The devil’s logic – Thomas Brooks

“Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we who are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” Romans 6:1, 2

To argue from God’s mercy to sinful liberty is the devil’s logic and such logicians do ever walk as upon a mine of gunpowder ready to be blown up! No such soul can ever avert or avoid the wrath of God. This is wickedness at the height for a man to be very bad, because God is very good! There is not a worse spirit than this in hell. Ah, Lord, does not wrath, yes, the greatest wrath, lie at this man’s door? Are not the strongest chains of darkness prepared for such a soul? To sin against mercy is bestial; no, it is worse!

To render good for evil is divine.
To render good for good is human.
To render evil for evil is brutish.

But to render evil for good is devilish!

There is nothing in the world which renders a man more unlike a Christian, and more like Satan than to argue from God’s mercy to sinful liberty; from divine goodness to licentiousness. This is devilish logic, and in whomever you find it, you may write, ‘This soul is lost!’

A man may as truly say, ‘the sea burns’, or ‘the fire cools’ as that God’s free grace and mercy should make a truly gracious soul to live wickedly.