Christian returns Thanks 83 look, till he perceived he had wounded Apollyon with his twoedged sword; then indeed did he smile and look upward! but it was the dreadfullest sight that ever I saw. (r) (r) The preceding part of Christian's contest with Apollyon is instructive to every experienced believer; but this is far more difficult: yet if we duly reflect upon the Lord's permission to Satan, in respect of Job, with the efforts and effects that followed, and compare it with the tempter's desire of sifting Peter and the Apostles as wheat; we shall not be greatly at a loss about the author's meaning. This enemy is sometimes gratified by an arrangement of outward dispensations exactly suited to favour his assaults: so that the believer's path seems wholly obstructed. The Lord himself appears to have forsaken him, or even to fight against him; and his appointments are thought contrary to his promises! This gives Satan an opportunity of suggesting hard thoughts of God and his ways, doubts about the truth of the Scriptures, and desponding fears of a fatal event. Many such "fiery darts" may be repelled or quenched by the shield of faith: but there are seasons (as some of us well know,) when they are poured in so incessantly, and receive such plausibility from facts; and when they so interrupt a man while praying, reading, or meditating, that he is tempted to intermit religious duties, that he may avoid these most distressing attendants on them. The evils of the heart, which seemed before subdued, are so excited by means of the imagination, that they apparently prevail more than ever, rendering every service an abomination, as well as a burden; so that the harassed soul, alarmed, baffled, defiled, self-detested, and thinking that God and his servants unite in abhorring him, is ready to give up all hope, to doubt all his former principles, to seek refuge in some heretical or antinomian system, or to attempt the dissipating of his melancholy gioom, by joining again in the vanities of the world. Thus the enemy wounds him in his understanding, faith, and conversation,' (according to the author's marginal interpretation of his meaning :) yet he cannot in this way find relief; but is inwardly constrained, with renewed efforts, to return to the conflict.-When such temptations, however, are long continued, resistance will gradually become more feeble; the distressed believer will be ready to give up every thing; and, when the enemy plies him closely with infidel suggestions, to which his circumstances give a specious occasion, he may be thrown down, and "his sword fly out of his hand :" so that for a time he may be unable to give any credit to the truth of the Scriptures, by which alone he was before enabled to repel the tempter. This is a dreadful case and could true faith thus finally fail, even real Christians must perish: Satan hath succeeded against many professors, with half these advantages; and he may be supposed at least to boast that he is sure of such as are thus cast down. But the Advocate above "prays" for his disciples, "that their faith should not fail:"* so that, though Peter fell with Judas, he was not left to perish with him. The Christian, therefore, almost pressed to death,' and ready to despair of life,' will, by the special grace of God, be helped again to seize his sword, and to use it with more effect than ever. The Holy Spirit will bring to his mind, with the most convincing energy, the evidences of the divine inspiration of the *Luke xxii. 31, 32. 84 To his gracious Deliverer. So when the battle was over, Christian said, I will here give thanks to him that hath delivered me out of the mouth of the lion, to him that did help me against Apollyon. And so he did; saying, 'Great Beelzebub, the captain of this fiend, Then there came to him a hand with some of the leaves of the Tree of Life, the which Christian took, and applied to the wounds that he had received in the battle, and was healed im Scripture, and enable him to rely on the promises: and thus at length the enemy will be put to flight, by testimonies of holy writ pertinently adduced, and more clearly understood than before.-Experience will teach some readers to understand these things, and they will know how to compassionate and make allowances for the mistakes of the tempted: and others, who have been graciously exempted from perhaps the deepest anguish known on earth, (though commonly not of long duration,) should learn from the testimony of their brethren, to allow the reality of these distresses, and sympathize with the sufferers; and not (like Job's friends) to join with Satan in aggravating their sorrows.-We may allow, that constitutional, partial disease, and errors in judgment, expose some men more than others to such assaults: yet these are only occasions, and evil spirits are assuredly the agents in thus harassing serious persons, it is indeed of the greatest importance to be well established in the faith: they, who in ordinary cases are satisfied with general convictions and comfortable feelings, without being able to give a reason for their hope, may be driven to the most tremendous extremities, should God permit them to be thus assaulted: for they have no fixed principles to which they may resort in such an emergency; and perhaps some degree of mistake always gives Satan his principal advantage on these occasions. men of the most sober mind and sound judgment, when in a better state of bodily health than usual, and in all other respects most rational, have experienced such distressing temptations of this kind, as they could scarcely have believed on the report of others; and when delivered, they cannot look back on the past without the greatest consternation. Yet Besides the verses, by which Christian gave thanks to his great Deliverer, we meet in the old copies with these lines. A more unequal match can hardly be, |