Doct. That faith will enable a soul to quench the fire of Satan's most pleasing temptations. First, We shall shew you, that these enticing temptations have a fiery quality in them. Secondly, That faith is able to quench them.
First, of the first, They have an inflaming quality. There is a secret dispo- sition 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 lightning on a thatched roof, which presently is in a flame ; hence in Scripture, though tempted by Satan, yet the sin is charged on us. Jam. i. 14 : ' Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lusts, and enticed.' Mark ! it is Satan tempts, but our own lust draws us. The fowler lays the trap, but the bird's own desire betrays it into the net. The heart of man is marvellous prone to take fire from these darts. 'Where no wood is, the fire goeth out,' Prov. xxvi., and does no hurt: thus did they 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, Hos. vii. 4 : ' They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker.' 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 dwell,' saith David, Psa. Ivii., 'among those that are set on fire;' and pray who sets them on fire? the apostle will inform us. Jam. iii. 6: 'set on fire of hell.' 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 tempta- tion so apparent, that a carnal ej'e could see it, Joab I mean, who reproved him, yet was hurried to the loss of seventy thousand men's lives ; for so much did 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 on their sins,' Jer. 1. o8. Spurring on without fear, or wit ; like a man inflamed with a fever that takes his head, there is no hold- ing of him in his bed ; thus a soul possessed with the fmy of temptation, runs into the mouth of death and hell, and will not be stopped. Use 1. 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 liim, whose house is blown up, that kept his powder in the chimney corner? ' Am I a dog?' saith Hazael, 2 Kings viii. 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 temjitation, and by that one bloody act upon his own liege lord, which he pei'petrated as soon as he got home, shew that the other evils which the prophet foretold of him were not so improbable as at first he thought. O stand oft" the devil's mark, unless you mean to have one of the devil's arrows in your side ! keep as far from the whii-1 of temptation as may be ; for if once he get you within his circle, thy head may soon be dizzy. One sin helps to kindle another; the less the greatei', as the brush the logs : Hos. vii. 5, 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.' Secondly, 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. Thus the whoi-e per- fumes her bed, paints her face. Idolaters, as whorish as the other, set out their temples and altars with superstitious pictures, embellished with all the cost that gold and silver can aftbrd tliem, to bewitch the spectator's eye. Hence they
ABOVE ALL, TAKING THE SHIELD OF FAITH. 479