3 books to know The Devil. Джон Мильтон
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, or that there was such a being in the world.
Well might it be said the Lord appeared to Abraham, Gen. xii. 7, for if God had not appeared himself, he must have sent a messenger from heaven; and perhaps it was so too, 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 seventeen 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 a difficulty which remains to be solved; and 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, it is 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 withal 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 that the Devil ever so much as attempted Abraham at all. Some will suggest that the command to 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 an holy seed into the world. For the first, if Abraham had disobeyed that call, the new favorite had been overcome, arid 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 express, 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 an herolike faith and courage; and, if the Devil had been the author of it, he had seen himself disappointed in both his views; 1, by Abraham’s ready and bold compliance, as believing it to be God’s command; and 2, by the divine countermand 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 Lot; who, notwithstanding he was so immediately under the particular care of heaven, as that the angel who was sent to destroy Sodom, could do nothing till he was out of it; and who, though after he had left Zoar, and was retired into a cave to dwell, yet the subtle Devil found him out, deluded 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, &c., and so, in their abundant concern to repeople 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 Zoar had been preserved for their sakes.
This now was 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
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 two, and their father. To be sure the old man could not suspect that his daughters’ design was so wicked as indeed it was, or that they intended to debauch 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 twofold generation might be supposed to rise, religious and righteous like their parents, namely, that of Abraham, and this 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 of 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, and 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 before, Noah was silenced, and his preaching at an end, after that one action, so the like may be said of Lot; and, in short, you never hear one more word 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 an 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 as read of any failing they had, or of anything the Devil had ever the face to offer to them; no, 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 sheep-shearing, and placed Tamar in his way, in the posture of temptation; so made him commit incest.
He sent incestuous Reuben to take his father’s concubine, Bilhah.
He sent Dinah to the ball, to dance with the Shechernite ladies, and play the sinner with their master.
He enraged Simeon and Levi at the supposed injury, and then prompted them to revenge; for which their father 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 Midianites.
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 lion, &c.
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 debauched 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 of them had, 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 a quite differing situation. When the world first appeared peopled by the creating power of God, he had only Adam and Eve to take care of, and I think he plied his time with them to purpose