OF THE FIERY DARTS OF SATAN.

I.

A woodcut depicts a decorative drop cap letter D featuring floral and foliate motifs.With the help of God, for our instruction, admonition, and consolation, I intend in this Theological dissertation to explain a doctrine necessary to be known concerning the most grievous temptations of Satan, so that it may become manifest what those pyrobola mechanemata fire-casting engines and fiery darts of that most cunning veteran are, among many others, with which he assiduously attacks us in skirmishing warfare; and that those upon whom a richer revelation of the Spirit has fallen may have the opportunity and copious material to instruct, exhort, and finally console us as well.

II. The Golden Foundation of the Disputation.

We shall make our beginning from the holy exhortation of the Apostle Paul, which we shall lay down as the foundation for the entire treatise: Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the fiery darts of that Evil One.

As the shield relates to the darts of light-armed troops when one fights with missiles, so Faith relates to the temptations of Satan when he attacks us.

But we receive and shatter the darts hurled at us with a shield: therefore, by faith, which the Greek Scholiast rightly calls sindonine diapuron the linen-like fiery garment, sincere and fiery, the temptations of Satan are also extinguished. They are called fiery darts not only because desires become ignited and conflagrate, inciting one to base works, but also because we burn internally in our conscience from that moment on. Furthermore, the Devil burns us through the reasonings of unbelief and thus through thoughts, and through temptations, as Theophylactus says.

III.

For the sake of teaching, we shall first deal in order with the external and internal causes of the temptations which we hear called the fiery darts of Satan, and afterwards with the method of obtaining victory.