2 Corinthians 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety… I. THE WAY OF HIS OPERATION UPON THE SOUL, IN CONVEYING HIS FALLACIES IN THE MINDS OF MEN. 1. By moving, stirring, and sometimes altering the humours and disposition of the body. He knows that there is no grace but has its counterfeit in some passion; and no passion of the mind, but moves upon the wheel of some humour of the body. So that it is easy for him to refine the fire of a choleric humour into zeal, and raise the operations of melancholy to the semblance of humiliation. 2. By suggesting the ideas and spiritual pictures of things to the imagination. From whence it is, that poor deluded women talk much of sudden joys and raptures, etc. Again, some perhaps have had a text cast into their fancy, e.g., Jeremiah 48:10, whereupon they presently thought themselves commissioned, by an extraordinary call from heaven, to cut and slay. 3. By an actual ingress into the man like a vicarious soul. And now how easy must it be for this spirit to cast any person possessed by him into an ecstasy. And the person possessed (Acts 19:16) could never have prevailed over so many men, had he not had something in him stronger than man. But what needs there any further arguing when we read how often our Saviour cast him out of men? II. THE GRAND INSTANCES IN WHICH THE DEVIL, UNDER THIS MASK OF LIGHT, HAS IMPOSED UPON THE CHRISTIAN WORLD. It has been his constant method to accommodate his impostures to the prevailing notions of each particular age. 1. The ruling principle of the first ages of the church was zealous devotion, and concern for the worship of one only God, having been so newly converted from the worship of many. Accordingly, the devil sets up Arianism, and with a bold stroke strikes at the Godhead of the Son of God. 2. As the Arian ages had chiefly set themselves to take away our Saviour's divinity, so the following ages, by a kind of contrary stretch, were no less intent upon paying an exorbitant devotion to every thing belonging to His humanity. For from hence men came to give that inordinate veneration to the sacrament of Christ's body and blood. After which, with great industry, they got together and kept all relics, which any way represented His memory, till at length they even adored them. This superstition extended itself to Christ's martyrs; the memory of whom they celebrated with solemn invocations at their sepulchres. And thus by degrees paganism came to be christened into a new form and name. Then mortification was (in show at least) advanced, and Satan began to play the white devil, by prohibiting, upon pretence of higher sacerdotal purity, the marriage of the clergy, forbidding also certain sorts of meat, and enjoining others: as likewise imposing many corporal severities, for the recommending of all which to men's use, they taught them that these practices were satisfactory for sin, and meritorious of heaven. 3. When the mist of ignorance began to clear up, men began to smell out the cheat. But then again, lest so sudden and mighty a light might baffle all his projects, he began wisely to light up his candle, too, in the new sect of Ignatius Loyola, a sect composed of the best wits and ablest heads. And by this course he quickly fought the protestants at their own weapons. For he saw well enough that it was learning which must do his business, when ignorance was grown out of fashion. So having long imposed upon Christendom by popery, and at length finding a new light sprung in upon a great part of it, he thought it his interest to trump up a new scene of things, and so correspondently to the two main parts of religion, speculative and practical, he fell upon two contrary but equally destructive extremes, Socinianism and enthusiasm. III. SOME PRINCIPLES BY WHICH HE IS LIKELY TO REPEAT THE SAME CHEATS. And these are eminently three. 1. The stating of the doctrine of faith and free grace so as to make them undermine the necessity of a good life. 2. The opposing the power of godliness irreconcileably to all forms. And what is this but in another instance to confront subordinates, and to destroy the body because the soul can subsist without it? 3. The ascribing such a kingdom to Christ, as shall oppose and interfere with the kingdoms and governments of the world. (R. South, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. |
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