John Milton - 3 books to know The Devil

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 whom it seems Satan picked out for an hero: here he inspired him with ambitious thoughts, dreams of em pire, 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 princes, ano> ensnared the greatest of them ever since, even from his most august imperial majesty King Nimrod the first, 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 and the custom of magnifying 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 bustoes 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 is he, who, according to the received opinion, though I do not find Satan’s history exactly concurring with it, was first called Belus, then Baal, and worshipped in most of the eastern countries under those names; sometimes with additions of surnames, according to the several countries, or people, or towns, where he was particularly set up, as Baal-Peor, BaalZephon, Baal-Phegor, and in other places plain Baal, as Jupiter in aftertimes had the like additions: as Jupiter Ammon, Jupiter Capitolinus, Jupiter Pistor, Jupiter Feretrius, and about ten or twelve 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 had such an eminent example of the infinite power of the true (jrod, as was seen in the deluge, and particularly in the escape of Noah in 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 that a name of a mortal man dead and rotten, who was 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, nay, the very image and picture of him, for a God! It was first a mark of prodigious stupidity in the whole race of men, a monstrous de generacy from nature, and even from common sense; and in the next place it was a token of an inexpressible craft and subtility 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 worshipped anything; and in a little while more, did bring many of them to worship himself, plain devil as he was. and 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, and made a Baal, 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 Terah, the father of Abraham, who lived from the year 1879, was an idolater, as was doubtless Bethuel, who was Terah’s grandson; for we find Laban, who was Bethuel’s son, was so, and all this was during the life of the first postdiluvian family; for Terah was born within one hundred ninety-three years after the flood, and one hundred fiftyseven years before Noah was dead; and even Abraham himself was eight-and-fifty years old before Noah died; and yet idolatry had been then, in all probability, above an hundred years practised in the world.

N. B. It is worth remark here, what a terrible advantage the Devil gained by the debauching poor Noah, and drawing him into the sin of drunkenness; for by this, as I said, he silenced and stopped the mouth of the great preacher of righteousness, that father and patriarch of the whole world; who not being 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, run that little of religion which there might be left in Shem and Japhet, 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 at 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 four hundred years after that call; and till God brought the Israelites back out of Egypt, the whole world might 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 and beginning at the fatal defeat of Noah, who, had he lived untainted 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 raze 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, is evident from the story of Job. and his three friends; who. if we may take it for an history, not a fable, and may judge of the time of it by the length of Job’s life, and by the family of Eliphaz the Temanite, who it is manifest was at least grandson, or great-grandson, to Esau, Isaac’s eldest son; and by the language of Abimelech King of Gerar 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 upon mankind; and this 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 needs 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 worshipped 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 be present death; that to worship him immediately, was a presumption which would provoke his wrath; and that as 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 whom 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 and 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, nay, the image or 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.