USE OR APPLICATION OF...The Shield of Faith, Whereby Ye Shall Be Able to Quench All The Fiery Darts of The Wicked

 Use First.  O how should this make us afraid of running into a temptation when there is such a witchery in it.  Some men are too confident.  They have too good an opinion of themselves—as if they could not be taken with such a disease, and therefore will breathe in any air.  It is just with God to let such be shot with one of Satan’s darts, to make them know their own hearts better.  Who will pity him whose house is blown up, that kept his powder in the chimney corner?  ‘Is thy servant a dog,’ saith Hazael, II Kings 8:13.  Do you make me a beast, sunk so far be­low the nature of man as to imbrue my hands in these horrid murders?  Yet, how soon did this wretch fall into the temptation, and, by that one bloody act upon his liege lord, which he perpetrated as soon as he got home, show that the other evils, which the prophet foretold of him, were not so improbable as at first he thought.  Oh, stand off the devil’s mark, unless you mean to have one of the devil’s arrows in your side! Keep as far from the whirl of temptation as may be. For if once he got you within his circle, thy head may soon be dizzy.  One sin helps to kindle another; the less the greater, as the brush the logs.  When the courtiers had got their king to carouse and play the drunkard, he soon learned to play the scorner: ‘The princes have made him sick with bottles of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners,’ Hosea 7:5.

           Use Second.  Hath Satan’s darts such an enkind­ling nature? take heed of being Satan’s instrument in putting fire to the corruption of another.  Some on purpose do it.  Idolaters set out their temples and al­tars with superstitious pictures, embellished with all the cost that gold and silver can afford them, to be­witch the spectator’s eye.  Hence they are said to be ‘inflamed with their idols,’ Isa. 57:5—as much as any lover with his minion.  And the drunkard, he enkin­dles his neighbour’s lust, ‘putting the bottle to him,’ Hab. 2:15.  O what a base work are these men em­ployed about!  By the law it is death for any wilfully to set fire on his neighbour’s house.  What then de­serve they that set fire on the souls of men, and that no less than hell-fire?  But, is it possible thou mayest do it unawares by a less matter than thou dreamest on.  A silly child playing with a lighted straw may set a house on fire which many wise cannot quench.  And truly Satan may use thy folly and carelessness to kin­dle lust in another’s heart.  Perhaps an idle light speech drops from thy mouth, and thou meanest no great hurt; but a gust of temptation may carry this spark into thy friend’s bosom, and kindle a sad fire there.  A wanton attire, which we will suppose thou wearest with a chaste heart, and only because it is the fashion, yet may ensnare another's eye.  And if he that kept a pit open but to the hurt of a beast, sinned, how much more thou, who givest occasion to a soul’s sin, which is a worse hurt?  Paul ‘would not eat flesh while the world stood, if it made his brother offend,’ I Cor. 8:13.  And canst thou dote on a foolish dress and im­modest fashion, whereby many may offend, still to wear it?  ‘The body,’ Christ saith, ‘is better than rai­ment.’  The soul, then, of thy brother is more to be valued surely than an idle fashion of thy raiment.  We come to the second branch of the point.

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.