Required reading
A treatise on Satan's temptations by Richard Gilpin (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 4 of Part 2.
My summary
This week Gilpin shows us the second way that Satan improves his advantages for introducing error.
Gilpin teaches us that Satan improves his advantages by swaying the understanding through the power and prevalency of the affections. He does this by:
(i) the silent and insensible procedure he labours to introduce errors;
(ii) the external garb of error;
(iii) those instances that in these fabulous imaginations of truth the devil hath industriously traded;
(iv) accommodating truth to a compliance with different parties;
(v) working up the affections to such an earnest opposition to some error;
(vi) making use of rewards or punishments;
(vii) stirring up some particular passions;
(viii) adorning an error with truth's clothing.
What grabbed me
I appreciated the point that Satan works slowly and silently: 'By silent and insensible procedure he labours to introduce errors ; and lest men should startle at a sudden and full presentment of the whole, he thinks it policy to insinuate into the affections, by offering it in parcels. Thus he prevents wonderment and surprisal, lest men should boggle and turn away, and doth by degrees familiarise them to that which at first would have been rejected with abhorrency. We read in the parable of the tares that the envious man which sowed them, who was Satan, took his opportunity 'while men slept,' and then went away in the dark ; insomuch that the discovery was not made at the sowing, but at their coming up. In pursuance of this policy, we find the principal instruments of Satan have followed the footsteps of their master ; they ' creep in unawares,' Jude 4 ; they ' privily bring in damnable heresies,' 2 Pet. ii. 1 ; and, as if they were guilty "of some modest shamefacedness, they 'creep into houses,' 2 Tim. iii. 6.'
Satan is ever so subtle, which means we need to be ever so vigilant!
Next week's reading
Read Chapter 5 of Part 2.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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