Читать книгу 3 books to know The Devil - Джон Мильтон - Страница 24

OF SATAN’S AGENTS OR missionaries, and their actings upon and in the winds of me?i, in his name.

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INFINITE ADVANTAGES attend the Devil in his retired government, as they respect the management of his interests, and the carrying on his absolute monarchy in the world; particularly as it gives him room to act by the agency of his inferior ministers and messengers, called on many occasions his angels, of whom he has an innumerable multitude at his command, enough, for aught we know, to spare one to attend every man and woman now alive in the world; and of whom, if we may believe our second sight Christians, the air is always as full as a beam of the evening sun is of in sects, where they are ever ready for business, and to go and come as their great governor issues out orders for their directions.

These, as they are all of the same spirituous quality with himself, and consequently invisible like him, ex cept as above, are ready upon all occasions to be sent to and into any such person, and for such purposes, superior limitations only excepted, as the grand director of devils, (the Devil, properly so called.) guides them; and be the subject, or the object, what it will, that is to say, be the person they are sent to. or into, as above, who it will, and the business the messenger is to do what it will, they are sufficiently qualified; for this is a particular to Satan’s messengers or agents, that they are not like us human devils here in the world, some bred up one way, and some another, some of one trade, some of another, and consequently some fit for some business, some for another, some good for something, and some good for nothing, but his people are every one fit for everything, can find their way everywhere, and are a match for everybody they are sent to; in a word, there are no foolish devils, they are all fully qualified for their employment, fit for anything he sets them about, and very seldom mistake their errand, or fail in the business they are sent to do.

Nor is it strange at all, that the Devil should have such a numberless train of deputy devils to act under him; for it must be acknowledged he has a great deal of business upon his hands, a vast deal of work to do, abundance of public affairs under his direction, and an infinite variety of particular cases always before him. For example:

How many governments in the world are wholly in his administration? How many divans and great councils under his direction? Nay, I believe, it would be hard to prove, that there is or has been one council of state in the world for many hundred years past, down to the year 1713, (we do not pretend to come nearer home,) where the Devil by himself, or his agents, in one shape or another, has not sat as a member, if not taken the chair.

And though some learned authors may dispute this point with me, by giving some examples, where the councils of princes have been acted by a better hand, and where things have been carried against Satan’s interest, and even to his great mortification, it amounts to no more than this; namely, that in such cases the Devil has been outvoted; but it does not argue but he might have been present there, and have pushed his interest as far as he could, only that he had not the success he expected; for I don’t pretend to say that he has never been disappointed; but those examples are so rare, and of so small signification, that when I come to the particulars, as I shall do in the sequel of this history, you will find them hardly worth naming; and that, take it one time with another, the Devil has met with such a series of success in all his affairs, and has so seldom been balked; and where he has met with a little check in his politics, has, notwithstanding, so soon, and so easily recovered himself, regained his lost ground, or replaced himself in another country, when he has been supplanted in one, that his empire is far from being lessened in the world for the last thousand years of the Christian establishment.

Suppose we take an observation from the beginning of Luther, or from the year 1420, and call the Reformation a blow to the Devil’s kingdom, which before that was come to such an height in Christendom, that it is a question not yet thoroughly decided, whether that medley of superstition and horrible heresies, that mass of enthusiasm and idols, called the Catholic hierarchy, was a church of God, or a church of the Devil; whether it was an assembly of saints, or a synagogue of Satan: I say, take that time to be the epoch of Satan’s declension, and of Lucifer’s falling from heaven, that is, from the top of his terrestrial glory; yet, whether he did not gain in the defection of the Greek church, about that time, and since, as much as he lost in the reformation of the Roman, is what authors are not yet agreed about, not reckoning what he has regained since of the ground which he had lost even by the reformation; namely, the countries of the Duke of Savoy’s dominion, where the reformation is almost eaten out by persecution; the whole Valtoline, and some adjacent countries; the whole kingdom of Poland, and almost all Hungary; for, since the last war, the reformation, as it were, lies gasping for breath, and expiring, in that country; also several large provinces in Germany, as Austria, Carinthia, and the whole kingdom of Bohemia, where the reformation once powerfully planted, received its death’s wound at. the battle of Prague, anno 1627, and languished but a very little while, died, and was buried, and good king Popery reigned in its stead.

To these countries thus regained to Satan’s infernal empire, let us add his modern conquests, and the en croachments he has made upon the reformation in the present age, which are, however light we make of them, very considerable; namely, the Electorate of the Rhine, and the Palatinate, the one fallen to the House of Bavaria, and the other to that of Newburgrr, both popish; the Duchy of Deux Fonts fallen just now to a popish branch, the whole Electorate of Saxony fallen under the power of popish government by the apostasy of their princes, and more likely to follow the fate of Bohemia, whenever the diligent Devil can bring his new project in Poland to bear, as it is more than probable he will do some time or other.

But to sum up the dull story; we must add, in the roll of the Devil’s conquests, the whole kingdom of France, where we have in one year seen, to the im mortal glory of the Devil’s politics, that his measures have prevailed to the total extirpation of the protestant churches without a war; and that interest, which for two hundred years had supported itself in spite of persecutions, massacres, five civil wars, and innumerable battles and slaughters, at last received its mortal wound from its own champion, Henry IV., and sunk into utter oblivion, by Satan’s most exquisite management, under the agency of his two prime ministers, Cardinal Richelieu, and Louis the XlVth. whom he entirely possessed.

Thus far we have a melancholy view of the Devil’s new conquests, and the ground he has regained upon the reformation; in which his secret management has been so exquisite, and his politics so good, that could he but bring one thing to pass, which by his own former mistake (for the Devil is not infallible,) he has rendered impossible, he would bring the protestant interest so near its ruin, that heaven would be, as it were, put to the necessity of working by miracle to prevent it; the case is thus:

Ancient historians tell us, and from good authority, that the Devil finding it for his interest to bring his favorite, Mahomet, upon the stage, and spread the victorious half-moon upon the ruin of the cross, having, with great success, raised first the Saracen empire, and then the Turkish, to such an height, as that the name of Christian seemed to be extirpated in those two quarters of the world, which were then not the greatest only, but by far the most powerful, I mean Asia and Africa; having totally laid waste all those ancient and flourishing churches of Africa, the labors of St.Cyprian, Tert Lillian, St. Augustine, and six hundred and seventy Christian bishops and fathers, who governed there at once; also all the churches of Smyrna, Philadelphia, Ephesus, Sardis, Antioch, Laodicea, and innumerable others in Pontus, Bithynia, and the provinces of the lesser Asia;

The Devil having, I say, finished these conquests so much to his satisfaction, began to turn his eyes northward; and though he had a considerable interest in the Whore of Babylon, and had brought his power, by the subjection of the Roman hierarchy, to a great height, yet finding the interest of Mahomet most suitable to his devilish purposes, as most adapted to the destruction of mankind, and laying waste the world, he resolved to espouse the growing power of the Turk, and bring him in upon Europe like a deluge.

In order to this, and to make way for an easy conquest, like a true devil, he worked under ground, and sapped the foundation of the Christian power, by sowing discord among the reigning princes of Europe; that so envying one another, they might be content to stand still and look on, while the Turk devoured them one by one, and, at last, might swallow them all up.

This devilish policy took to his heart’s content; the Christian princes stood still, stupid, dozing and unconcerned, till the Turk conquered Thrace, overrun Servia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and all the remains of the Grecian empire, and last the imperial city of Constantinople itself.

Finding this politic method so well answer his ends, the Devil, who always improves upon the success of his own experiments, resolved, from that time, to lay a foundation for the making those divisions and jealousies of the Christian princes immortal; whereas they were at first only personal, and founded in private quarrels between the princes respectively; such as emulation of one another’s glory, envy at the extraordinary valor, or other merit, of this or that leader, or revenge of some little affront; for which, notwithstanding, so great was the piety of Christian princes in those days, that they made no scruple to sacrifice whole armies, yea, nations, to their piques, and private quarrels; a certain sign whose management they were under.

These being the causes by which the Devil first sowed the seeds of mischief among them, and the success so well answering his design, he could not but wish to have the same advantage always ready at his hand; and therefore he resolved to order it so, that these divisions, which, however useful to him, were only personal, and consequently temporary, like an annual in the garden, which must be raised anew every season, might for the future be rational, and consequently durable and immortal.

To this end it was necessary to lay the foundation of eternal feud, not in the humors and passions of men only, but in the interests of nations. The way to do this was to form and state the dominion of those Princes, by such a plan drawn in hell, and laid out from a scheme truly political, of which the Devil was chief engineer; that the divisions should always remain, being made a natural consequence of the situation of the country, the temper of their people, the nature of their commerce, the climate, the manner of living, or something which should for ever render it impossible for them to unite.

This, I say, was a scheme truly infernal, in which the Devil was as certainly the principal operator, to illustrate great things by small, as ever John of Leyden was of the High Dutch rebellion, or Sir John B 1 of the late project, called the South Sea Stock.

Nor did this contrivance of the Devil at all dishonor its author, or the success appear unworthy of the undertaker; for we see it not only answered the end, and made the Turk victorious at the same time, and formidable to Europe ever after, but it works to this day; the foundation of the divisions remains in all the several nations, and that to such a degree, that it is impossible they should unite.

This is what I hinted before, in which the Devil was mistaken, and is another instance that he knows nothing of what is to come; for this very foundation of immortal jealousy and discord between the several nations of Spain, France, Germany and others, which the Devil himself, with so much policy, contrived, and which served his interests so long, is now the only obstruction to his designs, and prevents the entire ruin of the reformation; for though the reformed countries are very powerful, and some of them, as Great Britain and Prussia are particularly, more powerful than ever; yet it cannot be said that the Protestant interests in general are stronger than formerly, or so strong as they were in 1623, under the victorious arms of the Swede. On the other hand, were it possible that the popish powers, to wit, of France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Poland, which are entirely popish, could heartily unite their interests, and should join their powers to attack the Protestants, the latter would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to defend themselves.

But as fatal as such an union of the popish powers would be, and as useful as it would be to the Devil’s cause at this time, not the Devil with all his angels is able to bring it to pass; no, not with all his craft and cunning; he divided them, out he cannot unite them; so that even just as it is Avith men, so it is with devils, they may do in an hour what they cannot undo in an age.

This may comfort those faint-hearted Christians among us, who cry out of the dangers of religious war in Europe, and what terrible things will happen when France, and Spain, and Germany, and Italy, and Poland, shall all unite. Let this answer satisfy them, the Devil himself can never make France and Spain, or France and the emperor, unite; jarring humors may be reconciled, but jarring interests never can. They may unite so as to make peace, though that can hardly be long, but never so as to make conquests together; they are too much afraid of one another, for one to bear that any addition of strength should come to the other. But this is a digression. We shall find the Devil mistaken and disappointed too on several occasions, as we go along,

I return to Satan’s interest in the several governments and nations, by virtue of his invisibility, and which he carries on by possession: it is by this invisibility that he presides in all the councils of foreign powers; (for we never mean our own, that we always premise;) and what though it is alleged by the critics, that he does not preside, because there is always a president; I say, if he is not in the president’s chair, yet if he be in the president himself, the difference is not much; and if he does not vote as a counsellor, if he votes in the counsellor, it is much the same; and here, as it was in the story of Abab, the king of Israel, as he was a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets; so we find him a spirit of some particular evil quality or other, in all the transactions and transactors on that stage of life we call the state.

Thus he was a dissembling spirit in Charles IX., a turbulent spirit in Charles V. emperor; a bigoted spirit of fire and fagot in our Queen Mary; an apostate spirit in Henry IV.; a cruel spirit in Peter of Castile; a revengeful spirit in Ferdinand II.; a phaeton in Louis XIV.; a Sardanapalus in C II.

In the great men of the world, take them a degree lower than the class of crowned heads, he has the same secret influence; and hence it comes to pass, that the greatest heroes, and men of the highest character for achievements of glory, either by their virtue or valor; however they have been crowned with victories, and elevated by human tongues, whatever the most consummate virtues or good qualities they have been known by, yet they have always had some devil or other in them, to preserve Satan’s claim to them uninterrupted, and prevent their escape out of his hands; thus we have seen a bloody devil in a D’ Alva; a profligate devil in a Buckingham; a lying, artful, or politic devil in a Richelieu; a treacherous devil in a Mazarin; a cruel, merciless devil in a Cortez; a de bauched devil in an Eugene; a conjuring devil in a Luxemburg; and a covetous devil in a M h. In a word, tell me the man, I will tell you the spirit that reigned in him.

Nor does he thus carry on his secret management by possession in men of the first magnitude only; but have you not had evidences of it among ourselves? How has he been a lying spirit in the mouths of our prophets, a factious spirit in the heads of our politicians, a proud spirit in my Lord Plausible, a bullying spirit in my Lord Bugbear, a talkative spirit in his grace the duke of Rattle-hail, a scribbling spirit in my Lord Hateful, a run-away spirit in my Lord Frightful; and so through a long roll of heroes, whose exceeding and particular qualifications proclaim loudly what handle the Devil took them by, and how fast he held them! for these were all men of ancient fame; I hope you know that.

From men of figure, we descend to the mob, and it is there the same thing. Possession, like the plague, is morbus plebcei: not a family but he is a spirit of strife and contention among them: not a man but he has a part in him; he is a drunken devil in one, a vile devil in another, a thieving devil in a third, a lying devil in a fourth, and so on to a thousand, and an hundred thousand, ad infinitum.

Nay, even the ladies have their share in the possession; and if they have not the Devil in their heads, in their faces, or their tongues, it must be some poor despicable devil that Satan did not think it worth his while to meddle with; and the number of those that are below his operation, I doubt is very small. But that part I have much more to say to in its place.

From degrees of persons, to professions and employments, it is the same. We find the Devil is a true posture-master, he assumes any dress, appears in any shape, counterfeits every voice, acts upon every stage; here he wears a gown, there a long robe; here he wears the jack-boots, there the small sword; is here an en thusiast, there a buffoon; on this side he acts the mountebank, on that side the merry Andrew; nothing comes amiss to him, from the great Mogul to the scaramouch; the Devil is in them, more or less, and plays his game so well, that he makes sure work with them all. He knows where the common foible lies, which is universal passion, what handle to take hold of every man by, and how to cultivate his interest so, as not to fail of his end, or mistake the means.

How then can it be denied but that his acting thus in tenebris, and keeping out of the sight of the world, is abundantly his interest; and that he could do nothing comparatively speaking, by any other method?

Infinite variety illustrates the Devil’s reign among the sons of men; all which he manages with admirable dexterity, and a slight particular to himself, by the mere advantage of his present concealed situation, and which, had he been obliged to have appeared in public, had been all lost, and he capable of just nothing at all, or at least of nothing more than the other ordinary politicians of wickedness could have done without him.

Now, authors are much divided as to the manner how the Devil manages his proper instruments for mischief; for Satan has a great many agents in the dark, who neither have the Devil in them, nor are they much acquainted with him, and yet he serves himself of them, whether of their folly, or of that other frailty called wit, it is all one, he makes them do his work, when they think they are doing their own; nay, so cunning is he in his guiding the weak part of the world, that even when they think they are serving God, they are doing nothing less or more than serving the Devil; nay, it is some of the nicest part of his operation, to make them believe they are serving God,, when they are doing his work. Thus those who the Scripture foretold should persecute Christ’s church in the latter days, were to think they do God good service. Thus the Inquisition (for example,) it may be, at this time, in all the acts of Christian cruelty which they are so famous for, (if any of them are ignorant enough not to know that they are devils incarnate,) may, for ought we know, go on for God’s sake; torture, murder, starve to death, mangle, and macerate, and all for God, and God’s Catholic church; and it is certainly the Devil’s master-piece to bring mankind to such a perfection of devilisrn as that of the Inquisition is; for if the Devil had not been in them, could they christen such an hellfire judicature as the Inquisition is, by the name of the Holy Office? And so in paganism, how could so many nations among the poor Indians offer human sacrifices to their idols, and murder thousands of men, women, and children, to appease this god of the air, when he is angry, if the Devil did not act in them under the vizor of devotion?

But we need not go to America, or to the Inquisition, not to paganism or to popery either, to look for people that. are sacrificing to the Devil, or that give their peace-offerings to him, while they are offered upon God’s altar. Are not our churches, (ay, and meetinghouses too. as much as they pretend to be more sanctified than their neighbors,) full of Devil-worshippers?

Do not the sons of God make assignations with the daughters of men, in the very house of worship? Do they not talk to them in the language of the eyes? And what is at the bottom of it, while one eye is upon the prayer book, and the other adjusting their dress 7 Are they not sacrificing to Venus and Mercury, nay, and the very Devil they dress at?

Let any man impartially survey the church gestures, the air, the postures, and the behavior; let him keep an exact roll, and if I do not show him two Devilworshippers for one true saint, then the word saint must have another signification than I ever yet understood by it.

The church (as a place) is the receptacle of the dead, as well as the assembly of the living. What relates to those below, I doubt Satan, if he would be so kind, could give a better account of than I can; but as to the superficies, I pretend to so much penetration as to tell you, that there are more spectres, more apparitions always there, than you that know nothing of the matter, may be aware of.

I happened to be at an eminent place of God’s most devout worship the other day, with a gentleman of my acquaintance, who, I observed, minded very little the business he ought to come about; first I saw him al ways busy staring about him, and bowing this way and that way, nay he made two or three bows and scrapes when he was repeating the responses to the ten commandments, and assure you, he made it correspond strangely, so that the harmony was not so broken in upon as you would expect it should. Thus: Lord, (and a bow to a fine lady just come up to her seat,) have mercy upon us; (three bows to a throng of ladies that came into the next pew all together,) and incline (then stopped to make a great scrape to my Lord) our hearts just then the hearts of all the church were gone off from the subject, for the response was over; so he huddled up the rest in whispers; for God could hear him well enough, he said, nay, as well as if he had spoken as loud as his neighbors did.

After we were come home, I asked him what he meant by all this, and what he thought of it.

“How could I help it?” said he, “I must not be rude.”

“What,” said I, “ rude to whom?”

“Why,” says he, “ there came in so many ladies, I could not help it.”

“What,” said I, “ could not you help bowing when you were saying your prayers?”

“O sir!” says he, “ the ladies would have thought I had slighted them; I could not avoid it.”

“Very well,” said I, “then you would be rude to God, because you could not be rude to the Devil?”

“Why, that is true,” said he, “ but what can we do? There is no going to church, as the case stands now, if we must not worship the Devil a little between whiles.”

This is the case indeed, and Satan carries his point on every hand; for if the fair-speaking world, and the fair-looking world are generally devils, that is to say, are in his management, we are sure the foul-speaking and the foul-doing world are all on his side; and you have then only the fair-doing part of the world that are out of his class; and when we speak of them, O how few!

But I return to the Devil’s managing our wicked part; for this he does with most exquisite subtilty; and this is one part of it; namely, he thrusts our vices into our virtues, by which he mixes the clean and the unclean; and thus, by the corruption of the one, poisons and debauches the other, so that the slave he governs cannot account for his own common actions, and is fain to be obliged to his Maker, to accept of the heart, without the hands and feqt; to take, as we vulgarly express it, the will for the deed, and if Heaven was not so good to come into that half-and-half service, I don’t see but the Devil would carry away all his servants. Here indeed I should enter into a long detail of involuntary wickedness, which, in short, is neither more nor less than the Devil in everybody, ay, in every one of you, (our governors excepted,) take it as you please.

What is our language, when we look back with reflection and reproach on past follies? I think I was bewitched. I was possessed, certainly the Devil was in me, or else I had never been such a sot. Devil in you, sir, ay, who doubts it? you may be sure the Devil was in you, and there he is still, and next time he can catch you in the same snare, you will be just the same sot that you say you were before.

In short, the Devil is too cunning for us, and manages us his own way; he governs the vices of men by his own methods; though every crime will not make a man a devil, yet it must be owned, that every crime puts the criminal, in some measure, into the Devil’s power, gives him a title to the man, and he treats him magisterially ever after.