Читать книгу 3 books to know The Devil - Джон Мильтон - Страница 9

INTRODUCTION TO THE whole work,

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I DOUBT NOT BUT THE title of this book will amuse some of my reading friends a little at first; they will make a pause, perhaps, as they do at a witch’s prayer, and be some time resolving whether they had best look into it or no, lest they should really raise the Devil, by reading his story.

Children and old women have told themselves so many frightful things of the Devil, and have formed ideas of him in their minds, in so many horrible and monstrous shapes, that really it were enough to fright the Devil himself to meet himself in the dark, dressed up in the several figures which imagination has formed for him in the minds of men; and, as for themselves, I cannot think by any means that the Devil would terrify them half so much, if they were to converse face to face with him.

It must certainly therefore be a most useful undertaking, to give a true history of this tyrant of the air, this god of the world, this terror and aversion of mankind, which we call Devil; to show what he is, and what he is NOT; where he is, and where he is NOT; when he is IN us, and when he is NOT; for I cannot doubt but that the Devil is really and bona fide in a great many of our honest weak-headed friends, when they themselves know nothing of the matter.

Nor is the work so difficult as some may imagine.

The Devil’s history is not so hard to come at, as it seems to be; his original and the first rise of his family is upon record; and as for his conduct, he has acted indeed in the dark, as to method, in many things; but in general, as cunning as he is, he has been fool enough to expose himself in some of the most considerable transactions of his Ike, and has not shown himself a politician at all; our old friend Matchiavel outdid him in many things, and I may, in the process of this work, give an account of several of the sons of Adam, and some societies of them too, who have outwitted the Devil, nay, who have outsinned the Devil, and that I think may be called outshooting him in his own bow.

It may, perhaps, be expected of me in this history, that since I seem inclined to speak favorably of Satan, to do him justice, and to write his story impartially, I should take some pains to tell you what religion he is of: and even this part may not be so much a jest, as at first sight you may take it to be; for Satan has something of religion in him, I assure you; nor is he such an unprofitable Devil that way as some may suppose him to be; for though, in reverence to my brethren, I will not reckon him among the clergy; no not so much as a gifted brother; yet I cannot deny, but that he often preaches; and if it be not profitable to his hearers, it is as much their fault, as it is out of his design.

It has indeed been suggested, that he has taken orders; and that a certain Pope, famous for being an extraordinary favorite of his, gave him both institution and induction; but as this is not upon record, and therefore we have no authentic document for the probation, I shall not affirm it for a truth, for I would not slander the Devil.

It is said also, and I am apt to believe it, that he was very familiar with that holy father Pope Silvester II., and some charge him with personating Pope Hildebrand on an extraordinary occasion, and himself sitting in the chair apostolic, in a full congregation; and you may hear more of this hereafter; but as I do not meet with Pope Diabolus among the list; in allFather Platina’s Lives of the Popes, so I am willing to leave it as I find it.

But to speak to the point, and a nice point it is, I acknowledge; namely, what religion the Devil is of; my answer will indeed be general, yet not at all ambiguous; for I love to speak positively, and with undoubted evidence.

1. He is a believer. And if in saying so it should follow, that even the Devil has more religion than some of our men of fame can at this time be charged with, I can assure them, however, that the Devil is no infidel.

2. He fears God. We have such abundant evidence of this in sacred history, that if I were not at present, in common with a few others, talking to an infidel sort of gentlemen, with whom those remote things called scriptures are not allowed in evidence, I might say it was sufficiently proved; but I doubt not in the process of this undertaking, to show that the Devil really fears God, and that after another manner than ever he feared Saint Francis or Saint Dunstan, and if that be proved, as I take upon me to advance, I shall leave it to judgment, who is the better Christian, the Devil who believes and trembles, or our modern infidels who believe neither God nor Devil.

Having thus brought the Devil within the pale, I shall leave him among you for the present; not but that I may examine in its order, who has the best claim to his brotherhood, the papists or the protestants; and among the latter, the Lutherans or the Calvinists; and so descending to all the several de nominations of churches, see who has less of the Devil in them, and who more; and whether less or more, the Devil has not a seat in every synagogue, a pew in every church, a place in every pulpit, and a vote in every synod; even to the Sanhedrim of the Jews.

I think I do no injury at all to the Devil, to say that he had a great hand in the old Holy War, as it was ignorantly and enthusiastically called; stirring up the Christian princes and powers of Europe to run a madding after the Turks and Saracens, and make war with those innocent people above a thousand miles off, only because they entered into God’s heritage when he had forsaken it; grazed upon his ground when he had fairly turned it into a common, and laid it open for the next comer; spending their nations’ treasure, and embarking their kings and people, I say, in a war above a thousand miles off, filling their heads with that religious madness, called, in those days, holy zeal to recover the terra sancta, the sepulchres of Christ and the saints, and as they called it falsely, the holy city, though true religion says it was the accursed city, and not worth spending one drop of blood for.

This religious bubble was certainly of Satan, who, as he craftily drew them in, so like a true Devil he left them in the lurch when they came there, faced about to the Saracens, animated the immortal Saladin against them, and managed so dextrously, that he left the bones of about thirteen or fourteen hundred thousand Christians there, as a trophy of his infernal politics: and after the Christian world had run d la santa terra, or in English, a sauntering about a hundred year, he dropt it to play another game less foolish, but ten times wickeder than that which went before it, namely, turning the crusadoes of the Christians, one against another; and, as Hudibras said in another case,

“Made them fight like mad or drunk,

For Dame Religion, as for Punk.”

Of this you have a complete account in the history of the Pope’s decrees against the Count de Thoulouse, and the Waldenses and Albigenses, with the crusadoes and massacres which followed upon them; wherein, to do the Devil’s politics some justice, he met with all the success he could desire; the zealots of that day executed his infernal orders most punctually, and planted religion in those countries in a glorious and triumphant manner, upon the destruction of an infinite number of innocent people, whose blood has fattened the soil for the growth of the Catholic faith, in a manner very particular, and to Satan’s full satisfaction.

I might, to complete this part of his history, give you the detail of his progress in these first steps of his alliances with Rome; and add a long list of massacres, wars and expeditions, in behalf of religion, which he has had the honor to have a visible hand in; such as the Parisian massacre, the Flemish war, under the Duke d’Alva, the Smithfield fires in the Marian days in England, and the massacres in Ireland; all which would most effectually convince us, that the Devil has not been idle in his business; but I may meet with these again in my way; it is enough while I am upon the generals only, to mention them thus in a summary way: I say, it is enough to prove that the Devil has really been as much concerned as any body, in the methods taken by some people for propagating the Christian religion in the world.

Some have rashly, and I had almost said maliciously, charged the Devil with the great triumphs of his friends the Spaniards in America, and would place the conquest of Mexico and Peru to the credit of his account.

But I cannot join with them in this at all: I must say, I believe the Devil was innocent of that matter; my reason is, because Satan was never such a fool as to spend his time, or his politics, or embark his allies, to conquer nations who were already his own; that would be Satan against Beelzebub, a making war upon himself, and at least doing nothing to the purpose.

But the greatest piece of management, which we find the Devil has concerned himself in of late, in the matter of religion, seems to be that of the mission into China; and here, indeed, Satan has acted his masterpiece: it was, no doubt, much for his service, that the Chinese should have no insight into matters of religion, I mean, that we call Christian; and, therefore, though popery and the Devil are not at so much variance as some may imagine, yet he did not think it safe to let the general system of Christianity be heard of among them in China. Hence when the name of the Christian religion had but been received with some seeming approbation in the country of Japan, Satan immediately, as if alarmed at the thing, and dreading what the consequences of it might be, armed theJapanese against it with such fury, that they expelled it at once.

It was much safer to his designs, when, if the story be not a fiction, he put that Dutch witticism into the mouths of the States’ commanders, when they came to Japan; who, having more wit than to own themselves Christians in such a place as that, when the question was put to them, answered negatively, that they were not, but that they were of another religion, called Hollanders.

However, it seems the diligent Jesuits outwitted the Devil in China, and, as I said above, overshot him in his own bow; for the mission being in danger by the Devil and the Chinese Emperor’s joining together, of being wholly expelled there too, as they had been in Japan, they cunningly fell in with the ecclesiastics of the country, and joining the priestcraft of both religions together, they brought Jesus Christ and Confucius to be so reconcilable, that the Chinese and the Roman Idolatry appeared capable of a confederacy, of going on hand in hand together, and consequently of being very good friends.

This was a master-piece indeed, and, as they say. almost frighted Satan out of his wits; but he, being a ready manager, and particularly famous for serving himself of the rogueries of the priests, faced about im mediately to the mission, and making a virtue of necessity, clapt in, with all possible alacrity, with the proposal^*; so the Jesuits and he formed a hotch-potch of religion made up of popery and paganism, and calculated to leave the latter rather worse than they found it, blending the faith of Christ and the philosophy or morals of Confucius together, and formally christening them by the name of religion; by which means the politic interest of the mission was preserved; and yet Satan lost not one inch of ground with the Chinese, no, not by the planting the gospel itself, such as it was, among them.

N.B. He never refus’d setting his hand to any opinion, which he thought it for his interest to acknowledge.

Nor has it been such disadvantage to him that this plan or scheme of a new-modelled religion would not go down at Rome, and that the Inquisition damneol it with bell, book and candle; distance of place served his new allies, the missionaries, in the stead of a protection from the Inquisition; and now and then a rich present well placed found them friends in the congregation itself; and where any nuncio with his impudent zeal pretended to take such a long voyage to oppose them, Satan took care to get him sent back re infecta, or inspired the mission to move him off the premises, by methods of their own; that is to say, being interpreted, to murder him.

But there is so much to inquire of about the Devil, before we can bring his story down to our modern times, that we must for the present let them drop, and look a little back to the remoter parts of this history; drawing his picture, that people may know him when they meet him, and see who and what he is, and what he has been doing ever since he got leave to act in the high station he now appears in.

But, however, he knows the certainty of this fact, that when he endeavors the seducing the chosen servants of the Most High, he fights against God himself, struggles with irresistible grace, and makes war with infinite power; undermining the church of God, and that faith in him, which is fortified with the eternal promises of Jesus Christ, that the gates of hell, that is to say, the Devil and all his power, shall not prevail against them; I say, however he knows the impossibility there is that he should obtain his ends, yet so blind is his rage, so infatuate his wisdom, that he cannot refrain breaking himself to pieces against this mountain, and splitting against the rock.

But to leave this serious part, which is a little too solemn for the account of this rebel: seeing we are not to expect he will write his own history for our information and diversion, I shall see if I cannot write it for him: in order to this, I shall extract the substance of his whole story, from the beginning to our own times, which I shall collect out of what is come to hand, whether by revelation or inspiration, that’s nothing to him: I shall take care so to improve my intelligence, as may make my account of him authentic, and, in a word, such as the Devil himself shall not be able to contradict.

In writing this uncouth story, I shall be freed from the censures of the critics, in a more than ordinary manner, upon one account especially; namely, that my story shall be so just, and so well-grounded, and, after all the good things I shall say of Satan, will be so little to his satisfaction, that the Devil himself will not be able to say, I dealt with the Devil in writing it: I might, perhaps, give you some account where I had my intelligence, and how all the arcana of his management have come to my hands; but pardon me, gentlemen; this would be to betray conversation, and to discover my agents; and you know statesmen are very careful to preserve the correspondences they keep in the enemy’s country, lest they expose their friends to the resentment of the power whose counsels they betray.

Besides, the learned tell us, that ministers of state make an excellent plea of their not betraying their intelligence, against all party inquiries into the great sums of money pretended to be paid for secret service; and whether the secret service was to bribe people to betray things abroad, or at home; whether the money was paid to somebody, or to nobody; employed to establish correspondences abroad, or to establish families, and amass treasure, at home; in a word, whether it was to serve their country, or serve themselves; it has been the same thing, and the same plea has been their protection: likewise in the important affair which I am upon, it is hoped you will not desire me to betray my correspondents; for you know Satan is naturally cruel and malicious, and who knows what he might do, to show his resentment? at least it might endanger a stop of our intelligence for the future.

And yet, before I have done, I shall make it very plain, that however my information may be secret and difficult, that yet I came very honestly by it, and shall make a very good use of it; for it is a great mistake in those who think that an acquaintance with the affairs of the Devil may not be made very useful to us all: they that know no evil can know no good: and, as the learned tell us, that a stone taken out of the head of a toad is a good antidote against poison; so a competent knowledge of the Devil, and all his ways, may be the best help to make us defy the Devil, and all his works.