2. He useth his greatest skill to get the greatest fleshly interest on his side: so that it may be a matter of great pleasure, great advancement, and honour, and applause, or great commodity to a man, if he will sin; or a matter of great suffering, and great disgrace, and great loss to him that will not sin, or that will be holy and obedient to God: for fleshly interest being the common matter of all his temptations, his main business is to greaten this as much as may be. 3. He maketh very great advantage of the common customs of the country that men live in: this carrieth away thousands and millions at once. When the common vote and custom are for sin, and against Christ and holiness, particular persons think themselves excused, that they are no wiser or better than all the country about them. And they think they are much the safer for sinning in so great a crowd, and doing but as most men do; and he that contradicteth them cometh on great disadvantage in their eye, when he is to oppose an army of adversaries, and seemeth to think himself wiser than so many. 4. Also he is exceeding industrious to get education on his side; he knoweth how apt men are to retain the form which they were moulded or cast into at first: if he get the first possession, by actual as well as original sin, he is not easily cast out. Especially when education doth conspire with common custom, it delivereth most of the people and kingdoms of the earth into his hands. 5. Also he is industrious to get the approved doctrine of the teachers of the people on his side. If he can get it to pass once for a revelation or command of God, he will quickly conquer conscience by it, and take down all resistance: he never doth war more successfully against God, than when he beareth the name of God in his colours, and fighteth against him in his own name. Mahometans, Jews, papists, and all heretics are the trophies and monuments of his victories by this way. Mischief is never so much reverenced, nor proceedeth so successfully, as when it is made a religion! When the devil can charge men to do his business in the name of God, and upon pain of damnation, he hath got the strongest weapons that ever he can make use of. His ordinary bait is some fleshly pleasure; but he goeth high indeed when he presumeth to offer the everlasting pleasures; he tempted Christ with all the kingdoms and glory of the world; but he tempteth many millions of souls with the offers of the kingdom of heaven itself. For he will offer it to them that he is endeavouring to keep from it, and make it the bait to draw men from it into the way to hell.