affections of Abraham that, to obey God's commandment, he determined to kill, with his own hand, his best beloved son Isaac? Who could have trusted that, so many torments as Job suffered, he should not speak in all his great temptations one foolish word against God? Or who could have thought that God so mercifully should have pardoned so many and so manifest transgressions committed by his people in the desert, and yet that his mercy never utterly left them, but still continued with them till at length he performed his promise made to Abraham? Who, I say, would have been persuaded of these things unless, by trials and temptations taken of his creatures by God, they had come by revelation made in his holy Scriptures to our knowledge?
And so this kind of temptation is profitable, good, and necessary, as a thing proceeding from God, who is the fountain of all goodness, to the manifestation of his own glory and to the profit of the sufferer, however the flesh may judge in the hour of temptation. Otherwise temptation, or to tempt, is taken in evil part; that is, he that assaults or assails intends destruction and confusion to him that is assaulted. As when Satan tempted the woman in the garden. Job by divers tribulations, and David by adultery. The scribes and Pharisees tempted Christ by divers means, questions, and subtleties. And of this matter saith St. James, "God tempted no man"; that is, by temptation proceeding immediately from Him, He intends no man's destruction. And here
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