SERMON VII.

THE DEVICES OF SATAN.

2 COR. II. 11.

"WE ARE NOT IGNORANT OF HIS DEVICES."

In addressing you in my last discourse upon the very important and deeply instructive subject of the devices of Satan, I intentionally confined my observations to those devices with which he particularly besets the path of the unconverted. We on that occasion, reviewed the danger from our own families and friends; from worldly and infidel and ungodly companions; from the inconsistencies and sins of real Christians; from Satan's misrepresentation of religious persons and

of religion itself; from his suggesting hard thoughts of God, and discouraging views of the way of salvation; and, lastly, when all other devices fail to keep you from the Saviour, the continual efforts which Satan makes to tempt you to become a Saviour to yourself, and to strive after holiness, humility, and sanctification through your own efforts, instead of coming at once to that Redeemer, who can alone enable you to fulfil these duties, and who must himself

be made unto you, "wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption."

We are, on the present occasion, to endeavour to set before you some of those devices, wherewith this indefatigable enemy of all godliness besets the path of the real children of God, seeking to drive you out of that stronghold into which the Word and the power of God have called you; or failing in this, to injure your peace, to destroy

your happiness, and to change

ways of pleasantness painfulness, and the

which a Saviour's love

"the

into paths of

light burden”

66

would lay upon

his people, into a galling yoke and a heavy bondage.

May the Spirit of wisdom and of love and of a sound mind direct us in the investigation!

As in the last discourse, I endeavoured to follow some little degree of order in arranging the devices of Satan, from the most plain and obvious and common-place, with which he attempts the hearts of all, to those with which he more immediately assails the heart, when beginning to feel desirous to turn unto the living God; so would I, on the present occasion, endeavour, in a similar manner, to follow the steps of the destroyer, only premising, that there can be no certain rule in these things, but that since God's Word has declared that, "as in water face answereth to face, so

the heart of man to man ; the experience of one may probably be the experience of many, and the dangers and difficulties of others, may lead you to foresee and forearm against your own.

The first device, then, with which Satan often bewilders the mind and endangers the peace of the new convert, is by perplexing him with the difficult and incomprehensible subject of the secret decrees of God, predestination, election, and reprobation.

No sooner have you begun to feel the comfort of those declarations of the revealed Word that, "God would have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth," and that “whosoever will, may take of the water of life freely;" no sooner, in obedience to the many commands and invitations to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and find peace for your soul, have you in much weakness and trembling drawn

*See Proverbs xxix. 19.

near with faith to faith to this blessed and adorable Redeemer, trusting, that poor and miserable and sinful as you feel yourself to be, he will neither despise nor reject you, than Satan, if you possess an inquiring mind, often produces this temptation: He will say, Is it not true, that "God hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us," I quote the words of the Seventeenth Article of our Church, "to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them, by Christ, to everlasting salvation?" Yes, this is a solemn truth of God, built upon all Scripture, and recognised in all the formularies of our truly scriptural Church. But then observe the deduction which Satan draws from it. He suggests, If this be true, that God hath appointed to eternal felicity those whom he hath chosen out of the world, as "vessels before prepared for glory" to manifest his mercy and love;

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