So long as we retain the simplicity of the word, we have Satan at the end of the staff; for unless we give way to a doubt about that, about the truth and simplicity of it, he gets no ground upon us.  In time of temptation, it is our wisdom and duty to keep close to the word that prohibits and forbids the sin; and not to reason with Satan, of how far our outward and worldly privileges go, especially of those privileges that border upon the temptation, as Eve here did:  “We may eat of all but one.”  By this she goeth to the outside of her liberty, and sees herself upon the brink of the danger.  Christ might have told the tempter, when he assaulted him, that he could have made stones bread, and that he could have descended from the pinnacle of the temple, as afterwards he did; but that would have admitted of other questions; wherefore he chooseth to lay aside such needless and unwarrantable reasonings, and resisteth him with a direct word of God, most pertinent to quash the tempter and also to preserve himself in the way.  To go to the outside of privileges, especially when tempted of the devil, is often if not always very dangerous and hazardous.

As long as the devil is alive there is danger; and though a strong Christian may lie too hard for, and may overcome him in one thing, he may be too hard for, yea, and may overcome the Christian two for one afterwards.  Thus he served David, and thus he served Peter, and thus he in our day has served many more.  The strongest are weak, the wisest are fools, when suffered to be sifted as wheat in Satan’s sieve; yea, and have often been so proved, to the wounding of their great hearts and the dishonor of religion.

It is usual with the devil in his temptings of poor creatures, to put a good and bad together, that by show of the good the tempted might be drawn to do that which in truth is evil.  Thus he served Saul; he spared the best of the herd and flock, under pretence of sacrificing to God, and so transgressed the plain command.  But this the apostle said was dangerous, and therefore censureth such as in a state of condemnation.  Thus he served Adam; he put the desirableness of sight and a plain transgression of God’s law together, that by the loveliness of the one they might the easier be brought to do the other.  O, poor Eve, do we wonder at thy folly?  Doubtless we had done as bad with half the argument of thy temptation.

Satan by tempting one may chiefly intend the destruction of another.  By tempting the wife, he may aim at the destruction of the husband; by tempting the father, he may design the dsstruction of his children; and by tempting the king, he may design the ruin of his subjects, even as in the case of David:  “Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number the people.”  He had a mind to destroy seventy thousand, therefore he tempted David to sin.

I have sent you here enclosed a drop of that honey that I have taken out of the carcass of a lion.  I have eaten thereof myself, and am much refreshed thereby.  Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey within them.