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same manner has he acted in our times, in order to conceal his interest, and conceal the influence he has had in the councils of the world.

Had it been possible for him to have raised the flames of rebellion and war so often in this nation, as he certainly has done? could he have agitated the parties on both sides, and inflamed the spirits of three nations, if he had appeared in his own dress, a mere naked devil?. It is not the Devil as a devil, that does the mischief, but the Devil in masquerade, Satan in full disguise, and acting at the head of civil confusion and distraction.

If history may be credited, the French court at the time of our old confusions was made the scene of Satan's politics, and prompted both parties in England and in Scotland also to quarrel; and how was it done? will any man offer to scandalize the Devil so much as to say, or so much as to suggest, that Satan had no hand in it all? did not the Devil, by the agency of Cardinal Richelieu, send four hundred thousand crowns at one time, and six hundred thousand at another, to the Scots, to raise an army and march boldly into England? and did not the same Devil, at the same time, by other agents, remit eight hundred thousand crowns to the other party, in order to raise an army to fall upon the Scote? nay, did not the Devil with the same subtlety send down the archbishop's order to impose the service-book upon the people in Scotland, and at the same time raise a mob against it, in the great church (at St. Giles's)? nay, did not he actually, in the person of an old woman (his favourite instrument), throw the three-legged stool at the service-book, and animate the zealous people to take up arms for religion, and turn rebels for God's sake?

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 who 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

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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, and to what purpose.

CHATPER IV.

OF SATAN'S AGENTS OR MISSIONARIES, AND THEIR ACTINGS UPON AND IN THE MINDS OF MEN IN HIS NAME.

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 insects, 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 spiritous quality with himself, and consequently invisible like him, except as

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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, 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, they are no foolish devils, they are all fuily 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 do not 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 a 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, viz., 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, ann. 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 encroachments he has made upon the Reformation in the present age, which are, however light we make of them, very considerable; viz., the

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electorate of the Rhine and the Palatinate, the one fallen to the house of Bavaria, and the other to that of Neuburg, both popish; the duchy of Deux Ponts, fallen just now to a popish branch; the whole electorate of Saxony, fallen under the power of popish government, by the apostacy of their princes, and more likely to follow the fate of Bohemia, whenever the dilligent Devil can bring his new project in Poland to bear, as it is more than probable he will do some time or other, by the growing zeal as well as power of (that house of bigots) the house of A

But to sum up the dull story; we must add in the roll of the Devil's conquests, the whols kingdom of France, where we have in one year seen, to the immortal glory of the Devil's politics, that is measures have prevailed to the total extirpation of the protestant churches, without a war; and that interest, which for two hundred years had supported itself in spite of persecutions, massacres, five civil wars, and innumerable battles and slaughters, at last received its mortal wound from its own champion Henry IV., and sunk into utter oblivion, by Satan's most exquisite management, under the agency of his two prime ministers Cardinal Richelieu and Lewis XIV., whom he entirely possessed.

Thus far we have a melancholy view of the Devil's new conquests, and the ground he has regained upon the Reformation, in which his secret management has been so exquisite, and his politics so good, that could he bring but one thing to pass, which, by his own former mistake (for the devil is not infallible), he has rendered impossible, he would bring the protestant interest so near its ruin, that heaven would be, as it were, put to the necessity cf working by miracle to prevent it; the case is thus:

Ancient historians tell us, and from good authority, that the Devil, finding it for his interest to bring his favourite Mahomet upon the stage, and spread the victorious half-moon upon the ruin of the cross, having with great success raised first the Saracen empire, and then the Turkish, to such a height, as that the name of Christian seemed to be extirpated in those two quarters of the world, which were then not the greatest only, but by far the most powerful, I mean Asia and Africa; having totally laid waste all those ancient and flourishing churches of Africa, the labours of St. Cyprian, Tertullian, St. Augustine, and six hundred and seventy Christian bishops