1. The temptations of Satan are sometime so unnatural, so ⟨p. 237⟩violent, and so importunate, that the tempted person even feels something besides himself, persuading and urging him: He cannot go about his calling, he cannot be alone, but he feels somewhat following him, with persuasions to sin, yea, to sins that he never found his nature much inclined to, and such as bring him no advantage in the world, and such as are quite against the temperature of his body. Doth it not plainly tell us that there is a Devil, labouring to deprive man of his Happiness, when men are drawn to commit such monstrous sins? Such cruelty as the Romans used to the Jews at the taking of Jerusalem: So many thousand Christians so barbarously murdered; such bloody actions as those of Nero, Caligula, Sulla, Messala, Caracalla, the Roman Gladiators the French Massacre, the Gunpowder Plot, the Spanish Inquisition, and their murdering fifty millions of Indians in forty two years, according to the Testimony of Acosta their Jesuit. Men invading their own neighbours and brethren, with an unquenchable thirst after their blood, and merely because of their strictness in the common professed Religion, as the late cruel wars in England have declared: I say, how could these come to pass, but by the instigation of the Devil? When we see men making a j•st of such sins as these, making them their pleasure, impudently, and implacably against Knowledge and Conscience proceeding in them, hating those ways that they know to be better, and all those persons that would help to save them: yea, choosing sin, though they believe it will damn them, despairing, and yet sinning still; Doth not this tell men plainly that there is a Devil, their enemy? When men will commit the sin which they abhor in others, which Reason is against, when men of the best natures, as Vespasian, Julian, &c. shall be so bloody murderers, when men will not be stirred from sin by any entreaty, though their dearest friends should beg with tears upon their knees; though Preachers convince them, and beseech them in the name of the Lord, though wife and children, body and soul be undone by it: Nay, when men will be the same under the greatest judgments, and under the most wonderful convincing Providences, as appears in England, yea, under Miracles themselves.
1. The temptations of Satan are sometime so unnatural, so ⟨p. 237⟩violent, and so importunate, that the tempted person even feels something besides himself, perswading and urging him: He cannot go about his calling, he cannot be alone, but he feels somewhat following him, with perswasions to sin, yea, to sins that he never found his nature much inclined to, and such as bring him no advantage in the world, and such as are quite against the temperature of his body. Doth it not plainly tell us that there is a Devil, labouring to deprive man of his Happiness, when men are drawn to commit such monstrous sins? Such cruelty as the Romans used to the Jews at the taking of Jerusalem: So many thousand Christians so barbarously murdered; such bloudy actions as those of Nero, Caligula, Sylla, Messala, Caeracalla, the Romane Gladiatores the French Massacre, the Gunpowder Plot, the Spanish Inquisition, and their murdering fifty millions of Indians in fourty two years, according to the Testimony of Acosta their Jesuite. Men invading their own neighbours and brethren, with an unquenchable thirst after their blood, and meerly because of their strictness in the common professed Religion, as the late cruel wars in England have declared: I say, how could these come to pass, but by the instigation of the Devil? When we see men making a j•st of such sins as these, making them their pleasure, impudently, and implacably against Knowledg and Conscience proceeding in them, hating those ways that they know to be better, and all those persons that would help to save them: yea, chusing sin, though they believe it will damn them, despairing, and yet sinning still; Doth not this tell men plainly that there is a Devil, their enemy? When men will commit the sin which they abhor in others, which Reason is against, when men of the best natures, as Vespasian, Julian, &c. shall be so bloody murderers, when men will not be stirred from sin by any intreaty, though their dearest friends should beg with teares upon their knees; though Preachers convince them, and beseech them in the name of the Lord, though wife and children, body and soul be undone by it: Nay, when men will be the same under the greatest judgments, and under the most wonderful convincing Providences, as appears in England, yea, under Miracles themselves.
