incessant. All of these were once bright and glorious angels around the throne of God : but " they kept not their first estate;" and, for their wickedness, were cast down to the regions of darkness ; whence however for a season they are permitted to emerge, in order that they may exert their powers, and subserve unwittingly the counsels of the Most High. Of these there are distinct orders, called principalities and powers, all under Satan as their head and leader, whose will they execute, and whose designs they promote. Hence, though Satan is limited both as to space and knowledge, he is, by his agents, in every part of the globe, receiving information from them, and exercising rule by means of them : and hence his devices, founded on such a combination of wisdom, and carried into effect by such an union of power, become so manifold as to exceed what on any other supposition would have been within the power of any finite creature to devise and execute. In a word, they are to any but God himself altogether un- searchable and without number.]
2. Their subtilty—
[We have already said, that he knows how to adapt his temptations to all different persons and occasions. But the subtlety of Satan is yet farther discoverable in this, that he puts such a specious appearance on his temptations, as removes from us all suspicion from whence they come. " He transforms himself into an angel of light''," so that his suggestions seem rather to bear the character of heaven than the stamp of hell. Who would think that he should pretend a zeal for God's honour, and make use of the very perfections of God to countenance and confirm his impious suggestions ? Yet so he did, both in his assaults on the first Adam in Paradise, and on the second Adam in the Wilderness. When he sought to prevail over our first parents, he asked " Hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden ?" that is. You surely must have made a mistake : it cannot be that so good and bountiful a God should have laid upon you any such unkind restriction. Then again, when Eve replied, that God had not only forbidden the use of that tree, but had enforced the pro- hibition by the sanction of death, he answered, " Ye shall not surely die;" you may be perfectly assured that God is too good ever to inflict such an awful penalty for so trivial a trans- gression. In like manner, when he took our Lord to a pinnacle of the temple, and advised him to cast himself down, for that God had engaged to preserve him from all evil, and had given his angels charge over him for that very purpose ; his argu- ment was, in fact, You may safely cast yourself down, for God,
'^ 2 Cor. xi. 14.