A treatise on Satan's temptations - Gilpin - IV - 'To the reader', Chapters 1 & 2

Required reading
A treatise on Satan's temptations by Richard Gilpin (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read 'To the reader' and Chapters 1 and 2.

My summary
This week we commence Gilpin's actual work.

After making a few introductory comments, Gilpin introduces his text in Chapter One: 'Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour' (1 Peter 5:8).  Gilpin teaches us that our adversary is dreadful because of his:
(i) malice and enmity;
(ii) power;
(iii) cruelty;
(iv) diligence.

Then in Chapter Two Gilpin speaks more particularly of the maliciousness of Satan.  He is:
(i) a proper subject of sin;
(ii) capable of increasing his wickedness;
(iii) one who has kindled malice to a rage in his fall and man's;
(iv) great in his malice.

What grabbed me
I appreciated Gilpin's point that Satan's malice is demonstrated by the malice of men: 'The malice of wicked men is an argument of Satan's great malice. They have an antipathy against the righteous, as the wolf against the sheep, and upon that very ground, that they are 'called out of the world.' How great this fury is, all ages have testified. This hath brought forth discord, revilings, slanders, imprisonments, spoiling of goods, banishments, persecutions, tortures, cruel deaths, as burning, racking, tearing, sawing asunder, and whatever the wit of man could devise for a satisfaction to those implacable, furious, murderous minds ; and yet all this is done to men of the same image and lineage with themselves, of the same religion with themselves, as to the main ; nay, sometime to men of their own kindred, their own flesh and blood, and all to those that would live peaceably in the land. What shall we say to these things ? How come men to put on a savage nature, to act the part of lions, leopards, tigers, if not much worse ? The reason of all we have, John viii. 54, ' Ye are of your father the devil ; he was a murderer from the beginning :' as also Gen. iii. 15, 'I will put enmity between her seed and thy seed ;' so that all this shews what malice is in Satan's heart, who urgeth and provokes his instruments to such bloody hatreds. Hence whoever were the agents [Rev. ii. 10] in imprisoning the saints, the malice of Satan in stirring them up to it, makes him become the author of it ; ' Satan shall cast some of you into prison.' '

It is incredible to consider the persecutions that man has inflicted upon some of his most exemplary brothers. 

A Satanic influence is obvious.

Next week's reading
Read Chapters 3 and 4.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.