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destroyed them all; he moved the Sabeans to fall upon the oxen arid the asses, and carry them off; he moved the Chaldeans to fall upon the camels and the servants, to carry off the first, and murder the last; he made lightning flash upon the poor sheep, and kill them all; and he blowed his house down upon his poor children, and buried them all in the ruins.
Now here is a specimen of Satan’s good will to mankind, and what havoc the Devil would make in the world, if he might; and here is a testimony too, that he could not do this without leave; so that I cannot but be of the opinion he has some limitations, some bounds set to his natural fury; a certain number of links in his chain, which he cannot exceed, or, in a word, that he cannot go a foot beyond his tether.
The same kind of evidence we have in the gospel, (Matt. viii. 31,) where Satan could not so much as possess the filthiest and meanest of all creatures, the swine, till he had asked leave; and that still, to show his good will, as soon as he had gotten leave, he hurried them all into the sea, and choked them; these, I say, are some of the reasons why I am not willing to say, the Devil is not restrained in power. But, on the other side, we are told of so many mischievous things the Devil has done in the world, by virtue of his dominion over the elements, and by other testimonies of his power, that I do not know what to think of it; though, upon the whole, the first is the safest opinion; for if we should believe the last, we might, for aught I know, be brought, like the American Indians, to worship him at last, that he may do us no harm.
And now I have named the Indians in America, I confess it would go a great way in favor of Satan’s generosity, as well as in testimony of his power, if we might believe all the accounts which indeed authors are pretty well agreed in the truth of; namely, of the mischiefs the Devil does in those countries, where his dominion seems to be established; how he uses them when they deny him the homage he claims of them as his due; what havoc and combustion he makes among them; and how beneficent he is (or at least negative in his mischiefs) when they appease him by their hellish sacrifices.
Likewise we see a test of his wicked subtilty in his management of those dark nations, when he was more immediately worshipped by them; namely, the making them believe, that all their good weather, rains, dews, and kind influences upon the earth, to make it fruitful, were from him; whereas they really were the common blessings of an higher hand, and came not from him, (the Devil,) but from him that made the Devil, and made him a devil, or a fallen angel, by his curse.
But to go back to the method the Devil took with the first of mankind; it is plain the policy of hell was right, though the execution of the resolves they took did not fully answer their end neither: for Satan, fastening upon poor, proud, ridiculous Mother Eve, as I have said before, made presently a true judgment of her capacities, and of her temper; took her by the right handle, and, soothing her vanity, (which is, to this day. the softest place in the head of all the sex,) wheedled her out of her senses by praising her beauty, and promising to made her a goddess.
The foolish woman yielded presently, and that we are told is the reason why the same method so strangely takes with all her posterity; namely, that you are sure to prevail with them, if you can but once persuade them that you believe they are witty and handsome; for the Devil, you may observe, never quits any hold he gets; and, having once found a way into the heart, always takes care to keep the door open, that any of his agents may enter after him without any more difficulty: hence the same argument, especially the last, has so bewitching an influence on the sex, that they rarely deny you anything, after they are but weak enough, and vain enough, to accept of the praises you offer them on that head: on the other hand, you are sure they never forgive you the unpardonable crime of saying they are ugly or disagreeable. It is suggested, that the first method the Devil took to insinuate all those fine things into Eve’s giddy head was by creeping close to her one night, when she was asleep, and laying his mouth to her ear, whispering all the fine things to her, which he knew would set her fancy on tip-toe, and so make her receive them involuntarily into her mind; knowing well enough, that when she had formed such ideas in her soul, however they came there, she would never be quiet till she had worked them up to some extraordinary thing or other.
It was evident what the Devil aimed at, namely, that she should break in upon the command of God, and so, having corrupted herself, bring the curse upon herself and all the race, as God. had threatened: but why the pride of Eve should be so easily tickled by the notion of her exquisite beauty, when there then was no prospect of the use or want of those charms, that indeed makes a kind of difficulty here, which the learned have not determined. For,
1. If she had been as ugly as the Devil, she had nobody to rival her; so that she need not fear Adam should leave her, and get another mistress.
2. If she had been as bright and as beautiful as an angel, she had no other admirer but poor Adam; and he could have no room to be jealous of her, or afraid she should cuckold him; so that, in short, Eve had no such occasion for her beauty, nor could she make any use of it to a bad purpose, or to a good; and therefore I believe the Devil, who is too cunning to do anything that signifies nothing, rather tempted her by the hope of increasing her wit, than her beauty.
But to come back to the method of Satan’s tempting her; namely, by whispering to her in her sleep. It was a cunning trick, that is the truth of it; and by that means he certainly set her head a madding after deism, and to be made a goddess; and then backed it by the subtle talk he had with her afterwards.
I am the more particular upon this part, because, however the Devil may have been the first that ever practised it, yet I can assure him the experiment has been tried upon many a woman since, to the wheedling her out of her modesty, as well as her simplicity; and the cunning men tell us still, that if you can come at a woman when she is in a deep sleep, and whisper to her close to her ear, she will certainly dream of the thing you say to her, and so will a man too.
Well, be this so to her race or not, it was, it seems, so to her; for she waked with her head filled with pleasing ideas, and, as some will have it, unlawful desires; such as, to be sure, she had never entertained before. These are supposed to be fatally infused in her dream, and suggested to her waking soul, when the organ ear which conveyed them was dozed and insensible; strange fate of sleeping in paradise! that whereas we have notice but of two sleeps there, that in one a woman should go out of him, and in the other the Devil should come into her.
Certainly, when Satan first made the attempt upon Eve, he did not think he should have so easily conquered her, or have brought his business about so soon; the Devil himself could not have imagined she should have been so soon brought to forget the command given, or at least who gave it, and have ventured to transgress against him. and made her forget, that God had told her, it should be death to her to touch it; and, above all, that she should aspire to be as wise as him, who was so ignorant before, as to believe it was for fear of her being like himself, that he had forbid it her.
Well might she be said to be the weaker vessel, though Adam himself had little enough to say for his being the stronger of the two, when he was over-persuaded (if it were done by persuasion,) by his wife to the same thing.
And mark how wise they were after they had eaten, and what fools they both acted like, even to one another; nay, even all the knowledge they attained to by it, was, for aught I see, only to know that they were fools, and to be sensible both of sin and shame; and see how simply they acted, I say, upon their having committed the crime, and being detected in it:
“View them today conversing with their God,
His image both enjoyed 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 labor 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 gavest,’ as if the gift
Could rob him of the little reason left;