The success and prevalence of Satan's temptations in the hour of persecution depends upon the fainting and overthrow of this grace. Wherefore doth he raise persecutions in the world, but because such terrible things are fitted to work upon the passion of carnal fear, which rises with those dangers, and makes the soul as a tumultuous sea. This is it he aims at, Neh. 6:13. This is a multiplying passion that represents dangers more and greater than they are, and so drives the soul into the very net and snare laid by the devil to take it.