Required reading
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices by Thomas Brooks (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Chapter 2, Devices 3 and 4.
My notes and thoughts
Devices 3: 'By extenuating and lessening of sin.' I found this section most edifying. I remember a lecturer at theological college claiming that in certain situations it was appropriate to lie, namely when it prevented greater evil. I argued against it and I think I would find a sure ally in Brooks: 'If we commit one sin to avoid another, it is just we should avoid neither, we having not law nor power in our own hands to keep off sin as we please; and we by yielding to the lesser, do tempt the tempter to tempt us to the greater.'; '...when Satan says it is but a little one, do thou answer that oftentimes there is the greatest unkindness showed to God's glorious majesty, in the acting of the least folly, and therefore thou wilt not displease thy best and greatest friend, by yielding to his greatest enemy.'
Device 4: 'By presenting to the soul the bestmen's sins and by hiding from the soul their virtues.' This device is indeed a clever one as it requires people to know something of their Bibles, to be aware of Noah, Job, David, Hezekiah and Peter. They claim to have scriptural support for their sin. But as Brooks indicates in his remedies, it is only a superficial knowledge of Scripture that would use these men to condone sin. The sins of these men in Scripture was accompanied by repentance, was infrequent, was disciplined for by God and only recorded for our example of what not to do. Interestingly, a remedy that Brooks didn't mention that was in my mind was that we should be trying to be Christ-like and not Christian-like. In the end, we should have the sinless saviour as our model, not other sinners.
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