John Milton - 3 books to know The Devil

Having thus, I say, brought them to satisfy themselves, that they worshipped the true God, and no other, under the figures and appearances which they made to represent him, it was easy after that to worship anything for the true God. And thus in a few ages they worshipped nothing but idols, even throughout the whole world; nor has the Devil lost his hold in some parts of the world, nay, not in most parts of the world, to this day. He holds still all the eastern parts of Asia, and the southern parts of Africa, and the northern parts of Europe; and in them the vast countries of China and Tartary, Persia and India, Guinea, Ethiopia, Zanqnebar, Congo. Angola, Moriomotapa, &c. in which, except Ethiopia, we find no vestiges of any other worship, but that of idols, monsters, and even the Devil himself; till after the coming of our Saviour, and even then, if it be true that the gospel was preached in the Indies and China by St. Thomas, and in other remote countries by other of the Apostles, we see that whatever ground Satan lost, he seems to have recovered it again; and all Asia and Africa is at present overrun with Paganism or Mahometanism, which I think of the two is rather the worst; besides all America, a part of the world, as some say, equal in bigness to all the other, in which the Devil’s kingdom was never in terrupted from its first being inhabited, whenever it was, to the first discovery of it by the European nations in the sixteenth century.

In a word, the Devil got what we may call an en tire victory over mankind, and drove the worship of the true God, in a manner, quite out of the world, forcing, as it were, his Maker, in a new kind of Creation, the old one proving thus ineffectual, to recover a certain number by force, and mere omnipotence, to return to their duty, serve him, and worship him. But of that hereafter.

OF GODS CALLING A CHURCH out of the midst of a de generate world; and of Satan’s new measures upon that incident. How he attacked them immediately; and his success in those attacks.

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SATAN HAVING, AS I have said in the preceding chapter, made, as it were, a full conquest of mankind; de bauched them all to idolatry; and brought them at least to worship the true God by the wretched medium of corrupt and idolatrous representations; God seemed to have no true servants or worshippers left in the world; but if I may be allowed to speak so, was obliged, in order to restore the world to their senses again, to call a select number out from among the rest, who he himself undertook should own his godhead, or supreme authority, and worship him as he required to be worshipped. This, I say, God was obliged to do, because it is evident it has not been done so much by the choice and counsel of men, for Satan would have overruled that part, as by the power and energy of some irresistible and invincible operation, and this our Divines give high names to; but be it what they will, it is the second defeat or disappointment that the Devil has met with in his progress in the world; the first I have spoken of already.

It is true, Satan very well understood what was threatened to him in the original promise to the Woman immediately after the fall; namely, Thou shalt bruise his head, &c., but he did not expect it so suddenly, but thought himself sure of mankind, till the fulness of time when the Messiah should come; and therefore it Avas a great surprise to him, to see that Abraham, being called, was so immediately received and established, though he did not so immediately follow the voice that directed him, yet in him, in his loins, was all God’s church at that time contained.

In the calling Abraham, it is easy to see that there was no other way for God to form a church, that is to say, to single out a people to himself, as the world was then stated, but by immediate revelation, arid a voice from heaven. All mankind were gone over to the enemy, overwhelmed in idolatry: in a word were en gaged to the Devil; God Almighty, or, 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.