If Satan can prevail with us to extenuate the sin, to slight the hazard, or any way to lessen it upon any of the forementioned accounts; then having possessed us before with high apprehensions of delights and satisfactions in the sin, he quickly persuades to accept the motion, as having a conveniency and advantage in it not to be despised: and thus doth he indirectly pervert our reason; which is the second way by which he blinds us through the working of our lust. CHAPTER XIII. _Of Satan’s diverting our reason, being the third way of blinding men.—His policies for diverting our thoughts.—His attempts to that purpose in a more direct manner; with the degrees of that procedure.—Of disturbing or distracting our reason, which is Satan’s fourth way of blinding men.—His deceits therein.—Of precipitancy, Satan’s fifth way of blinding men.—Several deceits to bring men to that._ III. Thirdly, Satan blinds the sons of men by _diverting and withdrawing their reason_, and taking it off from the pursuit of its discovery or apprehensions. For sometime it cannot be induced to go so contrary to its light as to call evil good, either directly or indirectly. Then is Satan put to a new piece of policy, and if the frame of the heart and the matter of the temptation suit his design, he endeavours to turn the stream of our thoughts either wholly another way, or to still them by turning them into a dead sea, or by some trick to beguile the understanding with some new dress of the temptation. So that we may observe in Satan a threefold policy in a subserviency to this design. For, 1. First, _Satan sometimes ceaseth his pursuit and lets the matter fall, and thinks it better to change the temptation than to continue a solicitation at so great a disadvantage_. When he tempted Christ and could not prevail, he ‘departed for a season,’ Luke iv. 13, with a purpose to return at some fitter time, which Christ himself was in expectation of, knowing it to be his manner to lie in wait for advantages; and accordingly when his suffering drew nigh, which, as he speaks to the Jews, was ‘their hour and power of darkness,’ Luke xxii. 53, he foretold his return upon him, ‘Now the prince of this world cometh.’ However this attempt of his against the Lord Jesus prevailed not, yet he shewed his art and skill in the suspending of his temptation to a more suitable time. And the success of this against us is sadly remarkable, for however we resist and at present stand out, yet his solicitations are often like leaven, which while it is hid in our thoughts, doth not a little ferment and change them, so that at his return he often finds our lusts prepared to raise greater clouds upon our mind. Many there are that resist strongly at present that which they easily slide into when Satan hath given them time to breathe; that say, ‘I will not,’ and yet ‘do it afterwards,’ [Mat. xxi. 29.]