Satan

“ A faint bleat came from the hill-side beyond, where Satan could see another woods—and then another bleat, and another. And the cur began to creep again, like a snake in the grass; and the others crept too, and little Satan crept, though it was all a sad mystery to him. Again the cur lay still, but only long enough for Satan to see curious, fat, white shapes above him—and then, with a blood-curdling growl, the big brute dashed forward. Oh, there was fun in them after all! Satan barked joyfully. ”

“ And Satan came to him and laying his hand upon his nose, blew into his nostrils the breath of pride and conceit, so that he magnified himself and said in his heart, ‘Who among men is like unto me?’ And he became so puffed up with arrogance and conceit and so taken up with the thought of his own glory and magnificence, that he would not vouchsafe a glance to any. ”

“ If Satan, in the time he was an angel, lived in innocence, and merited the good will of his Maker, how came God to suffer him to entertain ideas of pride, ambition, and rebellion? How came this angel of light so blind as not to see the folly of such an enterprise? ”

“ O, my son, you have had a long race in the service of Satan; he has kept you in bondage and made you his drudge. You are far advanced in the broad way that leads to destruction — to that place of endless torment prepared for the devil and his angels, to which Satan is dragging you. He has even been seeking the destruction of your body, that he might have you secure. ”

“ But Satan seems to be a privileged person: we learn, in the nursery, to fancy him a hideous caricature of human nature, with horns, hoof, and a tail, inspiring disgust, and a childish fear that wears off as we advance into youth, leaving an impression rather ludicrous than alarming of the ugly phantom that, nevertheless, continues identified with him of whom we read in the Bible. ”

“ In vain monks and nuns try to shut him out from their lives; he inspires Heloïse, he murmurs the verses of Ovid and Horace among David’s psalms and tears of repentance. But Satan often peoples the sleepless cell with images of a better age. He arouses, from the pages of Livy, eager tribunes, consuls, agitated shouting crowds. Wiclif and Huss, Savonarola, Luther secure the triumph of human thought: matter, rise again! Satan has conquered. ”

“ Is Satan in the same place as God, either in the air, or in men?
Answer. The sun yonder is but a creature. When it shines upon miry places, what harm does it take? How much more can the Divine Being be in the same place as Satan without being sullied or polluted? ”

“ Where we see Satan as the satyr, he is the rollicking fiend of the Mystery stage, tempting with sly good-humour, tormenting with a grim and ferocious joy, or often merely posturing and capering in a much to be envied height of the wildest animal spirits. There is in popular art no trace, so far as the writer’s observation extends, of that lofty sorrow at man’s unworthiness, which has occasionally been attributed to Satan. ”

“ A soul under Satan's power, and led captive by him, is blind in the things of God, and dumb at the throne of grace; sees nothing, and says nothing to the purpose. Satan blinds the eye of faith, and seals up the lips of prayer.
2. His cure was very strange, and the more so, because sudden; he healed him. Note, The conquering and dispossessing of Satan is the healing of souls. And the cause being removed, immediately the effect ceased; the blind and dumb both spake and saw. Note, Christ's mercy is directly opposite to Satan's malice; his favours, to the devil's mischiefs. ”

“ It is a marvel to me how some Christians who find the recognition of miracles inextricably involved in the life and even in the teaching of Christ, nevertheless fail to see, or at all events are most unwilling to confess, that the recognition of an evil one, or Satan, is an axiom that underlies all His doctrine. In the view of Jesus, it is Satan that causes some forms of disease and insanity; Satan is the author of temptation, the destroyer of the good seed, the sower of tares, the "evil one"—so at least the text of the Revisers tells us—from whom we must daily pray to be delivered. ”

“ When Satan heard these words from her, he changed his form, and he began to choke her, and she prayed to the glorious Saint Michael, and he came unto her forthwith and delivered her from him. And he seized Satan and began to punish him, and Satan entreated him, saying, “God will bear with us until the end of the world. Have mercy upon me and do not torture me”; and he gave her the salutation of peace and went up into heaven. ”

“ Satan is constantly engaged in doing all in his power to entice men away from God, and to have himself worshipped instead of the Creator. The introduction, establishment, persistence, and power of the various cruel, revolting superstitions of the ancient heathen world, or of pagan nations in modern times, are nothing but the work of the devil. They reveal a more than human power. God permitted Satan to operate upon man’s morbid nature, as a deserved punishment upon the Gentiles for their hatred of truth and their apostasy from the primitive religion. ”

“ Wherever the figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or flies, "rising aloft incumbent on the dusky air," it is illustrated with the most striking and appropriate images: so that we see it always before us, gigantic, irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed—but dazzling in its faded splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The deformity of Satan is only in the depravity of his will; he has no bodily deformity to excite our loathing or disgust. ”

“ As the crowning act in the great drama of deception, Satan himself will personate Christ. The church has long professed to look to the Saviour's advent as the consummation of her hopes. Now the great deceiver will make it appear that Christ has come. In different parts of the earth, Satan will manifest himself among men as a majestic being of dazzling brightness, resembling the description of the Son of God given by John in the Revelation.1065 The glory that surrounds him is unsurpassed by anything that mortal eyes have yet beheld. ”

“ Omnipresent, and well-nigh omnipotent and omniscient, Satan and his demons were ever and everywhere at work to obtain, by cunning arts, control over the souls of men, to cross their purposes, and to vex their bodies. The{380} food of these beings was the suffering of the damned, and human salvation their most exquisite torment. To effect their objects human agents were indispensable, and Satan was always ready to impart a portion of his power, or to consign a subordinate demon, to any one who would serve him. ”

“ Satan, by his supernatural powers directing his practice and experience for several millenniums, is a crafty, sagacious spy, acquainted with all the weaknesses and emotions of the human heart. Who is equal to such an enemy? Contending alone, no one on this sin-burdened footstool. ”

“ Book IV. Wishing his voice were loud enough to warn our first parents of coming woe and thus forestall the misfortunes ready to pounce upon them, the poet describes how Satan, "with hell raging in his heart," gazes from the hill, upon which he has alighted, into Paradise. The fact that he is outcast both from heaven and earth fills Satan with alternate sorrow and fierce wrath, under impulse of which emotions his face becomes fearfully distorted. ”

“ In accusing me of being a damnable sinner, you are cutting your own throat, Satan. You are reminding me of God's fatherly goodness toward me, that He so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. In calling me a sinner, Satan, you really comfort me above measure." ”

“ And our Lord Jesus Christ appeared unto them, and encouraged them, and gave them strength to endure patiently. And when God willed that their virtues should become manifest, Satan seized the daughter of the king, and tortured her with so many tortures that her father and her mother sorrowed greatly. Now there were in the city many Satans, who manifested themselves boldly, and who cried out and said, “What have we to do with thee, O Marcarius, and thy companion whom they have exiled from their country?” ”

“ The Satan is introduced in the prologue, exercising his function as minister of God in heaven; but it is to misinterpret wholly the doctrine of evil in the Old Testament to assign to the Satan any such personal importance or independence of power as that he should be called before the curtain to receive the hisses that accompany his own discomfiture. The Satan, though he here appears with the beginnings of a malevolent will of his own, is but the instrument of the sifting providence of God. ”

“ The application of it to the case in hand (v. 26) , If Satan cast out Satan; if the prince of the devils should be at variance with the inferior devils, the whole kingdom and interest would soon be broken; nay, if Satan should come into a compact with Christ, it must be to his own ruin; for the manifest design and tendency of Christ's preaching and miracles was to overthrow the kingdom of Satan, as a kingdom of darkness, wickedness, and enmity to God; and to set up, upon the ruins of it, a kingdom of light, holiness, and love. ”

“ Both the conversion of a sinner and the glorification of a saint are great disappointments to Satan, who does his utmost, with all his power and subtlety, to hinder both. Now, our Lord Jesus having undertaken to bring about the salvation of all his chosen, we may in faith pray that, in both these ways, that great adversary may be confounded. When a child of God is brought into that horrible pit, and the miry clay, Satan cries Aha! aha! thinking he has gained his point; but he shall rage when he sees the brand plucked out of the fire, and shall be desolate, for a reward of his shame. ”

“ Verily, verily, I say unto you, that Satan has great hold upon their hearts, he stirreth them up to iniquity against that which is good; and their hearts are corrupt, and full of wickedness and abominations; and they love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil; therefore they will not ask of me. Satan stirreth them up, that he may lead their souls to destruction. ”

“ This bad and perverse being they call Satan, the Devil, the Evil One; and we see him play a great game in all the religions of the world, the founders of which have found in the impotence of Deity the sources of both good and evil. ”

“ Know, O my brother, that Satan is not so anxious to cast thee into fornication as he is to dismiss thee from obedience, and to make thee disobedient and rebellious, and he plotteth always with exceedingly great care to make thee thus; for Satan himself hath been acquainted with disobedience from the beginning, and he knoweth that it is the cause of every kind of condemnation and of wickedness to those who possess it. ”

“ And the nature of the miracles was such as suited the intention of his commission, and gave light and lustre to it.
[1.] He was sent to break the power of Satan; and, in token of that, unclean spirits, being charged in the name of the Lord Jesus to remove, came out of many that were possessed with them, v. 7. As far as the gospel prevails, Satan is forced to quit his hold of men and his interest in them, and then those are restored to themselves and to their right mind again, who, while he kept possession, were distracted. ”

“ The blessing he expects from God—a victory over Satan. If he mean primarily those false doctrines and seducing spirits spoken of before, of which Satan was the prime founder and author, yet doubtless, it comprehends all the other designs and devices of Satan against souls, to defile, disturb, and destroy them, all his attempts to keep us from the purity of heaven, the peace of heaven here, and the possession of heaven hereafter. ”

“ Satan has had his headquarters somewhere in the heavens, below God's throne, but above the earth. Now, after a conflict, he is cast out of heaven, down to the earth. Here is a third event that comes approximately at the beginning of the tribulation time, Satan is cast down to the earth.
The Holy Spirit is withdrawn from the Church up to heaven, so removing the restraint upon evil. Satan is cast out of heaven and comes down to earth. Thus there is a double intensifying of evil on the earth, the withdrawal of restraint, and the presence of the evil one himself. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII. 1 A girl, whose blood Satan sucked receives one of Christ's swaddling clothes from the Virgin, 14 Satan comes like a dragon, and she shews it to him; flames and burning coals proceed from it and fall upon him; 19 he is miraculously discomfited, and leaves the girl. ”

“ It has been truly said that Satan always finds work for idle hands to do.
By disobeying God and obeying Satan man became the servant of sin and Satan. Paul says, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey?" Romans 6:16.
Driven from Eden.
By obeying Satan man lost his dominion of the earth, and it passed into the hands of Satan. Thus he became "the god of this world."
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"To them, bowed low with grief for sin, the shining ones made known the way to heaven." ”

“ Satan with his demons was born from the kingdom of darkness. These two kingdoms stood opposed to each other from all eternity, touching each other on one side, but remaining unmingled. Then Satan began to rage, and made an incursion into the kingdom of light, into the earth of light. The God of light, with his syzygy, “the spirit of his right hand,” now begot the primal man, and sent him, equipped with the five pure elements, to fight against Satan. ”