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This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book: PARADISE REGAINED. BOOK III. Satan, in a speech of much flalteriug commendation, endeavours to awaken in Jesus a passion for glory, by particularizing various instances of conquests achieved, and great actions performed, by persons at an early period of life. Our Lord replies, by showing the vanity of worldly fame, and the improper means by which it is generally attained; and contrasts with it the true glory of religious patience and virtuous wisdom, as exemplified in the character of Job. Satan justifies the love of glory from the example of God himself, who requires it from all hia creatures. Jesus detects the fallacy of this argnment, by showing that, as goodness is the true ground on which glory is due to the great Creator of ail things, sinful man can have no right whatever to it. Satan then urges our Lord respecting his claim to the throne of David: he tells him that the kingdom of Judea, being at that time a province of Rome, cannot be got possession of without much personal exertion on hia part, and presses him to lose no time in beginning to reign. Jesus refers him to the time allotted for this, as fur all other things; and, after intimating somewhat respecting his own previous sufferings, asks Satan, why he should be so solicitous for the exaltation of one, whose rising was destined to be hia fall. Satan replies, that his own desperate state, by excluding all hope, leaves little room for fear; and that, as his own punishment was equally doomed, he is not interested in preventing the reign of one, from whose apparent benevolence he might rather hope for some interference in his favour. Satan still pursues his former Incitements; and, supposing that the seeming reluctance of Jesus to be thus advanced might arise from his being unacquainted with the world and its glo...
This book is included in Project Gutenberg.
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