How Faith Quenches The Fiery Dart of Despair Drawn From THE GREATNESS OF SIN

         

  I might here instance in those many media or arguments Satan useth to dispute souls into despair from, and how able faith, and only faith, is to answer and refel them.  But I shall content myself with one to dilate upon—which is the chief of all Satan’s strength—and that is taken from all the greatness and multitude of the creature’s sins.  This when the crea­ture is enlightened to see, and hath the brawniness of its conscience pared off to feel with remorse, and then God but do allow Satan to use his rhetoric in declaiming against the heinousness of them, it must needs be in a doleful condition, and of necessity sink into the depths of despair, for all the help it can find from itself within or any other creature without doors. Perhaps some of you, who have slighty thoughts of your own sins, think it proves but a childish impotent spirit in others to be so troubled for theirs; and in this you show that you never were in Satan’s stocks pinched by his temptations. 

Those who have will speak in another language, and tell you that the sins which are unfelt by you  have lain like a mountain of lead upon their spirits.  O, when a breach is once made in the conscience, and the waves of guilt pour in amain upon the soul, it soon overtops all the crea­ture’s shifts and apologies, as the flood did the old world, that covered the tallest trees and the highest mountains.  As nothing then was visible but sea and heaven; so in such a soul, nothing but sin and hell. His sins stare him on the face, as with the eyes of so many devils, ready to drag him into the bottomless pit.  Every silly fly dares creep upon the lion while asleep, whose voice all the beasts in the forest tremble at when he awakes.  Fools can make a mock of sin when conscience’ eye is out or shut.  They can then dance about it, as the Philistines about blind Samson. But when God arms sin with guilt, and causeth this serpent to put forth his sting upon the conscience, then the proudest sinner of them all flees before it. Now it is faith that alone can grapple with sin in its strength; which it doth several ways.  First. Faith gives the soul a view of the great God.  Second. Faith quenches this fiery dart of despair drawn from the greatness of sin, by opposing to that the greatness of the promises.  Third. Faith teaches the soul to oppose the greatness of this one sin of despair to the great­ness of all its other sins.

Satan’s third affrighting temptation —THE FIERY DART OF DESPAIR

 Third Dart of affrighting temptations.  The third fiery dart which Satan lets fly at the Christian is his temptation to despair.  This cursed fiend thinks he can neither revenge himself further on God, nor en­grave his own image deeper on the creature, than by this sin; which at once casteth the greatest scorn upon God, and brings the creature nearest the complexion of devils and damned souls, who, by lying continually under the scorching wrath of God, in hell’s horrid zone, are blacked all over with despair.  This is the sin that of all Satan chiefly aims at.  Other sins are but as previous dispositions to introduce that, and make the creature more receptive for such a tempta­tion.  As the wool hath a tincture of some lighter col­ours given it before it can be dyed into a deep grain, so Satan hath his more lightsome and pleasant sins, which he at first entices to, that he may the better dis­pose the creature to this.  But this is kept by him as a great secret from the creature's knowledge.  The devil is too cunning a fowler to lay his net in the bird’s sight he means to take.  Despair is the net.  Other sins are but the shrap, whereby he covers it, and so flatters them into it, which done, he hath them safe to eternity.  This, above all sins, puts a man into a kind of actual possession of hell. 

 Other sins bind over to wrath, whereby he covers it, but this gives fire to the threatening, and sets the soul on a light flame with horror.  As it is faith’s excellency to give a being to the word of promise; so it is the cruelty of despair that it gives an existence to the torments of hell in the con­science.  This is the arrow that drinks up the spirit, and makes the creature executioner to itself.  Despair puts a soul beyond all relief; the offer of a pardon comes too late to him that hath turned himself off the ladder.  Other temptations have their way to escape. Faith and hope can open a window to let out the smoke that offends the Christian in any condition, be it at present never so sad and sorrowful; but then the soul must needs be choked, when it is shut up within the despairing thoughts of its own sins, and no crevice left to be an outlet to any of that horror with which they fill him.

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 (2.) Succour.  Faith resolves the soul that the ebullition of such thoughts is not inconsistent with the state of grace; and if the soul be well satisfied in this point, the devil’s fiery dart hath lost its enven­omed head, which uses so much to drink up the Christian’s spirits.  The common inference which he makes tempted souls draw from the presence of these thoughts in them is, ‘Surely I am not a saint.  This is not the spot of God’s children.’  But faith is able to disprove this, and challenges Satan to show—as well-read as he is in the Scriptures—one place in all the Bible that countenanceth such a conclusion.  Indeed there is none.  It is true the blasphemy of blasphe­mies—I mean the sin against the Holy Ghost —with this the evil one shall never touch a true believer.  But I know no kind of sin, short of that, from which he hath any such protection or immunity, as makes it impossible he should for a time be foiled by it.  The whole body of sin indeed is weakened in every be­liever, and a deadly wound given by the grace of God to his corrupt nature, which it shall never claw off, but at last die by it.  Yet as a dying tree may bear some fruit, though not so much, nor that so full and ripe, as before; and a dying man may move his limbs, though not so strongly as when he was in health; so original corruption in a saint will be stirring, though but feebly, and showing its fruit, though it be but crump­ted and unripe.  And thou hast no cause to be dis­couraged that it stirs; but to be comforted that it can but stir.  O be thankful thou hast got thy enemy, who even now was master of the field, and had thee tied to his triumphant chariot, now himself on his knees un­der the victorious sword of Christ and his grace, ready to drop into his grave, though lifting up his hand against thee to show his enmity continues when his power fails to do execution as he would.

           (3.) Succour.  Faith can clear it to the soul that these blasphemous thoughts, as they are commonly entertained in a saint, are not so great sins in God’s account as some other that pass for less in our ac­count.  The Christian commonly contracts more guilt by a few proud, unclean, covetous thoughts than by many blasphemous ones, because the Christian sel­dom gets a so clear a victory over those as over these of blasphemy.  The fiery darts of blasphemy may scare Christians more, but fiery lusts wound sooner and deeper.  It was the warm sun made the traveller open his cloak which the blustering wind made wrap closer to him.  Temptations of pleasure entice the heart to them, whereas the horrid nature of the other stirs up the Christian to a more valiant resistance of them.  O, the Christian is soon overtaken with these; they are like poison in sweet wine, they are down before he is aware, and diffuse apace into his affec­tions, poisoning the Christian’s spirits.  But these of blasphemy are like poison in some bitter potion; either it is spit out before it is down, or vomited up by the Christian before it hath spread itself far into his affections.  Sins are great or small by the share the will hath in the acting of them.  And blasphemous thoughts, commonly having less of the Christian’s will and affections in them than the other, cannot be a greater sin.

           (4.) Succour.  Faith tells the soul that God may have, yea, undoubtedly hath, gracious ends in suffer­ing him to be haunted with such troublesome guests, or else they should not be sent to quarter on him. Possibly God saw some other sin thou wert in great danger of, and he sends Satan to trouble thee with these temptations, that he may not overcome thee in the other.  And though a plaster or poultice be very offensive and loathsome, yet better endure that a while than a disease that will hazard thy life.  Better tremble at the sight of blasphemous thoughts than strut thyself in the pride of thy heart at the sight of thy gifts and privileges.  The first will make thee think thyself as vile as the devil himself in thy own eyes; but the other will make thee prodigiously wicked and so indeed like the devil in God's eyes.

           (5.) Succour.  Faith will put the Christian on some noble exploits for God, thereby to vindicate himself, and prove the devil's charge a lie, as one that is accused for some traitorous design against his prince, to wipe off that calumny doth undertake some notable enterprise for the honour of his prince.  This indeed is the fullest revenge the Christian can take either of Satan for troubling him with such injections, or [of] his own heart for issuing out such impure streams.  When David preferred Saul’s life in the cave above a kingdom, which one hearty blow might have procured him, he proved all his enemies liars that had brought him under a suspicion at court.  Thus, Chris­tian, do thou but prefer the honour of God when it cometh in competition with sin and self, and thou wilt stop the devil’s mouth, who is sometimes ready to make thee jealous of thyself as if thou wert a blasphemer.  Such heroic acts of zeal and self‑denial would speak more for thy purgation before God and thy own conscience than these sudden thoughts can do against thee.

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 Now, may not the Christian well wonder to see —may be when he is at he worship of God, and taken up with holy and heavenly meditations—a blasphe­mous thought on a sudden appear in the midst of such company to which it is so great a stranger? and also how it should get in among them?  If a holy thought surpriseth us on a sudden, when we stand as it were with our back on heaven, and there be nothing in the discourse our hearts at present are holding to usher it in, we may take it as a pure motion of the Spirit of Christ.  Who, indeed, but he, could be so soon in the midst of the soul when the door is shut, even before the creature can turn his thoughts to open it for him?  And probably these blasphemies, which rush upon thee, O Christian, at a time when thy soul is at the farthest distance from such thoughts, yea, sailing to the clean contrary point, in thy praying to and praising of God, are the irruptions of that wicked one, and that on purpose to interrupt thee in that work which of all other he fears and hates most.

           (3.) The effect these blasphemous notions have on the heart may make us think they are Satan's brats rather than the birth of the Christian’s own heart; —and that is a dismal horror and consternation of the Christian's spirit, which reacheth often to the dis­composure of the body.  So that an apparition of the devil to their bodily eyes could not affright them more than these blasphemies do that walk in their imagin­ation.  Yea, they do not only cause a horror, but stir up a vehement indignation and abhorrency, in the soul at their presence.  If now they be the birth of the Christian's own heart, why this horror? whence this indignation?  Those motions which arise from our­selves use to please us better.  It is natural for men to love the children of their own loins though black and deformed; and as natural to like the conceptions of their own minds.  Solomon found out the true mother by her tenderness to the child.  If these blas­phemies were the issue of the heart, familiarity with them might be expected rather than horror at the sight of them; favour to them rather than abhorrency of them.  Were it not more likely, poor soul, that thou wouldst kiss them, if thy own, than seek to kill them?—draw out thy breast to nurse and suckle them, than the sword of the Spirit to destroy them? And if so, saith faith, that these be Satan's brats, why then art thou troubled because he lays them at thy door?  Is the chaste woman the more whore, because some foul tongue calls her so?  Have patience a little, poor soul; the judge is at the door, and when he comes thou shalt be called by thy right name.  Sit not thou any longer wounding thy soul with his dart, and troubling thyself for the devil’s sin, but go and complain of him to thy God; and when thou hast spread his blasphemies before the Lord, as Hezekiah did Rabshakeh’s, comfort thyself with this, that God will spread thy cause against this false accuser, and send him away with as much shame and as little suc­cess as he did that barking dog who so reviled God and railed on his people.  But,

2. Suppose these blasphemous notions to be the Christian’s own sins, bred in his own heart, and not the devil’s brats falsely fathered on him; yet here faith relieves the Christian when distressed with the guilt of them, and Satan labours most to aggravate them.Now the succour faith brings the soul here is manifold.

           (1.) Succour.  Faith can assure the soul upon sol­id Scripture bottom that these blasphemous thoughts are pardonable.  ‘All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men,’ Matt. 12:31.  And it were strange if thy fancy should be so wild and melancholy as to think thou seest this only unpardonable blasphemy, which is ever marked on the forehead with final impenitency and desperate hatred against God, in those loose roving thoughts that never yet could gain any consent from thy heart to them, but continues to disavow and protest against them.  I say it were very strange That thou couldst long mistake those unwelcome guests for that wicked sin.  Now, for thy comfort, thou hearest all manner of blasphemy besides that one shall be forgiven.  Pardon for them may be sued out in the court of mercy, how terrible and amazing soever their circumstances are to thy trembling soul.  And if the creature believes this, Satan's dart is quenched; for his design is to make use of these temptations as a trap-door by which he may let thy soul down into despair.

Satan’s second affrighting temptation —THE FIERY DART OF BLASPHEMY 5/7

1. Faith teaches the Christian to discern and dis­tinguish those fireballs of temptations which are thrown in at his window by Satan, from those sparks of corruption which fly from his own hearth and take fire at his own sinful heart.And certainly those blas­phemous thoughts, of which many gracious souls make such sad complaint, will be found very often of the former sort, as may the more probably appear if we consider, (1.) The time when they first stir and are most busy.  (2.) The manner how they come.  And, (3.) The effect they have on the Christian’s heart.

           (1.) The time when they begin to stir and the soul to be haunted with them; and that is ordinarily when the work of conversion hath newly passed or is passing on him.  When the creature falls off from his old sinful course to embrace Christ, and declares for him against sin and Satan, this is the time when these blasphemous suggestions begin to make their appari­tion, and those vermin are seen to crawl in the Christian's bosom—a strong probability that they do not breed there, but are sent from Satan by way of revenge for the soul's revolt from him.  The devil deals by the Christian in this, and not much unlike what his own sworn servants—witches, I mean—are known to do, who to express their spite against those that cross them, sometimes cause them to swarm with lice, or such kind of vermin, to make them loathsome to themselves.  And, as one that never found such vermin crawling about him before, might well wonder to see himself so suddenly stocked with a multitude of them—yea, might rather impute it to the witch’s malice than to the corruption of his own body that bred them—so in this case.  Indeed, it is very im­probable to think that the creature should in this juncture of time above all fall so foul with God by sinning against him at such a height as this.  Is it like­ly that he can, while he is in tears for the sins of his past life, commit a greater than any of them he mourns for? or that he dare, while he is crying for pardoning mercy with a trembling heart, block up the way to his own prayers, and harden God’s heart into a denial of them, by such horrid sins as these are?  In a word, seems it not strange, that all the while he was a stranger to, yea an enemy against, God, he durst not venture on this sin for the prodigious nature of it, and that now he begins to love God those blasphemies should fit his mouth which were too big and horrid before for him to meddle with?

           (2.) The manner how these blasphemies rise in the Christian’s thoughts, will increase the probability that they are injections from Satan without, rather than motions of the Christian’s own heart within. They are commonly violent and sudden.  They come like lightning, flashing into the Christian’s thoughts before he hath time to deliberate with himself what he is doing.  Whereas that lust, which is the ebullition of our own hearts, is ordinarily gradual in its motion; it moves in a way more still and suitable to man’s nature; it doth entice the soul, and by degrees slyly inveigles it into a consent; making first the affections on its side, which then it employeth to corrupt the understanding, and take it off from appearing against it, by putting its eye out with some bribe of sensual pleasure and profit; and so, by these paces it comes at last to have a more easy access to and success over the will, which being now deprived of her guard, yields the sooner to the summons that lust makes.  But these sudden dartings of blasphemous thoughts, they make a forcible entry upon the soul without any ap­plication used to gain its good-will to come in.  Their driving is like the driving of that hellish Jehu.  It is the devil that is got into the box; who else could drive so furiously?  Yea, not only their suddenness and vio­lence, but incoherence with the Christian’s former thoughts and course, do still heighten the probability that they are darts shot from the devil's bow.  Peter was once known to be of Christ’s company by his voice: ‘Thy speech,’ say they, ‘bewrayeth thee.’  He spake like them, therefore he was judged one of them. On the contrary, we may say of these blasphemous motions, ‘They are not the Christian’s, their language bewrays them to be rather the belching of a devil than the voice of a saint.  If they were woven by the soul, they would be something like the whole piece from which they are cut off.’  There is ordinarily a depen­dency in our thoughts.  We take the hint for one thought from another.  As circle riseth out of circle in the moved water, so doth thought out of thought, till they spread into a discourse.

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4. Faith quenches this fiery dart, by purifying the heart of that enmity against Godwhich, in man’s cor­rupt nature, is fuel for such a temptation.  ‘Back­biters, haters of God, and despiteful,’ are joined together, Rom. 1:30.  No wonder that a man whose spirit is full of rancour against another, should be easily persuaded to revile him he hates so much. Every unbeliever is a hater of God, and so is in a dis­position to blaspheme God when his will or lust is crossed by God.  But faith slays this enmity of the heart; yea, it works love in the soul to God, and then works by this love.  Now it is one property of love ‘to think no evil,’ I Cor. 13:5.  That is, a man will neither plot any evil against him he loves, nor easily suspect any evil to be plotted by him against himself.  Love reads the actions of a friend through such clear glasses of candour and ingenuity, as will make a dark print seem a fair character.  It interprets all he doth with so much sweetness and simplicity, that those passages in his behaviour towards her, which to another would seem intricate and suspicious, are plain and pleasing to her; because she ever puts the most favourable sense upon all he doth that is possible.  The believer dares not himself plot any evil of sin against God, whom, from the report that faith hath made of him to his soul, he loves so dearly.  And, as love will not suf­fer him to turn traitor against a good God, so neither will it suffer him to harbour any jealous thoughts of God's heart towards him, as if he, who was the first lover, and taught the soul to love him by making love to her, could, after all this, frame any plot of real un­kindness against it.  No, this thought, though Satan may force it in a manner upon the Christian, and violently press for its entertainment, under the advan­tage of some frowning providence, which seems to countenance such a suspicion, yet it can never find welcome, so far as to be credited in the soul where love to God hath anything to do.  And surely there is no fear that soul will be persuaded wickedly to belch out blasphemies against God, who so abominates but the surmising the least suspicion of God in her most secret thoughts.

           Second Design.  Satan aims by these blasphe­mous temptations to effect the Christian’s trouble and vexation.  Though he doth not find the Christian so kind as to take these his guests in and give them lodging for his sake, yet he knows it will not a little disturb and break his rest to have them continually knocking and rapping at his door; yea, when he can­not pollute the Christian by obtaining his consent to them, even then he hopes to create him no little disquiet and distraction, by accusing him for what he will not commit; and so of a defiler—which rather he would have been—he is forced to turn slanderous reviler and false accuser.  Thus the harlot sometimes accuseth the honest man, merely to be avenged on him because he will not yield to satisfy her lust. Joseph would not lie with his mistress and she raiseth a horrible lie on him.  The devil is the blasphemer, but the poor Christian, because he will not join with him in the fact, shall have the name and bear the blame of it.  As the Jews compelled Simon of Cyrene to carry Christ’s cross, so Satan would compel the tempted Christian to carry the guilt of his sin for him. And many time he doth so handsomely, and with such sleight of hand, shift it from himself to the Christian’s back, that he, poor creature, perceives not the juggler's art of conveying it unto him, but goes complaining only of the baseness of his own heart. And as it sometimes so falls out, that a true man in whose house stolen goods are found suffers, because he cannot find out the thief that left them there; so the Christian suffers many sad terrors from the mere presence of these horrid thoughts in his bosom, because he is not able to say whose they are—whether shot in by Satan, or the steaming forth of his own naughty heart.  The humble Christian is prone to fear the worst of himself, even where he is not conscious to himself; like the patriarchs, who, when the cup was found in Benjamin's sack, took the blame to them­selves, though they were innocent in the fact.  And such is the confusion sometimes in the Christian’s thoughts, that he is ready to charge himself with those brats that should be laid at another door—Satan’s, I mean.  Now here I shall show you how faith defeateth this second design of the devil in these blasphemous motions.  And this it doth two ways.  1. By helping the Christian to discern Satan’s injections from the motions of his own heart.  2. By succouring him, though they rise of his own heart

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           (1.) Faith espies mercy in the greatest affliction —an eye of white in the saddest mixture of provi­dence; so that when the devil provokes to blasphemy from the evil that the creature receives from God, faith shows more good received than evil.

           Thus Job quenched this dart which Satan shot at him from his wife’s tongue.  ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall not we receive evil?’  Shall a few present troubles be a grave to bury the remem­brance of all my past and present mercies?  ‘Thou speakest as one of the foolish women.’  What God takes from me is less than I owe him, but what he leaves me is more than he owes me.  Solomon bids us, ‘In the day of adversity consider,’ Ecc. 7:14.  Our unbeseeming thoughts and words of God are the product of a rash hasty spirit.  Now faith is a considering grace; ‘He that believeth will not make haste’—no not to think or speak of God.  Faith hath a good memory, and can tell the Christian many stories of ancient mercies; and when his present meal falls short, it can entertain the soul with a cold dish, and not complain that God keeps a bad house neither.  Thus David recovered himself when he was even tumbling down the hill of temptation.  ‘This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High.  I will remember the works of the Lord: surely I will remember thy wonders of old,’ Ps. 77:10, 11.  Therefore, Christian, when thou art in thy depths of affliction, and Satan tempts thee to asperse God as if he were forgetful of thee, stop his mouth with this, ‘No, Satan, God hath not forgot to do for me, but I have forgot what he hath done for me, or else I could not question his fatherly care at present over me!’  Go, Christian, play over thy old lessons.  Praise God for past mercies; and it will not be long before thou hast a new song put into thy mouth for present mercy.

           (2.) As faith spies mercy in every affliction, so it keeps up an expectation in the soul for more mercy; which confidence disposeth the soul to praise God for, as if the mercy were then in being.  Daniel, when in the very shadow of death—the plot the plot laid to take away his life—‘three times a day he prayed and gave thanks before his God.’  To have heard him pray in that great strait would not have afforded so much matter of wonder; but to have his heart in tune for thanksgiving in such a sad hour, this was admirable, and his faith enabled him, Dan. 6:10.  Mercy in the promise is as the apple in the seed.  Faith sees it growing up, the mercy a coming.  Now, a soul under the expectation of deliverance, how will it scorn a blasphemous notion!  When relief is known to be on its way for a garrison besieged, it raiseth their spirits; they will not then hearken to the traitorous motion of the enemy.  It is when unbelief is the counsellor, and the soul under doubts and suspicions of God's heart to it, that Satan finds welcome upon such an errand. An excellent instance for both we have in one chapter, Isa. 8.  We find, ver. 17, what is the effect of faith, and that is a cheerful waiting on God in straits —‘I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him;’ and, ver. 21, we have the fruit of unbelief—and that is no less than blasphemy—‘And it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward.’ Faith keeps the believer in a waiting posture; and unbelief sets the sinner a cursing both God and man.  None escapes his lash that crosseth him in his way, no, not God himself.