Useful instructions for a professing people in times of great security and degeneracy

Secondly, Those that look not beyond Instruments. There is a great deal of enquiry made about the Devils agency, and raising of Spirits against such as we are ready to think may be his subservient actors in this case, but how many are there that look no further. Consider,

1. This is to forget the Supremacy of Divine Providence; we do not remember that God sits and rules over Men and Devils, and that in such an uncontrollable manner, that Earth and Hell cannot move to any act upon the creature, unless he permit them.

1. This is to forget the Supremacy of Divine Providence; we do not remember that God sits and rules over Men and Devils, and that in such an uncontrolable manner, that Earth and Hell cannot move to any act upon the creature, unless he permit them.

2. It tends to hinder the right efficacy of this Judgement upon the Soul; for it raiseth, and humbles not the Soul of the creature: it is the way to provocation and exasperation, to bitterness and rage, from the consideration of the virulency of the enemy, and that we have […] deserved it at their hands, &c. whereas if we looked beyond these, to God the prime Efficient, it would teach us silence, and holy submission: I was dumb, &c. because thou didst it, Psal. 39. 9.

2. It tends to hinder the right efficacy of this Judgement upon the Soul; for it raiseth, and humbles not the Soul of the creature: it is the way to provocation and exasperation, to bitterness and rage, from the consideration of the virulency of the enemy, and that we have 〈…〉 deserved it at their hands, &c. whereas if we looked beyond these, to God the prime Efficient, it would teach us silence, and holy submission: I was dumb, &c. because thou didst it,