_Ans._ 2. Yet Satan can do much this way; for if we consider how he can come so near to our spirits, as to communicate his injections to us, and that he often entertains a dispute with us in this secret way of access that he hath to our thoughts; if we observe his arguings, his answers and replies to our refusals, so direct, so pertinent, so continued, we shall be constrained to grant that he can do more this way than is commonly imagined. That I may explain this with a due respect to God’s prerogative of knowing the heart, I shall, 1. First, _Shew that there are two things which are clearly out of Satan’s reach_. [1.] Our future thoughts; he cannot tell what shall be our thoughts for time to come. He may possibly adventure to tell what suggestions he resolves to put into our hearts, but what shall be our resolves and determinations thereupon he knows not. This is singled out as one part of God’s prerogative, that he knoweth the determinate purposes and resolves of the heart aforehand, because he turneth the heart as he pleaseth, Prov. xxi. 1. [2.] Our present formed thoughts, the immediate and imminent[96] acts of the mind he cannot directly see into. He may tell what floating thinkings he hath put into our heart, but our own proper thoughts, or formed resolves, he cannot directly view. This is also particularly insisted on as proper to God alone: John ii. 24, 25, ‘Christ knew all men,’ so directly, that ‘he needed not that any should testify of man.’ This Satan stands in need of; he sometimes knows men and their thoughts, but he needs a sign or notification of these thoughts, and cannot immediately look into them. The reason why Christ needed not this, is rendered thus: ‘For he knew what was in man,’ Mat. xii. 25, that is, intuitively he knew his thoughts, and could immediately read them. 2. Secondly, _I shall endeavour to explain how much, or how far he can pry into our thoughts_. Several things are granted which argue Satan can go a great way toward a discovery. As, (1.) First, _That he knows the objects in our fancy or phantasms_, and this as clearly as we do behold things with our eyes. And the proof given hereof is this: that there are diabolical dreams, in which the devil cannot create new species, and such as our senses were never acquainted withal, as to make a blind man dream of colours, but that he can only call forth and set in order those objects, of which our imagination doth retain the shadows or impressions; and this he could not do if he did not visibly behold them in our fancy.[97] (2.) Secondly, It is certain he knows _his own suggestions and temptations darted into our minds_, upon which he can at present know what our thoughts are busied upon.