The Shield of Faith, Whereby Ye Shall Be Able to Quench All The Fiery Darts of The Wicked

The fiery darts of Satan which the believing soul is able by faith to quench may be described as of two sorts.  FIRST. Either those that do pleasingly entice and bewitch with some seeming promises of satis­faction to the creature.  Or, SECOND. Such as affright and carry horror with them.  Both are fiery, and quenched by faith, and only faith.

FAITH’S FIRST QUENCHING POWER.  Satan’s ‘fiery darts’ of PLEASING TEMPTATIONS, and faith’s power to quench them.

           We shall begin with the first sort of Satan’s fiery darts, viz. those temptations that do pleasingly entice and bewitch the soul with some seeming promises of satisfaction to the creature.  The note is this:— DOCTRINE. That faith will enable a soul to quench the fire of Satan’s most pleasing temptations.  FIRST. We will show you that these enticing temptations have a fiery quality to them.  SECOND. That faith is able to quench them.

Satan’s pleasing temptations HAVE A ‘FIERY’ QUALITY.

           FIRST.  We shall show you that Satan’s enticing temptations have a fiery quality in them.  They have an inflaming quality.  There is a secret disposition in the heart of all to all sin.  Temptation doth not fall on us as a ball of fire on ice or snow, but as a spark on tinder, or [as] lightning on a thatched roof, which presently is on a flame.  Hence in Scripture, though tempted by Satan, yet the sin is charged on us.  ‘Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed,’ James 1:14.  Mark! it is Satan tempts, but our own lust draws us.  The fowler lays the shrap, but the bird’s own desire betrays it into the net.  The heart of a man is marvellous prone to take fire from these darts.  ‘Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out,’ Prov. 26:20.  Thus the ‘fiery darts’ on Christ. There was no combustible matter of corruption in him for Satan to work upon.  But our hearts being once heated in Adam could never cool since.

  A sinner’s heart is compared to ‘an oven.’  ‘They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker,’ Hosea 7:4. The heart of man is the oven, the devil the baker, and temptation the fire with which he heats it; and then no sin comes amiss.  ‘I lie,’ saith David, ‘among them that are set on fire,’ Ps. 57:4.  And, I pray, who sets them on fire?  The apostle will resolve us, ‘set on fire of hell,’ James 3:6.  O friends! when once the heart is inflamed by temptation, what strange effects doth it produce! how hard to quench such a fire, though in a gracious person!  David himself, under the power of a temptation so apparent that a carnal eye could see it—Joab I mean, who reproved him—yet was hurried to the loss of seventy thousand men’s lives; for so much that one sin cost.  And if the fire be so raging in a David, what work will it make where no water is nigh, no grace in the heart to quench it?  Hence the wicked are said to be ‘mad’ upon their idols, Jer. 1:38—spurring on without fear or wit, like a man inflamed with a fever that takes his head; there is no holding of him then in his bed.  Thus the soul posses­sed with the fury of temptation runs into the mouth of death and hell, and will not be stopped.