Part 1 CHAPTER XA OF THE DEVIL'S SECOND KINGDOM The story of Noah is building the ark, his embarking himself in all nature's stock for a new world on boarded, the long voyage they took in the bad weather they met with, though it would embellish this work very well, and come in very much to the purpose in this place, yet as it does not belong to the devil's story, for I cannot prove what some suggest, vis that he was in the ark among the rest, I say for that reason I must omit it. And now having mentioned Satan's being in the ark, as I say, I cannot prove it, so there are I think some good reasons to believe he was not there. First, I know no business he had there. Secondly, we read of no mischief done there, and these joined together make me conclude he was absent. The last I chiefly insist upon, that we read of no mischief done there, which if he had been in the ark would certainly have happened. And therefore I suppose rather that when he saw his kingdom dissolved, his subjects all engulfed in an inevitable ruin and desolation, the sight suitable enough to him, except as it might unking him for a time. I say when he saw this, he took care to speed himself away as well as he could, and make his retreat to a place of safety. Where that was is no more difficult to us than it was to him. It is suggested that as he is prince of the power of the air, he retired only into that region. It is most rational to suppose he went no further on many accounts, of which I shall speak by and by. Here he stayed hovering in the earth's atmosphere as he has often done since, and perhaps now does. Or if the atmosphere of this globe was affected by the indraft of the absorption as something, then he kept himself upon the watch. To see what event the new phenomena would be in this watch, wherever it was, I doubt not was as near the earth as he could place himself, perhaps in the atmosphere of the moon, or in a word the next place of retreat he could find. From hence I took upon me to insist that Satan has not a more certain knowledge of events than we. I say he has not a more certain knowledge that he may be able to make stronger conjectures and more rational conclusions from that he sees, I will not deny, and that which he most outdoes us in is that he sees more to conclude from than we can, but I am satisfied he knows nothing of futurity more than we can see by observation and inference, nor, for example, did he know whether God would repeal the world any more or no. I must therefore allow that he only waited to see what would be the event of this strange eruption of water and what God proposed to do with the ark and all that was in it. Some philosophers tell us, besides what I hinted above, that the devil could have made no retreat in the earth's atmosphere, for that the air being wholly condensed into water and having continually poured down its streams to deluge the earth, that body was become so small and had suffered such convulsions that there was but just enough air left to surround the water or as might serve by its pressure to preserve the natural position of things and supply the creatures in the ark with a part to breathe in. The atmosphere indeed might suffer some strange and unnatural motions at that time, but not, I believe, to that degree. However, I will not affirm that there could be room in it, or is now for the devil, much less for all the numberless legions of Satan's host, but there was, and now certainly is, sufficient space to receive him, and a sufficient body of his troops for the business he had for them at that time, and that's enough to the purpose. Or if the earth's atmosphere did suffer any particular convulsion on that occasion, he might make his retreat to the atmosphere of the moon, or of Mars, or of Venus, or of any of the other planets, or to any other place, for he that is Prince of the Air could not want retreats in such a case, from whence he might watch for the issue of things.  In particular, his more than ordinary concern was to see what would become of the ark. He was wise enough doubtless to see that God who had directed its making, nay, even the very structure of it, would certainly take care of it, preserve it upon the water, and bring it to some place of safety or other, though where it should be, the devil with all his cunning could not resolve, whether on the same surface the water's drawing off, or in any other created or to be created place. In this state of uncertainty, being evidently his case, which proves his ignorance of futurity, it was his business, I say, to watch with the utmost vigilance for the event. If the ark was, as Mr. Burnett thinks, guided by two angels, they not only held it from foundering or being swallowed up in the water, but certainly kept the waters calm about it, especially when the Lord brought a strong wind to blow over the whole globe. Which, by the way, was the first, and I suppose the only universal storm that ever blew, or to be sure it blew over the whole surface at once. I say if it was thus guided to be sure the devil saw it, and that with envy and regret that he could do it, no injury. For doubtless had it been in the devil's power as God had drowned the whole race of man, except what was in the ark he would have taken care to have dispatched them to, and so made an end to the creation at once. But either he was not empowered to go to the ark, or it was so well guarded by angels that when he came near it he could do it no harm. So it rested at length the waters abating on the mountains of Arharat in Armenia, or someplace else that way. And where they say a piece of a keel is remaining to this day, of which, however, with Dr. Blank I say I believe not a word. The ark being safely landed is reasonable to believe Noah prepared to go on shore, as the seamen call him, as soon as the dry land began to appear. In here you must allow me to suppose Satan, though himself clothed with a cloud, so as not to be seen, came immediately, and perching on the roof so all the heaven-kept households safely landed, in all the host of living creatures dispersing themselves down the sides of the mountain, as the search of their food or other proper occasions directed them. This sight was enough. Satan was at no loss to conclude from hence that the design of God was to repeal the world by the way of ordinary generation. From the posterity of these eight persons without creating any new species. Very well, says the devil, then my advantage over them by the snare I laid for poor Eve is good still, and I am now just where I was after Adam's expulsion from the garden, and when I had Cain in his race to go to work with. For here is the old expunged, corrupted race still, as Cain was the object then, so Noah is my man now. And if I do not master him one way or another, I am mistaken in my mark. Pardon me for making a speech for the devil. Noah, big with a sense of his late condition, and while the wonders of the deluge were fresh in his mind, spent his first days in the ecstasies of his soul, giving thanks, and praising the power that had been his protection, in and through the flood of waters, and which had so miraculous a matter, safely landed him on the surface of the newly discovered land. And the text tells us, as one of the first things he was employed in, he built an altar unto the Lord and offered burnt offerings upon the altar. Genesis 8 verse 20. While Noah was thus employed he was safe the devil himself could nowhere break in upon him. And we may suppose very reasonably, as he found the old father invulnerable, he left him for some years, watching notwithstanding all possible advantages against his sons and their children. For now the family began to increase and know his sons at several children, whether himself had any more children after the flood or not, that we are not arrived any certainty about. Among his sons the devil found Jaffet and Shem, good pious, religious, and very devout person, serving God daily after the example of their good old father, Noah. And he could make nothing of them or of any of their posterity, but Ham, the second or according to some, the younger son of Noah, had a son who was named Canaan, a loose young profligate fellow, his education was probably but cursory and superficial. His father Ham not being near so religious and serious a man as his brothers Shem and Jaffet were. And as Canaan's education was defective, so he proved, as untaught youth generally do, he wild and in short a very wicked fellow, and consequently a fit tool for the devil to go to work with. Noah, a diligent, industrious man, being with all his family thus planted in the rich, fruitful plains of Armenia or wherever you please, let it be near the mountains of Caucasus or Ararat, went immediately to work cultivating and improving the soil, increasing his cattle and pastures, sowing corn and among other things planting trees for food. And among the fruit trees he planted vines of the grapes thereof he made no doubt, as they still in the same country do make most excellent wine, rich, luscious, strong, and pleasant. I cannot come into the notion of our critics who, to excuse Noah from the guilt of what followed, or at least from the censure, tell us he knew not the strength or the nature of one, but that gathering the heavy clusters of the grapes and their own weight crushing out their balmy juices into his hand, he tasted the tempting liquor, and that the devil assisting he was charmed with delicious fragrance, and tasted again and again, pressing it out into a bowl or dish, that he might take a larger quantity. Till it lengthed, the heady froth ascended, and seizing his brain he became intoxicated and drunk, not in the least imagining there was any such strength in the juice of that excellent fruit. But to make out this story, which is indeed very favorable for Noah, but in itself extremely ridiculous, you must necessarily fall into some absurdities, and beg the question most egregiously in some particular cases, which way of arguing will by no means oppose what is suggested. At first you must support that there was no such thing as wine made before the deluge, and that nobody had ever been made drunk with the juice of the grape before Noah, which I say is begging the question in the grossest manner. If the contrary is true, as I see no reason to question, if I say it was true that there was wine-drink, and that men were or had been drunk with it before, they cannot then but suppose that Noah, who was a wise, a great, and a good man, and a preacher of righteousness, both knew of it, and without doubt had in his preaching against their crimes, preached against this among the rest, upgraded them with it, reproved them for it, and exhorted them against it. Again, to his highly probable they had grapes growing and consequently wines made from them, in the anti-deluvian world, how else did Noah come by the vines which he planted? For we are to suppose he could plant no trees or shrubs, but such as he found the roots of in the earth, in which no doubt had been there before in their highest perfection, and had consequently grown up, and brought forth the same luscious fruit before. Besides, as he found the roots of the vines, so he understood what they were, and what fruit they bore, or else it may be supposed also he would not have planted them. For he planted them for their fruit, as he did it in the provision he was making for his subsistence, and the subsistence of his family, and if he did not know what they were, he would not have set them, or he was not planting for diversion but profit. Upon the whole it seems plain to me he knew what he did, as well when he planted the vines, as when he pressed out the grapes, and also when he drank the juice that he knew it was wine, was strong and would make him drunk if he took enough of it. He knew that other men had been drunk with such liquor before the flood, and that he had reprehended them for it. Therefore it was not his ignorance, but the devil took him at some advantage, when his appetite was eager, or he was thirsty, and the liquor cooling and pleasant, and in short, as Eve said, the serpent beguiled her, and she did eat. So the devil beguiled Noah, and he did drink. The temptation was too strong for Noah, not the wine. He knew well enough what he did, but as the drunkard say to this day it was so good he could not forbear it, and so he got drunk before he was aware, or as our ordinary speech expresses it, he was overtaken with drink, and Mr. Pool and other expositors are partly of the same mind. No sooner was the poor old man conquered and the wine had lightened his head, but it may be supposed he falls off from the chair or bench where he sat, and tumbling backwards his clothes, which in those hot countries were only loose open robes, like the vests which the Armenians wear to this day, flying abroad, or the devil so assisting on purpose to expose him, he lay there in a naked and decent posture not fit to be seen. In this juncture, who should come by but young Canaan? Some say, or as others think, this young fellow first attacked him by way of kindness and pretended affection, prompted his grandfather to drink on pretense of the wine being good for him, and proper for the support of his old age, and subtly set upon him, drinking also with him, and so his head being too strong for the old man's drank him down, and then devil-like triumphed over him, boasted of his conquest, insulted the body as it were dead, and covered him on purpose to expose him, and leaving him in that indecent posture went and made sport with it to his father Ham, who in that part, wicked like himself, did the same to his brethren, Jaffet and Shem, but they, like modest and good men, far from caring on the wicked insult on their parent, went and covered him as the Scripture expresses it, and as may be supposed to form him, how he had been abused, and by whom? While should Noah, when he came to himself, show his resentment so much against Canaan, his grandson, rather than against Ham, his father, and who tis supposed in the story the guilt chiefly lay upon? We see the curses as it were laid wholly upon Canaan, the grandson, and not a word of the father as mentioned, in Genesis chapter 9, verses 25, 26, and 27, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be, etc. That Ham was guilty, that's certain from the history of fact, but I cannot but suppose his grandson was the occasion of it, and in this case the devil seems to have made Canaan, the instrument, or tool to dilute Noah, and draw him into drunkenness, as he made the serpent the tool to beguile Eve, and draw her into disobedience. Probably Canaan might do it without design at first, but might be brought in to ridicule and make a jest of the old patriarch afterward, as is too frequent since in the practice of our days, but I rather believe he did it really with a wicked design and on purpose to expose and insult his reverent old parent, and this seems more likely too because of the great bitterness with which Noah resented it after he came to be informed of it. But be that as it will, the devil certainly made a great conquest here, and as to outward appearance no less than that which he gained before over Adam. Nor did the devil's victory consist barely in his having drawn in the only righteous man of the whole anti-diluvian world, and so beginning or initiating the new young progeny with a crime, but here was the great oracle silenced at once, the preacher of righteousness, or such no doubt he would have been to the new world, as he was to the old, I say, the preacher was turned out of office, or his mouth stopped, which was worse, nay, it was a stopping of his mouth in the worst kind, far worse than stopping his breath, for had he died the office had descended to his sons Shem and Jaffin, but he was dead to the office of an instructor, though alive as to his being, for of what force could his preachings be, who had thus fallen himself into the most shameful and beastly excess. Besides some are of the opinion, though I hope without ground, that Noah was not only overtaken once in his drink, but that being fallen into that sin it became habitual, and he continued in it a great while, and that it was this which is the meaning of his being uncovered in his tent, that his son saw his nakedness, that as he continually exposed himself for a long time, a hundred years, say they, and that his son Ham and his grandson Canaan, having drawn him into it, kept him in him, encouraged and prompted him, and all the while Satan, still prompting them, joined their scoffs in contempt of him with their wicked endeavors to promote the wickedness, and both was as much success as the devil himself could wish for. Then as for his two sons modestly and decently covering their father, they tell us that represents Shem and Jaffet applying themselves in a humble and dutiful manner to their father, to entreat and beseech him, to consider his ancient glory, his own pious exhortations to the late drowned world, and to consider the offense which he gave by his evil courses to God, and the scandal to his whole family, and also that they are brought in effectually, prevailing upon him, and that then Noah cursed the wickedness of Ham's degenerate race, in testimony of his sincere repentance after the fact. The story is not so very unlikely as is certain that it is not to be proved, and therefore we had better take it as we find it, these for one single act, but suppose it was so, tis still certain that Noah's preaching was sadly interrupted, the energy of his words flattered, and the force of his persuasions innervated and abated by this shameful fall, that he was effectually silenced for an instructor ever after, and this was as much as the devil had occasion for, and therefore indeed we read little more of him, except that he lived 350 years after the flood. Nay, we do not so much as read that he had any more children, but the contrary, nor indeed could Noah have any more children, except by his old and perhaps superannuated wife, who it was very likely he had had four or five hundred year, unless you will suppose he was allowed to marry some of his own progeny, daughters or granddaughters, which we do not suppose was allowed. No, not to Adam himself. This was certainly a masterpiece of the devil's policy, and a fatal instance of his unhappy diligence, these that the door of the ark was no sooner open, in the face of the world hardly dry from the universal destruction of mankind, but he was at work among them, and that not only to form a general defection among the race upon the foot of the original taint of nature, but like a bold devil, he strikes at the very root and flies at the next general representative of mankind, the tax the head of the family, that in his miscarriage, the rise in progress of a reformation of the new world should receive an early check, and should at once be prevented. I say like a bold devil, he strikes at the root, and alas, poor unhappy Noah, he proved too weak for him. Satan prevailed in his very first attempt, and got the victory over him at once. Noah thus overcome, and Satan's conquest carried on to the utmost of his own wishes, the devil had little more to do in the world for some ages than to carry on in universal degeneracy among mankind, and to finish it by a like diligent application in diluting the generality of the race and them as they came on gradually into life. This he found the less difficult because of the first defection which spread like a contagion upon the earth immediately after. The first evidence we have of his success in this mischievous design was in the building that great stupendous staircase for such it seems it was intended called Babel, which if the whole world had not been drunk or otherwise infatuated they would never have undertaken, even Satan himself could never have prevailed with them to undertake such a preposterous piece of work, for it had neither end or means, possibility or probability in it. I must confess I am sometimes apt to vindicate our old ancestors and my thoughts from the charge itself, as we generally understand it, namely that they really designed to build a tower which should reach up to heaven, or that it should secure them in case of another flood. And Father Causobon is of my opinion, whether I am of his or no, is a question by itself. His opinion is that the confusion was nothing but a breach among the undertakers and directors of the work, that the building was designed chiefly for a storehouse for provisions, in case of a second deluge. As to their notion of its reaching up to heaven, he takes the expression to be allegorical rather than little, and only to mean that it should be exceedingly high. Perhaps they might not be astronomers enough to measure the distance of space between the earth and heaven, as we pretend to do now. But as Noah was then alive, and as we believe all his three sons were, so too, they were able to have informed them how absurd it was to suppose either of one or the other, these one, that they could build up to heaven, or two, that they could build firm enough to resist, or high enough to overtop the waters, supposing another flood should happen. I would rather think it was only that they intended to build a most glorious and magnificent city where they might all inhabit together, and that this tower was to be built for ornament, and also for strength, or as above, and for a storehouse to lay up past magazines and provisions, in case of extraordinary floods or other events, the city being built in a great plain, namely the plains of Shimar, near the river Euphrates. But the story as it is recorded suits better with Satan's measure at that time, and as he was from the beginning prompting them to everything that was contrary to the happiness of man, so the more preposterous it was, and the more inconsistent with common sense, the more to his purpose, and it showed the more what a complete conquest he had gained over the reason as well as the religion of mankind at that time. Again, tis evident in this case they were not only acting contrary to the nature of things, but contrary to the design and the command of heaven. For God's command was that they should replenish the earth, that is, that they should spread their habitations over it in people the whole globe, whereas they were pitching in one place, as if they were not to multiply sufficient to take up any more. But what cared the devil for that, or to put it a little handsomer? That was what Satan aimed at, for it was enough to him to bring mankind to act just contrary to what heaven had directed or commanded them in anything, and if possible in everything. But God himself put a stop to this foolish piece of work, and it was time indeed to do so, for a matter thing the devil himself never proposed to them. I say God himself put a stop to this new undertaking, and disappointed the devil, and how was it done? Not in judgment and anger, as perhaps the devil expected, and hoped for, but as pitying the simplicity of that dreaming creature he confused their speech, or as some say, divided and confused their counsels, so that they could not agree with one another, which would be the same thing as not to understand one another. Or he put a new shippulet upon their tongues, thereby separating them into tribes or families. For by this every family found themselves under a necessity of keeping together, and this naturally increased the differing jargons of language, for at first it might be no more. What a confusion this was to them, we all know, by their being obliged to leave off the building, and immediately separating one from another. But what a surprise it was to the old serpent that remains to be considered of, for indeed it belongs to his history. Satan had never met any disappointment in all his wicked attempts till now. For first he seceded even to triumph upon Eve. He did the like upon Cain, and ensured upon the whole world, one man Noah accepted, when he blended the sons of God and the daughters of hell, for so the word is understood, together in a promiscuous, voluptuous living as well as generation. As to the deluge, authors are not agreed whether it was a disappointment to the devil or no. It might be indeed a surprise to him, for though Noah had preached of it for a hundred years together, yet as he, Satan, daily prompted the people not to heed or believe what that old fellow Noah said to them, and to ridicule his whimsical building, a monstrous tub to swim or float in, when the said deluge should come. So I am of the opinion he did not believe in himself, and in positive he could not foresee it by any insight into futurity that he was master of. Tis true, the astronomers tell us there was a very terrible comet seen in the air that had appeared for 180 days before the flood continually, and that as it approached near and near every day all the while, so that at last it burst and fell down in a continual spout or stream of water, being of a watery substance, and the quantity so great that it was forty days of falling, so that this comet not only foretold the deluge or drowning of the earth, but actually performed it and drowned it from itself. But to leave this tale to them that told it, let us consider the devil, surprised and a little amazed at the absorption or inundation or whatever we are to call it of the earth in the deluge, not I say that he was much concerned at it, perhaps just the contrary, and if God would drown it again, and as often as he thought fit, I do not see by any thing I meet with in Satan's history or in the nature of him, that he would be at all disturbed at it. All that I can see in it that could give Satan any concern would be that all his favorites were gone, and he had his work to do over again, to lay a foundation for a new conquest in the generation that was to come. But in this his prospect was fair enough for why should he be discouraged when he now had eight people to work upon who met with such success when he had but two? And why should he question breaking in now where nature was already vitiated and corrupted, when he had before conquered the same nature, when in its primitive rectitude and purity just come out of the hands of its maker and fortified with the awe of his high and solemn command just given them, and the threatening of death also annexed to it, if broken? End of Part 1 Chapter 10a. Part 1 Chapter 10b of the History of the Devil. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Devil by Daniel Defoe. Part 1 Chapter 10b. But I go back to the affair of Babel, this confusion of language or of counsels, take it which way you will, as the first disappointment that I find the devil met with in all his attempts and practices upon mankind, or upon the new creature which I mentioned above. For now he foresaw what would follow, namely that the people would separate and spread themselves over the whole surface of the earth, and a thousand new scenes of action would appear, in which he therefore prepares himself to behave as he should see occasion. How the devil learned to speak all the languages that were now to be used, and how many languages there were, the several ancient writers of the devil's story have not yet determined. Some tell us they were divided only into fifteen, some into seventy-two, others into one hundred and eighty, and others again into several thousands. It also remains a doubt with me, and I suppose will be so with others also, whether Satan has yet found out a method to converse with mankind without the help of language and words, or not seeing man has no other medium of conversing, no not with himself. This I have not time to enter upon here, however, this seems plain to me, these that the devil soon learned to make mankind understand him, whatever language he spoke, and no doubt, but he found ways and means to understand them, whatever language they spoke. After the confusion of languages, the people necessarily sorted themselves into families and tribes, every family understanding their own particular speech, and that only, and these families, multiplying, grew into nations, and those nations wanting room and seeking habitations wandered some this way, some that, till they found out countries respectively proper for their settling, and there they became a kingdom, spreading and possessing still more and more land as their people increased, till at last the whole earth was scarce big enough for them. This presented Satan with an opportunity to break in upon their morals at another door, these their pride, for men being naturally proud and envious nations and tribes began to jostle with one another for room, either one nation enjoyed better accommodations or had a better soil or a more favorable climate than another, and these being numerous and strong thrust the other out and encroached upon their land. The other, liking their situation, prepared for their defense, and so began oppression, invasion, war, battle, and blood, sainting all the while beating the drums, and its attendants clapping their hands as men do when they set dogs on upon one another. The bringing mankind thus to war and confusion as it was the first game the devil played after the confounding of languages and divisions at Babel, so it was a conquest upon mankind, purely devilish, born from hell, and so exactly tinctured with Satan's original sin, ambition, that it really transformed men into mere devils. For when his man transformed into the very image of Satan himself, when as he turned into a mere devil fit as not when he is fighting with his fellow creatures, and dipping his hands in the blood of his own kind, let his picture be considered the fire of hell flames or sparkles in his eyes, voracious grins set upon his countenance, rage and fury to sport the muscles of his face, his passion agitate his whole body, and he is metamorphosed from a comely, beautyous angelic creature into a fury, a satyr, a terrible and frightful monster, nay, into a devil, for Satan himself is described by the same word, which on his very account is changed into a substantive, and the devils are called furies. This sowing the seeds of strife in the world and bringing nations to fight, make war upon one another, would take up a great part of the devil's history, and abundance of extraordinary things would occur in relating the particulars, for there have been many great conflagrations kindled in the world by the artifice of hell under this head, these of making war, in which it has been the devil's masterpiece, and he has indeed shown himself a workmen in it, that he has weathled mankind into strange unnatural notions of things in order to propagate and support the fighting principle in the world, such as laws of war, fair fighting, behaving like men of honor, fighting at the last drop, and the like by which killing and murdering is understood to be justifiable. Virtue and a true greatness in spirit is rated now by rules which God never appointed, and the standard of honor is quite different from that of reason and of nature. Bravery is denominated, not from a fearless, undaunted spirit in the just defense of life and liberty, but from a daring defiance of God and man, fighting, killing, and treading underfoot his fellow creatures at the ordinary command of the officer, whether it be right or wrong, and whether it be in a just defense of life or our country's life that is liberty, or whether it be for the support of injury and oppression. A prudent, avoiding, causeless quarrels is called cowardice, and to take in affront baseness and meanness of spirit, to refuse fighting and putting life at a cast on the point of a sword, a practice forbid by the laws of God of all good government is yet called cowardice, and a man is bound to die dueling or live and be laughed at. This trumping up these imaginary things called bravery and gallantry, named in virtue and honor, is all from the devil's new management and his subtle influencing the minds of men to fly in the face of God and nature and act against his senses, nor but for his artifice and the management, could it be possible that such inconsistencies could go down with mankind, for they could pass such absurd things among them for reasoning. For example, A is found in bed with B's wife, B is the person injured, and therefore offended.  As you are a man of honor, let me rise and take my sword. A very good story indeed, fit for nobody but the devil to put into any man's head. But so it is. B, being put in mind foresooth that he is a man of honor, starts back and must act the honorable part, so he lets A get up, put on his clothes, and take the sword, then they fight, and B is killed for his honor. Whereas had the laws of God, of nature and of reason taken place, the adulterer and the adulteress should have been taken prisoners and carried before the judge, and being taken in the fact should have been immediately sentenced, he to the block and she to the stake, and the innocent, abused husband had no reason to have run any risk of his life for being made a cuckold. By thus has Satan abused the reason of man. And if a man does me the greatest injury in the world, I must do myself justice upon him, by venturing my life upon an even lay with him, and must fight him upon equal hazard, in which the injured person is as often killed as the person offering the injury. Suppose now it be in the same case as above, a man abuses my wife, and then to give me satisfaction he tells me he will fight me, which the French call doing me reason. No, sir, say I, let me lie with your wife too, and then if you desire it, I may fight you, then I am upon even terms with you. But this is indeed the reasoning which the devil has brought mankind to at this day. But to go back to the subject, these, the devil bringing the nations to fall out, and to quarrel for room in the world, and so to fight in order to dispossess one another of their settlements, this began at a time when certainly there were places enough in the world for everyone to choose in. And therefore the devil, not the want of elbow room, must be the occasion of it, and is carried on ever since, as apparently from the same interest and by the same original. But we shall meet with this part again very often in the devil's story, and as we bring him farther on in the management of mankind, I therefore lay it by for the present, and come to the next steps the devil took with mankind after the confusion of languages, and this was the affair of worship. It does not appear yet that ever the devil was so bold as either, one, to set himself up to be worshiped as a god, or which was still worse, two, to persuade man to believe there was no god at all to worship. Both these are introduced since the deluge, one indeed by the devil, who soon found means to set himself up for a god in many parts of the world, and holds to it to this day. But the last is brought in by the invention of man, in which it must be confessed man has out sinned the devil, for to do Satan justice he never thought it could ever pass upon mankind, or that anything so gross would go down with him, so that in short these modern casualists in the reach of our days have, I say, out sinned the devil. And then both these are modern inventions, Satan went on gradually in being to work upon human nature by stratagem, not by force, it would have been too gross to set himself up as an object of worship at first, it was done step by step, for example, one, it was sufficient to bring mankind to a neglect of God, to worship him by halves, and give little or no regard to his loss, and so grow loose and immoral and direct contradiction to his commands. This would not go down with him at first, so the devil went on gradually. Two, from a negligence in worshiping the true God, he by degrees introduced the worship of false gods, and to introduce this he began with the sun, moon, and stars, called in the holy text the host of heaven. These had greater majesty upon them, and seemed fitter to command the homage of mankind, so it was not the hardest thing in the world to bring men, when they had once forgotten the true God, to embrace the worship of such gods as these. Three, having thus debouched their principles in worship, and led them from the true and only object of worship to a false, it was the easier to carry them on, so in a few gradations more he brought them to downright idolatry, and even in that idolatry he proceeded gradually too, for he began with awful names, such as were venerable in the thoughts of men, as ball or bell, which in Chaldeac in Hebrew signifies lord or sovereign or mighty and magnificent, and this was therefore a name ascribed at first to the true God, but afterwards they descended to make images and figures to represent him, and then they were called by the same name as ball, boleum, and afterwards bell, from which by a hellish degeneracy Saturn brought mankind to adore every block of their own human, and to worshiping stocks, stones, monsters, hobbit goblins, and every sordid frightful thing, and at last the devil himself. What notions some people may entertain of the forwardness of the first ages of the world to run into idolatry, I do not inquire here, I know they tell us strange things of its being the product of mere nature, one removed from its primitive state, but I who pretend to have so critically inquired into Satan's history can assure you, and that from very good authority, that the devil did not find it so easy a task to obliterate the knowledge of the true God and the minds and consciences of men, as those people suggest. It is true he carried things a great length under the patriarchal government of the first ages, but still he was 1600 years bringing it to pass, and though we have reason to believe the old world before the flood was arrived to a very great height of wickedness, and Ovid very nobly describes it by the war of the Titans against Jupiter, yet we do not read that ever Satan was come to such a length as to bring them to idolatry. Indeed we do read of wars carried on among them, whether it was one nation against another, or only personal we cannot tell, but the world seemed to be swallowed up in a life of wickedness, that is to say of luxury and lewdness, rapon and violence, and there were giants among them, and men of renown, that is to say, men famed for their mighty valor, great actions of war we may suppose, and for their strength, who personally opposed others. We read of no considerable wars indeed, but tis not to be doubted, but there was such wars, or else it is to be understood that they lived in common, a life somewhat like the Brutes, the strong devouring the weak, for the text says the whole earth was filled with violence, hunting and tearing one another in pieces, either for dominion or for wealth, either for ambition or for avarice we know not well which. Thus far the anti-Diluvian world went, and very wicked they were, there is no doubt of that, but we have reason to believe that there was no idolatry, the devil had not brought them to that length yet, perhaps it would soon have followed, but the deluge intervened. After the deluge, as I have said, he had all his work to do over again, and he went on by the same steps, first he brought them to violence and war, then to oppression and tyranny, then to neglect of true worship, then to false worship, and then idolatry by the mere natural consequence of the thing, who were the first nation or people that fell from the worship of the true God is something hard to determine. The devil, who certainly of all God's creatures is best able to inform us, having left us nothing upon record upon that subject, but we have reason to believe it was thus introduced. Nimrod was the grandson of Ham, Noah's second son, the same who was cursed by his father for exposing him in his drunkenness. This Nimrod was the first who, it seems, Satan picked out for a hero. Here he inspired him with ambitious thoughts, dreams of empire, and having the government of all the rest, that is to say universal monarchy, the very same bait with which he has played upon the frailty of princess, and ensnared the greatest of them ever since, even from his most august imperial majesty, King Nimrod I, to his most Christian majesty, Louis XIV, and many a mighty monarch between. When these mighty monarchs and men of fame went off the stage, the world had their memories in esteem, many ages after, and as their great actions were no otherwise recorded than by oral tradition, and the tongues and memories of fallible men. Time in the custom of magnify in the past actions of kings, men soon fabled up their histories, Satan assisting, into miracle and wonder. Hence their names were had in veneration more and more. Statues and buss representing their persons and great actions were set up in public places till from heroes and champions they made gods of them, and thus Satan prompting the world was quickly filled with idols. This Nimrod, as he, according to the received opinion, though I do not find Satan's history exactly concurring with it, was first called Bellas, then Bald, and worshipped in most of the eastern country under those names, sometimes with additions of surnames, according to the several countries or people or towns where he was particularly set up, as Balpior, Bal Zephon, Bal Fagor, in other places plain ball as Jupiter and after times had the like additions as Jupiter Ammon, Jupiter Capitolinas, Jupiter Pistor, Jupiter Ferratrias, and about 10 or 12 Jupiters more. I must acknowledge that I think it was a masterpiece of hell to bring the world to idolatry so soon after they had such an imminent example of the imminent power of the true God as was seen in the deluge, and particularly in the escape of Noah and the Ark, to bring them, even before Noah or his sons were dead, to forget whose hand it was and give the homage of the world to a name and not a name of a mortal man dead and rotten, who is famous for nothing when he was alive but blood and war. I say, to bring the world to set up this nothing, this mere name, neither very image and picture of him or a God, it was first a mark of most prodigious stupidity in the whole race of men, a monstrous degeneracy from nature and even from common sense, and in the next place was a token of an inexpressible craft and subtly in the devil, who had now gotten the people into so full and complete a management that in short he could have brought them by the same rule to have worshiped anything in a little while more did bring many of them to worship himself, plain devil as he was, in knowing him to be such. As to the antiquity of this horrible defection of mankind, though we do not find the beginning of it particularly recorded, yet we are certain it was not long after the confusion of Babel, for Nimrod, as is said, was no more than Noah's great grandson and Noah himself, I suppose, might be alive some years after Nimrod was born, and as Nimrod was not long dead before they forgot that he was a tyrant and a murderer, he made a ball, that is a lord or idol of him, I say he was not long dead, for Nimrod was born in the year of the world, 1847, and built Babylon the year 1879, and we find Tara, the father of Abraham, who lived from the year 1879, was an idolater, as was doubtless Betheul, who was Tara's grandson, for we find Laban, who was Betheul's son, was so, and all this was during the life of the first post-Diluvian family, for Tara was born within 193 years after the flood, and 157 years before Noah was dead, and even Abraham himself was 80 and 50 years old before Noah died, yet idolatry had been then in all probability above and hundred years practice in the world. Note bene, it is worth remark here what a terrible advantage the devil gained by the debouching pornoa in drawing him into the sin of drunkenness, for by this, as I said, he silenced and stopped them out the great preacher of righteousness, that father and patriarch of the whole world, who was not able, for the shame of his own foul miscarriage, to pretend to instruct or reprove the world any more. The devil took hold of them immediately, and for want of a prophet to warn and admonish, ran that little of religion which there might be left in Shem and Jaffet, quite out of the world, and deluged them all in idolatry. How long the whole world may be said to be thus overwhelmed in ignorance and idolatry, we may make some tolerable guess set by the history of Abraham, for it was not till God called him from his father's house that any such thing as a church was established in the world, nor even then except in his own family and successors for almost 400 years after that call, and till God brought the Israelites back out of Egypt, the whole world may be said to be involved in idolatry and devil worship. So absolute a conquest had the devil made over mankind, immediately after the flood, and all taking its rise, beginning at the fatal defeat of Noah, who had he lived untanked and invulnerable as he had done for six hundred years before, would have gone a great way to have stemmed the torrent of wickedness which broke in upon mankind, and therefore the devil, I say, was very cunning and very much in the right of it, take him as he is a mere devil to attack Noah personally and give him a blow so soon. It is true the devil did not immediately raise out the notion of religion and of a God from the minds of men, nor could he easily suppress the principle of worship and homage to be paid to a sovereign being, the author of nature and guide of the world. The devil saw this clearly in the first ages of the new world, and therefore, as I have said, he proceeded politically, and by degrees, that it was so as evident from the story of Job and his three friends, who, if we may take it for a history, not a fable, it may judge of the time of it by the length of Job's life, and by the family of Eliphaz, the Temmonite, who it is manifest was at least grandson, or great grandson, to Esau, Isaac's eldest son, and by the language of Emilec, king of Gerard to Abraham, and of Laban to Jacob, both the latter being at the same time idolaters. I say if we may judge of it by all these, there were still very sound notions of religion in the minds of men, nor could Satan, with all his cunning and policy, deface those ideas and root them out of the minds of the people. And this put him upon taking new measures to keep up his interest and preserve the hold he got on mankind, and his method was like himself, subtle and politic to the last degree, as his whole history makes appear. For seeing he found they could not but believe the being of a God, and that they would need worship something, it is evident he had no game left him to play but this, namely to set up wrong notions of worship, and bring them to a false worship instead of a true, supposing the object worship to be still the same. To finish this stratagem he first insinuates that the true God was a terrible, a dreadful, unapproachable being, that to see him was so frightful that it would present death, that to worship him immediately was a presumption which would provoke his wrath, as that he was a consuming fire in himself, so he would burn up those in his anger that dared to offer up any sacrifice to him, but by the interposition of some medium which might receive their adorations in his name. Hence it occurred presently that subordinate gods were to be found out and set up to whom the people might pay the homage due to the supreme God, and who they might worship in his name. This I take from the most ancient account of idolatry in the world, nor indeed could the devil himself find out any other reason why men should canonize or rather deify their princes in men of fame, and worship them after they were dead, as if they could save them from death and calamity, who were not able to save themselves when they were alive. Much less could Satan bring men to swallow so gross, so absurd a thing as the bowing the knee to a stock or a stone, a calf, an ox, a lion, made the immature figure of a calf, such as the Israelites made at Mount Sinai, and say, These be thy gods, O Israel, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Having thus I say brought them to satisfy themselves that they worship the true God, and no other, under the figures and appearances which they made to represent him. It was easy after that to worship anything but the true God, and thus in a few ages they worship nothing but idols, even throughout the whole world, nor has the devil lost this hold in some parts of the world, nay, not in most parts of the world to this day. He holds still all the eastern parts of Asia, and the southern parts of Africa, and the northern parts of Europe, and in them the vast countries of China and Tartary, Persia and India, Guinea, Ethiopia, Zankabar, Congo, Angola, Monomotapa, etc. In all which, except Ethiopia, we find no vestiges of any other worship but that of idols, monsters, and even the devil himself, till after the very coming of our Savior, and even then, if it be true that the gospel was preached in the Indies in China by Saint Thomas, and in other remote countries by other of the apostles, we see that whatever ground Satan lost he seems to have recovered it again. And all Asian Africa is at present overrun with paganism or Mohammedanism, which I think of the two as rather the worst. Beside all America, a part of the world is some say equal and bigness to all the other in which the devil's kingdom was never interrupted from its first being inhabited, whenever it was, to the first discovery of it by the European nations in the 16th century. In a word the devil got what we may call an entire victory over mankind, and drove the worship of the true God in a manner quite out of the world, forcing as it were his maker in a new kind of creation, the old one proving thus ineffectual, to recover a certain number by force and mere omnipotence, to return to their duty, serve him and worship him. But of that hereafter. End of Part 1 Chapter 10b. Part 1 Chapter 11a of the history of the devil. This is a LibriVox recording. While LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Devil by Daniel Defoe. Part 1 Chapter 11a Of God's calling a church out of the mist of a degenerate world, and of Satan's new measures upon that incident, how he attacked them immediately, and his success in those attacks. Satan having, as I have said in the preceding chapter, made as it were a full conquest of mankind, debouched them all to idolatry, and brought them at least to worshiping the true God by the wretched medium of corrupt and idolatrous representations. God seemed to have no true servants or worshipers 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 worshiped. This, I say, God was obliged to do, because tis 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 he met with in his progress in the world, the first I've 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, etc. But he did not expect it so suddenly, but thought himself sure of mankind, till the fullness of time, when the Messiah should come. And therefore it was 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, or 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 and voice from heaven, all mankind was gone over to the enemy, overwhelmed in idolatry, in a word, were engaged 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, for that there was such a being in the world. Well might it be said the Lord appeared to Abraham, Genesis 7-7, for if God had not appeared himself, he must have sent a messenger from heaven, and perhaps it was so, 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 17 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 the difficulty which remains to be solved. 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, as 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 with all 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 what the devil ever so much as attempted, Abraham at all. Some will suggest that the command 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 a holy seed into the world. For, the first, if Abraham had disobeyed that call, the new favorite had been overcome and 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 expressed 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 a hero like faith and courage, as if the devil had been the author of it. He had seen himself disappointed in both his views. One, by Abraham's ready and bold compliance, as believing it to be God's command, and two, by the divine counter-man 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 Ly, who notwithstanding he was so immediately under the particular care of heaven, as that angel who was sent to destroy Sodom, could do nothing till he was out of it, and who, though, after he had left Zohar and was retired into a cave to dwell, yet the subtle devil found him out, diluted 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, etc. And so on, their abundant concern to repeal 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 Zohar had been preserved for their sakes. This now is 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 a 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 too and their father. To be sure the old man could not suspect that his daughter's design was so wicked as indeed it was, or that they intended to botch 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 two-fold generation might be supposed to rise religious and righteous like their parents, vis that of Abraham and vis 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 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, in 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 above, Noah was silenced and is preaching at an end, after that one action, so the like may be said of Lot, and in short you never hear one word more 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 a 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 read of any failing they had, or of anything the devil had ever the face to offer to them, nor, 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 shepherd's shearing and placed a whore, Tamar in his way, in the posture of temptation, so made him commit incest and whoredom both together. He sent incestuous Rubin to lie with his father's concubine, Billa. He sent Dina to the ball to dance with the Shimeat ladies and play the whore with their master. He enraged Simeon and Levi at the supposed injury and then prompted them to revenge, for which their fathers 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 Medianites. 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 line, etc. 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 debouched 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 had of them, 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 the quite differing situation. When the world first appeared, people by the creating power of God, he had only Adam and Eve to take care of, and I think he played his time with them to purpose enough. After the deluge he had Noah only to pitch upon and quickly conquered him by the instigation of his grandson. At the building of Babel he guided them by their acting role 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 who's snare as one man, but now the children of Israel multiply 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. Nor though the cunning artists, as I said, student looked on, yet he durst not metal, nor could he make a few lice, the least demeanest 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 another, 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 in them a fright at Baal Zephan, 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 Piharath and the Red Sea. But there indeed Satan was outwitted by Moses so far as it appeared to be a humane 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 is 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 forward 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 traveling on foot round the north point of that sea, by the wilderness of Eton, 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 frightened waves in an uproar, and to his utter astonishment and confusion saw the passage laid open, in Moses leading his vast army in full march over the dry space. Nay, even then, tis very probable, Satan did not know that if the Egyptians followed them, the sea would return upon and overwhelm them. For I can hardly think so hard at the devil himself, that if he had he would have suffered much less prompt at Pharaoh to follow the chase at such an expense, so that either he must be an ignorant and unforeseeing devil, or a very ungrateful false devil to his friends the Egyptians. I am inclined also to the more charitable opinion of Satan too, because of 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 in Egypt together, and he would never have suffered the disgrace if he had known it before him, 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 affairs of this very people, and their forty years wandering in the wilderness. And though he was in some way successful, and weathled them into many foolish and miserable murmurings and wranglings against God, and mutinies against poor Moses, yet the devil was often times balked and disappointed. And tis 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 1500 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 the 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 secret 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. One, it was in the night they marched through, whether the devil saw it in the dark or no, that's not my business. But when he had daylight 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. Tis 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 Israelite-ish host in his imagination, to the tune of at least a million and a half souls, men, women, 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 facts 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. 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 a hunted fox, corvetteing 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.  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 bring the divine vengeance upon them, leaving them in their distress, kept at a distance, as if he looked on with satisfaction to see them burnt, swallowed up, swept away in the like, as the several stories relate. His indefatigable vigilance is, on the other hand, a useful caveat, as well as an improving view to us. No sooner is he routed and exposed, defeated and disappointed in one enterprise, but he begins another, 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 meantime, let us take up his story again at the Red Sea, where he received a great blow, instead of which he expected a complete victory. For doubtless, the devil and the king of Egypt too thought of nothing but conquest at Pyriarus. 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, vis 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 straightens 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, but in less than one year more we find them, at his instigation too, setting up a golden calf and 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 pretense? Truly nothing but they had lost Moses, who used to be their guide, and he had hid himself in the mountain, 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. The poor pretense, 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 mountain, and presuming upon the liberty he had taken before. In a word that God had destroyed Moses, where he was starved to death for want of food, having been forty days and forty nights absent. All these words 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 able 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 out 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, and most of his attempts upon mankind, could hardly doubt his 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 their deliverance. It was more astonishing in the man that even their passing the Red Sea in a word the devil's whole history does not furnish us with a story equally surprising. And how is 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 in 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, with making the idol for them too, for tis 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 indeed. I bade them bring the earrings, etc., and I cast the gold into the fire, and it came out this calf. Ridiculous, as if the calf came out by mere fortuitous adventure, without a mold to cast it in, which could not be supposed. And if it had not come out so without a mold, 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 an idol, which he did, by making first a proper mold to cast it in, and then taking the proper metal 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 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 a height to be rude and unmanorly 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 compliance. See this cunning agent, when he has man's destruction in his view, how securely he acts. He never wants a 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 strategy, never by force, a proof that he is not empowered to use violence. He may tempt, and he does prevail, but it is all ledger domain. It is all craft and artifice. He is still the abalone, the calumnator 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 within imperfect view, raising clouds and fogs to intercept our sight. In short, he deceives all our senses, and imposes upon us the things which otherwise would be the easiest to discern and judge of. This indeed is in part 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 practiced 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 allowed to make use of it, for by his power indeed he might have laid the world desolate, and made a 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, and 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 a story as it relates to the Jewish Church and the Wilderness, and to the children of Israel and their traveling 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 the 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 believe the greatest part of them were polluted with the idolatry of the Egyptians, for we do not read of any state at 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 after they were coming away, so that there was not much religion among them, at least that we have any account of, though 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 immediate power of heaven engaged in it, and that Satan saw evidently God had singled them out in a miraculous manner to favor them, and called 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. Part 1, Chapter 11b of the History of the Devil. This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recording is in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Devil by Daniel Defoe. Part 1, Chapter 11b 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 worshiping, these 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 worshiped by dancing round a calf, and that not a living creature, or a real calf, but the mere image of a calf, casting gold or as something 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 to make 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 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. One, as God himself relieved them in every exigence and supplied them in every want, one would think it was impossible they should ever be brought to question either his willingness or his ability, 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 believed God would be provoked effectually. The testimonies of his care of him and ability to supply them were miraculous and undeniable. He gave them water from the rock, bred 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 carcasses fell on the wilderness. Let us take but a short view to what a 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 than 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 abahu offer strange fire till they were strangely consumed by fire for the doing it. He set them a complaining at Taborah 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 spoke by them as well as by him till he humbled the father and made a leper of the daughter. He debouched ten of the spies, frightened 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 carcasses 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 Marhaba 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 traveled from Mount Hor till they brought fiery serpents among them to destroy them. He tried to make Balaam the prophet cursed them, but there the devil was disappointed. However he brought the Midianites to debouch them with women as in the case of Zimri and Cosby. He tempted Akhen with a wedge of gold and the Babylonish garment that he might take of 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 debouch them to idolatry. He prompted the Benjamites to refuse satisfaction to the people in the case of the wickedness of the men of Gibiya to the destruction of the whole tribe, four hundred men except in the rock Riman. 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 the rulers, in 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 efferot contrary to the law of the Tabernacle and made the children of Israel go to whoring, that is, a worshipping after it.  He tempted Eli's sons to lie with the women in 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 reproved 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 Usa to reach out his hand to hold it up, as if he that 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 diverse ways to bring that king to load them with plagues and calamities, not a few. He tempted Saul to spare the king of Amalek, contrary to God's expressed command. He not tempted Saul only, 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 acquire a 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 the pretense that he might not fall into the hands of the uncircumcised, as if self-myrther 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 done 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 savored by heaven, the devil fell upon him with a 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 him easily he could overthrow the best man God could choose for the whole congregation. He made him distrust his benefactor so much as defame 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 shears. He made him, for his words he, give Zeba half his master's estate for his treachery, after he knew he had been the traitor, and betrayed poor Mephithboshef for the sake of it, in which the good old king it seems was very loath 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 wicked, he carried him to the top of his house and showed him a naked lady bathing herself 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 mirth 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 Amon to ravage 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 Absalon to murder his brother Amnon in revenge for Tamar's maiden hen. Then he made Joab run Absalon through the body, contrary to David's command, and after David's death he brought Edanija, weak man, to the block for usurping King Solomon's throne. As to Absalon 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 father mortification to lie with his father's wives in the face of the whole city, and had Akhtutufl's honest counsel been followed he had certainly sent him to sleep with his father's long before his time, but their saint and Akhtutufl were both outwitted together. Through all the reins 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 it last he so effectually debouched them to idolatry. That crime which 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 beast. In this house sorted and brutish so ever 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 it last God himself was provoked to un-church them, gave them up to their enemies, and the few that were left of them, after incredible slaughters and desolation, were heard away some into Tartary and others into Babylon, from what's very few of that same few that were carried away, ever found their way home again, and some when they might have come would not accept of it, but continue there to the very coming of the Messiah. See epistles of St. 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 word saw. I say in the middle of all this he drew him into such immoderate and insatiable an appetite for women, as to set up the first and perhaps the greatest serology of whores that ever any prince in the world had or pretended to before, named to bring whoring 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 seniors and great moguls, other princesses of the eastern world have since practiced, namely to pick up their most beautiful slaves, but these it seems, were men of rank, kings daughters as Pharaoh's daughter, and the daughters of the princess and prime men, among the Moabites, Ammonites, Zodonians, Hittites, etc., one kings, eleven one.  No, not the devil himself, without the assistance of his whores, nor the whores themselves, without the devil to help them. As to Solomon, Satan had made conquest enough there, we need here no more of him. The next advance he made was in the person of his son, Rehoboam. Had not the devil prompted his pride in 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, to whom he knew wanted and waited for an occasion to raise a rebellion, and had ripened up the people's humor to the occasion, well might the texts 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, before 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, these 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 masterpiece 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, of 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. To 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 secured Jeroboham'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 Jeroboham'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, he 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 is 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 any other politicians, is not for the just divinum of lineal secession, 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 Jeroboan, 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 yet 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. 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 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, Jezus Shabbat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, he hung about them in their courts, till he brought every one of them into some mischief for another. At 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 a higher benedad, 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 Jehosephat, but such as Asa, Jehosephat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, he hung about them in their courts till he brought every one of them into some mischief for another.  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 to Chronicles 1820, 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. Here there is a question mark, and indeed it was a commission fit for nobody but the devil. Thou shalt 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. Two kings, twenty-three, twenty-six. 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 to 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 his 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 their saint 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, Hammon, was exalted 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 accepting 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 Mavuk in such a bloody cutting themselves with knives as the priest 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 arrived 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 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 princess 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 re-establish 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 fortify in 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 in 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 that Jews fell into sects and eras and divisions of many kind, 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 is 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 peacefully under the protection rather than the dominion of the Roman Empire. When Herod the Great governed them as a king, and reedified, they almost rebuilt their temple, was so great an expense in 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 to his cold and scripture was come, and the devil was kept at bay, though he 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 chapter 3, 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 as decline 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 as 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 is 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 cohabitate 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. End of Part 1, Chapter 11b.