Chapter III (2)

[1.] First, _What a reverence men naturally carry to revelations, and how apt they are to be surprised with a hasty credulity_. An old prophecy, pretended to be found in a wall, or taken out of an old manuscript, of I know not what uncertain author, is usually more doted on than the plain and infallible rules of Scripture. This we may observe daily; and foreigners do much blame the English for a facile belief of such things; but it is a general fault of mankind, and we find even wise men forward in their persuasions upon meaner grounds than those that gain credit to old prophecies. For their antiquity and strangeness of discovery, especially at such times wherein the present posture of affairs seem to favour such predictions with a probability of such events, are more likely to get credit than these artificial imitations of the ways and garbs of the old prophets, and the cunning legerdemain of those that pretend to inspirations by seeming ecstasies, raptures, and confident declarations, &c.; nevertheless arrant cheats have by these ways deceived no mean men. Alvarus acknowledgeth that he honoured a woman as a saint that had visions and raptures as if really inspired—and the same apprehensions had the bishop and friars—who was afterward discovered to be a naughty woman.[257] Who shall then think it strange that the unobservant multitude should be deluded by such an art?

[2.] Secondly, Especially if we consider that _God himself took this course to signify his mind to men_. His prophets were divinely inspired, and the Scriptures were not of ‘any private interpretation,’ ἰδίας ἐπιλύσεως. The words that the penmen of Scriptures wrote were not the interpretations of their own private thoughts, ‘for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,’ 2 Pet. i. 20, 21. Now though the prophecies of Scripture are sealed, and no more is to be added to them upon any pretence whatsoever, yet seeing there are promises left us of the ‘giving of the Spirit,’ of ‘being taught and led by the Spirit,’ it is an easy matter for Satan to beguile men into an expectation of prophetic inspirations, and a belief of what is pretended so to be; for all men do not or will not understand that these promises of the Spirit have no intendment of new and extraordinary immediate revelations, but only of the efficacious applications of what is already revealed in Scripture. This kind of revelation we acknowledge and teach, which is far enough from enthusiasm, that is, a pretended revelation of new truths, and we have reason to assert that internal persuasions without the external word are to be avoided as Satan’s cozenages.[258] But for all this, when men’s minds are set agadding, if they meet with such as magnify their own dreams, and call their fancies visions, the suitableness of this to their humour makes them to reject our interpretations of these promises as false, and to persuade themselves that they are to be understood of such inspirations as the prophets of old had; and then they presently conclude they are to believe them, lest otherwise they should resist the Holy Ghost.

[3.] Thirdly, But _the advantage which the devil hath to work delusion upon by this pretence is a high motive to him to practise upon it_. For inspirations, visions, voices, impulses, dreams, and revelations are things wherein wicked impostors may by many ways and artifices play the counterfeits undiscovered. It is easy to prophesy false dreams, and to say, thus saith the Lord, when yet they do but lie, and the Lord never sent them nor commanded them, Jer. xxiii. 31; nay, it is easy, by tricks and illusions, to put that honour and credit upon their designs which they could not by their bare assertions, backed with all their art of seeming seriousness. The inventions of men that have been formerly successful in this deceit being now laid open to our knowledge, may make us more wary in our trust. Among the heathens you may find notable ways of deceits of this nature. The story of Hanno and Psappho is commonly known; they tamed birds and learned them to speak, ‘Hanno and Psappho are gods,’ and then set them at liberty, that men hearing such strange voices in the woods from birds, might imagine that these men were declared gods by special discovery. Mohammed’s device of making a dove to come frequently to his ear, which he did by training her up to a use of picking corn out of it, served him for an evidence among the vulgar beholders, who knew not the true cause of it, of his immediate inspiration by the angel Gabriel, who, as he told them, whispered in his ear in the shape of a dove. The like knavery he practised for the confirmation of the truth of his Alcoran, by making a bull, taught before to come at a call or sign, to come to him with a chapiter upon his horns. Hector Boetius tells us of a like stratagem of a king of Scots, who, to animate his fainting subjects against the Picts that had beaten them, caused a man clothed in the shining skins of fishes, and with rotten wood, which, as a glow-worm in the night, represents a faint light, to come among them in the dark, and through a reed or hollow trunk, that the voice might not appear to be human, to incite them to a vigorous onset: this they took to be an angel bringing them this command from heaven, and accordingly fought and prevailed. Crafty Benedict, who was afterward pope under the name of Boniface VIII., made simple Celestine V. give over the popedom by conveying to him a voice through a reed to this purpose: Celestine, Celestine, renounce the papacy, give it over, if thou wouldst be saved, the burden is beyond thy strength, &c. The silly man, taking this for a revelation from heaven, quitted his chair and left it for that crafty fox Benedict. Not very many years since the same trick was played in this country to a man of revelations—Paul Hobson—who called himself David in spirit. When he had wearied his entertainer with a long stay, he quitted himself of his company, as I was credibly informed, by a policy which he perceived would well suit with the man’s conceitedness, for through a reed in the night-time he tells him that he must go into Wales, or some such country, and there preach the gospel; the next morning the man avouches a revelation from God to go elsewhere, and so departs. These instances shew you how cunningly a cheating knave may carry on a pretence of revelation or vision. And yet this is not all the advantage which the devil hath in this matter, though it is an advantage which he sometime makes use of when he is fitted with suitable instruments. But he works most dangerously when he so acts upon men that they themselves believe they have visions, raptures, and revelations, for some are really persuaded that it is so with them. Neither is it strange that men should be deluded into an apprehension that they hear and see what they do not; in fevers, frenzies, and madness we clearly see it to be so; and who can convince such persons of their mistakes, when with as high a confidence as may be they contend that they are not deceived? Shall we think it strange that Satan hath ways of conveying false apprehensions upon men’s minds? No, surely. Do we not see that the senses may be cheated, and that the fancies of men may be corrupted? Is it not easy for him to convey voices to the ear, or shapes and representations to the eye? and in such cases, what can ordinarily hinder a belief that they hear or see such things? But he needs not always work upon the fancy by the senses. If he hath the advantage of a crazy distempered fancy, as commonly he hath in melancholy persons, he can so strongly fix his suggestions upon them, and so effectually set the fancy on work to embrace them, that without any appearance of madness they will persuade themselves that they have discoveries from God, impulses by his Spirit, scriptures set upon their hearts, and what not; and because they feel the workings of these things within them, it is impossible to make them so much as suspect that they are deceived. Do but consider the power of any fancy in a melancholic person, and you may easily apprehend how Satan works in such delusions. Melancholy doth strangely pervert the imagination, and will beget in men wonderful misapprehensions, and that sometimes doth bewitch them into peremptory, uncontrollable belief of their fancy. It is a vehement, confident humour, what way soever it takes; the imagination thus corrupted hath an enormous strength, so that if it fix upon things never so absurd or irrational, it is not reducible by the strongest reasons. If such a man conceits himself dead, or that he is transformed to a wolf or cat, or that he is made of glass, as many in this distemper have done, there is no persuasion to the contrary that can take place with him. Now if this humour be taken up with divine matters, as usually it doth, for it hath a natural inclination to religious things, it still acts with fierceness and confidence, and there are many things often concomitant to such actings, that if it misconceit inspiration or prophecy, the parties themselves are not only bound up under that persuasion, but even unwary spectators are deluded. For sometime a melancholy imagination is not wholly corrupt, but only in respect of some one or two particulars, whilst in other things it acts regularly, and then neither they nor others, that are unacquainted with such cases, are so apt to suspect that they are mistaken in these things, while they act rationally and soberly in other matters. Sometime they have vehement fits of surprisal—for the humour hath its ebbings and flowings—and this gives them occasion to apprehend that something doth supernaturally act or raise them, and then when the things they speak are for the matter of them of religious concern and odd notions—for the humour flies high and bounds not itself with ordinary things—and withal uttered in Scripture rhetoric and with fervency and urgency of spirit—when these things concur, there is such an appearance of inspiration that the parties themselves and others rest fully persuaded that it is so.

(7.) Seventhly, _Pretended and counterfeit miracles the devil makes much use of to countenance error, and this is also one of his strongholds_; for he suggests that God himself bears witness by these signs, wonders, and miracles to such erroneous doctrine as seems to be concerned[259] by them.

That the devil cannot work a true miracle hath been discoursed before, but that he can perform many strange things, and such as may beget admiration, none denies; and that by such unwonted actions he usually endeavours to justify false doctrines, and to set them off with the appearance of divine approbation, we are sufficiently forewarned in the Scriptures.[260] Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses by false miracles. In Deut. xiii. 1, God speaks of the signs and wonders of false prophets, who would by that means seek to seduce the people to follow after other gods. Christ also, in Mat. xxiv. 24, foretells that ‘false Christs and false prophets shall arise, and shew great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect,’ and puts a special note of caution upon it: ‘Behold, I have told you before.’ And to the same purpose is that of Paul concerning Antichrist, 2 Thes. ii. 9, where he tells us of powerful ‘signs and wonders by the working of Satan,’ who doth all the while only lie and cheat that he may draw men to error.

If we make inquiry how Satan hath managed this engine, we shall observe not only his diligence in using it on all occasions to countenance all kind of errors both in paganism and Christianity, but also his subtle dexterity by cheating men with forgeries and falsehood.

Heathenish idolatry, among other helps for its advancement, wanted not this. The oracles and responses, which were common before the coming of Christ, were esteemed as miraculous confirmations of the truth of the deities which they worshipped; the movings and speakings of their statues[261] were arguments that the operative presence of some celestial _Numen_ was affixed to such an image. In some places the solemn sacrifices are never performed without a seeming miracle. As in Nova Zembla, where the priest’s trances, his running a sword into his belly, his making his head and shoulder fall off his body into a kettle of hot water by the drawing of a line, and then his reviving again perfect and entire, without maim or hurt, are all strange, astonishing things to the beholders.[262] But besides such things as these, which are standing constant wonders, we read of some that have had, as it were, a gift of miracles, that they might be eminently instrumental to promote and honour paganism. All histories agree that Simon Magus did so many strange things at Rome—as the causing an image to walk, turning stones into bread, transforming himself into several shapes, flying in the air, &c.—that he was esteemed a god. Philostratus and Cedrenus[263] report great things of Apollonius [of Tyana,] as that he could deliver cities from scorpions, serpents, earthquakes, &c., and that many miracles were wrought by him. This man Satan raised up in an extraordinary manner to revive the honour of paganism, that it might at least vie with Christianity. And though few ever attained to that height which Apollonius and Simon Magus reached unto, yet have we several instances of great things done now and then by some singular persons upon a special occasion, which Satan improved to his advantage. Vespasian cured a lame and blind man.[264] Adrianus cured a blind woman; and which is more, after he was dead, by the touch of his body, a man of Pannonia who was born blind received his sight.[265] Valerius Maximus tells of many strange things, and particularly of a vestal virgin that drew water into a sieve. As Livy tells of another, Claudia by name, who with her girdle drew the ship to the shore which carried the mother of their gods, when neither strength of men nor oxen could do it.[266]

Errors under profession of Christianity have been supported and propagated by the boast of miracles. A clear instance for this we have in popery, that religion being a perpetual boast of wonders. To let pass their great miracle of transubstantiation, which, as one hath lately demonstrated, is a bundle of miracles, or contradictions rather,[267] because it appears not to the senses of any man, and consequently is not capable of being an argument to prove any of their opinions. We have abundance of strange things related by them, as proofs of some doctrines of theirs in particular, as purgatory, invocation of saints, transubstantiation, &c., and of their profession in the general, devils cast out, blind and lame cured, dead raised, and what not; it would be endless to recite particulars. It would take a long time to tell what their St Francis hath done—how he fetched water out of a rock, how he was homaged by fowls and fishes, how he made a fountain in Marchia run wine, and how far he exceeded Christ himself in wonderful feats. Christ did nothing which St Francis did not do, nay, he did many more things than Christ did: Christ turned water into wine but once, but St Francis did it thrice; Christ was once transfigured, but St Francis twenty times; he and his brethren raised above a thousand to life, cast out more than a thousand devils, &c.[268] Their Dominicus raised three dead men to life. Their Zeverius,[269] while he was alive, did many miracles, and after he was dead his body lay fifteen months sweetly smelling, without any taint of corruption. It is irksome to repeat their stories; abundance of such stuff might be added out of their own writings, the design of all which is to prove, to those that are so prodigal of their faith as to believe them, that they only are the true church, and that by this note among others they may be known to be so.

But let us turn aside a little to observe Satan’s cunning in this pretence of miracles; let things be soberly weighed, and we may see enough of the cheat. This great boast is, as Austin hath it, resolved into one of these two—either the figments of lying men, or the craft of deceitful spirits: _Vel figmenta hominum mendacium, vel portenta fallacium spirituum_.

As to the first of these, it is evident that a great many things that have been taken by the vulgar for mighty wonders, were nothing but the knaveries of impostors, who in this matter have used a threefold cunning.

[1.] First, _By mere juggling and forgery in confederacies and private contrivances they have set upon the stage persons before instructed to act their parts, or things aforehand prepared, to pretend to be what they were not, that others might seem to do what they did not, and all to amaze those that know not the bottom of the matter_. Of this nature was Mohammed’s dove and bull, who were privately trained up to that obedience and familiarity which they used to him. The pagan priests were not altogether to seek in this piece of art. Lucian tells us of one Alexander, who nourished and tamed a serpent, and made the people of Pontus believe that it was the god Æsculapius, and doubtless the idol priests improved their private artificial contrivances: as of the movings of their images, as that of Venus made by Dædalus, which by the means of quicksilver enclosed could stir itself;[270] their eating and drinking, as in the story of Bel in the Apochryphal adjections to the Book of Daniel; their responses, and several other appearances; as of the paper head of Adonis or Osiris, which, as Lucian reports, comes swimming down the river every year from Egypt to Byblos, &c.; these and such like they improved as evidences of the power, knowledge, and reality of their gods. And though in the prevalency of idolatry, where there was no considerable party to oppose, their cheats were not always discovered, yet we have no reason to imagine that the priests of those days were so honest that they were only deceived by the devil’s craft, and did not in a villainous design purposely endeavour the delusion of others. If we had no other grounds for a just suspicion in these cases, the famous instances of the abuse of Paulina at the temple of Isis in Rome, in the reign of the emperor Tiberius, by the procurement of Mondus, who corrupted the priest of Anubis to signify to her the love of their god, and under that coverture gratified the lust of Mondus, mentioned by Josephus.[271] And that of Tyrannus, priest of Saturn in Alexandria, who by the like pretence of the love of Saturn, adulterated most of the fairest dames of the city, mentioned by Ruffinus.[272] These would sufficiently witness that the priests of those times were apt enough to abuse the people at the rate we have been speaking of. In popery nothing hath been more ordinary. Who knows not the story of the holy maid of Kent and the boy of Bilson? How common is it with them to play tricks with women troubled with hysterical distempers; and to pretend the casting out of devils, when they have only to deal with a natural disease. Not very many years since they practised upon a poor young woman at Durham, and made great boasts of their exorcisms, relics, and holy water against the devil, with whom they would have all believe she was possessed, when the event discovered that her fits were only the fits of the mother. I myself, and some others in this place, have seen those fits allayed by the fume of tobacco blown into her mouth, to the shame and apparent detection of that artifice. I might mention the legerdemain of Antonius of Padua, who made his horse adore the host, for the conversion of a heretic; the finding of the images of St Paul and St Dominic in a church at Venice, with this inscription for Paul, ‘By this man you may come to Christ;’ and this for Dominic, ‘But by this man you may do it easilier;’ and the honour put upon Garnet, by his image on straw,[273] found at his execution, in all probability by him that made it and threw it down, or by his confederate: but these are enough to shew the honesty of these kind of men.

[2.] Secondly, _They have also a cunning of ascribing effects to wrong causes, and by that means they make those things wonders that are none_. Mohammed called his fits of falling-sickness ecstasies or trances. Austin tells us the heathens were notable at this: the burning lamp in the temple of Venus, though only the work of art, was interpreted to be a constant miracle of that deity.[274] The image which, in another temple, hung in the air, by ignorant gazers was accounted a wonder, when indeed the loadstone in the roof and pavement, though unseen, was the cause of it. The Sidonians were confirmed in their constant annual lamentations of Adonis, by a mock miracle of the redness of the river Adonis at one time of the year constantly; they take it to be blood, when it is nothing else but the colouring of the water by the dust of red earth or _minium_, which the winds constantly at that time of the year from mount Libanus do drive into the water.[275] Neither are the papists out in this point. I will only instance in that observation of Dr Jenison, to confirm the doctrine and practice of invocation:[276] they take the advantage of sovereign baths and waters, and where they espy any fountain good against the stone, or other diseases, presently there is the statue or image of some saint or other erected by it, by whose virtue the cure and miracle must seem to be done; or some chapel is erected to this or that saint, to whom prayers before and thanks after washing must be offered.

[3.] Thirdly, where the two former fail, men that devote themselves to this kind of service _imitate their father the devil, and fall to plain lying and devised fables_. Idolatry was mainly underpropped by fabulous stories; and no wonder, when they esteemed it a pious fraud to nourish piety towards the gods, in which case, as Polybius saith, though their writers speak monsters, and write childish, absurd, and impossible things, yet are they to be pardoned for their good intent.[277] Among the papists what less can be expected, when the same principle is entertained among them? Canus, and Lodovicus Vives mentioned by him,[278] as also some few others, do exceedingly blame that blind piety of coining lies for religion, and feigning histories for the credit of their opinions; but while they with great freedom and ingenuity do tax the fables of their own party, they do plainly acknowledge that they are too much guilty of feigning, insomuch that not only the author of the Golden Legend is branded with the characters of a brazen face and a leaden heart, but also Gregory’s Dialogues and Bede’s History are blamed by him, as containing narrations of miracles taken upon trust from the reports of the vulgar.[279] And indeed the wonders they talk of are so strange, so unlikely, so ridiculous and absurd some of them, that except a man offer violence to his reason, and wilfully shut his eyes against the clear evidences of suspicion, he cannot think they are anything else than dreams and fables, no better than Æsop’s. You may meet with several catalogues of them in protestant writers:[280] as their St Swithins making whole a basket of broken eggs by the sign of the cross; Patricius his making the stolen sheep to bleat in the thief’s belly after he had eaten it; their St Bridget’s bacon, which in great charity she gave to a hungry dog, was found again in her kettle; Dionysius after he was beheaded carried his head in his hand three French miles; St Dunstan took the devil by the nose with his tongs till he made him roar; Dominicus made him hold the candle till he burnt his fingers; St Lupus imprisoned the devil in a pot all night; a chapel of the Virgin Mary was translated from Palestine to Loretto; a consecrated host, being put into a hive of bees to cure them of the murrain, was so devoutly entertained that the bees built a chapel in the hive, with doors, windows, steeple, and bells, erected an altar and laid the host upon it, sung their canonical hours, and kept their watches by night, as monks used to do in their cloisters, &c. Who would ever imagine that men of any seriousness could satisfy themselves with such childish fopperies? These are the usual ways by which men of design have raised the noise of miracles.

The other part of Satan’s coming[281] relates to himself and his own actions. When his agents can go no further in the trade of miracle-making, he as a spirit doth often make use of his power, knowledge, and agility, by which he can indeed do things incredible and to be wondered at: _Portenta fallacium spirituum_. It is nothing for him, by his knowledge of affairs at a distance, of the private endeavours or expressed resolves of princes, to prognosticate future events. By his power over the bodies of men, he can, with the help of inclinations and advantages, do much to bring a man into a trance, or take the opportunity of a fit of an apoplexy, and then, like a cunning juggler, pretend, by I know not what nor whom, to raise a man from death. He knows the secret powers and virtues of things, and by private applications of them may easily supply spirits, remove obstructions, and so cure lameness, blindness, and many other distempers, and then give the honour of the cure to what person or occasion may best fit his design; so that either by the officious lies of his vassals, or the exerting of his own power on suitable objects at fit times, he hath made a great noise of signs and wonders in the world. And this stratagem of his hath ever been at hand to gain a repute to false doctrine. And the rather doth he insist upon this,

_First_, Because true miracles are a divine testimony to truth. As Nicodemus argued, John iii. 2, ‘No man could do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.’ And there were solemn occasions wherein they were necessary; as when God gave public discoveries of his mind before the Scriptures were written; and also when he altered the economy of the Old Testament and settled that of the New. In these cases it was necessary that God should confirm his word by miracles. But now, though these ends of miracles are ceased, though God hath so settled and fixed the rule of our obedience and worship that no other gospel or rule is to be expected, and consequently no need of new miracles, where the certain account of the old miracles are sufficient attestations of old and unalterable truths; nay, though God have expressly told us, Deut. xiii. 1, that no miracle—though it should come to pass, and could not be discovered to be a lie—should prevail with us to forsake the established truths and ways of Scripture, or to entertain anything contrary to it; yet doth Satan exercise herein a proud imitation of the supreme majesty, and withal doth so dazzle the minds of the weaker sort of men—who are more apt to consider the wonder than to suspect the design—that, without due heed given to the cautions which God hath laid before us in that particular, they are ready to interpret them to be God’s witness to this or that doctrine, to which they seem to be appendant.

_Secondly_, Because Satan hath a more than ordinary advantage to feign miracles; he doth more industriously set himself to pretend them and to urge them for the accomplishment of his ends. It is an easy work to prevail with men that are wholly devoted to their own interest, under the mask of religion to say and do anything that may further their design; and the business of miracles is so imitable by art, through the ignorance and heedlessness of men, that with a small labour Satan can do it at pleasure. The secret powers of nature—such as that of the loadstone—by a dexterous application brought into act in a fitly-contrived subject, will seem miraculous to those that see not the secret springs of those actions. There have been artificial contrivances of motions which, had they been disguised under a religious form, and directed to such an end, might have passed for greater miracles than many which we have mentioned. Such was the dove of Archyas, which did fly in the air as if it had been a living creature.[282] Such was the fly of Regiomontanus, and the eagle presented to the Emperor Maximilian, which, in the compass of their little bodies, contained so many springs and wheels as were sufficient to give them motion, and to direct their courses as if they had been animated. Albertus Magnus his artificial man, and the silver galley and tritons made by a goldsmith at Paris,[283] were rare pieces of art—their motions so certain and steady, that they seemed to have life and understanding. If art can do all this, how much more may we suppose can Satan do! how easily can he make apparitions, present strange sights to the eye and voices to the ear, and, by putting out his power, do a thousand things astonishing and wonderful!

(8.) Eighthly, _Sometimes Satan pleads for error, from the ease, peace, or other advantages which men pretend they have received since they engaged in such a way or received such a persuasion_. This is an argument from the effect, and frequently used to confirm the minds of men in their opinions. Hence they satisfy themselves with these reasonings: ‘I was before always under fears and uncertainties; I never was at peace or rest in my mind. I tried several courses, followed several parties, but I never had satisfaction or comfort till now, and by this I know that I am in a right way.’ Others argue after the same manner from their abundance and outward prosperity: ‘I met with nothing but crosses and losses before, but now God hath blessed me with an increase of substance, prospered my trade and undertakings,’ &c. These, though apparently weak and deceitful grounds, are reputed strong and conclusive to those that are first resolved upon an error. For men are so willing to justify themselves in what they have undertaken, that they greedily catch at anything that hath the least appearance of probability to answer their ends.

This plea of satisfaction is commonly from one of these two things:

1. First, _From inward peace and contentment of mind_. Satan knows that peace is the thing to which a man sacrificeth all his labours and travail. This he seeks, though often in a wrong way, and by wrong means. He knows also that true peace is only the daughter of truth, ‘the ways whereof are pleasantness, and the paths whereof are peace;’ neither is he ignorant of the delights which a man hath, by enjoying himself in the sweet repose of a contented mind, that he may charm the hearts of the erroneous into a confidence and assurance that they have taken a right course; he doth all he can to further a false peace in them, and to this purpose he commonly useth this method:—

[1.] First, He doth all he can to _unsettle them from the foundation of truth upon which they were bottomed_. He labours to render things suspicious, doubtful, or uncertain. This some have noted from 2 Thes. ii. 2, where Satan’s first attempts are to shake their minds, not only by disquiet, of which we are next to speak, but by alteration of their judgment; for mind is sometimes taken for sentence, opinion, judgment, as 1 Cor. ii. 16, ‘We have the mind of Christ;’ and 1 Cor. i. 10, ‘In the same mind, and in the same judgment.’[284]

[2.] Secondly, His second approach is to _raise a storm of restless disquiet upon that uncertainty_; and in order to his intended design, he usually fills them with the utmost anxiety of mind, and makes their thoughts, like a tempestuous sea, dash one against another. This piece of his art is noted in the fore-cited place, that ‘ye be not shaken in mind, or troubled:’ the word signifies a great perplexity, θροεῖσθαι. And this is a usual method which the false teachers among the Galatians practised; they first troubled them, and then endeavoured by the advantage of that trouble to pervert the gospel of Christ, Gal. i. 7, and v. 12. To effect both these, he doth amuse them with all the objections that can be raised. If he can say anything of the antiquity of the error, the number, wisdom, learning, or authority of those that embrace it, they are sure to hear of these things to the full. The danger of continuing as they were, and the happiness of the new doctrine, are represented with all aggravating circumstances; and these so often, that their thoughts have no rest: and if this restlessness does wound or weaken them, he pursues with a high hand. These ways of disturbing the unsettled mind are hinted to us in the aforesaid place—spirit, word, letter, anything that carries a seeming authority to unsettle, or power to amaze and distress. And we may here further note, that where the minds of men are discomposed with other fears or disquiets, Satan is ready to improve them to this use, so that commonly when the word of God begins to work at first upon the consciences of men, to awaken them to the consideration of their sin and danger, the adversary is then very busy with them to inveigle them into some error or other.

[3.] Thirdly, Having thoroughly prepared the mind with restless fears, he then advanceth forward with the _proffers of peace and comfort in the way of error which he proposeth_; and in this case error will boast much, ‘Come to me, and ye shall find rest for your souls.’ How grateful and welcome the confident proffers of ease and satisfaction are to a tossed and disquieted mind, any man will easily imagine. It is usually thus: men that are tired out will easily embrace anything for ease. A man in this case may be wrought upon like wax, to receive any impression; he will fasten on anything, true or false, that doth but promise comfort.

[4.] Fourthly, The completement of his method is _to please the man in the fruition of the peace promised_; and this he labours to do, not only to fix the man in his delusion, but to make that man brag of ease, to be a snare to others. And it is easy for the devil to do this: for, _first_, The novelty of a new opinion doth naturally please, especially if it give any seeming commendation for discovery or singularity. We see men are fond of their own inventions, and delighted to be lifted up above others. _Secondly_, Satan can easily allay the storm which he himself raised: he gives over to molest with anxious thoughts—on the contrary, he suggests thoughts of satisfaction. _Thirdly_, And whatever he can do in a natural way to raise up our passions of joy and delight, he will be sure to do it now, to ravishment and excess if he can; and then he not only makes these men sure—for what argument can stand before such a confidence?—but hath an active instrument for the allurement of such as cannot discover these methods.

2. Secondly, _Outward prosperity_ is the other common plea for error. Though successes, plenty, and abundance of worldly comforts argue of themselves neither love nor hatred, truth nor falsehood—because the wise providence of God, for holy ends and reasons often undiscerned by us, permits often the tabernacles of robbers to prosper, and permits those that ‘deal treacherously’ with the truths of God ‘to be planted, to take root, to grow, yea, to bring forth fruit’—nevertheless if in a way of error they meet with outward blessings, they are apt to ascribe all to their errors, and to say as Israel, Hosea ii. 5, ‘I will go after my lovers that gave me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink,’ without any serious consideration of God’s common bounty, which upon far other accounts, ‘gives them corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplies their silver and gold,’ which they prepared for Baal, ver. 8. I shall not need to add anything further for the proof and explanation of this than what we have in Jer. xliv. 17, 18, where the Jews expressly advance their idolatrous worship as the right way, and confirm themselves even to obstinacy in the pursuit of it, upon this reason: ‘We will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven ... for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil: but since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out our drink-offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.’

(9.) Ninthly, Instead of better arguments, Satan usually makes _lies his refuge_: and these respect either the truth which he would cry down, or the errors which he would set up.

Those lies that are managed against truth are of two sorts: mistakes and misrepresentations of its doctrines, or calumnies against the persons and actions of those that take part with it.

Those lies that are proper to bespatter a truth withal are such as tend to render it unlovely, inconvenient, or dangerous. Satan hath never been a-wanting to raise up mists and fogs to eclipse the shining beauty of truth. Sometime he persuades men that it is a novelty, and contrary to the tradition of the fathers; and then, if an error had been once upon the stage before, and had again been hissed out of the world, when it peeps out again into the world, its former impudency is made an argument for its antiquity, and truth is decried as novel. Or if it be but an error of yesterday, and hath only obtained an age or two, then the ghosts of our forefathers are conjured up as witnesses, and the plea runs current, What has become of your fathers? or, are you wiser than your fathers? are they all damned? These were insisted on by the heathens: the gods of the country and the worship of their fathers, they thought, should not be forsaken for Christianity, which they judged was but a novelty in comparison of paganism. Of the same extract is that old song of the papists, ‘Where was your religion before Luther?’ and to this purpose they talk of the succession of their bishops and popes. And other errors grow a little pert and confident, if they can but find a pattern or sample for themselves among the old heresies. Sometime he endeavours to bring truth into suspicion, by rendering it a dangerous encroachment upon the rights and privileges of men, as if it would turn all upside down, and introduce factions and confusions. This clamour was raised against the gospel, that it would subvert the doctrine of Moses and the law. Sometimes he clothes the opinions of truth with an ugly dress, and misrepresents it to the world as guilty of strange inferences and absurdities, which only arise from a wrong stating of the questions; and where it doth really differ from error, he endeavours to widen the differences to an inconvenient distance, so that if it go a mile from error, Satan will have it to go two: if truth teach justification by faith, error represents it as denying all care of holiness and good works; if truth say bare moral virtues are not sufficient without grace, error presently accuseth it as denying any necessary use of morality, or affirming that moral virtues are obstructions and hindrances to salvation. It were easy to note abundance of such instances.

As for calumnies against the persons and actions of those that are assertors of truth, it is well known for an old threadbare design, by which Satan hath gained not a little. Machiavel borrowed the policy from him, and formed it into a maxim; for he found by experience that where strong slanders had set in their teeth, though never so unjustly, the wounds were never thoroughly healed; for some that heard the report of the slander never heard the vindication, and those that did were not always so unprejudiced as to free themselves from all suspicion, but still something remained usually upon their spirits for ever after; and that, like a secret venom, poisons all that could be said or done by the persons that wrongfully fell under their prejudice, and did not a little derogate from the authority and power of the truths which they delivered.

The friends of truth have always to their cost found it so. Christ himself escaped not the lies and censures of men when he did the greatest miracles; they raised this calumny against him, that ‘he cast out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils,’ John viii. 48. When he shewed the most compassionate condescensions, they called him ‘a man gluttonous, a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners;’ and at last, upon a misinterpretation of his speeches, ‘I will destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up,’ Mat. xxvi. 61, they arraigned and condemned him for blasphemy; and his servants have, according to what he foretold, drunk of the same cup: the more eminent in service the greater draught. Paul, a chosen vessel, met with much of this unjust dealing: he was accused, Acts xxi. 28, as speaking against the people, the law, and the temple, and, chap. xxiv. 5, called ‘a pestilent fellow, a mover of sedition, a profaner of the temple.’ Neither can we wonder at this, that the greatest innocency or highest degree of holiness is no armour or proof against the sharp arrows of a lying tongue; when we read this as one of Satan’s great characters, that he is ‘the accuser of the brethren,’ and that his agents are so perfectly instructed in this art that they are also branded with the same mark of ‘false accusers,’ Jude 10. It is well known how the primitive Christians were used: they were accounted ‘the filth and offscouring of all things;’ there could be nothing that could render them odious or ridiculous but they were aspersed with it; as that they ‘sacrificed infants, worshipped the sun, and used promiscuous uncleanness;’ nay, whatever plague or disaster befell their neighbours, they were sure to carry the blame. And we might trace this stratagem down to our own days. Luther in his time was the common butt for all the poisoned arrows of the papists’ calumny; which so exceeded all bounds of sobriety and prudence that they devised a romance of his death, how he was choked of the devil; that before he died he desired his corpse might be carried into the church and adored with divine worship; and that after his death the excessive stench of his carcase forced all his friends to forsake him. All this and more to this purpose they published while he was alive; whose slanders, worthy only of laughter, he refuted by his own pen. The like fury they expressed against Calvin by their Bolsecus, whom they set on work to fill a book with impudent lies against him. Neither did Beza, Junius, or any other of note escape without some slander or other. How unjustly the Arians of old accused Athanasius of uncleanness, and of bereaving Arsenius of his arm, is sufficiently known in history.[285]

But the devil’s malice doth not always run in the dirty channel of odious calumnies. He hath sometimes a more cleanly conveyance for his lies against holy men. In prosecution of the same design, it is a fair colour for error if he can abuse the name and credit of renowned champions of truth, by fathering an error upon them which they never owned. By this means he doth not only grace a false doctrine with the authority of an eminent person, whose estimation might be a snare to some well-meaning persons, but weakens the truth, by bringing a faithful assertor of it into suspicion of holding, at least in some points, dangerous opinions; by which many are affrighted from entertaining anything that they write or preach. For though they may be confessedly sound in the most weighty doctrines, yet if it be once buzzed abroad that they are in anything unsound, this dead fly spoils all the precious ointment. And the matter were yet the less if there were any just cause for such a prejudice; but such is Satan’s art, that if a man explains the same truth, but in different words and forms of speech than those that others have been used unto; or if he casts it into a more convenient mould, that, by laying aside doubtful or flexible expressions, it may be more safely guarded from the exceptions of the adversaries; especially if he carefully choose his path betwixt the extremes on either hand,—this is enough for Satan to catch at, and presently he bestows upon him the names of the very errors which he most strenuously opposeth; nay, sometimes if he mention anything above the reach or acquaintance of those that hear him, it is well if he escapes the charge of heresy, and that he meets not with the lot of Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg, who was judged no less than heretical for venting his opinion concerning the antipodes.[286] I know men do such things in their zeal; but while they do so they are concerned to consider how Satan doth abuse their good meaning to the disservice of truth.

As Satan’s design in bespattering the actions and doctrines of good men is to bring the truth they profess into a suspicion of falsehood, and to advance the contrary errors to the place and credit of truth, so doth he use a skill proportionable to his design. And though he be so impudent that he will not blush at the contrivance of the most gross and malicious lie, yet withal he is so cunning that he studiously endeavours some probable rise for his slanders, and commonly he takes this course:—

[1.] First, He doth all he can _to corrupt the professors of truth_. If riches or honours will tempt them to be proud, high-minded, contentious, or extravagant, he plies them with these weapons; if the pleasures of the flesh and world be more likely to besot them, or to make them sensual, earthly, or loose, he incessantly lays those baits before them; if fears and persecutions can affright them out of duty, if injuries and provocations may prejudice them into a froward or wayward temper, he will certainly urge them by such occasions; and when he hath prevailed in any measure, he is sure to aggravate every circumstance to its utmost height, and upon that advantage to make additions of a great many things beyond what they can be justly accused of. This old device Paul, in Rom. ii. 24, takes notice of concerning the Jews, whose breach of the law so dishonoured God that ‘the name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles through them.’ The Jews lived wickedly, and their wicked lives was a current argument among the Gentiles to confirm them in paganism; for they judged the law of God could not approve itself to be better than their own, when the professors of it were so naught. To prevent this mischief, we are seriously warned to be carefully strict in all our stations, ‘that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed,’ 1 Tim. vi. 1; Titus ii. 5.

[2.] Secondly, _Whatever miscarriages any professor of truth is guilty of, Satan takes care that it be presently charged upon all the profession_. If any one offend, it is matter of public blame; much more if any company or party shall run into extravagances, or do actions strange and unjustifiable; those that agree with them in the general name of their profession, though they differ as far from their wild opinions and practices as their enemies do, shall still be upbraided with their follies. We see this practised daily by differing parties; according to what was foretold in 2 Pet. ii. 2, ‘false prophets’ seduce a great number of Christians to follow their pernicious ways, and by reason of their wild, ungodly behaviour, ‘the whole way of truth was evil spoken of.’

[3.] Thirdly, _The least slip or infirmity of the children of truth the devil is ready to bring upon the stage_; and they that will not charge themselves as offenders for very great evils, will yet object, to the disparagement of truth, the smallest mistakes of others: a mote in the eye of the lovers of truth shall be espied when a beam in the eye of falsehood shall pass for nothing.

[4.] Fourthly, _Slanderous aspersions are sometimes raised from a simple mistake of actions, and their grounds or manner of performance, and sometimes from a malicious misrepresentation_. The devil seldom acts from a simple mistake; but he will either suborn the passionate opposers to a wilful perverting of the true management of things, or will by a false account of things take the advantage of their prejudice, to make men believe that such things have been said or done, which indeed never were. The Christians in the primitive times were reported to be bloody men, and that they did kill men in sacrifice, and did eat their flesh and drink their blood; and this was only occasioned by their doctrine and use of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. They were accused for promiscuous uncleanness with one another, and this only because they taught that there was no distinction of male and female in respect of justification, and that they were all brethren and sisters in Christ. This account Tertullian gives of the calumnies of those times, and others have noted the like occasions of other abuses of them.[287] They were reported to worship the sun, because they in times of persecution were forced to meet early in the fields, and were often seen undispersed at sunrising. They were reported to worship Bacchus and Ceres, because of the elements of bread and wine in the Lord’s supper. If they met in private places, and in the night, it was enough to occasion surmises of conspiracy and rebellion: so ready is Satan to take occasion where none is given.

[5.] Fifthly, But if none of these are at hand, then _a downright lie must do the turn, according to that of Jer._ xviii. 18, ‘Come and let us devise devices against Jeremiah;’ and when once the lie is coined, Satan hath officious instruments to spread it: Jer. xx. 10, ‘Report, say they, and we will report it.’

These were the lies raised against truth; but besides this endeavour, he useth the same art of lying to enhance the credit of error. Lying inspirations, lying signs and wonders we have spoken of; I shall only mention another sort of lying, which is that of forgery, an art which error hath commonly made use of. Sometimes books and writings erroneous have been made to carry the names of men that never knew or saw them. The apostles themselves escaped not these abuses: you read of the counterfeit Gospels of Thomas and Bartholomew, the Acts of Peter and Andrew, the Apostolical Constitutions, and a great many more. Later writers have by the like hard usage been forced to father the brats of other men’s brains. I might be large in these, but they that please may see more of this in authors that have of purpose discovered the frauds of spurious, supposititious books.[288] The design is obvious: error would by this means adorn itself with the excellent names of men of renown, that so it might pass for good doctrine with the unwary.