II. The Devil does often manage his _temptations_, by urging of our

_Necessities_. Our Lord, was thus by the Devil bawl'd upon; _You want Bread, and you'll starve, if in my way you get it not_. The Devil will show some forbidden thing unto us, and plead concerning it, as of _Bread_ we use to say, _it must be had_. _Necessity_ has a wonderful compulsion in it. You may see what _Necessity_ will do, if you read in Deut. 28. 56. _the tender and the delicate Woman among you, her eye shall be evil towards the Children that she shall bear, for she shall eat them for want of all things_. The Devil will perswade us that there is a _Necessity_ of our doing what he does propound unto us; and then tho' the _Laws_ of God about us were so many _Walls_ of Stone, yet we shall break [54] through them all. That little inconvenience, of our coming to beg our _Bread_, O what a fearful Representation does the Devil make of it! and when once the Devil scares us to think of a sinful thing, _it must be done_, we soon come to think, _it may be done_. When the Devil has frighted us into an Apprehension, that it is a _Needful_ thing which we are prompted unto, he presently Engages all the Faculties of our Souls, to prove, that it may be a _Lawful_ one; the Devil told _Esau, You'll dye if you don't sell your Birthright;_ the Devil told _Aaron, You'll pull all the people about your ears, if you do not countenance their superstitions;_ and then they comply'd immediately. Yea, sometimes if the Devil do but Feign a Necessity, he does thereby _Gain_ the Hearts of Men; he did but feign a Need, when he told _Saul, the Cattel must be spared, and the sacrifice must be precipitated_, and he does but feign a Need, when he tells many a man, _if you do no servile work on the Sabbath-day, and if you don't Rob God of his evening_,[207] _you'll never subsist in the world_. All the denials of God, in the world, use to be from this Fallacy impos'd upon us. It never can be necessary for us to violate any Negative Commandment in the Law of our God; where God says, _thou shalt not_, we cannot upon any pretence reply, I _must_. But the Devil will put a most formidable and astonishing face of necessity upon many of those _Abominable things, which are hateful to the soul of God_. He'll say nothing to us about, the one thing needful; but the petite and the sorry _Need-nots_ of this world, he'll set off with most bloody Colours of _Necessity_. He will not say, _'tis necessary for you to maintain the Favour of your God, and secure the_ welfare of your Soul; but he'll say, _'tis necessary for you to keep in with your Neighbours; and that you and yours may have a good Living among them_.