John Milton - 3 books to know The Devil

He counts their censure fame.

“As for a certain reverend gentleman, who is pleased gravely to dislike the work, (he hopes, rather for the author’s sake than the Devil’s;) he only says, Let the performance be how it will, and, the author what he will, it is apparent he has not yet preached away all his hearers.

“It is enough for me (says the author) that the Devil himself is not pleased with my work, and less with the design of it; let the Devil and all his fellow complainers stand on one side, and the honest, well-meaning, charitable world, who approve my work, on the other.”

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INTRODUCTION TO THE whole work,

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I DOUBT NOT BUT THE title of this book will amuse some of my reading friends a little at first; they will make a pause, perhaps, as they do at a witch’s prayer, and be some time resolving whether they had best look into it or no, lest they should really raise the Devil, by reading his story.

Children and old women have told themselves so many frightful things of the Devil, and have formed ideas of him in their minds, in so many horrible and monstrous shapes, that really it were enough to fright the Devil himself to meet himself in the dark, dressed up in the several figures which imagination has formed for him in the minds of men; and, as for themselves, I cannot think by any means that the Devil would terrify them half so much, if they were to converse face to face with him.

It must certainly therefore be a most useful undertaking, to give a true history of this tyrant of the air, this god of the world, this terror and aversion of mankind, which we call Devil; to show what he is, and what he is NOT; where he is, and where he is NOT; when he is IN us, and when he is NOT; for I cannot doubt but that the Devil is really and bona fide in a great many of our honest weak-headed friends, when they themselves know nothing of the matter.

Nor is the work so difficult as some may imagine.

The Devil’s history is not so hard to come at, as it seems to be; his original and the first rise of his family is upon record; and as for his conduct, he has acted indeed in the dark, as to method, in many things; but in general, as cunning as he is, he has been fool enough to expose himself in some of the most considerable transactions of his Ike, and has not shown himself a politician at all; our old friend Matchiavel outdid him in many things, and I may, in the process of this work, give an account of several of the sons of Adam, and some societies of them too, who have outwitted the Devil, nay, who have outsinned the Devil, and that I think may be called outshooting him in his own bow.

It may, perhaps, be expected of me in this history, that since I seem inclined to speak favorably of Satan, to do him justice, and to write his story impartially, I should take some pains to tell you what religion he is of: and even this part may not be so much a jest, as at first sight you may take it to be; for Satan has something of religion in him, I assure you; nor is he such an unprofitable Devil that way as some may suppose him to be; for though, in reverence to my brethren, I will not reckon him among the clergy; no not so much as a gifted brother; yet I cannot deny, but that he often preaches; and if it be not profitable to his hearers, it is as much their fault, as it is out of his design.

It has indeed been suggested, that he has taken orders; and that a certain Pope, famous for being an extraordinary favorite of his, gave him both institution and induction; but as this is not upon record, and therefore we have no authentic document for the probation, I shall not affirm it for a truth, for I would not slander the Devil.

It is said also, and I am apt to believe it, that he was very familiar with that holy father Pope Silvester II., and some charge him with personating Pope Hildebrand on an extraordinary occasion, and himself sitting in the chair apostolic, in a full congregation; and you may hear more of this hereafter; but as I do not meet with Pope Diabolus among the list; in allFather Platina’s Lives of the Popes, so I am willing to leave it as I find it.

But to speak to the point, and a nice point it is, I acknowledge; namely, what religion the Devil is of; my answer will indeed be general, yet not at all ambiguous; for I love to speak positively, and with undoubted evidence.

1. He is a believer. And if in saying so it should follow, that even the Devil has more religion than some of our men of fame can at this time be charged with, I can assure them, however, that the Devil is no infidel.

2. He fears God. We have such abundant evidence of this in sacred history, that if I were not at present, in common with a few others, talking to an infidel sort of gentlemen, with whom those remote things called scriptures are not allowed in evidence, I might say it was sufficiently proved; but I doubt not in the process of this undertaking, to show that the Devil really fears God, and that after another manner than ever he feared Saint Francis or Saint Dunstan, and if that be proved, as I take upon me to advance, I shall leave it to judgment, who is the better Christian, the Devil who believes and trembles, or our modern infidels who believe neither God nor Devil.

Having thus brought the Devil within the pale, I shall leave him among you for the present; not but that I may examine in its order, who has the best claim to his brotherhood, the papists or the protestants; and among the latter, the Lutherans or the Calvinists; and so descending to all the several de nominations of churches, see who has less of the Devil in them, and who more; and whether less or more, the Devil has not a seat in every synagogue, a pew in every church, a place in every pulpit, and a vote in every synod; even to the Sanhedrim of the Jews.

I think I do no injury at all to the Devil, to say that he had a great hand in the old Holy War, as it was ignorantly and enthusiastically called; stirring up the Christian princes and powers of Europe to run a madding after the Turks and Saracens, and make war with those innocent people above a thousand miles off, only because they entered into God’s heritage when he had forsaken it; grazed upon his ground when he had fairly turned it into a common, and laid it open for the next comer; spending their nations’ treasure, and embarking their kings and people, I say, in a war above a thousand miles off, filling their heads with that religious madness, called, in those days, holy zeal to recover the terra sancta, the sepulchres of Christ and the saints, and as they called it falsely, the holy city, though true religion says it was the accursed city, and not worth spending one drop of blood for.

This religious bubble was certainly of Satan, who, as he craftily drew them in, so like a true Devil he left them in the lurch when they came there, faced about to the Saracens, animated the immortal Saladin against them, and managed so dextrously, that he left the bones of about thirteen or fourteen hundred thousand Christians there, as a trophy of his infernal politics: and after the Christian world had run d la santa terra, or in English, a sauntering about a hundred year, he dropt it to play another game less foolish, but ten times wickeder than that which went before it, namely, turning the crusadoes of the Christians, one against another; and, as Hudibras said in another case,

“Made them fight like mad or drunk,

For Dame Religion, as for Punk.”

Of this you have a complete account in the history of the Pope’s decrees against the Count de Thoulouse, and the Waldenses and Albigenses, with the crusadoes and massacres which followed upon them; wherein, to do the Devil’s politics some justice, he met with all the success he could desire; the zealots of that day executed his infernal orders most punctually, and planted religion in those countries in a glorious and triumphant manner, upon the destruction of an infinite number of innocent people, whose blood has fattened the soil for the growth of the Catholic faith, in a manner very particular, and to Satan’s full satisfaction.