3. Thirdly, _All acts of sin, some way or other, come through Satan’s fingers_. I do not say that all sin is Satan’s proper offspring, for we have a cursed stock of our own; and it may be said of us, as elsewhere of Satan, sometime we sin out of our own inclination and disposition; yet in every sin, whether it arise from us or the world, Satan blows the sparks and manageth all. As David said to the woman of Tekoah, ‘Is not the hand of Joab with thee in all this?’ [2 Sam. xiv. 19;] so may we say, Is not the hand of Satan with thee in every sin thou committest? This is so eminently true, that the Scripture indifferently ascribes the sin sometimes to us, sometimes to the devil. It was Peter’s sin to tempt Christ to decline suffering, yet Christ repelling it with this rebuke, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan,’ Mat. xvi. 23, doth plainly accuse both Peter and Satan. It is the personal sin of a man to be angry, yet in such acts he ‘gives place to the devil;’ both man and Satan concur in it, Eph. iv. 26. Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh,’ 2 Cor. xii. 7, whatever sin it was, he calls ‘Satan’s messenger.’ He that submits not to God, doth in that comply with Satan; as, on the contrary, he that doth submit himself to God, doth resist the devil, James iv. 7. Neither doth that expression of the apostle, James i. 14, ‘Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust,’ &c., give any contradiction to this. It is not the apostle’s design to exclude Satan, but to include man as justly culpable, notwithstanding Satan’s temptations; and that which he asserts is this, that there is sin and a temptation truly prevalent when there is the least consent of our lust or desire, and that it is that brings the blame upon us; so that his purpose is not to excuse Satan, or to deny him to have a hand in drawing or tempting us on to sin, but to shew that it is our own act that makes the sin to become ours. 4. Fourthly, _Such is the constitution of the soul of man, that its sinning cannot be conceived without some deception or delusion_;[166] for, granting that the soul of man is made up of desires, and that the soul were nothing else but, as it were, one willing or lusting power diversified by several objects; and that this power or these faculties are depraved by the fall, and corrupted; and that man in every action doth consult with his desires; and that they have so great an influence upon him, that they are the law of the members, and give out their commands accordingly for obedience; yet still these three things are firm and unshaken principles:— [1.] First, That desires cannot be set upon any object but as it is apprehended truly or apparently good. It is incompatible to a rational soul to desire evil as evil: _Omne appetit bonum_. [2.] Secondly, The will doth not resolvedly embrace any object till the light of the understanding hath made out, some way or other, the goodness or conveniency of the object.[167]