Satan’s second affrighting temptation —THE FIERY DART OF BLASPHEMY 2/7

1. Faith sets God before the soul—within sight and hearing of all its thoughts and ways;and this keeps the soul in awe, that it dares harbour nothing unworthy of God in its most secret thoughts.  David gives the reason why the wicked are so bold, ‘They have not set thee before them,’ Ps. 54:3.  Such as de­fame and asperse the name of others do it commonly behind their backs.  Sin, in this life, seldom comes to such a ripeness as to blaspheme God to his face.  This is properly the language of hell.  There is a mixture of atheism with the blasphemy of sinners while on earth. They do with God as those wretched miscreants did with Christ; they cover his face and then smite him; they draw a curtain by some atheistical principles betwixt God and them, and then they belch out their blasphemies against that God whose omniscience they do not believe.  Now faith eyes God eyeing the soul, and so preserves it.  ‘Curse not the king,’ saith Solomon,’ ‘no not in thy thought,... nor the rich in thy bedchamber; for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter,’ Ecc. 10:20.  Such kind of language faith useth.  Blas­pheme not, saith faith, O my soul, the God of heaven; thou canst not whisper it so softly, but the voice is heard in his ear who is nearer to thee than thou to thyself.  And thus it breaks the snare the devil lays.  Those unbeseeming speeches which dropped from Job’s mouth, through the length and extremity of his troubles, though they did not amount to blasphemy, yet, when God presented himself to him in his majesty, they soon vanished, and he covered his face with shame before the Lord for them—‘Now mine eye seeth thee.  Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes,’ Job 42:5, 6.
2. Faith credits no report of God but from God’s own mouth; and thus it quencheth temptations to blasphemy.  It is impossible that a soul should have any but holy and loyal thoughts of God, who shapes his apprehensions of him by the word of God, which is the only true glass to behold God in, because it alone presents him like himself in all his attributes, which Satan by this sin of blasphemy one way or other asperses.  Faith conceives its notions of God by the word, resolves all cases of conscience, and deciphers all providences which God writes in myster­ious figures, by the word; for want of which skill, Satan drives the creature very oft to have hard thoughts of God, because he cannot make presently good sense of his administrations in the world.  Thus, there have been [those] who foolishly have charged God’s justice, because some outrageous sinners have not been overtaken with such speedy judgment as they deserve.  Others have charged as deeply his care and faithfulness in providing no better for his serv­ants, whom they have seen kept long under the hatches of great afflictions; like him, that seeing a company of Christians in poor ragged clothes, said he would not serve that God who kept his servants no better.  These, and such like, are the broken glasses that Satan presents God in, that he may disfigure him to the creature's eye; and truly if we will look no further, but judge God to be what he appears to be by them, we will soon condemn the holy One, and be within the whirl of this dangerous temptation.

           3. Faith quenches temptations to blasphemy, as it is praiseful.  It disposeth the Christian to bless God in the saddest condition that can befall it.  Now these two, blessing and blasphemy, are most contrary.  By the one we think and speak evil, and by the other good, of God; and therefore [they] cannot well dwell under the same roof.  They are like contrary tunes. They cannot be played on the same instrument with­out changing all the strings.  It is past Satan’s skill to strike so harsh a stroke as blasphemy is, on a soul tuned and set to praise God.  Now faith doth this, ‘My heart is fixed,’ saith David. There was his faith. Then follows, ‘I will sing and give praise,’ Ps. 57:7.  It was faith that turned his spirit and set his affections praise-way.  And would not Satan, think you, have found it a hard task to have made David blaspheme God while his heart was kept in a praising frame? Now, two ways faith doth this.