Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations: In Three PartsGilpin, Richard
Religion
Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations: In Three Parts
Gilpin, Richard
Devil -- Early works to 1800; Temptation -- Early works to 1800
3. Thirdly, _His cruelty_: a ‘roaring lion’ implying not only his
innate property to destroy, which must be a strange fierceness, but
also that this innate principle is heightened and whetted on, as hunger
in a lion sharpens and enrages that disposition till he get his prey,
so that he becomes raving and roaring, putting an awful majesty upon
cruelty, and frighting them out of endeavours or hopes of resistance,
and increasing their misery with affrightments and tremblings. Thus
Satan shews a fierce and truculent temper, whose power being put forth
from such an implacable malice, must needs become rage and fierceness.
4. Fourthly, _His diligence_: which, together with his cruelty, are
consequences of his malice and power; he ‘goes about and seeks.’ He is
restless in his pursuit, and diligent, as one that promiseth himself a
satisfaction or joyful contentment in his conquests.
CHAPTER II.
_Of the malice of Satan in particular.—The grounds and causes of that
malice.—The greatness of it proved, and instances of that greatness
given._
I shall first give some account of his malice, by which it shall appear
we do not wrong the devil in calling him malicious, the truth of which
charge will evidence itself in the following particulars:—
1. First, _The devil, though a ‘spirit,’ yet is a proper subject of
sin_. We need no other evidence for this than what doth by daily
experience result from ourselves. We have sins which our spirits and
hearts do act, that relate not to the body, called ‘a filthiness of
the spirit,’ in contradistinction to the ‘filthiness of the flesh,’
[2 Cor. vii. 1.] It is true, it cannot be denied but that those
iniquities which have a necessary dependence upon the organs of the
body, as drunkenness, fornication, &c., cannot properly, as to the
formality of the act, be laid at Satan’s door, though as a tempter and
provoker of these men he may be called the father of these sins; yet
the fore-mentioned iniquities, which are of a spiritual nature, are
properly and formally committed by him, as lying, pride, hatred, and
malice. And this distinction Christ himself doth hint: John viii. 44,
‘When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own,’ where he asserts
such spiritual sins to be properly and formally acted by himself. The
certainty of all appears in the epithets given him—‘the wicked one,’
‘the unclean spirit;’ as also those places that speak his fall, ‘They
kept not their first estate,’ Jude 6; ‘The angels that sinned,’ 2 Peter
ii. 4. If sins spiritual are in a true and proper sense attributed to
the devil, then also may malice be attributed to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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