when I see the same covetousness, the same drunkenness and profaneness, that was first punished in ourselves, and then in our sanctified enemies; when I see joy turned into a revel, and debauchery proclaim itself louder than it can be proclaimed against; these, I must confess, stagger and astonish me; and I cannot persuade myself, that we were delivered to do all these abominations.

But if we have not the grace of Christians, have we not the hearts of men? Have we no bowels, no relentings? If the blood and banishment of our kings cannot move us, if the miseries of our common mother, the church, ready to fall back into the jaws of purchasers and reformers, cannot work upon us, yet shall we not at least pity our posterity? Shall we commit sins, and breed up children to inherit the curse? Shall the infants now unborn have cause to say hereafter in the bitterness of their souls, Our fathers have eaten the sour grapes of disobedience, and our teeth are set on edge by rebellions and confusions?

How does any man know, but the very oath he is swearing, the lewdness he is committing, may be scored up by God as one item for a new rebellion? We may be rebels, and yet neither vote in parliaments, sit in committees, or fight in armies. Every sin is virtually a treason; and we may be guilty of murder by breaking other commandments besides the sixth.

But at present we are made whole: God has by a miracle healed the breaches, cured the maladies, and bound up the wounds of a bleeding nation: What remains now, but that we take the counsel, that seconded a like miraculous cure: Go, sin no more, lest a worse. evil come unto thee? But since our evil has been so superlative as not to acknowledge a worse; since our calamities having reached the highest, give us rather cause to fear a repetition, than any possibility of gradation; I shall dismiss you with the like, though something altered advice, Go, sin no more, lest the same evil befall

you.

DISCOURSE XI.

THE DISGUISES OF SATAN.

2 COR. xi. 14.

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

He who has arrived to that pitch of infidelity, as to deny that there is a devil, gives a shrewd proof, that he is deluded by him; and so by this very denial does unawares infer the thing, he would deny. There have indeed been some in all ages and religions, who have promoted the devil's interests, by arguing against his being. For that, which men generally most desire, is to go on in sin without control; and it cannot be more their desire, than the devil accounts it his interest, that they should do so. But when they are told withal, that he who tempts to sin now, is to execute God's wrath for our sin hereafter; the belief of a spirit, appointed to so terrible an office, standing so directly between them and their sins, they can never proceed smoothly in them, till such a belief be first taken out of the way; and therefore, no wonder if men argue against the thing they hate; and for the freer enjoyment of their lusts, do all they can to throw off a persuasion, which does but torment them before their time : This undoubtedly being the true, if not only ground of all the disputes men raise against demons, or evil spirits; that their guilt has made it their concern, that there should be none.

Nevertheless, on the other side, it must be considered, that the proving of spirits and immaterial substances, from the common discourses of the world upon this subject, has not hitherto proved so successful as might be wished. For that there are such finite, incorporeal beings, as we call spirits, I take to be a point of that moment, that the belief of it ought to be established upon much surer proofs, than such as are commonly taken from visions and apparitions, and the reports which use to go of them; it having never hitherto been held for solid reasoning, to argue from what seems, to what exists; or, in other words, from appearances to things; especially since it has been found so frequent, for the working of a strong fancy and a weak judgment, to pass with many for apparitions. Nor yet can I think the same sufficiently proved, from several strange effects, which, (as historians tell us,) having sometimes happened in the world, and carrying in them the marks of a rational efficiency, (but manifestly above all human power,) have therefore by some been ascribed to spirits, as the proper, immediate causes thereof. For such a conclusion, I conceive, cannot be certainly drawn from thence, unless we were able to comprehend the full activity of all corporeal substances, especially the celestial; so as to assign the utmost term which their activity can reach to; which, I suppose, no sober reasoner, or true philosopher, will pretend to.

And therefore, in the present case, allowing the forementioned common arguments all the advantage of probability they can justly lay claim to; yet if we would have a certain proof of the existence of finite spirits, good or bad, we ought, no doubt, to fetch it from the infallible word of revelation; and so employ faith to piece up the defects of science; which, as nothing but faith can do, so that man must by no means pretend to faith, who will not sell his assent under a demonstration; nor indeed to so much as pru

dence, who will be convinced by nothing but experience, when perhaps the experiment may prove his destruction. He who believes that there is a devil, puts himself into the ready way to escape him. But as for those modern Sadducees, who will believe neither angel nor spirit, because they cannot see them, and with whom invisible and incredible pass for terms equipollent; they would do wisely to consider, that as the fowler would certainly spoil his own game, should he not, as much as possible, keep out of sight; so the devil never plants his snares so skilfully and successfully, as when he conceals his person; nor tempts so dangerously, as when he can persuade men that there is no tempter.

But I fear I have argued too far upon this point already; since it may seem something inartificial for the sermon to prove, what the text had supposed. But since the infidelity of the present age has made the proof of that necessary, which former ages took for granted; I hope the usefulness of the subject will atone for what may seem less regular in the prosecution. It must therefore be allowed, (and that not only from the foregoing probable arguments, but much more from an infallible and divine testimony,) that there is a devil, a Satan, and a tempter. And we have him here presented to us, under such a strange kind of mask or vizard, that we cannot see him for light; and then surely he must needs walk undiscovered, who can make that, which discovers all things else, his disguise. But the wonder ought to abate, if we consider, that there is a light, which dazzles and deludes, as well as one which informs and directs; and that it is the former of these, which Satan clothes himself with, as with a garment. A light so far resembling that of the stars, that it still rules by night, and has always darkness both for its occasion and companion. The badge of truth is unity, and the property of falsehood, variety; and accordingly the devil appears all things, as he has occasion; the priest,

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the casuist, the reformer, the reconciler, and, in a word, any thing but himself. He can change his voice, his dress, and the whole scene of his fallacies; and by a dexterous management of the fraud, present you with an Esau under the form of a Jacob; for the old serpent can shift his skin, as often as he has a turn to serve by his doing so. For it is a short and easy transition from darkness to light; even as near as the confines of night and day. So that this active spirit can quickly pass from one to the other, and equally carry on a work of darkness in both. We read of a demonium meridianum, though the sun, we know, is then highest, and the light greatest. The Psalmist tells us, not only of a pestilence which walks in darkness, but also of a destruction which wasteth at noon-day; and consequently that he who is the great manager both of the one and the other, is as much a devil, when he shines as Lucifer, as when he destroys as Satan.

Now the devil, I conceive, is represented to us thus transformed in the text; not so much in respect of what he is in his person, as in his practice upon men; for none ever conceals himself, but he has a design upon another. And therefore to prosecute the sense of the words, by as full a representation of his frauds, as I am able to give, I shall discourse of him in this method. I shall endeavour to show,

I. The way of his operation upon the soul, in conveying his fallacies into the minds of men. II. The grand instances in which he has played an angel of light, in the several ages of the church successively. III. And give caution against some principles, by which he is like to repeat the same cheat upon the world, if not prevented in time to come.

I. And first, for the influence he has upon the soul. To lay open here all the ways whereby this spiritual engineer works upon us, to trace the serpent in all his windings, is a thing, I believe, as much above a mere human understanding, as that is below an angelical;