‘View them to Day conversing with their God,
‘His Image both enjoy’d and understood,
‘To Morrow skulking with a sordid Flight, ‘Among the Bushes from the Infinite, ‘As if that Power was blind, which gave them Sight; ‘With senseless Labour Tagging Fig-Leaf Vests, ‘To hide their Bodies from the sight of Beasts. ‘Hark! how the Fool pleads faint, for forfeit Life, ‘First he reproaches Heaven, and then his Wife; ‘The Woman which thou gav’st as if the Gift ‘Could rob him of the little Reason left, ‘A weak Pretence to shift his early Crime, ‘As if accusing her would excuse him; ‘But thus encroaching Crime dethrones the Sense, ‘And intercepts the Heavenly Influence, ‘Debauches Reason, makes the Man a Fool, ‘And turns his active Light to Ridicule.
It must be confess’d that it was unaccountable Degeneracy, even of their common Reasoning, which Adam and Eve both fell into upon the first committing the Offence of taking the forbidden Fruit: If that was their being made as Gods, it made but a poor Appearance in its first coming, to hide their Nakedness when there was no body to see them, and cover themselves among the Bushes from their Maker; but thus it was, and this the Devil had brought them to, and well might he, and all the Clan of Hell, as Mr. Milton brings them in, laugh and triumph over the Man after the Blow was given, as having so egregiously abused and deluded them both.
But here, to be sure, began the Devil’s new Kingdom; as he had now seduc’d the two first Creatures, he was pretty sure of Success upon all the Race, and therefore prepar’d to attack them also, as soon as they came on; nor was their encreasing Multitude any Discouragement to his Attempt, but just the contrary; for he had Agents enough to employ, if every Man and Woman that should be born was to want a Devil to wait upon them, separately and singly to seduce them; whereas some whole Nations have been such willing subjects to him, that one of his Seraphic Imps may, for ought we know, have been enough to guide a whole Country; the People being entirely subjected to his Government for many Ages; as in America, for example, where some will have it, that he convey’d the first Inhabitants, at least if he did not, we don’t well know who did, or how they got thither.
And how came all the Communication to be so entirely cut off between the Nations of Europe and Africa, from whence America must certainly have been peopl’d, or else the Devil must have done it indeed? I say, how came the Communication to be so entirely cut off between them, that except the time, whenever it was, that People did at first reach from one to the other, none ever came back to give their Friends any account of their Success, or invite them to follow? Nor did they hear of one another afterwards, as we have Reason to think: Did Satan politically keep them thus asunder, lest News from Heaven should reach them, and so they should be recover’d out of his Government? We cannot tell how to give any other rational Account of it, that a Nation, nay a Quarter of the World, or as some will have it be, half the Globe, should be peopled from Europe or Africa, or both, and no body ever go after them, or come back from them in above three thousand years after.
Nay, that those Countries should be peopled when there was no Navigation in use in these Parts of the World, no Ships made that could carry Provisions enough to support the People that fail’d in them, but that they must have been starved to death before they could reach the Shore of America; the Ferry from Europe or Africa, in any Part (which we have known Navigation to be practised in) being at least 1000 Miles, and in most Places much more.
But as to the Americans, let the Devil and they alone to account for their coming Thither, this we are certain of, that we knew nothing of them for many hundred Years; and when we did, when the Discovery was made, they that went from Hence found Satan in a full and quiet Possession of them, ruling them with an arbitrary Government, particular to himself; He had led them into a blind Subjection to himself, nay, I might call it Devotion, for it was all of Religion that was to be found among them) worshipping horrible Idols in his Name, to whom he directed human Sacrifices continually to be made, till he deluged the Country with Blood, and ripen’d them up for the Destruction that follow’d, from the Invasion of the Spaniards, who he knew would hurry them all out of the World as fast as he (the Devil) himself could desire of them.
But to go back a little to the Original of Things, It is evident that Satan has made a much better Market of Mankind, by thus subtilly attacking them, and bringing them to break with their Maker as he had done before them, than he could have done by fulminating upon them at first, and sending them all out of the World at once; for now he has peopled his own Dominions with them, and tho’ a Remnant are snatch’d as it were out of his Clutches, by the Agency of Invincible Grace, of which I am not to discourse in this Place; yet this may be said of the Devil, without Offence, that he has in some Sense carried his Point, and as it were forc’d his Maker to be satisfied with a Part of Mankind, and the least Part too, instead of the great Glory he would have brought to himself by keeping them all in his Service.
Mr. Milton, as I have noted above, brings in the Devil and all Hell with him, making a Feu de Joye for the Victory Satan obtain’d over one silly Woman; indeed it was a Piece of Success greater in its Consequence than in the immediate Appearance; nor was the Conquest so compleat as Satan himself imagin’d to make, since the Promise of a Redemption out of his Hands, which was immediately made to the Man, in behalf of himself and his believing Posterity, was a great Disappointment to Satan, and as it were snatch’d the best Part of his Victory out of his Hands.
It is certain the Devils knew what the meaning of that Promise was, and who was to be the Seed of the Woman, namely, the incarnate Son of God, and that it was a second Blow to the whole infernal Body; but as if they had resolved to let that alone, Satan went on with his Business; and as he had introduc’d Crime into the common Parent of Mankind, and thereby secured the Contamination of Blood, and the Descent or Propagation of the corrupt Seed, he had nothing to do but to assist Nature in time to come, to carry on its own Rebellion, and act it self in the Breasts of Eve’s tainted Posterity; and that indeed has been the Devil’s Business ever since his first Victory upon the Kind, to this Day.
His Success in this Part has been such, that we see upon innumerable Occasions a general Defection has follow’d; a kind of a Taint upon Nature, call it what you will, a Blast upon the Race of Mankind; and were it not for one thing, he had ruined the whole Family; I say, were it not for one thing, namely, a selected Company or Number, which his Maker has resolv’d he shall not be able to corrupt, or if he does, the sending the promis’d Seed shall recover back again from him, by the Power of irresistible Grace; which Number thus selected or elected, call it which we will, are still to supply the Vacancies in Heaven, which Satan’s Defection left open; and what was before fill’d up with created Seraphs, is now to be restor’d by recover’d Saints, by whom infinite Glory is to accrue to the Kingdom of the Redeemer.
This glorious Establishment has robb’d Satan of all the Joy of his Victory, and left him just where he was, defeated and disappointed; nor does the Possession of all the Myriads of the Sons of Perdition, who yet some are of the Opinion will be snatch’d from him too at last; I say, the Possession of all these makes no amends to him, for he is such a Devil in his Nature, that the Envy at those he cannot seduce, eats out all the Satisfaction of the Mischief he has done in seducing all the rest; but I must not preach, so I return to things as much needful to know, tho’ less solemn.
Chap. IX.
Of the Progress of Satan in carrying on his Conquest over Mankind, from the Fall of Eve to the Deluge.
I doubt if the Devil was ask’d the Question