Required reading
A treatise on Satan's temptations by Richard Gilpin (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 6 of Part 2.
My summary
Now that Gilpin has shown that one of Satan's principal designs is against the peace and comfort of God's children, he now endeavours a discovery of the various ways by which Satan undermines them.
The first way Satan undermines the people of God is by discomposures of the soul. To unpack this way, Gilpin teaches us:
(i) upon what advantage of natural temper the devil is encouraged to molest men;
(ii) by what occasions he doth work upon our natural inclinations;
(iii) with what success of disturbance Satan does to the soul.
What grabbed me
I appreciated Gilpin's point that when Satan has unsettled us it brings sin: 'Where there is much discomposure there is much sin. If in the multitude of words there wants not iniquity, then much more in the multitude of unruly thoughts. A disturbed spirit is like troubled water ; all the mud that lay at the bottom is raised up and mixeth itself with the thoughts. If any injury or loss do trouble the mind, all the thoughts are tinctured with anger, pride, impatience, or whatsoever root of bitterness was in the heart before. We view them not singly as the issues of wise providence, but ordinarily we consider them as done by such instruments, and against ourselves, as malicious, spiteful, causeless, ungrateful wrongs; and then we give too great a liberty to ourselves to rage, to meditate revenge, to threaten, to reproach, and what not. And if our disposition have not so strong a natural inclination to these distempers, yet the thoughts by discomposure are quickly leavened. It is the comparison used by the apostle, 1 Cor. v. 8, to express the power of malice, which is a usual attendant in this service, to infect all the imaginations with a sharpness, which makes them swell into exorbitancy and excess ; hence proceed revilings, quarrellings, &c. When the tongue is thus fermented, it is 'a fire, a world of iniquity,' producing more sins than can be reckoned,' it defileth the whole body,' engaging all the faculties in heady pursuit, James iii. 6.'
If we are settled in Christ, we can resist sin.
Next week's reading
Read Chapter 7 of Part 2.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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