All these happy and successful undertakings, though it is no more to be doubted they were done by the agency of Satan, and in a very surprising manner too, yet were all done in secret, by what I call possession and injection, and by the agency and contrivance of such instruments, or by the Devil in the disguise of such servants as he found out fitted to be employed in his work, and whom he took a more effectual care in concealing of.
But we shall have occasion to touch all this part over again, when we come to discourse of the particular habits and disguises which the Devil has made use of, all along in the world, the better to cover his actions, and to conceal his being concerned in them.
In the mean time the cunning or artifice the Devil makes use of in all these things is in itself very considerable; it is an old practice of his using, and he has gone on in divers measures, for the better concealing himself in it; which measures, though he varies sometimes, as his extraordinary affairs require, yet they are in all ages much the same, and have the same tendency; namely, that he may get all his business carried on by the instrumentality of fools; that he may make mankind agents in their own destruction; and that he may have all his work done in such’ a manner as that he may seem to have no hand in it; nay, he contrives so well, that the very name devil is put upon his opposite party, and the scandal of the black agent lies all upon them.
In order then to look a little into his conduct, let us inquire into the common mistakes about him, see what use is made of them to his advantage, and how far mankind is imposed upon in those particulars, anoTo what purpose.
Chapter 4.
OF SATAN’S AGENTS OR missionaries, and their actings upon and in the winds of me?i, in his name.
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INFINITE ADVANTAGES attend the Devil in his retired government, as they respect the management of his interests, and the carrying on his absolute monarchy in the world; particularly as it gives him room to act by the agency of his inferior ministers and messengers, called on many occasions his angels, of whom he has an innumerable multitude at his command, enough, for aught we know, to spare one to attend every man and woman now alive in the world; and of whom, if we may believe our second sight Christians, the air is always as full as a beam of the evening sun is of in sects, where they are ever ready for business, and to go and come as their great governor issues out orders for their directions.
These, as they are all of the same spirituous quality with himself, and consequently invisible like him, ex cept as above, are ready upon all occasions to be sent to and into any such person, and for such purposes, superior limitations only excepted, as the grand director of devils, (the Devil, properly so called.) guides them; and be the subject, or the object, what it will, that is to say, be the person they are sent to. or into, as above, who it will, and the business the messenger is to do what it will, they are sufficiently qualified; for this is a particular to Satan’s messengers or agents, that they are not like us human devils here in the world, some bred up one way, and some another, some of one trade, some of another, and consequently some fit for some business, some for another, some good for something, and some good for nothing, but his people are every one fit for everything, can find their way everywhere, and are a match for everybody they are sent to; in a word, there are no foolish devils, they are all fully qualified for their employment, fit for anything he sets them about, and very seldom mistake their errand, or fail in the business they are sent to do.
Nor is it strange at all, that the Devil should have such a numberless train of deputy devils to act under him; for it must be acknowledged he has a great deal of business upon his hands, a vast deal of work to do, abundance of public affairs under his direction, and an infinite variety of particular cases always before him. For example:
How many governments in the world are wholly in his administration? How many divans and great councils under his direction? Nay, I believe, it would be hard to prove, that there is or has been one council of state in the world for many hundred years past, down to the year 1713, (we do not pretend to come nearer home,) where the Devil by himself, or his agents, in one shape or another, has not sat as a member, if not taken the chair.
And though some learned authors may dispute this point with me, by giving some examples, where the councils of princes have been acted by a better hand, and where things have been carried against Satan’s interest, and even to his great mortification, it amounts to no more than this; namely, that in such cases the Devil has been outvoted; but it does not argue but he might have been present there, and have pushed his interest as far as he could, only that he had not the success he expected; for I don’t pretend to say that he has never been disappointed; but those examples are so rare, and of so small signification, that when I come to the particulars, as I shall do in the sequel of this history, you will find them hardly worth naming; and that, take it one time with another, the Devil has met with such a series of success in all his affairs, and has so seldom been balked; and where he has met with a little check in his politics, has, notwithstanding, so soon, and so easily recovered himself, regained his lost ground, or replaced himself in another country, when he has been supplanted in one, that his empire is far from being lessened in the world for the last thousand years of the Christian establishment.
Suppose we take an observation from the beginning of Luther, or from the year 1420, and call the Reformation a blow to the Devil’s kingdom, which before that was come to such an height in Christendom, that it is a question not yet thoroughly decided, whether that medley of superstition and horrible heresies, that mass of enthusiasm and idols, called the Catholic hierarchy, was a church of God, or a church of the Devil; whether it was an assembly of saints, or a synagogue of Satan: I say, take that time to be the epoch of Satan’s declension, and of Lucifer’s falling from heaven, that is, from the top of his terrestrial glory; yet, whether he did not gain in the defection of the Greek church, about that time, and since, as much as he lost in the reformation of the Roman, is what authors are not yet agreed about, not reckoning what he has regained since of the ground which he had lost even by the reformation; namely, the countries of the Duke of Savoy’s dominion, where the reformation is almost eaten out by persecution; the whole Valtoline, and some adjacent countries; the whole kingdom of Poland, and almost all Hungary; for, since the last war, the reformation, as it were, lies gasping for breath, and expiring, in that country; also several large provinces in Germany, as Austria, Carinthia, and the whole kingdom of Bohemia, where the reformation once powerfully planted, received its death’s wound at. the battle of Prague, anno 1627, and languished but a very little while, died, and was buried, and good king Popery reigned in its stead.
To these countries thus regained to Satan’s infernal empire, let us add his modern conquests, and the en croachments he has made upon the reformation in the present age, which are, however light we make of them, very considerable; namely, the Electorate of the Rhine, and the Palatinate, the one fallen to the House of Bavaria, and the other to that of Newburgrr, both popish; the Duchy of Deux Fonts fallen just now to a popish branch, the whole Electorate of Saxony fallen under the power of popish government by the apostasy of their princes, and more likely to follow the fate of Bohemia, whenever the diligent Devil can bring his new project in Poland to bear, as it is more than probable he will do some time or other.
But to sum up the dull story; we must add, in the roll of the Devil’s conquests, the whole kingdom of France, where we have in one year seen, to the im mortal glory of the Devil’s politics, that his measures have prevailed to the total extirpation of the protestant churches without a war; and that interest, which for two hundred years