The History of the Devil, As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts

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 Humour, 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 whom he knew wanted and waited for an Occasion to raise a Rebellion, and had ripened up the People’s Humour to the Occasion: Well might the Text call it listening to the Council 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 observ’d, the Old Serpent.

Having thus pav’d 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 tho’ 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, viz. 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 publick 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 Delusion, that we find but little of in all the Annals of Satan; not is it much to the Case: ’Tis certain the Devil found a strange kind of Propensity to worshiping 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 secur’d 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, to all Jeroboam’s Posterity; nor had they one good King ever after; even Jehu, who call’d his Friends to come and see his Zeal for the Lord, and who fulfill’d the Threatnings of God upon Ahab and his Family, and upon Queen Jezabel and her Offspring, and knew all the while 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 to have 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 transfer’d 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 divinum 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 reduc’d 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, Abija by Name, and he none of the best neither; but God’s Time was not come, and the Devil receiv’d a great Disappointment; when Jeroboam was so entirely overthrown; that if the Records of those Ages do not mistake, no less than 500000 Men of Israel were kill’d, such 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 intirely reduc’d the House of Jeroboam and the ten Tribes that follow’d him to their Obedience; nay they did take a great deal of the Country from them, and among the rest Bethel it self; 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 it self, 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 Manasseth, and those who transgress’d 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 another.

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 no where 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 shew 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 Mouths 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 no body but the Devil: Thou shalt entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: Go out and do even so, ℣ 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. 26. yet the Devil never left him with his Machinations, till finding he could not tempt him to any Thing wicked in his Government, he tempted or mov’d 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 prevail’d 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 suffer’d to be spoil’d first, then burnt and demolish’d; 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 follow’d 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 Hester, 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 exalted, as he deserv’d.

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 seem’d 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 call’d upon, or his Dominion so much as acknowledg’d; all the World was buried in Idolatry, and that of so many horrid Kinds, that one would think, the Light of Reason should have convinc’d 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 demented World arriv’d to at that Time, that in these sordid and corrupt Ways, they went on worshiping 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 to, till Heaven was again put, as it were, to the Necessity of bringing about a Revolution, in favour of his own forsaken People, by Miracle and Surprize, as he had done before.

We come therefore to the Restoration or Return of the Captivity: Had Satan been able to have acted any thing by Force, as I have observ’d 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, arm’d 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 appear’d in it, and that he was resolv’d 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 oblig’d to give it over; and thus the Captivity being return’d, and the Temple rebuilt, the People of the Jews encreased and multiplied to an infinite Number and Strength; and from this Time we may say, the Power of the Devil rather declin’d and decreas’d, 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 triumph’d over them for some Time; but they were deliver’d many Ways, till at last they came peaceably under the Protection rather than the Dominion of the Roman Empire: When Herod the Great govern’d them as a King, and reedified, nay almost rebuilt their Temple, with so great an Expence and Magnificence, that he made it, as some say, greater and more glorious than that of Solomon’s, tho’ 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 ’tis call’d in Scripture, was come; and the Devil was kept at Bay, tho’ 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 in Chap. III. at the Creation of Man; and therefore with this I break off the Antiquities of the Devil’s History, or the antient Part of his Kingdom; for from hence downward we shall find his Empire has declin’d gradually; and tho’ 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 Ecclesiastick as the Secular; he has many Times retriev’d what he has lost, and sometimes bid fair for recovering the universal Empire he once possess’d over Mankind; yet he has been still defeated again, repulst and beaten back, and his Kingdom has greatly declin’d in many Parts of the World; and especially in the Northern Parts, except Great Britain; and how he has politically maintain’d his Interest and encreased 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.

PART II.

OF THE MODERN HISTORY OF THE DEVIL

Chap. I

I have examined the Antiquities of Satan’s History in the former Part of this Work, and brought his Affairs down from the Creation, as far as to our blessed Christian Times; especially to the Coming of the Messiah, when one would think the Devil could have nothing to do among us. I have indeed but touch’d at some Things which might have admitted of a farther Description of Satan’s Affairs, and the Particulars of which we may all come to a farther Knowledge of hereafter; yet I think I have spoken to the material Part of his Conduct, as it relates to his Empire in this World: What has happen’d to his more sublimated Government, and his Angelic Capacities, I shall have an Occasion to touch at in several solid Particulars as we go along.

The Messiah was now born, the Fulness of Time was come, that the old Serpent was to have his Head broken, that is to say, his Empire or Dominion over Man, which he gain’d by the Fall of our first Father and Mother in Paradise, receiv’d a Downfal or Overthrow.

It is worth observing, in order to confirm what I have already mention’d of the Limitation of Satan’s Power, that not only his Angelic Strength seems to have received a farther Blow upon the Coming of the Son of God into the World, but he seems to have had a Blow upon his Intellects; his Serpentine Craft and Devil-like Subtilty seems to have been circumscrib’d and cut short; and instead of his being so cunning a Fellow as before, when, as I said, ’tis evident he outwitted all Mankind, not only Eve, Cain, Noah, Lot, and all the Patriarchs, but even Nations of Men, and that in their publick Capacity; and thereby led them into absurd and ridiculous Things, such as the Building of Babel, and deifying and worshiping their Kings, when dead and rotten; idolizing Beasts, Stocks, Stones, any Thing, and even Nothing; and in a Word, when he manag’d Mankind just as he pleased.

Now and from this Time forward he appeared a weak, foolish, ignorant Devil, compar’d to what he was before; He was upon almost every Occasion resisted, disappointed, baulk’d and defeated, especially in all his Attempts to thwart or cross the Mission and Ministry of the Messiah, while he was upon Earth, and sometimes upon other and very mean Occasions too.

And first, how foolish a Project was it, and how below Satan’s celebrated Artifice in like Cases, to put Herod upon sending to kill the poor innocent Children in Bethlehem, in hopes to destroy the Infant? for I take it for granted, it was the Devil put into Herod’s Thoughts that Execution, how simple and foolish soever; now we must allow him to be very ignorant of the Nativity himself, or else he might easily have guided his Friend Herod to the Place where the Infant was.

This shews that either the Devil is in general ignorant as we are, of what is to come in the World, before it is really come to pass; and consequently can foretel nothing, no not so much as our famous old Merlin or Mother Shipton did, or else that great Event was hid from him by an immediate Power superior to his, which I cannot think neither, considering how much he was concern’d in it, and how certainly he knew that it was once to come to pass.

But be that as it will, ’tis certain the Devil knew nothing where Christ was born, or when; nor was he able to direct Herod to find him out, and therefore put him upon that foolish, as well as cruel Order, to kill all the Children, that he might be sure to destroy the Messiah among the rest.

The next simple Step that the Devil took, and indeed the most foolish one that he could ever be charg’d with, unworthy the very Dignity of a Devil, and below the Understanding that he always was allow’d to act with, was that of coming to tempt the Messiah in the Wilderness; it is certain, and he own’d it himself afterwards, upon many Occasions, that the Devil knew our Saviour to be the Son of God; and ’tis as certain that he knew, that as such he could have no Power or Advantage over him; how foolish then was it in him to attack him in that Manner, if thou beest the Son of God? why he knew him to be the Son of God well enough; he said so afterwards, I know thee who thou art, the holy One of God; how then could he be so weak a Devil as to say, if thou art, then do so and so?

The Case is plain, the Devil, tho’ he knew him to be the Son of God, did not fully know the Mystery of the Incarnation; nor did he know how far the Inanition of Christ extended, and whether, as Man, he was not subject to fall as Adam was, tho’ his reserv’d Godhead might be still immaculate and pure; and upon this Foot, as he would leave no Method untried, he attempts him three Times, one immediately after another; but then, finding himself disappointed he fled.

This evidently proves that the Devil was ignorant of the great Mystery of Godliness, as the Text calls it, God manifest in the Flesh, and therefore made that foolish Attempt upon Christ, thinking to have conquer’d his human Nature as capable of Sin, which it was not; and at this Repulse Hell groan’d, the whole Army of regimented Devils receiv’d a Wound, and felt the Shock of it; ’twas a second Overthrow to them, they had had a long Chain of Success, carried a devilish Conquest over the greatest Part of the Creation of God; but now they were cut short, the Seed of the Woman was now come to break the Serpent’s Head, that is, to cut short his Power, to contract the Limits of his Kingdom, and in a Word, to dethrone him in the World: No doubt the Devil receiv’d a Shock, for you find him always afterward, crying out in a horrible Manner, whenever Christ met with him, or else very humble and submissive, as when he begg’d leave to go into the Herd of Swine, a Thing he has often done since.

Defeated here, the first Stratagem I find him concern’d in after it, was his entring into Judas, and putting him upon betraying Christ to the Chief Priest; but here again he was entirely mistaken, for he did not see, as much a Devil as he was, what the Event would be; but when he came to know, that if Christ was put to Death, he would become a Propitiatory and be the great Sacrifice of Mankind, so to rescue the fallen Race from that Death they had incurr’d the Penalty of, by the Fall, that this was the fulfilling of all Scripture Prophesy, and that thus it was that Christ was to be the End of the Law, I say, as soon as he perceiv’d this, he strove all he could to prevent it, and disturb’d Pilate’s Wife in her Sleep, in order to set her upon her Husband to hinder his delivering him up to the Jews; for then, and not till then, he knew how Christ was to vanquish Hell by the Power of his Cross.

Thus the Devil was disappointed and exposed in every Step he took, and as he now plainly saw his Kingdom declining, and even the temporal Kingdom of Christ, rising up upon the Ruins of his (Satan’s) Power; he seem’d to retreat into his own Region the Air, and to consult there with his fellow Devils, what Measures he should take next to preserve his Dominion among Men; Here it was that he resolv’d upon that truly hellish Thing call’d Persecution, by which, tho’ he prov’d a foolish Devil in that too, he flatter’d himself he should be able to destroy God’s Church, and root out its Professors from the Earth, even almost as soon as it was establish’d; whereas on the contrary, Heaven counter-acted him there too, and tho’ he arm’d the whole Roman Empire against the Christians, that is say, the whole World, and they were fallen upon every where, with all the Fury and Rage of some of the most flaming Tyrants that the World ever saw, of whom Nero was the first; yet in spight of Hell, God made all the Blood, which the Devil caus’d to be spilt, to be semen Ecclesiæ, and the Devil had the Mortification to see, that the Number of Christians encreased even under the very Means he made use of to root them out and destroy them: This was the Case thro’ the Reign of all the Roman Emperors, for the first three hundred Years after Christ.

Having thus tried all the Methods that best suited his Inclination, I mean those of Blood and Death, complicated with Tortures and all Kinds of Cruelty, and that for so long a Stage of Time as above; the Devil all on a suddain, as if glutted with Blood, and satiated with Destruction, sits still and becomes a peaceable Spectator for a good while; as if he either found himself unable, or had no Disposition to hinder the Progress of Christianity in the first Ages of its Settlement in the World: In this interval the Christian Church was establish’d under Constantine, Religion flourished in Peace, and under the most perfect Tranquillity: The Devil seem’d to be at a Loss what he should do next, and Things began to look as if Satan’s Kingdom was at an End; but he soon let them see that he was the same indefatigable Devil that ever he was, and the Prosperity of the Church gave him a large Field of Action; for knowing the Disposition of Mankind to Quarrel and Dispute, the universal Passion rooted in Nature, especially among the Church-Men for Precedency and Dominion, he fell to work with them immediately; so that turning the Tables, and reassuming the Subtilty and Craft, which, I say, he seem’d to have lost in the former four hundred Years, he gain’d more Ground in the next Ages of the Church, and went farther towards restoring his Power and Empire in the World, and towards overthrowing that very Church which was so lately establish’d, than all he had done by Fire and Blood before.

His Policy now seem’d to be edg’d with Resentment for the Mistakes he had made; as if the Devil looking back with Anger at himself, to see what a Fool he had been to expect to crush Religion by Persecution, rejoyc’d for having discover’d that Liberty and Dominion was the only way to ruin the Church, not Fire and Faggot; and that he had nothing to do but to give the zealous People their utmost Liberty in Religion, only sowing Error and Variety of Opinion among them, and they would bring Fire and Faggot in fast enough among themselves.