Against Spiritual Wickedness

           These words are the fourth branch in the des­cription, spiritual wickedness, and our contest or combat with them as such [is] expressed by the adversative particle ‘against.’   against the spirituals of wickedness, which is, say some, ‘against wicked spirits;’ that is true, but not all.  I conceive, with many interpreters, not only the spiritual nature of the devil, and the wickedness thereof, to be intended, but also, yea chiefly, the nature and kind of those sins which these wicked spirits do most usually and vigorously provoke the saints unto; and they are the spirituals of wickedness, not those gross fleshly sins, which the heard of beastly sinners, like swine, wallow in, but sin spiritualized, and this because it is not spirits, but spirituals.  The words present us with these three doctrinal conclusions.  First. The devils are spirits.  Second. the devils are spirits extremely wicked.  Third. These wicked spirits do chiefly annoy the saints with, and provoke them to, spiritual wickednesses.

[The spirituality of the devil’s nature.]

           Doctrine First. The devils are spirits.  Spirit is a word of various acceptation in Scripture. Amongst others, [it is] used often to set forth the essence and nature of angels, good and evil, both which are called spirits.  the holy angles, ‘Are they not all ministering spirits?’ Heb. 1:14.  The evil ‘And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him,’ I Kings 22:21; that spirit was a devil. How oft is the devil called the unclean spirit, foul spirit, lying spirit, &c.!  Sin did not alter their sub­stance, for then, as one saith well, that nature and substance which transgressed could not be punished.

           First. The devil is a spirit; that is, his essence is immaterial and simple, not compounded, as corporal beings are, of matter and form: ‘Handle me and see,’ saith Christ to his disciples, that thought they had seen a spirit, ‘for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have,’ Luke 24:39.  If they were not thus im­material, how could they enter into bodies and pos­sess them, as the Scripture tells us they have [done], even a legion into one man? Luke 8:30.  One body cannot thus enter into another.

           Second. The devils are spiritual substances, not qualities, or evil motions, arising from us, as some have absurdly conceived.  So the Sadducees, and others following them, deny any such being as angel, good or evil; but this is so fond a conceit, that to maintain it, we must both forfeit our reason and deny the Scriptures.  There we find their creation related, Col. 1:16; the fall of some from their first estate, Jude 6, and the standing of others, called the elect angels; the happiness of the one [class], who behold God’s face, and their employment—sent out to attend on the saints, as servants on their master’s heirs, Heb. 1:14; the misery of the other, reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgement of the great day; and their present work, which is to do mischief to the souls and bodies of men, as far as they are permitted; all which show their subsistence plain enough.  But so immersed is sorry man in flesh, that he will not easily believe what he sees not with his fleshly eyes.  Upon the same account we may deny the being of God himself, being invisible.

           Third. They are entire spiritual substances, which have, every one, proper existence.  And thus they are distinguished from the souls of men, which are made to subsist in a human body, and together with it make one perfect man;  so that the soul, though, when separated from the body, it doth exist, yet hath a tendency to union with its body again.

           Fourth. They are, though entire spiritual substances, yet finite, being but creatures.  God only is the uncreated, infinite, and absolutely simple Spirit, yea, Father of all other spirits.  Now from this spiritual nature of the devil, we may further see...