All these were, it is true, in themselves most foolish suggestions, considering Moses was admitted to the vision of God, and that God had been pleased to appear to him in the most intimate manner; that, as they might depend God would not destroy his faithful servant, so they might have concluded he was ahle to support his being without food as long as he thought fit. But to a people so easy to believe anything, what could be too gross for the Devil to persuade them to?
A people who could dance round a calf, and call it their God, might do anything; that could say to one another, that this was the Great Jehovah, that brought them out of the land of Egypt; and that within so few days after God’s miraculous appearance to them, and for them; I say, such a people were really fitted to be imposed upon, nothing could be too gross for them.
This was indeed his first considerable experiment upon them as a people, or as a body; and the truth is, his affairs required it; for Satan, who had been a successful Devil in most of his attempts upon mankind, could hardly doubt of success in anything after he had carried his point at Mount Sinai. To bring them to idolatry in the very face of their deliverer, and just after the deliverance! It was more astonishing in the main than even their passing the Red Sea. In a word, the Devil’s whole history doth not furnish us with a story equally surprising.
And how was poor Aaron bewildered in it too! He that was Moses’ partner in all the great things that Moses did in Pharaoh’s sight, and that was appointed to be his assistant and oracle, or orator rather, upon all public occasions; that he, above all the rest, should come into this absurd and ridiculous proposal, he that was singled out for the sacred priesthood, for him to defile his holy hands with a polluted abominable sacrifice, and with making the idol for them too (for it is plain that he made it,) how monstrous it was!
And see what an answer he gives to his brother Moses, how weak! how simple! I did so and so, in deed; I bade them bring the ear-rings, &c., and I cast the gold into the fire, and it ca’me out this calf. Ridiculous! as if the calf came. out by mere fortuitous adventure, without a mould to cast it in: which could not be supposed. And if it had not come out so without a mould, Moses would certainly have known of it. Had Aaron been innocent, he would have answered after quite another manner, and told Moses honestly, that the whole body of the people came to him in a fright, that they forced him to make them an idol; which he did, by making first the proper mould to cast it in, and then taking the proper rnetal to cast it from. That indeed he had sinned in so doing, but that he was mobbed into it, and the people terrified him, perhaps they threatened to kill him; and, if he had added, that the Devil, prompting his fear, beguiled him, he had said nothing but what was certainly true; for if it was in Satan’s power to make the people insolent and outrageous enough to threaten and bully the old venerable prophet, (for he was not yet a priest.) who was the brother of their oracle Moses, and had been partner with him in so many of his commissions; I say, if he could bring up the passions of the people to an height to be rude and unmannerly to him, (Aaron.) and perhaps to threaten and insult him, he may be easily supposed to be able to intimidate Aaron, and terrify him into a compliance.
See this cunning agent, when he has man’s destruction in his view, how securely he acts! he never wants an handle; the best of men have one weak place or other, and he always finds it out, takes the advantage of it, and conquers them by one artifice or another; only take it with you as you go, it is always by stratagem, never by force; a proof that he is riot empowered to use violence. He may tempt, and he does prevail; but it is all legerdemain, it is all craft and artifice; he is still diabole, the calumniator and deceiver, that is, the misrepresenter; he misrepresents man to God. and misrepresents God to man; also he misrepresents things; he puts false colors, and then manages the eye to see them with an imperfect view, raising clouds and fogs to intercept our sight; in short, he deceives all our senses, and imposes upon us in things which otherwise would be the easiest to discern and judge of.
This indeed is in parf the benefit of the Devil’s history, to let us see that he has used the same method all along; and that ever since he has had anything to do with mankind, he has practised upon them with stratagem and cunning; also it is observable that he has carried his point better that way than he would have done by fury and violence, if he had been allowedto make use of it; for by his power indeed he might have laid the world desolate, and made an heap of rubbish of it long ago; but, as I have observed before, that would not have answered his ends half so well; for by destroying men he would have made martyrs, and sent abundance of good men to heaven, who would much rather have died than yielded to serve him, and, as he aimed to have it, to fall down and worship him; I say, he would have made martyrs, arid that not a few. But this was none of Satan’s business; his design lies quite another way; his business is to make men sin, not to make them suffer; to make devils of them, not saints; to delude them, and draw them away from their Maker, not send them away to him; and therefore he works by stratagem, not by force.
We are now come to his story, as it relates to the Jewish church in the wilderness, and to the children of Israel in their travelling circumstances; and this was the first scene of public management that the Devil had upon his hands in the world; for, as I have said, till now, he dealt with mankind either in their separate condition one by one, or else carried all before him, engrossing whole nations in his systems of idolatry, and overwhelming them in an ignorant destruction.
But having now a whole people as it were snatched away from him, taken out of his government, and, which was still worse, having a view of a kingdom being set up independent of him, and superior to his authority, it is not to be wondered at if he endeavored to overthrow them in the infancy of their constitution, and tried all possible arts to bring them back into his own hands again.
He found them not only carried away from the country where they were even in his clutches, surrounded with idols, and where we have reason to be lieve the greatest part of them were polluted with the idolatry of the Egyptians; for we do not read of any stated worship which they had of their own; or if they did worship the true God, we scarce know in what manner they did it; they had no law given them, nothing but the covenant of circumcision, and even
Moses himself had not strictly observed that, till he was frightened into it; we read of no sacrifices among them, no feasts were ordained, no solemn worship appointed; and how, or in what manner, they performed their homage, we know not; the passover was not ordained till just at their coming away; so that, there was not much religion among them, at least that we have any account of; and we may suppose the Devil was pretty easy with them all the while they were in the house of their bondage.
But now, to have a million of people fetched out of his hands, as it were all at once, and to have the im mediate power of heaven engaged in it, and that Satan saw evidently God had singled them out in a miraculous manner to favor them, and call them his own; this alarmed him at once; and therefore he resolves to follow them, lay close siege to them, and take all the measures possible to bring them to rebel against, and disobey God, that he might be provoked to destroy them; and how near he went to bring it to pass, we shall see presently.
This making a calf, and paying an idolatrous worship to it (for they acted the heathens and idolaters, not in the setting up the calf only, but in the manner of their worshipping, namely, dancing and music, things they had not been acquainted with in the worship of the true God,) I mention here, to observe how the Devil not only imposed upon their principles, but upon their senses too; as if the awful majesty of heaven, whose glory they had seen in mount Sinai, where they stood, and whose pillar of cloud and fire was their guide and protection, would be worshipped by dancing round a calf! and that not a living creature, or a real calf, but the mere image of a calf cast in gold, or, as some think, in brass gilded over.
But this was the Devil’s way with mankind, namely, to impose upon their senses, and bring them into the grossest follies and absurdities; and then, having first made them fools, it was much the easier