An antidote against distractions, or, An endeavour to serve the church, in the daily…An antidote against distractions, or, An indeavour to serve the church, in the daily…

SECT. IX.¹

1. 1§. 9.

A Ninth cause of Distractions in the Worship of God,¹ is, Satan^*. And this he doth sometimes more remotely, by throwing in some cross business before Duties, whereby the soul is unhinged: some body, or Letter with business, just before prayer; or some passionate distempering passages in the family, whereby to lay matter ready for our discomposure, and wanderings in the following duties. Sometimes he approaches nearer, and by presenting and occasioning objects to our senses in God's Worship, draws off the heart: He can stay One long from the Congregation, that Another may be distracted in observing him coming in, and so wounds two, and sometimes twenty ⟨p. 116⟩at a blow: Satan is not idle, when this and that child are restless and unquiet in the family; whereby perhaps all in the family lose the passages that would most profit them. He can create a further distraction by every pillar and part of the structure, and every person in the congregation; and can be content you read sentences on the walls, to hinder and divert your s•uls from the sentences in the pulpit. Yea, he often approaches nearer, and works immediately upon the Fancy, upon which he can imprint a thousand notions, most strange and incoherent many times, to steal the heart from God, for we are not ignorant (the more is our sorrow) of his devices. Hence we have him, Job 1.6. When the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, coming also among them. And being questioned, tells his business is to go to and fro in the earth, and to walk up and down in it; as if he walked only out of curiosity, or for some charitable end. But as our Lord Jesus went up and down, doing good; this was his work from morning to night: so the Devil walks up and down, doing evil. He is in every pew, at every elbow, throwing in his fire-balls,