselves could not signify; and that which occasions this imagination is this, that we read frequently of ‘mysteries’ in [the] Scriptures, and ‘hidden wisdom,’ and the ‘special revelation’ of them to God’s children, which are very great truths, but yet not to be so understood as this delusion supposeth; for these expressions in Scripture intend no more than this, that the design of God to save man by Christ is in itself a ‘mystery,’ which never would have been found out without a special revelation; and that though this ‘mystery’ is now revealed by the gospel, yet as to the application of it to the hearts of men in conversion by the operation of the Spirit, it is yet a ‘mystery.’ But none of these intend any such suggestion, that there are private notions of truth or doctrine that are lying under ground, as it were, in Scripture words, which the words in the common language will not acquaint us withal; nay, the contrary is expressly affirmed when we are told that all is plainly laid open to the very simple, so that from the Scriptures they may as well understand the fundamental principles of religion, as they may understand any other thing which their language doth express to them. However, in this Satan takes advantage of men’s pride and curiosity to make them forward in the acceptation of such offers, especially when such things are represented as the only saving discoveries, which a man cannot be ignorant of but with hazard of damnation.
[2.] Secondly, In this boast of mystery, Satan sometimes takes another course somewhat differing from the former, and that is to put men upon allegorical reflections and allusions, by which the historical passages of Scripture are made, besides the import of the history, resemblances of spiritual truths, which supposeth the letter of Scripture to be true, but still as no better than the first rudiments to train up beginners withal, yet withal that the spiritual meaning of it raiseth the skilful to a higher form in Christ’s school. At this rate all are turned into allegories. If they fall upon the first of Genesis, they think they then truly understand it when they apply the light and darkness, and God’s separating of them, with such other passages, to the regeneration of the soul. The like work make they with the sufferings of Christ. But then the crafty adversary at last enticeth them on to let go the history, as if it were nothing but a parable, not really acted, but only fitted to represent notions to us. Allegories were a trap which the devil had for the Jews, and wherein they wonderfully pleased themselves. How much Origen abused himself and the Scriptures by this humour is known to many; and how the devil hath prevailed generally by it upon giddy people in later times I need not tell you.
The pretence that Satan hath for this dealing is raised from some passages of the New Testament, wherein many things of the Old Testament are said to have had a mystical signification of things expressed or transacted then, and some things are expressly called allegories. Hence papists determine the Scripture to have, besides the grammatical sense, which all of us do own, and besides the tropological sense, which is not diverse or distinct from the grammatical, as when from histories we deduce instructions of holy and sober carriage, an allegorical and analogical sense; in which dealing men consider not that the Spirit of God his interpreting a passage or two allegorically, will never justify any man’s boldness in presuming to do the like to any other passage of Scripture; and beside, when any hath tried his skill that way, another may with equal probability carry the same scripture to a different interpretation, and by this means the Scripture shall not only become obscure, but altogether uncertain and doubtful, and unable to prove anything; so that this doth extremely dishonour Scripture, by making it little less than ridiculous. Porphyry and Julian made themselves sport with it upon the occasion of Origen’s allegorizing; and no wonder, seeing that humour, as one calls it,[240] is no better than a learned foolery. Notwithstanding this, men are sometime transported with a strange delight in turning all into allegories, and picking mysteries out of some by-passages and circumstances of Scripture where one would least expect them; which I can ascribe to no second cause more than to the working and power of fancy, which, as it can frame ideas and images of things out of that that affords no real likeness or proportion, as men that create to themselves similitudes and pictures in the clouds or in the fire, so doth it please itself in its own work; and with a kind of natural affection it doth kiss and hug its own baby. It hath been my wonder sometimes to see how fond men have been of their own fancies, and how extremely they have doted upon a very bauble. I might note you examples of this, even to nauseousness, in all studies, as well as in this of religion. Those that affect the sublimities of chemistry do usually by a strange boldness stretch all the sacred mysteries of Scripture, as of the Trinity, of regeneration, &c., to represent their secrets and processes, as may be seen sufficiently in their writings. One of them I cannot forbear to name, and that is Glauber, who doth so please himself with some idle whims about sal and sol, that at last he falls in with Bernardinus Gomesius, whom he cites and approves, who in this one word, ἃλς, which signifies salt, finds the Trinity, the generation of the Son, the two natures of Christ, the calling of the Jews and Gentiles, the procession of the Spirit, and the communications of the Spirit in the law and gospel; and all this he gathers from the shapes, strokes, and positions of these three letters—a very subtle invention.[241] Not unlike to this were some of the dotages of the Jewish Cabala, which they gathered from the different writing of some letters in the sacred text, from the transposing of them, and from their mystical arithmetic. R. Ellis from the letter aleph, mentioned six times in Gen. i. 1, collected his notion of the world’s continuance for six thousand years, because that letter א stands for a thousand in the Hebrew computation. Another Rabbi, mentioned by Lud. Cappellus,[242] hath a profound speculation concerning the first letter of Genesis, which, as he saith, doth therefore begin with beth, and not with aleph, to shew the unexceptionable verity of God’s word, against which no mouth can justly open itself; and this he gathers from the manner of the pronunciation of that letter ב, which is performed by the closure of the lips. It were not possible to imagine that wise men should be thus carried away with childish follies, if there were not some kind of enchantment in fancy, which makes the hit of a conceit, though never so silly, intoxicate them into an apprehension of a rare discovery. And doubtless this is the very thing that doth so transport the allegorizers and inventors of mysteries, that they are ravished either with the discovery of a new nothing or with the rare invention of an enigmatical interpretation.