5. Fifthly, Sometime he shews his art _in preparing and fitting our bodies to his designs, or in fitting temptations to our bodies and the inclinations thereof_. The soul, though it be a noble being, yet is it limited by the body, and incommodated by the craziness and indispositions thereof, so that it can no more act strenuously or evenly to its principles in a disordered body, than it can rightly manage any member of it, in its natural motions, where the bones are disjointed. Hence sickness or other bodily weaknesses do alter the scene, and add another kind of bias to the soul than what it had before. This Satan takes notice of, and either follows his advantage of the present indisposition, or, if he hath some special design, endeavours to cast our body into such a disorder as may best suit his intention. Asa was more easily drawn to be overseen in peevishness and rash anger in his latter days, when his body grew diseased. Satan had his advantage against Solomon to draw him to idolatry when old age and uxoriousness had made him more ductile to the solicitations of his wives; ‘When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart,’ 1 Kings xi. 4. The devil, when he took upon him to foretell Job’s blaspheming God to his face, yet he attempted not the main design till he thought he had thoroughly prepared him for it, by the anguish and smart of a distempered body and mind; and though he failed in the great business of his boast, yet he left us an experiment in Job, that the likeliest way to prevail upon the mind in hideous and desperate temptations, is to mould the body to a suitable frame. He prevailed not against Job to cause him curse God, yet he prevailed far, ‘he cursed the day of his birth,’ and spake many things by the force of that distress, which he professeth himself ashamed of afterwards. The body then will be in danger, when it is disordered, to give a tincture to every action, as a distempered palate communicates a bitterness to everything it takes down.