and every possibility of prevaricating the strictnesses of a duty, is a temptation, and an insecurity to them, who have begun to serve God in hard battles.

7. The Holy Spirit did drive Jesus into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil. And though we are bound to pray. instantly, that we fall into no temptation; yet if, by Divine permission, or by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we be engaged in an action or course of life, that is full of temptation, and empty of comfort, let us apprehend it as an issue of Divine Providence, as an occasion of the rewards of diligence and patience, as an instrument of virtue, as a designation of that way, in which we must glorify God; but no argument of disfavour, since our dearest Lord, the most holy Jesus, who could have driven the devil away by the breath of his mouth, yet was, by the Spirit of his Father, permitted to a trial and molestation by the spirits of darkness. And this is St. James's counsel: "My brethren, count it all joy, when ye enter into divers temptations; knowing that the trial of your faith worketh patience." So far is a blessing, when the Spirit is the instrument of our motion, and brings us to the trial of our faith: but if the Spirit leaves us, and delivers us over to the devil, not to be tempted, but to be abused and ruined, it is a sad condition, and the greatest instance of their infelicity, whom the church, upon sufficient reason, and with competent authority, delivers over to Satan, by the infliction of the greater excommunication.

8. As soon as it was permitted to the devil to tempt our Lord, he, like fire, had no power to suspend his act, but was as entirely determined by the fulness of his malice, as a natural agent by the appetites of nature; that we may know, to whom we owe the happinesses of all those hours and days of peace, in which we sit under the trees of paradise, and see no serpent encircling the branches, and presenting us with fair fruit, to ruin us. It is the mercy of God we have the quietness of a minute; for if the devil's chain were taken off, he would make our very beds a torment; our tables to be a snare; our sleeps fantastic, lustful, and illusive; and every sense should have an object of delight and danger, an hyena to kiss, and to perish in its embraces. But the holy Jesus

b Jam. i. 2.

having been assaulted by the devil, and felt his malice by the experiments of humanity, is become so merciful a High Priest, and so sensible of our sufferings and danger, by the apprehensions of compassions, that he hath put a hook into the nostrils of Leviathan; and although the relics of seven nations be in our borders and fringes of our country, yet we live as safe as did the Israelites, upon whom sometimes an inroad and invasion was made, and sometimes they had rest forty years; and when the storm came, some remedy was found out by his grace, by whose permission the tempest was stirred up and we find many persons, who in seven years meet not with a violent temptation to a crime, but their battles are against impediments and retardations of improvement; their own rights are not directly questioned, but the devil and sin are wholly upon the defensive. Our duty here is an act of affection to God, making returns of thanks for the protection, and of duty, to secure and continue the favour.

9. But the design of the Holy Ghost being to expose Jesus to the temptation, he arms himself with fasting, and prayer, and baptism, and the Holy Spirit, against the day of battle; he continues in the wilderness forty days and forty nights, without meat or drink, attending to the immediate addresses and colloquies with God; not suffering the interruption of meals, but representing his own and the necessities of all mankind, with such affections and instances of spirit, love, and wisdom, as might express the excellence of his person, and promote the work of our redemption; his conversation being, in this interval, but a resemblance of angelical perfection, and his fasts not an instrument of mortification, for he needed none; he had contracted no stain from his own nor his parents' acts; neither do we find, that he was at all hungry, or afflicted with his abstinence, till after the expiration of forty days. He was afterwards " an hungered," said the evangelist; and his abstinence from meat might be a defecation of his faculties, and an opportunity of prayer, but

· Εἶθ ̓ ὅταν τῆς χάριτος καταξιωθῇς, τότε σοι πρὸς ἀντικειμένας δυνάμεις παλαίειν δίδωσι τὴν ἐξουσίαν, ὥσπερ γὰρ μετὰ τὸ βάπτισμα καὶ τεσσαράκοντα ἡμέρας ἐπειρᾶτο, οὐχ ὅτι καὶ πρὸ τούτου νικῶν οὐκ ἐδύνατο, ἀλλ ̓ ὅτι πάντα τάξει καὶ ἀκολουθία πράττειν ἐβούλετο· οὕτω καὶ σὺ πρὸ τοῦ βαπτίσματος τοῖς ἀντικειμένοις παλαίειν μὴ τολμήσας, λαβὼν δὲ τὴν χάριν καὶ λοιπὸν θαρσῶν τοῖς τῆς δικαιοσύνης ὅπλοις, ἀγωνίζου τότε, καὶ εἰ θέλεις, εὐαγγελίζου. Cyril. Hieros. Catech. 3.

we are not sure it intended any thing else. But it may concern the prudence of religion, to snatch at this occasion of duty, so far as the instance is imitable; and in all violences of temptation to fast and pray, prayer being a rare antidote against the poison, and fasting a convenient disposition to intense, actual, and undisturbed prayer. And we may remember also, that we have been baptized and consigned with the Spirit of God, and have received the adoption of sons, and the graces of sanctification in our baptisms, and had then the seed of God put into us; and then we put on Christ; and entering into battle, put on the whole armour of righteousness; and therefore we may, by observing our strength, gather also our duty and greatest obligation, to fight manfully, that we may triumph gloriously.

10. The devil's first temptation of Christ was upon the instances and first necessities of nature; Christ was hungry, and the devil invited him to break his fast upon the expense of a miracle, by turning the stones into bread. But the answer Jesus made, was such as taught us, since the ordinary providence of God is sufficient for our provision or support, extraordinary ways of satisfying necessities are not to be undertaken; but God must be relied upon, his time attended, his manner entertained, and his measure thankfully received. Jesus refused to be relieved, and denied to manifest the Divinity of his person, rather than he would do an act, which had in it the intimation of a diffident spirit, or might be expounded a disreputation to God's providence. And, therefore, it is an improvident care and impious security, to take evil courses, and use vile instruments, to furnish our table, and provide for our necessities. God will certainly give us bread; and till he does, we can live by the breath of his mouth, by the word of God, by the light of his countenance, by the refreshment of his promises; for if God gives not provisions into our granaries, he can feed us out of his own, that is, out of the repositories of charity. If the flesh-pots be removed, he can also alter the appetite; and when our stock

* Εάν σοι προσβάλῃ μετὰ τὸ βάπτισμα ὁ τοῦ φωδιώκτης καὶ πειραστὴς, προσβαλεῖ δὲ, (καὶ γὰρ καὶ τῷ λόγῳ καὶ θεῷ μου προσέβαλε διὰ τὸ κάλυμμα, τῷ κρυπτῷ φωτὶ διὰ τὸ φαινόμενον) ἔχεις ᾧ νικήσεις. μὴ φοβηθῆς τὸν ἀγῶνα· προβαλοῦ τὸ ὕδωρ, προβαλοῦ τὸ πνεῦμα, ἐν ᾧ πάντα τὰ βέλη τοῦ πονηροῦ τὰ πεπυρωμένα σβεσθήσεται. πνεῦμα μέν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ διαλύον ὄρη ὕδωρ μεν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ πυρὸς σβεστήριον. — Nazian. Orat. in S. Bapt.

is spent, he can also lessen the necessity; or if that continues, he can drown the, sense of it in a deluge of patience and resignation. Every word of God's mouth can create a grace, and every grace can supply two necessities, both of the body and the spirit, by the comforts of this to support that, that they may bear each other's burden, and alleviate the pressure.

11. But the devil is always prompting us to change our stones into bread, our sadnesses into sensual comfort, our drynesses into inundations of fancy and exterior sweetnesses: for he knows, that the ascetic tables of mortification and the stones of the desert, are more healthful than the fulnesses of voluptuousness and the corn of the vallies. He cannot endure, we should live a life of austerity or self-denial: if he can get us but to satisfy our senses, and a little more freely to please our natural desires, he then hath a fair field for the battle; but so long as we force him to fight in hedges and morasses, encircling and crowding up his strengths into disadvantages, by our stone walls, our hardnesses of discipline and rudenesses of mortification, we can with more facilities repel his flatteries, and receive fewer incommodities of spirit. But thus the devil will abuse us, by the impotency of our natural desires; and therefore let us go to God, for satisfaction of our wishes. God can, and does, when it is good for us, change our stones into bread: for he is a Father so merciful, that "if we ask him a fish, he will not give us a scorpion; if we ask him bread, he will not offer us a stone;" but will satisfy all our desires by ministrations of the Spirit, making stones to become our meat, and tears our drink; which, although they are unpleasant and harsh to natural appetites, yet, by the operation and influences of God's Holy Spirit, they are made instruments of health, and life, and salvation.

12. The devil, perceiving Jesus to be a person of greater eminence and perfection, than to be moved by sensual and low desires, makes a second assault, by a temptation something more spiritual, and tempts him to presumption and indiscreet confidence, to a throwing himself down from the pinnacles of the temple; upon the stock of predestination, that God might secure him by the ministry of angels, and so prove his being the Son of God. And indeed it is usual

with the devil, when severe persons have so much mortified their lower appetites, that they are not easily overcome by an invitation of carnality or intemperance, to stir them to opinions of their own sanctity, and make their first escaping prove their second and greater dangers. But that the devil should persuade Jesus to throw himself down, because he was the Son of God, was an invitation to no purpose, save only that it gave occasion to this truth, That God's providence secures all his sons in the ways of nature, and while they are doing their duty; but loves not to be tempted to acts unreasonable and unnecessary. God will protect his servants in or from all evils happening without their knowledge, or against their will; but not from evils of their own procuring, Heron, an inhabitant of the desert, suffered the same temptation, and was overcome by it; for he died with his fall, sinfully and ingloriously. For the caresses of God's love to his saints and servants are security against all but themselves. The devil and all the world offer to do them mischief, but then they shall be safe, because they are innocent; if they once offer to do the same to themselves, they lose their protection, because they lost their prudence and their charity. But here, also, it will concern all those, who, by their eminent employment, and greater ministries in ecclesiasticals, are set upon the pinnacle of the temple, to take care that the devil tempt not them to a precipice; a fall from so great a height will break the bones in pieces: and yet there also the station is less firm, the posture most uneasy, the prospect vertiginous, and the devil busy, and desirous to thrust us headlong.

13. St. Hierom here observes well', the devil intending mischief to our blessed Saviour, invited him " to cast himself down." He may persuade us to a fall, but cannot precipitate us without our own act. And it is an infinite mercy in God, that the devil, who is of malice infinite, is of so restrained and limited a power, that he can do us no ghostly disadvantage, but by persuading us to do it ourselves. And then it will be a strange imprudence to lay violent and unreasonable hands upon ourselves, and do that mischief which our strongest and most malicious adversary cannot; or to be invited by the only rhetoric of a dog's barking, to come near

1 S. Hieron. in 4. cap. Matt.