{^dli/.) Supi)ose the peace cared for, and proposed to safeguard the soul, be true and good, yet when all is laid up in tins one bottom, when the hour of temptation comes, so many reliefs will be tendered against this consideration as will make it useless. " This evil is small ; it is questionable; it falls not openly and downright ujDon conscience. I do but fear consequences ; it may be I may keep my peace notwith- standing. Others of the people of God have fallen, and yet kept or recovered their peace. If it be lost for a season, it may be obtained again. I will not solicit its station any more; or though peace be lost, safety may remain." And a thousand such pleas there are, Avhich are all planted as batteries against this fort, so that it cannot long hold out.
(pdly.) The fixing on this particular only is to make good one jjas- sage or entrance, whilst the enemy assaults us round about. It is true, a little armour would serve to defend a man if he might choose where his enemy should strike him; but we are commanded to take the " whole armour of God " if we intend to resist and stand, Eph. vi. This we speak of is but one piece ; and when our eye is only to that, temptation may enter and prevail twenty other wa3^s. For instance, a man may be tempted to worldliness, unjust gain, revenge, vain- glory, or the like. If he fortify himself alone with this consideration, he will not do this thing, and wound his conscience and lose his peace ; fixing his eye on this particular, and counting himself safe whilst he is not overcome on that hand, it may be neglect of private communion with God, sensuality, and the like, do creep in, and he is not one jot in a better condition than if he had fallen under the power of that 2>art of the temptation which was most visibly pressing on liim. Experience gives to see that this doth and will fail also. There is no saint of God but puts a valuation on the peace he hath; yet how many of them fail in the day of temptation !
{■i^t/dj/.) But yet they have another consideration also, and that is, the vileness of sinning against God. How shall they do this thing, and sin against God, the God of their mercies, of their salvation ? TIow shall they wound Jesus Christ, who died for them ? This surely cannot but preserve them. I answer, —
First, We see every day this consideration failing also. There is jio child of God that is overcome of temptation but overcomes this consideration. It is not, then, a sure and infallible defei)sative.
Secondly, This consideration is twofold: either it expresses the thoughts of the soul with particular reference to the temptation con- tended withal, and then it will not preserve it; or it expresses the luiiversal, habitual frame of heart that is in us, U2:)on all accounts.
POWER OF TEMPTATION. ] 09
and then it falletli in with what I shall tender as the universal medi- cine and remedy in this case in the process of this discourse ; whereof afterward.
(2.) Consider the poiuey^ of temptation, partly from what was showed before, from the effects and fruits of it in the saints of old, partly from such other effects in general as we find ascribed to it; as, —
[1.] It will darken the mind, that a man shall not be able to make a riofht iud^ment of thinors, so as he did before he entered into it. As in the men of the world, the god of this world blinds their minds that they should not see the glory of Christ in the gospel, 2 Cor. iv. 4, and " whoredom, and wine, and new wine, take away their hearts," Hos. iv. 11 ; so it is in the nature of every temptation, more or less, to take away the heart, or to darken the understanding of the person tempted.
And this it doth divers ways: —
\st. By fixing the imagination and the thoughts upon the object whereto it tends, so that the mind shall be diverted from the consi- deration of the things that would relieve and succour it in the state wherein it is. A man is tempted to apprehend that he is forsaken of God, that he is an object of his hatred, that he hath no interest in Christ. By the craft of Satan the mind shall be so fixed to the con- sideration of this state and condition, with the distress of it, that he shall not be able to manage any of the reliefs suggested and tendered to him against it; but, following the fulness of his own thoughts, shall walk on in darkness and have no light. I say, a temptation will so possess and fill the mind with thoughtfulness of itself and the matter of it, that it will take off from that clear consideration of things which otherwise it might and would have. And those things whereof the mind was wont to have a vigorous sense, to keep it from sin, will by this means come to have no force or efficacy witli it; nay, it will commonly bring men to that state and condition, that when others, to whom their estate is known, are speaking to them the things that concern their deliverance and peace, their minds will be so jjos- sessed with the matter of their temptation as not at all to understand, scarce to hear one Avord, that is spoken to them.