He never lacks an apple for an Eve – Thomas Brooks
It is ten thousand times a greater judgment and affliction to be given to a fretful spirit, a froward spirit, a muttering spirit under an affliction than it is to be afflicted. This is both the devil’s sin, and the devil’s punishment. God is still afflicting, crossing and vexing him; and he is still a-fretting, repining, vexing, and rising up against God. No sin like the devil’s sin; no punishment like the devil’s punishment.
A man were better to have all the afflictions of all the afflicted throughout the world at once upon him than to be given up to a froward spirit to a muttering, murmuring heart under the least affliction. When you see a soul fretting, vexing, and stamping under the mighty hand of God, you see one of Satan’s first-born, one who resembles him to the life. No child can be so much like the father, as this froward soul is like to the father of lies.
Though he has been in chains almost this six thousand years, yet he has never lain still one day, nor one night, no, nor one hour in all this time but is still a-fretting, vexing, tossing and tumbling in his chains like a princely bedlam.
He is a lion not a lamb; a roaring lion not a sleepy lion; not a lion standing still but a lion going up and down. He is not satisfied with the prey he has already gotten but is restless in his designs to fill hell with souls.
He never lacks . . .
an apple for an Eve,
nor a grape for a Noah,
nor a change of clothing for a Gehazi,
nor a wedge of gold for an Achan,
nor a crown for an Absalom,
nor a bag of silver for a Judas,
nor a world for a Demas!
If you look into one company, there you shall find Satan dishing out his meat to every palate. If you look into another company, there you shall find him fitting a lace to every shoe. If you look into a third company, there you shall find him suiting a garment to every back. He is under wrath, and cannot but be restless. Here, with Jael, he allures poor souls in with milk and murders them with a nail! There, with Joab, he embraces with one hand and stabs with another! Here with Judas, he kisses and betrays! And there, with the whore of Babylon, he presents a golden cup with poison in it! He cannot be quiet, though his chains be always on!
And the more unquiet any are under the rebukes of God, the more they resemble Satan whose whole life is filled up with vexing and fretting against the Lord. Let not any think, says Luther, that the devil is now dead, nor yet asleep; for as he who keeps Israel, so he who hates Israel, neither slumbers nor sleeps!
