Required reading
A treatise on Satan's temptations by Richard Gilpin (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 6.
My summary
This week Gilpin teaches us about Satan's cruelty.
We see his cruelty in his:
(i) desperate pursuits of advantage upon those whom spirits are wounded;
(ii) usage of those that are his slaves;
(iii) incessant provokings and force upon the children of God;
(iv) persecutions of all ages;
(v) bloody and tyrannical superstitions;
(vi) personal cruelties.
What grabbed me
Gilpin certainly isn't afraid of describing Satan's actions: 'Thirdly, There is also a cruelty seen in his incessant provokings and force upon the children of God, while he urgeth his loathed temptations upon them against their will. When I consider Paul's outcry in this case, Kom. vii. 15, 19, ' That which I do, I allow not ; the evil which I would not, that do I,' &c., my thoughts represent him to me, like those Christians that were tortured in the trough, where water was poured by a continued stream upon their mouths, till the cloth that lay upon their lips was forced down their throats ; or like those that had stinking puddle-water by a tunnel poured into their stomachs, till they were ready to burst ; and surely he apprehended himself to be under very cruel dealing by Satan when he cried out, ' wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me ? ' If we seriously consider the mind and endeavours of those children of God that are striving against sin, and have cast it off as the most loathsome abominable thing, when Satan urgeth them to evil with his incessant importunities, it is as if they were forced to eat their own excrements, or to swallow down again their own vomit ; for the devil doth but as it were cram these temptations down their throats against their will. '
The people of God have endured much of Satan's cruelty.
Next week's reading
Read Chapters 7 and 8.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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