From hence to the captivity, we find the Devil busy with the kings of Judah; especially the best of them. As for such as Manasseh, and those who transgressed by the general tenor of their lives, those he had no great trouble with,
But such as Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah, he hung about them, and their courts, till he brought every one of them into some mischief or other.
As first, good King Asa, of whom the Scripture says, his heart was perfect all his days, yet this subtle spirit, that could break in upon him nowhere else, tempted him, when the king of Israel came out against him, to send to hire Benhadad, the king of Syria, to help him; as if God, who had before enabled him to conquer the Ethiopians with an army of ten hundred thousand men, could not have saved him from the king of the ten tribes.
In the same manner he tempted Jehoshaphat to join with that wicked King Ahab against the king of Syria, and also to marry his son to Ahab’s daughter, which was fatal to Jehoshaphat, and to his posterity.
Again, he tempted Hezekiah to show all his riches to the king of Babylon’s messengers; and who can doubt, but that he (Satan) is to be understood by the wicked spirit which stood before the Lord, 2 Chron. xviii. 20, and offered his service to entice Ahab the king of Israel to come out to battle, to his ruin, by being a lying spirit in the months of all his prophets; and who, for that time, had a special commission, as he had another time, in the case of Job? and indeed, it was a commission fit for nobody but the Devil: “Thou shait entice him, and thou shalt also prevail: Go out, and do even so,” verse 21.
Even good Josiah himself, of whom it is recorded, that “like him there was no king before him, neither after him arose there any like him,” 2 Kings xxiii. 25, yet the Devil never left him with his machinations, till, finding he could not tempt him to anything wicked in his government, he tempted or moved him to a needless war with the king of Egypt, in which he lost his life.
From the death of this good king, the Devil prevailed so with the whole nation of the Jews, and brought them to such an incorrigible pitch of wickedness, that God gave them up, forsook his habitation of glory, the temple, which he suffered to be spoiled first, then burnt and demolished; destroying the whole nation of the Jews, except a small number that were left, and those the enemy carried away into captivity.
Nor was he satisfied with this general destruction of the whole people of Israel, for the ten tribes were gone before; but he followed them even into their captivity; those that fled away to Egypt, which they tell us were seventy thousand, he first corrupted, and then they were destroyed there, upon the overthrow of Egypt, by the same king of Babylon.
Also he went very near to have them rooted out. Young and old, man, woman, and child, who were in captivity in Babylon, by the ministry of that true agent of hell, Haman, the Agagite; but there Satan met with a disappointment too, as in the story of Esther, which was but the fourth that he had met with, in all his management since the creation; I say, there he was disappointed, and his prime minister, Haman, was ex alted, as he deserved.
Having thus far traced the government and dominion of the Devil, from the creation of man to the captivity; I think I may call upon him to set up his standard of universal empire, at that period; it seemed just then as if God had really forsaken the earth, and given the entire dominion of mankind up to his outrageous enemy the Devil; for, excepting the few Israelites which were left in the territories of the king of Babylon, and they were but a few, I say, except among them, there was not one corner of the world left where the true God was called upon, or his dominion so much as acknowledged; all the world was buried in idolatry, and that of so many horrid kinds, that one would think, the light of reason should have convinced mankind, that he who exacted such bloody sacrifices as that of Moloch, and such a bloody cutting themselves with knives, as the priests of Baal did, could not be a God, a good and beneficent being, but must be a cruel, voracious and devouring devil, whose end was not the good, but the destruction of his creatures. But to such a height was the blind, dementated world arrived at that time, that in these sordid and corrupt ways they went on worshipping dumb idols, and offering human sacrifices to them; and, in a word, committing all the most horrid and absurd abominations that they were capable of, or that the Devil could prompt them too, till heaven was again put, as it were, to the necessity of bringing about a revolution, in favor of his own forsaken people, by miracle and surprise, as he had done before,
We come therefore to the restoration or return of the captivity. Had Satan been able to have acted anything by force, as I have observed before, all the princes and powers of the world having been, as they really were, at his devotion, he might easily have made use of them, armed all the world against the Jews, and prevented the rebuilding the temple, and even the return of the captivity.
But now the Devil’s power manifestly received a check, and the hand of God appeared in it; and that he was resolved to reestablish his people the Jews, and to have a second temple built. The Devil who knew the extent of his own power too well, and what limitations were laid upon him, stood still, as it were, looking on, and not daring to oppose the return of the captivity, which he very well knew had been prophesied, and would come to pass,
He did indeed make some little opposition to the building, and to the fortifying the city, but as it was to no purpose, so he was soon obliged to give it over; and thus the captivity being returned, and the temple rebuilt, the people of the Jews increased and multiplied to an infinite number and strength; and from this time we may say, the power of the Devil rather declined and decreased, than went on with success, as it had done before: it is true the Jews fell into sects and errors, and divisions of many kinds, after the return from the captivity, and no doubt the Devil had a great hand in those divisions; but he could never bring them back to idolatry; and his not being able to do that, made him turn his hand so many ways to plague and oppress them; as particularly by Antiochus the Great, who brought the abomination of desolation into the holy place; and there the Devil triumphed over them for some time; but they were delivered many ways, till at last they came peaceably under the protection rather than the dominion of the Roman empire: when Herod the Great governed them as a king, and reedified, nay, almost rebuilt their temple, with so great an expense and magnificence, that he made it, as some say, greater and more glorious than that of Solomon’s; though, that I take to be a great fable, to say no worse of it.
In this condition the Jewish church stood, when the fullness of time, as it is called in scripture, was come; and the Devil was kept at bay, though he had made some encroachments upon them as above; for there was a glorious remnant of saints among them, such as old Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, and old Simeon, who waited for the salvation of Israel; I say, in this condition the Jewish church stood when the Messiah came into the world; which was such another mortal stab to the thrones and principalities infernal, as that of which I have spoken already, (chap, iii.,) at the creation of man; and therefore, with this I break off the antiquities of the Devil’s history, or the ancient part of his kingdom; for from hence downward we shall find his empire has declined gradually; and though, by his wonderful address, his prodigious application, and the vigilance and fidelity of his instruments, as well human as infernal and diabolical, and of the human as well the ecclesiastic as the secular, he has many times retrieved what he has lost, and sometimes bid fair for recovering the universal empire he once possessed over mankind; yet he has been still defeated again, repulsed, and beaten back, and his kingdom has greatly declined in many parts of the world; and especially in the northern parts, except Great Britain; and how he has politically maintained his interest, and increased his dominion among the wise and righteous generation that we cohabit with and among, will be the subject of the modern part of Satan’s history, and of which we are next to give an account.
Part II.
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Chapter 1
THE INTRODUCTION.
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