[3.] His last and most dangerous argument is, that they are sinful. Unfitness for duty produceth many distractions, much deadness, wandering thoughts, great interruptions, and pitiful performances. Hence the troubled soul comes off from duty wounded and halting, more distressed when he hath done than when he began; upon these considerations, that all his service was sin, a mocking of God, a taking his name in vain, nay, a very blasphemous affront to a divine majesty. Upon this the devil starts the question to his heart, Whether it be not better to forbear all duty, and to do nothing? Thus doth Satan improve the trouble of the mind, and often with the designed success. For a dejected spirit doth not only afford the materials of these weapons which the devil frames against it, but is much prepared to receive them into its own bowels. The grounds of these arguments it grants, and the inferences are commonly consented to, so that ordinarily duty is neglected, either, 1. Through sottishness of heart; or, 2. Through frightful fears; or, 3. Through desperateness; bringing a man to the very precipice of that atheistical determination, ‘I have cleansed my hands in vain,’ [Ps. lxxiii. 13.]
Fourth, Satan makes use of the troubles of God’s children as a stumbling-block to others. It is no small advantage to him, that he hath hereby an occasion to render the ways of God unlovely to those that are beginning to look heavenward; he sets before them the sighs, groans, complaints, and restless outcries of the wounded in spirit, to scare them off from all seriousness in religion, and whispers this to them, ‘Will you choose a life of bitterness and sorrow? can you eat ashes for bread, and mingle your drink with tears? will you exchange the comforts and contents of life for a melancholy heart and a dejected countenance? how like you to go mourning all the day, and at night to be scared with dreams and terrified with visions? will you choose a life that is worse than death, and a condition which will make you a terror to yourselves and a burden to others? can you be in love with a heart loaden with grief, and perpetual fears almost to distraction, while you see others in the meantime enjoy themselves in a contented peace? Thus he follows young beginners with his suggestions, making them believe that they cannot be serious in religion, but at last they will be brought to this, and that it is a very dangerous thing to be religious overmuch, and the highway to despair; so that if they must have a religion, he readily directs them to use no more of it than may consist with the pleasures of sin and the world, and to make an easy business of it, not to let sin lie over-near their heart, lest it disquiet them; nor overmuch to concern themselves with study, reading, prayer, or hearing of threatening, awakening sermons, lest it make them mad; nor to affect the sublimities of communion with God, exercises of faith and divine love, lest it discompose them and dash their worldly jollities out of countenance. A counsel that is readily enough embraced by those that are almost persuaded to be Christians; and the more to confirm them in it, he sticks not sometime to asperse the poor troubled soul with dissimulation—where that accusation is proper, for the devil cares not how inconsistent he be with himself, so that he may but gain his end—affirming all his seriousness to be nothing but whining hypocrisy. So that whether they judge these troubles to be real or feigned, his conclusion is the same, and he persuades men thereby to hold off from all religious strictness, holy diligence, and careful watchfulness.
Fifth, A further use which the devil makes of these troubles of spirit is, to prepare the hearts of men thereby to give entertainment to his venomous impressions. Distress of heart usually opens the door to Satan, and lays a man naked, without armour or defence, as a fair mark for all his poisoned arrows; and it is a hundred to one but some of them do hit. I shall choose out some of the most remarkable, and they are these:—
[1.] After long acquaintance with grief he labours to fix them in it. In some cases custom doth alleviate higher griefs, and men take an odd kind of delight in them; Est quædam etiam dolendi voluptas. It is some pleasure to complain, and men settle themselves in such a course, their finger is ever upon their sore, and they go about telling their sorrows to all they converse with—though to some this is a necessity, for real sorrows, if they be not too great for vent, will constrain them to speak—yet in some that have been formerly acquainted with grief, it degenerates at last into a formality of complaining; and because they formerly had cause so to do, they think they must always do so. But besides this, Satan doth endeavour to chain men to their mourning upon two higher accounts[320]: 1. By a delusive contentment in sorrow, as if our tears paid some part of our debt to God, and made amends for the injuries done to him. 2. By an obstinate sullenness and desperate resolvedness they harden themselves in sorrow, and say as Job, chap. vii. 11, ‘I will not refrain my mouth, I will speak in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?’
[2.] Another impression that men’s hearts are apt to take, is, unthankfulness for the favours formerly bestowed upon them. Their present troubles blot out the memory of old kindnesses. They conclude they have nothing at all, because they have not peace. Though God heretofore hath sent down from on high, and taken them out of the great waters, or out of the mire and clay where they were ready to sink; though he hath sent them many tokens of love, conferred on them many blessings; yet all these are no more to them, so long as their sorrows continue, than Haman’s wealth and honour was to him, so long as Mordecai the Jew sat at the king’s gate. Thus the devil oft prevails with God’s children, to deal with God as some unthankful persons deal with their benefactors; who, if they be not humoured in every request, deny the reality of their love, and despise with great ingratitude all that was done for them before.
[3.] By inward griefs, the heart of the afflicted are prepared to entertain the worst interpretation that the devil can put upon the providences of God. The various instances of Scripture, and the gracious promises made to those that ‘walk in darkness and see no light,’ do abundantly forewarn men from making bad conclusions of God’s dealings, and do tell us that God in design, for our trial and for our profit, doth often hide his face ‘for a moment,’ when yet his purpose is to ‘bind us up with everlasting compassions.’ Now the devil labours to improve the sorrows of the mind to give a quite contrary construction. If they are afflicted, instead of saying, ‘Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy will come in the morning,’ [Ps. xxx. 5,] or that ‘for a little while God hath hidden himself,’ he puts them to say, ‘this darkness shall never pass away.’ If the grief be little, he drives them on to a fearful expectation of worse; as he did with Hezekiah, Isa. xxxviii. 13, ‘I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones; from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.’ If God purpose to teach us by inward sorrows our pride of heart, carelessness, neglect of dependence upon him, the bitterness of sin, or the like, the devil will make us believe, and we are too ready to subscribe to him, that God proclaims open war against us, and resolves never to own us more. So did Job, chap. xix. 6, ‘Know now that God hath overthrown me, and compassed me with his net;’ how often complained he, ‘thou hast made me as thy mark, thou hast broken me asunder, thou hast taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces’! So also Heman, Ps. lxxxviii. 14, ‘Why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?’
[4.] Upon this occasion the devil is ready to envenom the soul with sinful wishes and execrations against itself. Eminent saints have been tempted in their trouble to say too much this way. Job solemnly cursed his day: Job iii. 3, ‘Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived,’ &c. So also Jeremiah, chap. xx. 14, ‘Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child is born unto thee; and let that man be as the cities which God overthrew, and repented not.’ Strange rashness! what had the day deserved? or wherein was the messenger to be blamed? Violent passions hurried him beyond all bounds of reason and moderation. When troubles within are violent, a small push sets men forward; and when once they begin, they are carried headlong beyond what they first intended.
[5.] On this advantage the devil sometimes emboldens them to quarrel God himself directly. When Job and Jeremiah cursed their day, it was a contumely against God indirectly; but they durst not make bold with God at so high a rate as to quarrel him to his face. Yet even this are men brought to often when their sorrows are long-lasting and deep. The devil suggests, Can God be faithful, and never keep promise for help? can he be merciful, when he turns away his ears from the cry of the miserable? where is his pity, when he multiplies his wounds without cause? Though at first these cursed intimations do a little startle men, yet when by frequent inculcating they grow more familiar to the heart, the distressed break out in their rage with those exclamations, Where is the faithfulness of God? where are his promises? hath he not forgotten to be gracious? are not his mercies clean gone? And at last it may be Satan leads them a step higher, that is—
[6.] To a despairing desperateness. For when all passages of relief are stopped up, and the burden becomes great, men are apt to be drawn into rage and fury when they think their burden is greater than they can bear, and see no hope of ease; in a kind of revenge they express their anger against the hand that wounded them. The devil is officiously ready with his advice of ‘Curse God and die,’ [Job. ii. 9,] and they, being full of anguish, are quickly made to comply with it.
[7.] When it is at this height, the devil hath but one stage more, and that is the suggesting of irregular means for ease. Rage against God doth not quench the inward burning, blasphemies against heaven easeth not the pain, the sore runs still and ceaseth not, the trouble continues, the man cannot endure it longer, all patience and hope is gone. What shall he do in this case? The devil offers his service; he will be the physician, and commonly he prescribes one of these two things: (1.) That it is best to endeavour to break through all this trouble into a resolved profaneness; not to stand in awe of laws, not to believe that there is a God that governs in the earth, but that this is only the bitter fruit of melancholy and unnecessary seriousness, and therefore it is best ‘to eat, drink, and be merry,’ If a man can thus escape out of his trouble, the devil needs no more; but oft he cannot, the wounds of conscience will not be thus healed. Then, (2.) He hath another remedy, which will not fail, as he tells them, that is, to ‘destroy themselves,’ to end their troubles with their lives. How open are the breasts of troubled creatures to all these darts! and were it not that God secretly steps in and holds the afflicted with his right hand, it is scarce imaginable but that wounded consciences should by Satan’s subtle improvement of so fair an advantage be brought to all this misery.