Читать книгу 3 books to know The Devil - Джон Мильтон - Страница 19

OF GODS CALLING A CHURCH out of the midst of a de generate world; and of Satan’s new measures upon that incident. How he attacked them immediately; and his success in those attacks.

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SATAN HAVING, AS I have said in the preceding chapter, made, as it were, a full conquest of mankind; de bauched them all to idolatry; and brought them at least to worship the true God by the wretched medium of corrupt and idolatrous representations; God seemed to have no true servants or worshippers left in the world; but if I may be allowed to speak so, was obliged, in order to restore the world to their senses again, to call a select number out from among the rest, who he himself undertook should own his godhead, or supreme authority, and worship him as he required to be worshipped. This, I say, God was obliged to do, because it is evident it has not been done so much by the choice and counsel of men, for Satan would have overruled that part, as by the power and energy of some irresistible and invincible operation, and this our Divines give high names to; but be it what they will, it is the second defeat or disappointment that the Devil has met with in his progress in the world; the first I have spoken of already.

It is true, Satan very well understood what was threatened to him in the original promise to the Woman immediately after the fall; namely, Thou shalt bruise his head, &c., but he did not expect it so suddenly, but thought himself sure of mankind, till the fulness of time when the Messiah should come; and therefore it Avas a great surprise to him, to see that Abraham, being called, was so immediately received and established, though he did not so immediately follow the voice that directed him, yet in him, in his loins, was all God’s church at that time contained.

In the calling Abraham, it is easy to see that there was no other way for God to form a church, that is to say, to single out a people to himself, as the world was then stated, but by immediate revelation, arid a voice from heaven. All mankind were gone over to the enemy, overwhelmed in idolatry: in a word were en gaged to the Devil; God Almighty, or, as the Scripture distinguishes him, the Lord, the true God, was out of the question; mankind knew little or nothing of him; much less did they know anything of his worship, or that there was such a being in the world.

Well might it be said the Lord appeared to Abraham, Gen. xii. 7, for if God had not appeared himself, he must have sent a messenger from heaven; and perhaps it was so too, for he had not one true servant or worshipper that we know of then on earth, to send on that errand; no prophet, no preacher of righteousness. Noah was dead, and had been so above seventeen years; and if he had not, his preaching, as I observed, after his great miscarriage, had but little effect. We are indeed told that Noah left behind him certain rules and orders for the true worship of God, which were called the precepts of Noah, and remained in the world for a long time; though how written, when neither any letters, much less writing, were known in the world, is a difficulty which remains to be solved; and this makes me look upon those laws called the precepts of Noah to be a modern invention, as I do also the Alphabetum Noachi, which Bochart pretends to give an account of.

But to leave that fiction and come back to Abraham; God called him, whether at first by voice without any vision, whether in a dream, or night vision, which was very significant in those days, or whether by some awful appearance, we know not; the second time, it is indeed said expressly, God appeared to him. Be it which way it will, God himself called him, showed him the land of Canaan, gave him the promise of it for his posterity, and withal gave him such a faith, that the Devil soon found there was no room for him to meddle with Abraham. This is certain, we do not read that the Devil ever so much as attempted Abraham at all. Some will suggest that the command to Abraham to go and offer up his son Isaac, was a temptation of the Devil, if possible, to defeat the glorious work of God’s calling an holy seed into the world. For the first, if Abraham had disobeyed that call, the new favorite had been overcome, arid made a rebel of; or, secondly, if he had obeyed, then the promised seed had been cut off, and Abraham defeated; but as the text is express, that God himself proposed it to Abraham, I shall not start, the suggestions of the critics, in bar of the sacred oracle.

Be it one way or other, Abraham showed an herolike faith and courage; and, if the Devil had been the author of it, he had seen himself disappointed in both his views; 1, by Abraham’s ready and bold compliance, as believing it to be God’s command; and 2, by the divine countermand of the execution, just as the fatal knife was lifted up.

But if the Devil left Abraham, and made no attack upon him, seeing him invulnerable, he made himself amends upon the other branch of his family, his poor nephew Lot; who, notwithstanding he was so immediately under the particular care of heaven, as that the angel who was sent to destroy Sodom, could do nothing till he was out of it; and who, though after he had left Zoar, and was retired into a cave to dwell, yet the subtle Devil found him out, deluded his two daughters, took an advantage of the fright they had been in about Sodom and Gomorrah, made them believe the whole world was burnt too, as well as those cities, and that, in short, they could never have any husbands, &c., and so, in their abundant concern to repeople the world, and that the race of mankind might not be destroyed, they go and lie with their own father; the Devil telling them doubtless how to do it, by intoxicating his head with wine; in all which story, whether they were not as drunk as their father, seems to be a question; or else they could not have supposed all the men in the earth were consumed, when they knew that the little city Zoar had been preserved for their sakes.

This now was the third conquest Satan obtained by the gust of human appetite; that is to say, once by eating, and twice by drinking, or drunkenness; and still the last was the worst, and most shameful; for

Lot, however his daughters managed him, could not pretend he did not understand what the strength of wine was; and one would have thought, after so terrible a judgment as that of Sodom was, which was, as we may say, executed before his face, his thoughts should have been too solemnly engaged in praising God for sparing his life, to be made drunk, and that two nights together.

But the Devil played his game sure, he set his two daughters to work; and as the Devil’s instruments seldom fail, so he secured his by that hellish stratagem of deluding the daughters to think all the world was consumed but they two, and their father. To be sure the old man could not suspect that his daughters’ design was so wicked as indeed it was, or that they intended to debauch him with wine, and make him drink till he knew not what he did.

Now the Devil, having carried his game here, gained a great point; for as there were but two religious families in the world before, from whence a twofold generation might be supposed to rise, religious and righteous like their parents, namely, that of Abraham, and this of Lot; this crime ruined the hopes of one of them; it could no more be said that just Lot was in being, who vexed his righteous soul from day to day with the wicked behavior of the people of Sodom; righteous Lot was degenerated into drunken, incestuous Lot, Lot fallen from what he was, to be a wicked and unrighteous man; no pattern of virtue, no reprover of the age, but a poor, fallen, degenerate patriarch, who could now no more reprove or exhort, but look down and be ashamed, and nothing to do but to repent; and see the poor mean excuses of all the three:

Eve says, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”

Noah says, “my grandson beguiled me, or the wine beguiled me, and I did drink.”

Lot says, “My daughters beguiled me, and I also did drink.”

It is observable, that, as I said before, Noah was silenced, and his preaching at an end, after that one action, so the like may be said of Lot; and, in short, you never hear one more word of either of them after it; as for mankind, both were useless to them; and as to themselves, we never read of any of their repentance, nor have we much reason to believe they did repent.

From this attack of the Devil upon Lot, we hear no more of the Devil being so busily employed as he had been before in the world; he had indeed but little to do; for all the rest of the world was his own, lulled asleep under the witchcraft of idolatry, and are so still.

But it could not be long that the Devil lay idle; as soon as God called himself a people, the Devil could not be at rest till he attacked them.

“Wherever God sets up an house of prayer,

The Devil always builds a chapel there.”

Abraham indeed went off the stage free, and so did Isaac too; they were a kind of first-rate saints; we do not so much as read of any failing they had, or of anything the Devil had ever the face to offer to them; no, or with Jacob either, if you will excuse him for beguiling his brother Esau of both his birthright and his blessing; but he was busy enough with all his children; for example,

He sent Judah to his sheep-shearing, and placed Tamar in his way, in the posture of temptation; so made him commit incest.

He sent incestuous Reuben to take his father’s concubine, Bilhah.

He sent Dinah to the ball, to dance with the Shechernite ladies, and play the sinner with their master.

He enraged Simeon and Levi at the supposed injury, and then prompted them to revenge; for which their father heartily cursed them.

He set them all together to fall upon poor Joseph, first to murder him intentionally, and then actually sell him to the Midianites.

He made them show the party-colored coat, and tell a lie to their father, to make the poor old man believe Joseph was killed by a lion, &c.

He sent Potiphar’s wife to attack Joseph’s chastity, and filled her with rage at the disappointment.

He taught Joseph to swear by the life of Pharaoh.

In a word, he debauched the whole race, except Benjamin; and never man had such a set of sons; so wicked, and so notorious, after so good an introduction into the world as they all of them had, to be sure; for Jacob, no doubt, gave them as good instruction as the circumstances of his wandering condition would allow him to do.

We must now consider the Devil and his affairs in a quite differing situation. When the world first appeared peopled by the creating power of God, he had only Adam and Eve to take care of, and I think he plied his time with them to purpose enough. After the deluge he had Noah only to pitch upon, and he quickly conquered him by the instigation of his grand-son.

At the building of Babel he guided them by their acting all in a body, as one man; so that, in short, he managed them with ease, taking them as a body politic; and we find they came into his snare as one man; but now, the children of Israel multiplying in the land of their bondage, and God seeming to show a particular concern for them, the Devil was obliged to new measures, stand at a distance, and look on for some time.

The Egyptians were plagued even without his help; for, though the cunning artist, as I said, stood and looked on, yet he durst not meddle; nor could he make a few lice, the least and meanest of the armies of insects raised to afflict the Egyptians.

However, when he perceived that God resolved to bring the Israelites out, he prepared to attend them, to watch them, and be at hand upon all the wicked occasions that might offer; as if he had been fully satisfied such occasions would offer, and that he should not fail to have an opportunity to draw them into some snare or other; and that therefore it was his business not to be out of the way, but to be ready (as we say) to make his market of them in the best manner he could. How many ways he attempted them, nay, how many times he conquered them in their journey, we shall see presently.

First he put them in a fright at Baal-Zephon, where he thought he had drawn them into a noose, and where he sent Pharaoh and his army to block them up between the mountains of Pihahiroth and the Red Sea; but there indeed Satan was outwitted by Moses, so far ajs it appeared to be an human action; for he little thought of their going dry-footed through the sea, but depended upon having them all cut in pieces the next morning by the Egyptians; an eminent proof, by the way, that the Devil has no knowledge of events, or any insight into futurity; nay, that he has not so much as a second sight, or knows today what his Maker intends to do tomorrow; for had Satan known that God intended to ford them over the sea, if he had not been able to have prevented the miracle, he would certainly have prevented the escape, by sending out Pharaoh and his army time enough to have taken the strand before them, and so have driven them to the necessity of travelling on foot round the north point of that sea, by the wilderness of Etan, where he would have pursued and harassed them with his cavalry, and in all probability have destroyed them: but the blind, short-sighted Devil, perfectly in the dark, and unacquainted with futurity, knew nothing of the matter, was as much deceived as Pharaoh himself, stood still, flattering himself with the hopes of his booty, and the revenge he should take upon them the next morning; till he saw the frighted waves in an uproar, and to his utter astonishment and confusion, saw the passage laid open, and Moses leading his vast army in full march over the dry space; nay, even then it is very probable Satan diAnot know that if the Egyptians followed them, the sea would return upon and overwhelm them; for I can hardly think so hard of the Devil himself, that if he had, hewould have suffered, much less prompted Pharaoh to follow the chase at such an expense; so that either he must be an ignorant, unforeseeing Devil, or a very un grateful, false Devifto his friends the Egyptians.

I am inclined ~also to the more charitable opinion of Satan too, because the escape of the Israelites was really a triumph over himself; for the war was certainly his, or at least he was auxiliary to Pharaoh; it was a victory over hell arid Egypt together; and he would never have suffered the disgrace, if he had known it beforehand; that is to say, though he could not have prevented the escape of Israel, or the dividing the water, yet he might have warned the Egyptians, and cautioned them not to venture in after them.

But we shall see a great many weak steps taken by the Devil in the affair of this very people, and their forty years’ wandering in the wilderness; and, though he was in some things successful, and wheedled them into many foolish and miserable murmurings and wranglings against God, and mutinies against poor Moses, yet the Devil was oftentimes balked and dis appointed; and it is for this reason that I choose to finish the first part of his history with the particular relation of his behavior among the Jews, because also we do not find any extraordinary things happening anywhere else in the world for above one thousand five hundred years, no variety, no revolutions; all the rest of mankind lay still under his yoke, quietly submitted to his government, did just as he bade them, worshipped every idol he set up. and, in a word, he had no difficulty with any body but the Jews; and, for this reason, I say, this part of his story will be the more useful and instructing.

To return therefore to Moses, and his dividing the Red Sea; that the people went, over or through it, that we have the sacred history for; but how the Devil behaved, that you must come to me for, or I know not where you will find a true account of it, at least not in print.

1. It was in the night they marched through; whether the Devil saw it in the dark or no, that is not my business.

But when he had day-light for it, and viewed the next day’s work, I make no question but all hell felt the surprise, the prey being thus snatched out of their hands unexpectedly. It is true the Egyptians’ host was sent to him in their room; but that was not what he aimed at; for he was sure enough of them his own way, and if it was not just at that time, yet he knew what and who they were; but as he had devoured the whole Israelitish host in his imagination, to the tune of at least a million and an half of souls; men, women, and children; it was, no doubt, a great disappointment to the Devil to miss of his prey, and to see them all triumphing on the other side in safety.

It is true, Satan’s annals do not mention this defeat; for historians are generally backward to register their own misfortunes; but as we have an account of the fact from other hands, so as we cannot question the truth of it; the nature of the thing will tell us it was a disappointment to the Devil, and a very great one too.

I cannot but observe here, that I think this part of the Devil’s story very entertaining, because of the great variety of incidents which appear in every part of it; sometimes he is like an hunted fox, curvetting and counter-running to avoid his being pursued and found out, while at the same time he is carrying on his secret designs to draw the people he pretends to manage, into some snare or other, to their hurt; at another time, though the comparison is a little too low for his dignity, like a monkey that has done mischief, and which, making his own escape, sits and chatters at a distance, as if he had triumphed in what he had done; so Satan, when he had drawn them in to worship a calf, to offer strange fire, to set up a schism, and the like; and so to bring the Divine vengeance upon themselves; leaving them in their distress, kept at a dis tance, as if he looked on with satisfaction to see them burnt, swallowed up, swept away, and the like; as the several stories relate.

His indefatigable vigilance is, on the other hand, an useful caveat, as Avell as an improving view to us; no sooner is he routed and exposed, defeated and disappointed in one enterprize, but he begins another, and, like a cunning gladiator, warily defends himself, and boldly attacks his enemy at the same time. Thus we see him up and down, conquering and conquered, through this whole part of his story, till, at last, he receives a total defeat; of which you shall hear in its place. In the mean time, let us take up his story again at the Red Sea, where he received a great blow, instead 12 of which he expected a complete victory; for, doubtless, the Devil and the king of Egypt too, thought of nothing but conquest at Pihahiroth.

However, though the triumph of the Israelites over the Egyptians must needs be a great mortification to the Devil, and exasperated him very much, yet the consequence was only this; namely, that Satan, like an enemy who is balked and defeated, but not overcome, redoubles his rage, and reinforces his army, and what the Egyptians could not do for him, he resolves to do for himself. In order then to take his opportunity for what mischief might offer, being defeated, and provoked, I say, at the slur that was put upon him. he resolves to follow them into the wilderness, and many a vile prank he played them there; as first, he straitens them for water, and makes them murmur against God, and against Moses, within a very few days, nay, hours, of their great deliverance of all.

Nor was this all, but in less than one year more we find them (at his instigation too) setting up a golden calf, arid making all the people dance about it at Mount Sinai; even when God himself had but just before appeared to them in the terrors of a burning fire upon the top of the mountain; and what was the pretence? Truly, nothing but that they had lost Moses, who used to be their guide, and he had hid himself in the mount, and had not been seen in forty days; so that they could not tell what was become of him. This put them all into confusion. A poor pretence indeed, to turn them all back to idolatry! But the watchful Devil took the hint, pushed the advantage, and insinuated, that they should never see Moses again; that he was certainly devoured by venturing too near the flashes of fire in the mount, and presuming upon the liberty he had taken before. In a word, that God had destroyed Moses, or he was starved to death for want of food, having been forty days and forty nights absent.

All these were, it is true, in themselves most foolish suggestions, considering Moses was admitted to the vision of God, and that God had been pleased to appear to him in the most intimate manner; that, as they might depend God would not destroy his faithful servant, so they might have concluded he was ahle to support his being without food as long as he thought fit. But to a people so easy to believe anything, what could be too gross for the Devil to persuade them to?

A people who could dance round a calf, and call it their God, might do anything; that could say to one another, that this was the Great Jehovah, that brought them out of the land of Egypt; and that within so few days after God’s miraculous appearance to them, and for them; I say, such a people were really fitted to be imposed upon, nothing could be too gross for them.

This was indeed his first considerable experiment upon them as a people, or as a body; and the truth is, his affairs required it; for Satan, who had been a successful Devil in most of his attempts upon mankind, could hardly doubt of success in anything after he had carried his point at Mount Sinai. To bring them to idolatry in the very face of their deliverer, and just after the deliverance! It was more astonishing in the main than even their passing the Red Sea. In a word, the Devil’s whole history doth not furnish us with a story equally surprising.

And how was poor Aaron bewildered in it too! He that was Moses’ partner in all the great things that Moses did in Pharaoh’s sight, and that was appointed to be his assistant and oracle, or orator rather, upon all public occasions; that he, above all the rest, should come into this absurd and ridiculous proposal, he that was singled out for the sacred priesthood, for him to defile his holy hands with a polluted abominable sacrifice, and with making the idol for them too (for it is plain that he made it,) how monstrous it was!

And see what an answer he gives to his brother Moses, how weak! how simple! I did so and so, in deed; I bade them bring the ear-rings, &c., and I cast the gold into the fire, and it ca’me out this calf. Ridiculous! as if the calf came. out by mere fortuitous adventure, without a mould to cast it in: which could not be supposed. And if it had not come out so without a mould, Moses would certainly have known of it. Had Aaron been innocent, he would have answered after quite another manner, and told Moses honestly, that the whole body of the people came to him in a fright, that they forced him to make them an idol; which he did, by making first the proper mould to cast it in, and then taking the proper rnetal to cast it from. That indeed he had sinned in so doing, but that he was mobbed into it, and the people terrified him, perhaps they threatened to kill him; and, if he had added, that the Devil, prompting his fear, beguiled him, he had said nothing but what was certainly true; for if it was in Satan’s power to make the people insolent and outrageous enough to threaten and bully the old venerable prophet, (for he was not yet a priest.) who was the brother of their oracle Moses, and had been partner with him in so many of his commissions; I say, if he could bring up the passions of the people to an height to be rude and unmannerly to him, (Aaron.) and perhaps to threaten and insult him, he may be easily supposed to be able to intimidate Aaron, and terrify him into a compliance.

See this cunning agent, when he has man’s destruction in his view, how securely he acts! he never wants an handle; the best of men have one weak place or other, and he always finds it out, takes the advantage of it, and conquers them by one artifice or another; only take it with you as you go, it is always by stratagem, never by force; a proof that he is riot empowered to use violence. He may tempt, and he does prevail; but it is all legerdemain, it is all craft and artifice; he is still diabole, the calumniator and deceiver, that is, the misrepresenter; he misrepresents man to God. and misrepresents God to man; also he misrepresents things; he puts false colors, and then manages the eye to see them with an imperfect view, raising clouds and fogs to intercept our sight; in short, he deceives all our senses, and imposes upon us in things which otherwise would be the easiest to discern and judge of.

This indeed is in parf the benefit of the Devil’s history, to let us see that he has used the same method all along; and that ever since he has had anything to do with mankind, he has practised upon them with stratagem and cunning; also it is observable that he has carried his point better that way than he would have done by fury and violence, if he had been allowedto make use of it; for by his power indeed he might have laid the world desolate, and made an heap of rubbish of it long ago; but, as I have observed before, that would not have answered his ends half so well; for by destroying men he would have made martyrs, and sent abundance of good men to heaven, who would much rather have died than yielded to serve him, and, as he aimed to have it, to fall down and worship him; I say, he would have made martyrs, arid that not a few. But this was none of Satan’s business; his design lies quite another way; his business is to make men sin, not to make them suffer; to make devils of them, not saints; to delude them, and draw them away from their Maker, not send them away to him; and therefore he works by stratagem, not by force.

We are now come to his story, as it relates to the Jewish church in the wilderness, and to the children of Israel in their travelling circumstances; and this was the first scene of public management that the Devil had upon his hands in the world; for, as I have said, till now, he dealt with mankind either in their separate condition one by one, or else carried all before him, engrossing whole nations in his systems of idolatry, and overwhelming them in an ignorant destruction.

But having now a whole people as it were snatched away from him, taken out of his government, and, which was still worse, having a view of a kingdom being set up independent of him, and superior to his authority, it is not to be wondered at if he endeavored to overthrow them in the infancy of their constitution, and tried all possible arts to bring them back into his own hands again.

He found them not only carried away from the country where they were even in his clutches, surrounded with idols, and where we have reason to be lieve the greatest part of them were polluted with the idolatry of the Egyptians; for we do not read of any stated worship which they had of their own; or if they did worship the true God, we scarce know in what manner they did it; they had no law given them, nothing but the covenant of circumcision, and even

Moses himself had not strictly observed that, till he was frightened into it; we read of no sacrifices among them, no feasts were ordained, no solemn worship appointed; and how, or in what manner, they performed their homage, we know not; the passover was not ordained till just at their coming away; so that, there was not much religion among them, at least that we have any account of; and we may suppose the Devil was pretty easy with them all the while they were in the house of their bondage.

But now, to have a million of people fetched out of his hands, as it were all at once, and to have the im mediate power of heaven engaged in it, and that Satan saw evidently God had singled them out in a miraculous manner to favor them, and call them his own; this alarmed him at once; and therefore he resolves to follow them, lay close siege to them, and take all the measures possible to bring them to rebel against, and disobey God, that he might be provoked to destroy them; and how near he went to bring it to pass, we shall see presently.

This making a calf, and paying an idolatrous worship to it (for they acted the heathens and idolaters, not in the setting up the calf only, but in the manner of their worshipping, namely, dancing and music, things they had not been acquainted with in the worship of the true God,) I mention here, to observe how the Devil not only imposed upon their principles, but upon their senses too; as if the awful majesty of heaven, whose glory they had seen in mount Sinai, where they stood, and whose pillar of cloud and fire was their guide and protection, would be worshipped by dancing round a calf! and that not a living creature, or a real calf, but the mere image of a calf cast in gold, or, as some think, in brass gilded over.

But this was the Devil’s way with mankind, namely, to impose upon their senses, and bring them into the grossest follies and absurdities; and then, having first made them fools, it was much the easier making them offenders.

In this very manner he acted with them through all the course of their wilderness travels; for, as they were led by the hand like children, defended by omnipotence, fed by miracles, instructed immediately from heaven, and in all things had Moses for their guide; they had no room to miscarry, but by acting the greatest absurdities, and committing the greatest follies in nature; and, even these, the Devil brought them to be guilty of, in a surprising manner. 1. As God himself relieved them in every exigence, and supplied them in every want, one would think it was impossible they should be ever brought to question either his willingness or his ability, and yet they really objected against both, which was indeed very provoking; and I doubt not, that when the Devil had brought them to act in such a preposterous manner, he really hoped and be lieved God would be provoked effectually. The testimonies of his care of them, and ability to supply them, were miraculous and undeniable; he gave them water from the rock, bread from the air, sent the fowls to feed them with flesh, and supported them all the way by miracles; their health was preserved, none were sick among them, their clothes did not wear out, nor their shoes grow old upon their feet; could anything be more absurd than to doubt, whether he could provide for them, who had never let them want for so many years?

But the Devil managed them in spite of miracles; nor did he ever give them over till he had brought six hundred thousand of them to provoke God so highly that he would not suffer above two of them to go into the land of promise; so that, in short, Satan gained his point as to that generation, for all their carcases fell in the wilderness. Let us take but a short view to what an height he brought them, and in what a rude, absurd manner they acted; how he set them upon murmuring upon every occasion, now for water, then for bread; nay, they murmured at their bread when they had it; “Our soul loaths this light bread.”

He sowed the seeds of church-rebellion in the sons of Aaron, and made Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire till they were strangely consumed by fire for the doing it.

He set them a complaining at Taberah, and a lusting for flesh at the first three days’ journey from mount Sinai.

He planted envy in the hearts of Miriam and Aaron, against the authority of Moses, to pretend God had spoken by them as well as by him, till he humbled the father, and made a leper of the daughter.

He debauched ten of the spies, frighted them with sham appearances of things, when they went out to search the land; and made them fright the whole people out of their understanding as well as duty, for which six hundred thousand of their carcases fell in the wilderness.

He raised the rebellion of Korah, and the two hundred and fifty princes, till he brought them to be swallowed up alive.

He put Moses into a passion at Meribah, and ruffled the temper of the meekest man upon earth; by which he made both him and Aaron forfeit their share of the promise, and be shut out from the holy land.

He raised a mutiny among them when they travelled from mount Hor, till they brought fiery serpents among them to destroy them.

He tried to make Balaam the prophet curse them; but there the Devil was disappointed. However, he brought the Midianites to debauch them with women, as in the case of Zimri and Cozbi.

He tempted Achan with the wedge of gold, and the Babylonish garment, that he might take off the accursed thing, and be destroyed.

He tempted the whole people, not effectually to drive out the cursed inhabitants of the land of promise, that they might remain, and be goads in their sides, till, at last, they often oppressed them for their idolatry, and, which was worse, debauched them to idolatry.

He prompted the Benjamites to refuse satisfaction to the people, in the case of the wickedness of the men of Gibeah, to the destruction of the whole tribe, six hundred men excepted in the rock Rimmon.

At last he tempted them to reject the theocracy of their Maker, and call upon Samuel to make them a king; and most of those kings he made plagues and sorrows to them in their time, as you shall hear in their order.

Thus he plagued the whole body of the people continually, making them sin against God, and bring judgments upon themselves, to the consuming some millions of them, first and last, by the vengeance of their Maker.

As he did with the whole congregation, so he did with their rulers, and several of the judges, who were made instruments to deliver the people; yet were drawn into snares by this subtle serpent, to ruin themselves, or the people they had delivered.

He tempted Gideon to make an ephod contrary to the law of the tabernacle; and made the children of Israel go a whoring (that is, a worshipping,) after it.

He tempted Samson to debauch himself with an harlot, and betray his own happy secret to a harlot, at the expense of both his eyes, and at last, of his life.

He tempted Eli’s sons to sin at the very doors of the tabernacle, when they came to bring their offerings to the priest; and he tempted poor Eli to connive at them, or not sufficiently reprove them.

He tempted the people to carry the ark of God into the camp, that it might fall into the hands of the Philistines. And

He tempted Uzzah to reach out his hand to hold it up; as if he that had preserved it in the house of Dagon the idol of the Philistines, could not keep it from falling out of the cart.

When the people had gotten a king, he immediately set to work in divers ways to bring that king to load them with plagues and calamities not a few.

He tempted Saul to spare the king of Amelek, contrary to God’s express command.

He not only tempted Saul, but possessed him with an evil spirit, by which he was left to wayward dispositions, and was forced to have it fiddled out of him with a minstrel.

He tempted Saul with a spirit of discontent, and with a spirit of envy at poor David, to hunt him like a partridge upon the mountains.

He tempted Saul with a spirit of divination, and sent him to a witch to inquire of Samuel for him; as if God would help him when he was dead, that had forsaken him when he was alive.

After that, he tempted him to kill himself, on a pretence that he might not fall into the hands of the un circnmcised; as if self-murder was not half so bad, either for sin against God, or disgrace among men, as being taken prisoner by a Philistine! A piece of madness none but the Devil could have brought mankind to submit to, though some ages after that he made it a fashion among the Romans.

After Saul was dead, and David came to the throne, by how much he was a man chosen and particularly favored by Heaven, the Devil fell upon him with the more vigor, attacked him so many ways, and conquered him so very often, that as no man was so good a king, so hardly any good king was ever a worse man; in many cases one would have almost thought the Devil had made sport with David, to show how easily he could overthrow the best man God could choose of the whole congregation.

He made him distrust his benefactor so much as to feign himself mad before the king of Gath, when he had fled to him for shelter.

He made him march with his four hundred cutthroats, to cut off poor Nabal, and all his household, only because he would not send him the good cheer he had provided for his honest sheep-shearers.

He made him, for his word’s sake, give Ziba half his master’s estate for his treachery, after he knew he had been the traitor, and betrayed poor Mephibosheth for the sake of it; in which

“The good old king, it seems, was very loth,

To break his word, and therefore broke his oath.”

Then he tempted him to the ridiculous project of numbering the people, though against God’s express command; a thing Joab himself was not wicked enough to do, till David and the Devil forced him to it.

And to make him completely wickepl, he carried him to the top of his house, and showed him Uriah’s wife, bathing in her garden. In which it appeared that the

Devil knew David too well, and what was the particular sin of his inclination; and so took him by the right handle; drawing him at once into the sins of murder and adultery.

Then, that he might not quite give him over, (though David’s repentance for the last sin kept the Devil off for a while,) when he could attack him no farther personally, he fell upon him in his family, and made him as miserable as he could desire him to be, in his children; three of whom he brought to destruction before his face, and another after his death.

First, he tempted Ammon to ravish his sister, Tamar; so there was an end of her, poor girl, as to this world; for we never hear any more of her.

Then he tempted Absalom to murder his brother Ammon, in reveuge for Tamar’s virtue.

Then he made Joab run Absalom through the body, contrary to David’s command.

And after David’s death he brought Adonijah (weak man!) to the block, for usurping king Solomon’s throne.

As to Absalom, he tempted him to rebellion, and raising war against his father, to the turning him shamefully out of Jerusalem, and almost out of the kingdom.

He tempted him for David’s farther mortification, to insult his father’s wives, in the face of the whole city; and, had Achitophel’s honest counsel been followed, he had certainly sent him to sleep with his fathers, long before his time but there Satan and Achitophel were both outwitted together.

Through all the reigns of the several successors of David, the Devil took care to carry on his own game, to the continual insulting the measures which God himself had taken for the establishing his people in the world, and especially as a church: till at last he so effectually debauched them to idolatry; that crime which of all others was most provoking to God, as it was carrying the people away from their allegiance, and transposing the homage they owed God their Maker, to a contemptible block of wood, or an image of a brute beasl .; and this how sordid and brutish soever it was in itself, yet so did his artifice prevail among them, that, first or last, he brought them all into it, the ten tribes as well as the two tribes; till, at last, God himself was provoked to unchurch them, gave them up to their enemies, and the few that were left of them, after incredible slaughters and desolation, were hurried away, some into Tartary, and others into Babylon, from whence very few, of that few that were carried away, ever found their way home again; and some, when they might have come, would not accept of it, but continued there to the very coming of the Messiah. See epistles of Su James, and of St. Peter, at the beginning.

But to look a little back upon this part (for it cannot be omitted, it makes so considerable a part of the Devil’s history;) I mean his drawing God’s people, kings and all, into all the sins and mischiefs which gradually contributed to their destruction:

First, (for he began immediately with the very best and wisest of the race,) he drew in King Solomon, in the midst of all his zeal for the building God’s house, and for the making the most glorious and magnificent appearance for God’s worship that ever the world saw I say, in the middle of all this, he drew him into such immoderate and insatiable an appetite for fame, as to set up the first, and perhaps the greatest seraglio that ever any prince in the world had, or pretended to be fore; nay, and to bring it so much into reputation, that, as the text says, Seven hundred of them were princesses; that is to say, ladies of quality: not as the grand signers, and great moguls (other princes of the Eastern world,) have since practised, namely, to pick up their most beautiful slaves; but these, it seems, were women of rank, king’s daughters, as Pharaoh’s daughter, and the daughters of the princes and prime men among the Moabites, Ammonites, Zidonians, Hittites, &c. 1 Kings xi. 1.

Nor was this all; but as he drew him into the love of those forbidden women (for such they were, as to their nation, as well as number,) so he ensnared him by those women to a familiarity with their worship; and by degrees brought that famous prince (famous for his wisdom) to be the greatest and most imposedupon old fool in the world; bowing down to those idols by the enticing of his women, whom he had abhorred and detested in his youth, as dishonoring that God for whom, and for whose worship, he had finished and dedicated the most magnificent building and temple in the world. Nothing but the invincible subtlety of this arch-devil could ever have brought such a man as Solomon to such a degeneracy of manners, and to such meannesses; no, not his Devil himself, without the assistance of his agents, nor the agents themselves, without the Devil to help them.

As to Solomon, Satan had made conquest enough there; we need hear no more of him. The next advance he made, was in the person of his son Rehoboam. Had not the Devil prompted his pride, and tyrannical humor, he would never have given the people such an answer as he did; and when he saw a fellow at the head of them too, who he knew wanted and waited for an occasion to raise a rebellion, and had ripened up the people’s humor to the occasion. Weil might the text call it listening to the counsel of the young heads; that it was indeed with a vengeance! but those young heads too were acted by an old Devil, who, for his craft, is called, as I have observed, the old Serpent.

Having thus paved the way, Jeroboam revolts. So far God had directed him; for the text says expressly, speaking in the first person of God himself, “This thing is of me.”

But though God might appoint Jeroboam to be king (that is to say, of ten tribes.) yet God did not appoint him to set up the two calves in the two extreme parts of the land; namely, in Dan, and in Bethel; that was Jeroboam’s own doing, and done on purpose to keep the people from falling back to Rehoboam, by being obliged to go to Jerusalem to the public worship. And the text adds. “Jeroboam made Israel to sin.” This was indeed a master-piece of the Devil’s policy, and it was effectual to answer the end: nothing could have been more to the purpose. What reason he had to expect the people would so universally come into it, and be so well satisfied with a couple of calves, instead of the true worship of God at Jerusalem; or what arts and management he (Satan) made use of afterwards, to bring the people in, to join with such a delu13 sion; that we find but little of in all the annals of Satan; nor is it much to the case. It is certain the Devil found a strange kind of propensity to worshipping idols rooted in the temper of that whole people, even from their first breaking away from the Egyptian bondage; so that he had nothing to do but to work upon the old stock, and propagate the crime that he found was so natural to them. And this is Satan’s general way of working, not with them only, but with us also, and with all the world, even then, and ever since.

When he had thus secured Jeroboam’s revolt, we need not trace him among his successors; for the same reason of state that held for the setting up the calves at Bethel and Dan, held good for the keeping them up r to all Jeroboam’s posterity; nor had they one good king ever after: even Jehu, who called his friends to come and see his zeal for the Lord, and who fulfilled the threatenings of God upon Ahab and his family, and upon Queen Jezebel, and her offspring, and knew all the white that he was executing the judgment of the true God upon an idolatrous race; yet he would not part with his calves, but would have thought it had been parting with his kingdom, and that as the people would have gone up to Jerusalem to worship, so they would at the same time have transferred their civil obedience to the king of Judah (whose right it really was, as far as they could claim by birth and right line;) so that, by the way, Satan any more than other politicians, is not for the jus div’mum of lineal succession, or what we call hereditary right, any farther than serves for his purpose.

Thus Satan ridded his hands of ten of the twelve tribes; let us now see how he went on with the rest, for his work was now brought into a narrower compass; the church of God was now reduced to two tribes, except a few religious people, who separated from the schism of Jeroboam, and came and planted themselves among the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The first thing the Devil did after this, was to foment a war between the two kings, while Judah was governed by a boy or youth, Abijah by name; and he none of the best neither. But God’s time was not come, and the Devil received a great disappointment; when Jeroboam was so entirely overthrown, that, if the records of those ages do not mistake, no less than five hundred thousand men of Israel were killed; suck a slaughter, that one would think the army of Judah, had they known how to improve as well as gain a victory, might have brought all the rest back again, and have entirely reduced the house of Jeroboam, and the ten tribes that followed him, to their obedience; nay, they did take a great deal of the country from them, and among the rest Bethel itself; and yet so cunningly did Satan manage, that the king of Judah, who was himself a wicked king, and perhaps an idolater in his heart, did not take down the golden calf that Jeroboam had there, no nor destroy the idolatry itself; so that, in short, his victory signified nothing.

From hence to the captivity, we find the Devil busy with the kings of Judah; especially the best of them. As for such as Manasseh, and those who transgressed by the general tenor of their lives, those he had no great trouble with,

But such as Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, he hung about them, and their courts, till he brought every one of them into some mischief or other.

As first, good King Asa, of whom the Scripture says, his heart was perfect all his days, yet this subtle spirit, that could break in upon him nowhere else, tempted him, when the king of Israel came out against him, to send to hire Benhadad, the king of Syria, to help him; as if God, who had before enabled him to conquer the Ethiopians with an army of ten hundred thousand men, could not have saved him from the king of the ten tribes.

In the same manner he tempted Jehoshaphat to join with that wicked King Ahab against the king of Syria, and also to marry his son to Ahab’s daughter, which was fatal to Jehoshaphat, and to his posterity.

Again, he tempted Hezekiah to show all his riches to the king of Babylon’s messengers; and who can doubt, but that he (Satan) is to be understood by the wicked spirit which stood before the Lord, 2 Chron. xviii. 20, and offered his service to entice Ahab the king of Israel to come out to battle, to his ruin, by being a lying spirit in the months of all his prophets; and who, for that time, had a special commission, as he had another time, in the case of Job? and indeed, it was a commission fit for nobody but the Devil: “Thou shait entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: Go out, and do even so,” verse 21.

Even good Josiah himself, of whom it is recorded, that “like him there was no king before him, neither after him arose there any like him,” 2 Kings xxiii. 25, yet the Devil never left him with his machinations, till, finding he could not tempt him to anything wicked in his government, he tempted or moved him to a needless war with the king of Egypt, in which he lost his life.

From the death of this good king, the Devil prevailed so with the whole nation of the Jews, and brought them to such an incorrigible pitch of wickedness, that God gave them up, forsook his habitation of glory, the temple, which he suffered to be spoiled first, then burnt and demolished; destroying the whole nation of the Jews, except a small number that were left, and those the enemy carried away into captivity.

Nor was he satisfied with this general destruction of the whole people of Israel, for the ten tribes were gone before; but he followed them even into their captivity; those that fled away to Egypt, which they tell us were seventy thousand, he first corrupted, and then they were destroyed there, upon the overthrow of Egypt, by the same king of Babylon.

Also he went very near to have them rooted out. Young and old, man, woman, and child, who were in captivity in Babylon, by the ministry of that true agent of hell, Haman, the Agagite; but there Satan met with a disappointment too, as in the story of Esther, which was but the fourth that he had met with, in all his management since the creation; I say, there he was disappointed, and his prime minister, Haman, was ex alted, as he deserved.

Having thus far traced the government and dominion of the Devil, from the creation of man to the captivity; I think I may call upon him to set up his standard of universal empire, at that period; it seemed just then as if God had really forsaken the earth, and given the entire dominion of mankind up to his outrageous enemy the Devil; for, excepting the few Israelites which were left in the territories of the king of Babylon, and they were but a few, I say, except among them, there was not one corner of the world left where the true God was called upon, or his dominion so much as acknowledged; all the world was buried in idolatry, and that of so many horrid kinds, that one would think, the light of reason should have convinced mankind, that he who exacted such bloody sacrifices as that of Moloch, and such a bloody cutting themselves with knives, as the priests of Baal did, could not be a God, a good and beneficent being, but must be a cruel, voracious and devouring devil, whose end was not the good, but the destruction of his creatures. But to such a height was the blind, dementated world arrived at that time, that in these sordid and corrupt ways they went on worshipping dumb idols, and offering human sacrifices to them; and, in a word, committing all the most horrid and absurd abominations that they were capable of, or that the Devil could prompt them too, till heaven was again put, as it were, to the necessity of bringing about a revolution, in favor of his own forsaken people, by miracle and surprise, as he had done before,

We come therefore to the restoration or return of the captivity. Had Satan been able to have acted anything by force, as I have observed before, all the princes and powers of the world having been, as they really were, at his devotion, he might easily have made use of them, armed all the world against the Jews, and prevented the rebuilding the temple, and even the return of the captivity.

But now the Devil’s power manifestly received a check, and the hand of God appeared in it; and that he was resolved to reestablish his people the Jews, and to have a second temple built. The Devil who knew the extent of his own power too well, and what limitations were laid upon him, stood still, as it were, looking on, and not daring to oppose the return of the captivity, which he very well knew had been prophesied, and would come to pass,

He did indeed make some little opposition to the building, and to the fortifying the city, but as it was to no purpose, so he was soon obliged to give it over; and thus the captivity being returned, and the temple rebuilt, the people of the Jews increased and multiplied to an infinite number and strength; and from this time we may say, the power of the Devil rather declined and decreased, than went on with success, as it had done before: it is true the Jews fell into sects and errors, and divisions of many kinds, after the return from the captivity, and no doubt the Devil had a great hand in those divisions; but he could never bring them back to idolatry; and his not being able to do that, made him turn his hand so many ways to plague and oppress them; as particularly by Antiochus the Great, who brought the abomination of desolation into the holy place; and there the Devil triumphed over them for some time; but they were delivered many ways, till at last they came peaceably under the protection rather than the dominion of the Roman empire: when Herod the Great governed them as a king, and reedified, nay, almost rebuilt their temple, with so great an expense and magnificence, that he made it, as some say, greater and more glorious than that of Solomon’s; though, that I take to be a great fable, to say no worse of it.

In this condition the Jewish church stood, when the fullness of time, as it is called in scripture, was come; and the Devil was kept at bay, though he had made some encroachments upon them as above; for there was a glorious remnant of saints among them, such as old Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, and old Simeon, who waited for the salvation of Israel; I say, in this condition the Jewish church stood when the Messiah came into the world; which was such another mortal stab to the thrones and principalities infernal, as that of which I have spoken already, (chap, iii.,) at the creation of man; and therefore, with this I break off the antiquities of the Devil’s history, or the ancient part of his kingdom; for from hence downward we shall find his empire has declined gradually; and though, by his wonderful address, his prodigious application, and the vigilance and fidelity of his instruments, as well human as infernal and diabolical, and of the human as well the ecclesiastic as the secular, he has many times retrieved what he has lost, and sometimes bid fair for recovering the universal empire he once possessed over mankind; yet he has been still defeated again, repulsed, and beaten back, and his kingdom has greatly declined in many parts of the world; and especially in the northern parts, except Great Britain; and how he has politically maintained his interest, and increased his dominion among the wise and righteous generation that we cohabit with and among, will be the subject of the modern part of Satan’s history, and of which we are next to give an account.