The divine life in three treatises

what wonder if there are so many Saint-haters, and God-haters in the world, as to fill the earth with persecutions and cruelties, or make a scorn of that which God most highly valueth, and all this under pretences of Order, or Unity, or Justice, or something that is good, and therefore fit to palliate their sin! Is there any thing so false, or foul, or wicked, that Satan will not teach his followers? Is he grown modest, or moderate, or holy, or just? Is he reconciled to Christ, to Scripture, to Godliness, or to the Godly? Or is his Kingdom of darkness at an end? and hath he lost the earth? Or are men therefore none of the servants of the Devil, because they were baptized (as Simon Magus was) and call and think themselves the servants of Christ? As if still it were not the art by which he gets and keeps Disciples, to suffer them to wear the livery of Christ, and to use his name, that he may thus keep possession of them in peace, who else would be frighted from him, and fly to Christ! He will give them leave to study Arts and Sciences, and to understand things excellent of inferior use, so be it they will be deceived by him in the matters of God and their salvation. He can allow them to be learned Lawyers, excellent Physicians, Philosophers, Politicians, to be skilful Artists, so be it they will follow him in sin to their damnation, and will overlook the Truth that should set them free, (Joh. 8. 32. Yea he will permit them (when ⟨p. 261⟩there's no remedy) to study the holy Scriptures, if he may but be the expounder and applier of it: Yea he will permit them notionally to understand it, if they will not learn by it to be converted, to be holy, and to be saved: He can suffer them to be eminent Divines, so they will not be serious Christians. Thus is the world by the grand Deceiver hurried in darkness to perdition, being taken captive by him at his will, 2 Tim. 2. 26. But the Sanctified are all illuminated by the Holy Ghost, by whom their eyes are so effectually opened, that they are turned from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God, Act. 26. 18. The Father of Glory hath given them the spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of Christ, that the eyes of their understanding being enlightened, they may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the Glory of his inheritance in the Saints,