3 books to know The Devil. Джон Мильтон

to preserve Satan’s claim to them uninterrupted, and prevent their escape out of his hands; thus we have seen a bloody devil in a D’ Alva; a profligate devil in a Buckingham; a lying, artful, or politic devil in a Richelieu; a treacherous devil in a Mazarin; a cruel, merciless devil in a Cortez; a de bauched devil in an Eugene; a conjuring devil in a Luxemburg; and a covetous devil in a M h. In a word, tell me the man, I will tell you the spirit that reigned in him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “What,” said I, “ rude to whom?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

      But I return to the Devil’s managing our wicked part; for this he does with most exquisite subtilty; and this is one part of it; namely, he thrusts our vices into our virtues, by which he mixes the clean and the unclean;