Of Satan’s cruelty.—Instances thereof in his dealing with wounded spirits, in ordinary temptations of the wicked and godly, in persecutions, cruelties in worship.—His cruel handling of his slaves.
He that shall consider his malice and power, must unavoidably conclude him to be cruel. Malice is always so where it hath the advantage of a proportionable strength and opportunity for the effecting of its hateful contrivances. It banisheth all pity and commiseration, and follows only the dictate of its own rage, with such fierceness, that it is only limited by wanting power to execute. We may then say of Satan, that according to his malice and power such is his cruelty. The truth of this will be abundantly manifested by instances: as,
1. First, From his desperate pursuits of advantage upon those whose spirits are wounded. The anguish of a distressed conscience is unspeakably great, insomuch that many are, as Heman, Ps. lxxxviii. 15, ‘even distracted, while they suffer the terrors of the Almighty.’ These, though they look round about them for help, and invite all that pass by to pity them, ‘because the hand of the Lord hath touched them,’ [Job xix. 21,] yet Satan laughs at their calamity, and mocks at them under their fears, and doth all he can to augment the flame. He suggests dreadful thoughts of an incensed majesty, begets terrible apprehensions of infinite wrath and damnation, he aggravates all their sins to make them seem unpardonable. Every action he calls a sin, and every sin he represents as a wilful forsaking of God, and every deliberate transgression he tells them is ‘the sin against the Holy Ghost.’ He baffles them in their prayers and services, and then accuseth their duties for intolerable profanations of God’s name; and if they be at last affrighted from them, he then clamours that they are ‘forsaken of God’ because they have forsaken him. He, as a right Baal-zebub,[132] rakes in their wounds, as flies are ever sucking where there is a sore. Their outcries and lamentations are such music to him, that he gives them no rest; and with such triumph doth he tread upon those that thus lie in the dust, that he makes them sometimes accuse themselves for that which they never did, and in derision he insults over them in their greatest perplexities, with this, ‘Where is now thy God?’ [Ps. xlii. 3,] and ‘Who shall deliver thee out of my hand?’ This were enough to evidence him altogether void of compassion. But,
2. Secondly, He shews no less cruelty in his usage of those that are his slaves. The service that he exacts of those that are his most willing servants, is no less than the highest cruelty; and not only [1.] in regard of the misery and destruction which he makes them work out for themselves, which is far greater than where men are forced by the most brutish tyrants to buy their own poison or to cut their own throats, because this is unspeakably less than the endless miseries of eternal torments; but [2.] also in regard of the very slavery and drudging toil of the service which he exacts from them. He is not pleased that they sin, but the vilest iniquities most contrary to God and most abominable to man, as the highest violations of the laws of nature and reason, are the things which he will put them upon, where there are no restraints in his way. He drave the heathens, as Paul testifies, Rom. i., to affections so vile and loathsome, that in their way of sinning they seemed to act rather like brutes than men, their minds becoming so injudicious that they lost all sense of what was fit and comely. Neither [3.] doth this satisfy his cruelty, that the worst of abominations be practised, but he urgeth them to the highest desperateness in the manner of performance, and so draws them out to the front of the battle, that they might contemn and outdare God to his face. He will have them sin with a high hand, and in the highest bravado of madness to rush into sin as ‘the horse into the battle.’ This cruelty of Satan were yet the less if he only brought them forth presumptuously in some one or two set battles upon special occasions; but [4.] he would have this to be their constant work, the task of every day, upon the same score that Ahithophel advised Absalom to an open and avouched defilement of his father’s concubines, that so the breach betwixt them and God might be fixed by a resolute determination, and consequently that their hands might be strong and their hearts hardened in rebellion against God. And [5.] that Satan might not come short of the utmost of what cruelty could do, we may yet further observe, that though sinners offer themselves willingly enough to conflict against God in the high places of the field, yet, as not satisfied with their forwardness, he lasheth and whips them on to their work, and sometime overdrives them in their own earnestness. Haman was so hurried and overborne with violent hatred against Mordecai and the Jews, that his own advancement and the marks of singular favour from the king availed him not, as to any satisfaction and present contentment, Esther v. 13. Ahab, though king of Israel, is so vehemently urged in his desires for Naboth’s vineyard, that he covered his face and grew sick upon it, [1 Kings xxi. 1, seq.] Thus as galley-slaves were they chained to their oar, and forced to their work beyond their own strength.
3. Thirdly, There is also a cruelty seen in his incessant provokings and force upon the children of God, while he urgeth his loathed temptations upon them against their will. When I consider Paul’s outcry in this case, Rom. vii. 15, 19, ‘That which I do, I allow not; the evil which I would not, that do I,’ &c., my thoughts represent him to me, like those Christians that were tortured in the trough, where water was poured by a continued stream upon their mouths, till the cloth that lay upon their lips was forced down their throats; or like those that had stinking puddle-water by a tunnel poured into their stomachs, till they were ready to burst; and surely he apprehended himself to be under very cruel dealing by Satan when he cried out, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?’ If we seriously consider the mind and endeavours of those children of God that are striving against sin, and have cast it off as the most loathsome abominable thing, when Satan urgeth them to evil with his incessant importunities, it is as if they were forced to eat their own excrements, or to swallow down again their own vomit; for the devil doth but as it were cram these temptations down their throats against their will.
4. Fourthly, If we cast our eye upon the persecutions of all ages, we shall have thence enough to charge Satan withal in point of cruelty, for he who is styled ‘a murderer from the beginning,’ [John viii. 44,] set them all on foot. It is he that hath filled the world with blood and fury, and hath in all ages, in one place or other, made it a very shambles and slaughter-house of men. [1.] Can we reckon how often Satan hath been at this work? That is impossible. His most public and general attempts of this kind are noted by histories of all ages. The persecutions of Pharaoh against Israel, and of the prevailing adversaries of Israel and Judah against both or either of them, are recorded for the most part in Scripture. The persecutions of the Roman emperors against Christianity are sufficiently known, and what is yet to come who can tell? A great persecution by Antichrist was the general belief and expectation of those that lived in Austin’s time, and long before; but whether this be one more to the ten former persecutions, that so the parallel betwixt these and Pharaoh’s ruin in the Red Sea after his ten plagues might run even, be only to be looked for, or that others are also to be expected, he thinks it would be presumption and rashness to determine.[133] But, however, his particular assaults of this nature cannot be numbered: how busy is he still at this work in all times and places! insomuch that ‘He that will live godly in this world must suffer persecution,’ 2 Tim. iii. 12. But [2.] If we withal consider what inventions and devices of cruelty and torture he hath found out, and what endless variety of pains and miseries he hath prepared, a catalogue whereof would fill a great deal of paper, we can do no less than wonder at the merciless fury and implacable rage of him that contrived them. Satan, the great engineer, doth but give us the picture of his mind in all those instruments of destruction. And when we see amongst tyrants ways of torturing every member of the body, and arts of multiplying deaths, that so those that perish by their hands might not have so much as the mercy of a speedy despatch, but that they might feel themselves to die, we may reflect it upon Satan, in Jacob’s words to Simeon and Levi, ‘Cursed be his anger, for it is fierce; and his wrath, for it is cruel,’ [Gen. xlix. 7.] [3.] But if we consider what instruments he useth, and against whom, we shall see cruelty in a higher exaltation. Had he used some of the beasts of the earth, or some of his apostate associates, to persecute and afflict the innocent lambs of Christ, it might have been much excused from the natural instinct or cursed antipathy of such agents; or had he used only the vilest of the children of men to act his tragical fury, the matter had been less; but as not content with common revenge, he persecutes men by men, though all of one blood and offspring, and so perverts the ends of nature, making those that should be the comforts and support of men to be the greatest terror and curse to them—a thing which nature itself abhors, and in regard of which, that the impressions of pity might be more permanent and efficacious, God forbade Israel to ‘seethe a kid in the mother’s milk,’ [Exod. xxiii. 19;] nay, he hath prevailed with some of good inclinations and rare accomplishments—for such were some of the persecuting emperors—to be his deputies for authorising the rack, for providing fire and faggot, and, which is strange, hath prevailed so far with them, that they have been willing to open their ears to the most palpable lies, the grossest forgeries, the most unreasonable suggestions that known malice could invent; and then after all, when they were drawn out to butchery and slaughter by multitudes, they have made such spectacles—which might make impressions upon an iron breast or an adamant heart—only advancements of their jollity; and as Nero upon the sight of flaming Rome took his harp and made melody, so have these tormenting furies fired, by the help of combustible matter, multitudes of such harmless creatures, and then taken the opportunity of their light for their night sports. And yet, methinks, the devil hath discovered a keener fury when he hath made them rage against the dead, and dig their graves, and revenge themselves upon their senseless ashes, and when they could do no more, seek to please themselves by executing their rage against their pictures or statues; which actions, though they might be condemned for follies, yet are they evidences of highest fury, which commonly destroys the judgment, and sacrificeth wit, reason, and honour upon the altar of revenge. That the devil should so poison man’s nature that he should thus rise up against his fellow, that carries the same specific being with himself, shews enough of his temper against man, but never more than when he prevails against the engagements of kindness, blood, affinity, and relation, to raise a man’s enemies out of his own house, ‘the father against the son, and the son against the father, the daughter against the mother, and the mother against the daughter,’ [Mat. x. 35;] for this is little less than an unnatural mutiny of the members against the body.
5. Fifthly, We have yet a more visible instance of his cruelty in his bloody and tyrannical superstitions. Look but into the rites and ways of his worship among the heathen in all ages and places, and you will find nothing but vile and ridiculous fooleries, or insolent and despiteful usages. In the former he hath driven men to villainous debaucheries, in the latter to execrable cruelties. Of the latter I shall only speak; though in the former, by debasing man to be his laughing-stock, he is cruel in his scorn and mockery. Here I might mention his tyrannical ceremonies of the lower order, such as touch not life; such were their tedious pilgrimages, as in Zeilan; their painful whippings, as of the youth of Lacedæmon at the altar of Diana; of their priests, and that with knotted cords upon their shoulders, as at Mexico and New Spain; their harsh usages in tedious fastings, stinking drenches, hard lyings upon stones, eating earth, strict forbearances of wine and commerce, their torturings and manglings of their bodies by terrible lancings and cuttings for the effusion of blood, 1 Kings xviii.; their dismembering themselves, plucking out their eyes, mangling their flesh, to cast in the idol’s face, sacrificing their own blood, as did the priests of Bellona and Dea Syria.[134] So did the kings of New Spain at their election, as Montezuma the Second, who sacrificed by drawing blood from his ears and the calves of his legs.[135] In Narsinga and Bisnagar they go their pilgrimages with knives sticking on their arms and legs till the wounded flesh festered. Some cast themselves under the wheels of the waggon on which their idol is drawn in procession.[136] Yet are all these but small matters in comparison of the bloody outrages committed upon mankind in the abominable custom of sacrificing men to him. Of this many authors give us a large account.[137] The Lacedæmonians to avert the plague sacrifice a virgin; the Athenians, by the advice of Apollo’s oracle, sent yearly to King Minos seven males and so many females to be sacrificed to appease the wrath of the god for their killing of Androgeus. The Carthaginians, being vanquished by Agathocles, king of Sicily, sacrificed two hundred noblemen’s children at once. The Romans had every year such sacrifices of men and women, of each sex two, for a long time; and this was so common among the wiser pagan nations, that whensoever they fell into danger, either of war, sicknesses, or of any other calamity, they presently, to expiate their offences against their supposed incensed gods, and to clear themselves of their present miseries or dangers, sacrificed some mean persons, who for this reason were called καθάρματα, expiations,[138] and to this doth the apostle allude in 1 Cor. iv. 13, as Budæus, Stephanus, Grotius, and many others think; as if he should say, we are as much despised and loaded with cursings as those that are sacrificed for public expiation. But what cruel usage may we expect for the poor barbarous nations of the world, where he had all possible advantages for the exercise of his bloody tyranny! Many sad instances of this kind are collected by Purchas in his Pilgrimage, in his discourses of Virginia, Peru, Brasilia, Mexico, Florida, and other places, whose stories of this subject are so terrible, and occur so frequently, that they are almost beyond all belief,[139] all which for brevity’s sake I omit, contenting myself to note one instance or two out of the Scripture: 2 Kings iii. 27, the king of Moab ‘took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall.’ This he did, according to the customs of the Phœnicians and others, being reduced to great straits, as supposing by this means, as his last refuge, to turn away the wrath of his God. Of Ahaz it is recorded, 2 Chron. xxviii. 3, that ‘he burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen.’ That this was not a lustration or consecration of their children, though that also was used, but a real sacrificing, is without doubt to Josephus, who expresseth it thus: ‘He offered his son as an holocaust,’ [ὁλοκάυστωσε.] But whatever Ahaz did, it is certain the children of Israel did so; ‘They offered their sons and daughters to devils,’ Ps. cvi. 37. And if the ‘sacrifices of the dead’ which they ate in the wilderness, mentioned ver. 28, be understood of the feasts which were made at ‘the burning of their children,’ as some think[140]—though many understand it of their senseless dead gods or their deceased heroes, or for their deceased friends—then this cruelty had soon possessed them. However, possess them it did, as appears also by the description of their devouring Moloch, which the Jewish Rabbins say was a hollow brazen image in the form of a man, saving that it had the head of a calf, the arms stretched in a posture of receiving; the image was heated with fire, and the priest put the child in his arms, where it was burnt to death; in the meantime a noise was made with drums, that the cries of the child might not be heard, and hence was it called Tophet, from toph, which signifies a drum; so that the name and shape of the image shews that it was used to these execrable cruelties.[141]
These Scripture evidences, if we were backward to credit what histories say of this matter, may assure us of the temper and disposition of Satan, and may enable us to believe what bloody work he hath made in the world, which I shall briefly sum up in these particulars:—
[1.] First, These inhuman, or rather, as Purchas calls them, over-human sacrifices, were practised in most nations. Not only the Indians, Parthians, Mexicans, &c., but Æthiopians, Syrians, Carthaginians, Grecians, Romans, Germans, French, and Britons used them.
[2.] Secondly, These cruelties were acted not only upon slaves and captives, but upon children, whose age and innocency might have commanded the compassions of their parents for better usage.