45.
[895] In the original, _flee_.
[896] The sermon thus opens:--'That there are angels and spirits good
and bad; that at the head of these last there is ONE more considerable
and malignant than the rest, who, in the form, or under the name of a
_serpent_, was deeply concerned in the fall of man, and whose _head_, as
the prophetick language is, the son of man was one day to _bruise_; that
this evil spirit, though that prophecy be in part completed, has not yet
received his death's wound, but is still permitted, for ends
unsearchable to us, and in ways which we cannot particularly explain, to
have a certain degree of power in this world hostile to its virtue and
happiness, and sometimes exerted with too much success; all this is so
clear from Scripture, that no believer, unless he be first of all
_spoiled by philosophy and vain deceit [Colossians_, ii. 8], can
possibly entertain a doubt of it.'
Having treated of _possessions_, his Lordship says, 'As I have no
authority to affirm that there _are_ now any such, so neither may I
presume to say with confidence, that there are _not_ any.
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