which is to come," and then look to the temporal estate of the man who makes this affirmation, we are assured that in the possession of this grace of godliness there must be a hidden joy which passes understanding, a joy which depends not for its resources on outward prosperity, nor looks to a vain world to minister fuel to its flame. No: he who gave utterance to this sentiment was himself, in external respects, the poorest of the poor, of all men the most miserable: a tent-maker, he laboured strenuously for his daily bread: his life was in continual jeopardy; exposed to stripes, to shipwrecks, to perils of all kinds innumerable; "in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness;" he was accounted the very filth and offscouring of all things, the refuse of the earth. When, therefore, my brethren, from the lips of such a one you hear the declaration that godliness has the promise even of the life that now is, you may at once conclude that this is indeed a pearl of great price; and, oh, let it hush for very shame the complaint that so frequently is falling from your own lips, your murmurs at your present estate and circumstances, your impatience under the dispensations of your Lord. If Christ be precious to your soul, as he was to that of Paul, you too will learn in whatsoever state you are, there

with to be content. And now the observation which we have exemplified from the writings of Solomon and of Paul, applies also to the passage in the text. The warning here given, that our adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour, and the consequent exhortation to soberness and vigilance, obtain an additional claim on our attention, when we remember that they are the words of one who, in his own person, bitterly experienced the truth of what he states; of one whom Satan had desired to have, that he might sift him as wheat, and who, in the injunction, "Be sober, be vigilant," was echoing only those words spoken to him in the garden of Gethsemane, and still sounding in his ears, "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." Well would it be did you too, my brethren, make a like use of your past experience, and thence learn both to exercise watchfulness as regards yourselves, and, with converted Peter,6 to strengthen your weak brethren.

The first part of the text which claims your serious attention is the fact that is asserted. You are here assured that, however little the subject may have engaged your thoughts, there is a hostile spirit ever prowling abroad among the sons of men; a living person, not a mere influence. He

6 Luke xxii. 32.

resembles a lion in strength and in rapacity; and as a ravenous lion eager for his prey, so are his glistening eyes fixed stedfastly on you, watching his opportunity of attack, that you may become the victim of his malice.

He is here called "your adversary the devil;" the term "devil" means a calumniator; and the word "adversary," adversary," in this passage, means an adversary at law, an adversary in a court of justice: for this enemy to God and man first tempts to sin, and then brings his accusation against the victim of his treachery. This was the design of his fierce but fruitless assaults on righteous Job.

To what cause the present condition of Satan and his angels is attributable, is not revealed to us in the Bible. It is from the gratuitous statements of our great epic poet that the prevailing opinion is derived. The warning conveyed in 1 Tim. iii. 6 appears to imply that the condemnation of Satan was awarded to his pride; but whether this be the correct interpretation of that passage is a subject of dispute among divines.8 Or admitting it to be declaratory of the pride and

7 The remarks which follow, respecting the present condition of the evil angels, were not in the original sermon, but have been inserted by way of completing the subject.

8 See Poli Synopsis.

consequent condemnation of Satan, it leaves unexplained the precise nature of that pride. The application of Isa. xiv. 12 to Satan now meets with a general and just rejection.

On this interesting subject the pious Hooker 9 has made the following remarks: "A part of the angels of God (we know) have fallen, and that their fall hath been through the voluntary breach of that law which did require at their hands continuance in the exercise of their high and admirable virtue. Impossible it was that ever their will should change, or incline to remit any part of their duty, without some object having force to avert their conceit from God, and to draw it another way; and that before they attained that high perfection of bliss wherein now the elect angels are without possibility of falling. Of anything more than of God they could not by any means like as long as whatsoever they knew besides God, they apprehended it not in itself, without dependency upon God; because so long God must needs seem infinitely better than anything which they could so apprehend. Things beneath them could not in such sort be presented unto their eyes, but that therein they must needs see always how those things did depend on God. It seemeth, therefore, that there was no other way

9 Eccl. Pol. book i. § 4.

for angels to sin, but by reflex of their understanding upon themselves; when, being held with admiration of their own sublimity and honour, the memory of their subordination unto God, and their dependency on him, was drowned in this conceit; whereupon their adoration, love, and imitation of God could not choose but be also interrupted. The fall of angels, therefore, was pride." To the same purpose Jeremy Taylor has observed, "The angels themselves, because their light reflected home to their orbs, and they understood all the secrets of their own perfection, they grew vertiginous, and fell from the battlements of heaven."

1

Another opinion which has been maintained, and which evidently owes its origin to a misconception of Isa. xiv. 12, is, that Satan's" pride bid him aspire to an equality with his Maker, and say, I will ascend, and be like the Most High.'" 2

I Works, vol. i. p. 864. Edit. Westley and Davis. See also p. 397, 433; vol. iii. p. 739. Jenkin, in his Reasonableness and Certainty of the Christian Religion, has an observation of the same nature, vol. ii. c. 13. Similarly, Hales' (of Eton) Golden Remains, p. 107.

2 South, vol. i. p. 306. Edit. Oxf. 1823. Elsewhere, however, in vol. v. p. 505, he is sarcastically severe upon this opinion. There is a quotation from St. Bernard to