3 books to know The Devil. Джон Мильтон

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Thus Satan ridded his hands of ten of the twelve tribes; let us now see how he went on with the rest, for his work was now brought into a narrower compass; the church of God was now reduced to two tribes, except a few religious people, who separated from the schism of Jeroboam, and came and planted themselves among the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The first thing the Devil did after this, was to foment a war between the two kings, while Judah was governed by a boy or youth, Abijah by name; and he none of the best neither. But God’s time was not come, and the Devil received a great disappointment; when Jeroboam was so entirely overthrown, that, if the records of those ages do not mistake, no less than five hundred thousand men of Israel were killed; suck a slaughter, that one would think the army of Judah, had they known how to improve as well as gain a victory, might have brought all the rest back again, and have entirely reduced the house of Jeroboam, and the ten tribes that followed him, to their obedience; nay, they did take a great deal of the country from them, and among the rest Bethel itself; and yet so cunningly did Satan manage, that the king of Judah, who was himself a wicked king, and perhaps an idolater in his heart, did