work upon human nature by stratagem, not by force, it would have been too gross to have set himself up as an object of worship at first; it was to be done step by step: for ex ample:
1. It was sufficient to bring mankind to a neglect of God, to worship him by halves, and give little or no regard to his laws, and so grow loose and immoral, in direct contradiction to his commands; this would not go down with them at first; so the Devil went on gradually.
2. From a negligence in worshipping the true God, he by degrees introduced the worship of false gods: and to introduce this, he began with the sun, moon, and stars, called in the holy text the host of heaven; these had greater majesty upon them, and seemed fitter to command the homage of mankind; so it was not the hardest thing in the world to bring men, when they had once forgotten the true God, to embrace the worship of such gods as those.
3. Having thus debauched their principles in worship, and led them from the true and only object of worship to a false, it was the easier to carry them on; so in a few gradations more he brought them to downright idolatry; and even in that idolatry he proceeded gradually too; for he began with awful names, such as were venerable in the thoughts of men, as Baal or Bel, which, in the Chaldaic and Hebrew, signifies lord or sovereign, or mighty and magnificent; and this was therefore a name ascribed at first to the true God; but afterwards they descended to make images and figures to represent him, and then they were called by the same name, as Baal, Baalim, and afterwards Bel; from which, by an hellish degeneracy, Satan brought mankind to adore every block of their own hewing, and to worshipping stocks, stones, monsters, hobgoblins, and every sordid frightful thing, and at last the Devil himself.
What notions some people may entertain of the forwardness of the first ages of the world to run into idolatry, I do not inquire here; I know they tell us strange things, of its being the product of mere nature, one remove from its primitive state; but I, who pre tend to have so critically inquired into Satan’s history, can assure you, and that from very good authority, that the Devil did not find it so easy a task to obliterate the knowledge of the true God in the minds and consciences of men, as those people suggest.
It is true he carried things a great length under the patriarchal government of the first ages; but still he was sixteen hundred years bringing it to pass: and though we have reason to believe the old world, before the flood, was arrived to a very great height of wickedness; and Ovid very nobly describes it by the war of the Titans against Jupiter; yet we do not read that ever Satan was come to such a length as to bring them to idolatry: indeed we do read of wars carried on among them, whether it was one nation against another, or only personal, we cannot tell: but the world seemed to be swallowed up in a life of wickedness, that is to say, of luxury and lewdness, rapine and violence; and there were giants among them, and men of renown, that is to say, men famed for their mighty valor, great actions of war, we may suppose, and their strength, who personally opposed others. We read of no considerable wars indeed; but it is not to be doubted but there were such wars; or else it is to be understood that they lived (in common) a life somewhat like the brutes, the strong devouring the weak; for the texts say, the whole earth was filled with violence, hunting and tearing one another in pieces, either for dominion, or for wealth; either for ambition, or for avarice, we know not well which.
Thus far the old antediluvian world went; and very wicked they were, there is no doubt of that; but we have reason to believe that was no idolatry; the Devil had not brought them that length yet; perhaps it would soon have followed, but the deluge intervened.
After the deluge, as I have said, he had all his work to do over again, and he went on by the same steps; first he brought them to violence and Avar, then to oppression and tyranny, then to neglect of true worship, then to false worship, and then idolatry by the mere natural consequence of the thing. Who were the first nation or people that fell from the worship of the true God. is something hard to determine; the Devil, who certainly of all God’s creatures is best able to inform us, having left us nothing upon record upon that subject: but we have reason to believe it was thus introduced:
Nimrod was the grandson of Ham, Noah’s second son, the same who was cursed by his father for exposing him in his drunkenness: this Nimrod was the first whom it seems Satan picked out for an hero: here he inspired him with ambitious thoughts, dreams of em pire, and having the government of all the rest, that is to say, universal monarchy; the very same bait with which he has played upon the frailty of princes, ano> ensnared the greatest of them ever since, even from his most august imperial majesty King Nimrod the first, to his most Christian majesty Louis XIV., and many a mighty monarch between.
When these mighty monarchs and men of fame went off the stage, the world had their memories in esteem many ages after; and as their great actions were no otherwise recorded than by oral tradition, and the tongues and memories of fallible men, time and the custom of magnifying the past actions of kings, men soon fabled up their histories, Satan assisting, into miracle and wonder: hence their names were had in veneration more and more; statues and bustoes representing their persons, and great actions, were set up in public places, till from heroes and champions they made gods of them; and thus (Satan prompting) the world was quickly filled with idols.
This Nimrod is he, who, according to the received opinion, though I do not find Satan’s history exactly concurring with it, was first called Belus, then Baal, and worshipped in most of the eastern countries under those names; sometimes with additions of surnames, according to the several countries, or people, or towns, where he was particularly set up, as Baal-Peor, BaalZephon, Baal-Phegor, and in other places plain Baal, as Jupiter in aftertimes had the like additions: as Jupiter Ammon, Jupiter Capitolinus, Jupiter Pistor, Jupiter Feretrius, and about ten or twelve Jupiters more.
I must acknowledge that I think it was a masterpiece of hell, to bring the world to idolatry so soon after they had had such an eminent example of the infinite power of the true (jrod, as was seen in the deluge, and particularly in the escape of Noah in the ark; to bring them (even before Noah or his sons were dead) to forget whose hand it was, and give the homage of the world to a name, and that a name of a mortal man dead and rotten, who was famous for nothing when he was alive, but blood and war; I say, to bring the world to set up this nothing, this mere name, nay, the very image and picture of him, for a God! It was first a mark of prodigious stupidity in the whole race of men, a monstrous de generacy from nature, and even from common sense; and in the next place it was a token of an inexpressible craft and subtility in the Devil, who had now gotten the people into so full and complete a management, that, in short, he could have brought them by the same rule, to have worshipped anything; and in a little while more, did bring many of them to worship himself, plain devil as he was. and knowing him to be such.
As to the antiquity of this horrible defection of mankind, though we do not find the beginning of it particularly recorded, yet we are certain, it was not long after the confusion of Babel: for Nimrod, as is said, was no more than Noah’s great-grandson, and Noah himself, I suppose, might be alive some years after Nimrod was born; and as Nimrod was not long dead, before they forgot that he was a tyrant, and a murderer, and made a Baal, that is, a lord or idol of him; I say, he was not long dead; for Nimrod was born in the year of the world 1847, and built Babylon the year 1879: and we find Terah, the father of Abraham, who lived from the year 1879, was an idolater, as was doubtless Bethuel, who was Terah’s grandson; for we find Laban, who was Bethuel’s son, was so, and all this was during the life of the first postdiluvian family; for Terah was born within one hundred ninety-three years after the flood, and one hundred fiftyseven years before Noah was dead; and even Abraham himself was eight-and-fifty years old before Noah died; and yet idolatry had been then, in all probability, above an hundred years practised in the world.
N. B. It is worth remark here, what a terrible advantage the Devil gained by the debauching poor Noah, and drawing him into the sin of drunkenness; for by this, as I said, he silenced and stopped the mouth of the great preacher of righteousness, that father and patriarch of the whole world; who not being able, for the shame of his own foul miscarriage, to pretend to instruct or reprove the world any
