John Milton - 3 books to know The Devil

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THE INTRODUCTION.

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I HAVE EXAMINED THE antiquities of Satan’s history in the former part of this work, and brought his affairs down from the creation, as far as to our blessed Christian times; especially to the coming of the Messiah, when one would think the Devil could have nothing to do among us. I have indeed but touched at such things which might have admitted of a farther description of Satan’s affairs, and the particulars of which we may all come to a farther knowledge of hereafter; yet I think I have spoken to the material part of his conduct, as it relates to his empire in this world. What has happened to his more sublimated government, and his angelic capacities, I shall have an occasion to touch at in several solid particulars as we go along.

The Messiah was now born, the fullness of time was come, that the Old Serpent was to have his head broken; that is to say, his empire or dominion over man, which he gained by the fall of our first father and mother in paradise, received a downfall or overthrow.

It is worth observing, in order to confirm what I have already mentioned of the limitation of Satan’s power, that not only his angelic strength seems to have received a farther blow upon the coming of the Son of God into the world, but he seems to have had a blow upon his intellects; his serpentine craft and devil-like subtilty seems to have been circumscribed, and cut short; and instead of his being so cunning a fellow as before, when, as I said, it is evident he outwitted all mankind, not only Eve, Cain, Noah, Lot, and all the patriarchs, but even nations of men, and that in their public capacity; and thereby led them into absurd and ridiculous things, such as the building of Babel, and deifying and worshipping their kings, when dead and rotten; idolizing beasts, stocks, stones, anything, and even nothing; and, in a word, when he managed mankind just as he pleased.

Now, and from this time forward, he appeared a weak, foolish, ignorant Devil, compared to what he was before. He was upon almost every occasion resisted, disappointed, balked and defeated; especially in all his attempts to thwart or cross the mission and ministry of the Messiah, while he was upon earth, and sometimes upon other and very mean occasions too.

And first; how foolish a project was it, and how below Satan’s celebrated artifice in like cases, to put Herod upon sending to kill the poor innocent children in Bethlehem, in hopes to destroy the infant i for I take it for granted, it was the Devil put into Herod’s thoughts that execution, how simple and foolish soever; now we must allow him to be very ignorant of the nativity himself, or else he might easily have guided his friend Herod to the place where the infant was.

This shows that either the Devil is in general ignorant, as we ace, of what is to come in the world, before it is really come to pass; and, consequently, can fortell nothing, no not so much as our famous old Merlin or Mother Shipton did; or else that great event was hid from him by an immediate power superior to his, which I cannot think neither, considering how much he was concerned in it, and how certainly he knew that it was once to come to pass.

But be that as it will, it is certain the Devil knew nothing where Christ was born, or when; nor was he able to direct Herod to find him out; and therefore put him upon that foolish, as well as cruel order, to kill all the children, that he might be sure to destroy the Messiah among the rest.

The next simple step that the Devil took, and indeed the most foolish one that he could ever be charged with, unworthy the very dignity of a devil, and below the understanding that he always was allowed to act with, was that of coming to tempt the Messiah in the wilderness; it is certain, and he owned it himself afterwards, upon many occasions, that the Devil knew our Saviour to be the Son of God; and it is as certain that he knew, that as such he could have no power or advantage over him; how foolish then was it in him to attack him in that manner, “if thou beest the Son of God?” why he knew him to be the Son of God well enough; he said so afterwards, “ I know thee who thou art, the holy one of God;” how then could he be so weak a devil as to say, if thou art, then do so and so?

The case is plain, the Devil, though he knew him to be the Son of God, did not fully know the mystery of the incarnation; nor did he know how far the inanition of Christ extended, and whether, as man, he was not subject to fall as Adam was, though his reserved godhead might be still immaculate and pure; and upon this foot, as he would leave no method untried, he attempts him three times, one immediately after another; but then, finding himself disappointed, he fled.

This evidently proves, that the Devil was ignorant of the great mystery of godliness, as the text calls it, God manifest in the flesh; and therefore made that foolish attempt upon Christ, thinking to have conquered his human nature, as capable of sin, which it was not: and at this repulse hell groaned; the whole army of regimented devils received a wound, and felt the shock of it; it was a second overthrow to them; they had a long chain of success; carried a devilish conquest over the greatest part of the creation of God: but now they were cut short, the seed of the woman was now come to break the serpent’s head; that is, to cut short his power, to contract the limits of his kingdom, and, in a word, to dethrone him in the world. No doubt the Devil received a shock; for you find him, always afterward, crying out in a horrible manner, whenever Christ met with him, or else very humble and submissive; as when he begged leave to go into the herd of swine, a thing he has often done since.

Defeated here, the first stratagem I find him concerned in after it, was his entering into Judas, and putting him upon betraying Christ to the chief priest; but here again he was entirely mistaken; for he did not see, as much a devil as he was, what the event would be. But, when he came to know, that if Christ was put to death, he would become a propitiatory, and be the great sacrifice of mankind, so to rescue the fallen race from that death they had incurred the penalty of, by the fall; that this was the fulfilling of all scripture prophecy; and that thus it was that Christ was to be the end of the law; I say, as soon as he perceived this, he strove all he could to prevent it, and disturbed Pilate’s wife in her sleep, in order to set her upon her husband to hinder his delivering him up to the Jews; for then, and not till then, he knew how Christ was to vanquish hell by the power of his cross.

Thus the Devil was disappointed and exposed in every step he took; and as he now plainly saw his kingdom declining, and even the temporal kingdom of Christ rising up upon the ruins of his (Satan’s) power, he seemed to retreat into his own region the air, and to consult there with his fellow devils, what measures he should take next to preserve his dominion among men. Here it was that he resolved upon that truly hellish thing called persecution; by which, though he proved a foolish devil in that too, he flattered himself he should be able to destroy God’s church, and root out its professors from the earth, even almost as soon as it was established; whereas, on the contrary, Heaven counteracted him there too; and though he armed the whole Roman empire against the Christians, that is to say, the whole world, and they were fallen upon everywhere, with all the fury and rage of some of the most flaming tyrants that the world ever saw. of whom Nero was the first; yet, in spite of hell, God made all the blood, which the Devil caused to be spilt, to be semen ecclesia;; and the Devil had the mortification to see, that the number of Christians increased, even under the very means he made use of to root them out, and destroy them. This was the case through the reign of all the Roman emperors, for the first three hundred years after Christ.