How God Doth Outwit The Devil In His Tempting of Saints to Sin

How God doth outwit the devil in his tempting of saints to sin.

             Question.  But how doth God defeat Satan, and outwit his wiles in tempting his saints?

             Answer.  This God doth by accomplishing his own gracious ends for the good and comfort of his people out of those temptations from which Satan designs their ruin.  This is the noblest kind of conquest, to beat back the devil's weapon to the wounding of his own head, yea, to cut it off with the devil’s own sword.  Thus God sets the devil to catch the devil, and lays, as it were, his own counsels under Satan's wings, and makes him hatch them.  Thus the patriarchs helped to fulfil Joseph's dream, while they were thinking to rid their hands of him.  To instance in a few particulars,

[The ends Satan propounds.]

             First Particular.  Satan by his temptations aims at the defiling of the Christian's conscience, and disfiguring that beautiful face of God's image which is engraven with holiness in the Christian's bosom; he is an unclean spirit himself, and would have them such that he might glory in their shame; but God outwits him, for he turneth the temptations of Satan to sin, to purging them from sin; they are the black soap with which God washes his saints white.           

1. God useth the temptations of Satan to one sin, as a preventive against another; so Paul's thorn in the flesh to prevent his pride.  God sends Satan to as­sault Paul on that side where he is strong, that in the meantime he may fortify him where he is weak.  Thus Satan is befooled, as sometimes we see an army sit­ting down before a town, where it wastes its strength to no purpose, and in the meantime gives the enemy an advantage to recruit; and all this by the counsel of some Hushai, that is a secret friend to the contrary side.  God, who is the saint's true friend, sits in the devil's council, and overrules proceedings there to the saint's advantage.  He suffers the devil to annoy the Christian with temptations to blasphemy, atheism, and with these, together with the troubles of spirit they produce, the soul is driven to duty, is humbled in the sense of these horrid apparitions in its imagina­tion, and secured from abundance of formality and pride, which otherwise God saw invading him.  As in a family, some business falls out, which keeps the master up later than ordinary, and by this the thief, who that night intended to rob him, is disappointed. Had not such a soul had his spirit of prayer and diligence kept awake by those afflicting temptations, it is likely that Satan might have come as a seducer, and taken him napping in security.          
2. God purgeth out the very sin Satan tempts to, even by his tempting.  Peter never had such a con­quest over his self-confidence, never such an establishment of his faith as after his soul-fall in the high-priest's hall.  He that was so well persuaded of himself before, as to say, ‘Though all were offended with Christ, yet would not he,’ how modest and humble was he in a few days become, when he durst not say he loved Christ more than his fellow-brethren, to whom before he had preferred himself! John 21:15. What an undaunted confessor of Christ and his gos­pel doth he prove before councils and rulers, who even now was dashed out of countenance by a silly maid, and all this the product of Satan's temptation sanctified unto him!  Indeed a saint hath a discovery by his fall, what is the prevailing corruption in him, so that the temptation doth but stir the humour, which the soul having found out, hath the greater advantage to evacuate, by applying those means, and using those ingredients which do purge that malady  with a choice.  Now the soul sure will call all out against this destroyer?  Paul had not taken such pains to buffet his body, had he not found Satan knocking at that door.          

3. God useth these temptations for the advancing the whole work of grace in the heart.  One spot occasions the whole garment to be washed.  David overcome with one sin, renews his repentance for all, Ps. 51.  A good husband when he seeth it rain at one place, sends for the workman to look over all the house.  This indeed differenceth a sincere heart from an hypocrite, whose repentance is partial, soft in one plot, and hard in another.  Judas cries out of his treason, but not a word of his thievery and hypocrisy. The hole was no wider in his conscience than where the bullet went in; whereas true sorrow for one, breaks the heart into shivers for others also.