that time, make it not reasonable to suggest, that the devils were confined to their eternal prison, at their expulsion out of heaven; but that they were in a state of liberty to act, though limited in acting, of which I shall also speak in its place.
Chapter 7
OF THE NUMBER OF SATAN’S host. How they came first to know of the new-created worlds now in being; and their measures with makind upon the discovery.
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SEVERAL THINGS HAVE been suggested to set us a calculating the number of this frightful throng of devils, who with Satan, the master-devil, was thus cast out of heaven. I cannot say I am so much master of political arithmetic, as to cast up the number of the beast, no, nor the number of the beasts or devils, who make up this throng. St. Francis, they tell us, or some other saint, they do not say who, asked the Devil once, how strong he was? for St. Francis, you must know, was very familiar with him: the Devil, it seems, did not tell him; but presently raised a great cloud of dust, by the help, I suppose, of a gust of wind, and bid that saint count it: he was, I suppose, a calculator, that would be called grave, who, dividing Satan’s troops into three lines, cast up the number of the devils of all sorts in each battalia, at ten hundred times a hundred thousand millions of the first line, fifty millions of times as many in the second line, and three hundred thousand times as many as both in the third line.
The impertinence of this account would hardly have given it a place here, only to hint, that it has always been the opinion, that Satan’s name may well be called a noun of multitude, and that the Devil and his angels are certainly no inconsiderable number. It was a smart repartee that a Venetian nobleman made to a priest, who rallied him upon his refusing to give something to the church, which the priest demanded for the delivering him from purgatory; when the priest asking him, “if he knew what an innumerable number of devils there were to take him?” he answered. “ yes, he knew how many devils there were in all.” “ How many?” says the priest; his curiosity, I suppose being raised by the novelty of the answer. “Why, ten millions five hundred and eleven thousand six hundred and seventy-five devils and an half,” says the nobleman. “ An half,” says the priest, “ pray what kind of a devil is that?” “ Yourself,” says the nobleman; “for you are half a devil already, (and will be a whole one when you come there;) for you are for deluding all you deal with, and bringing us soul and body into your hands, that you may be paid for letting us go again.” So much for their number.
Here also it would come in very aptly, to consider the state of that long interval between the time of their expulsion from heaven, and the creation of the world; and what the posture of the Devil’s affairs might be, during that time. The horror of their condition can only be conceived of at a distance, and especially by us, who, being embodied creatures, cannot fully judge of what is, or is not, a punishment to seraphs and spirits; but it is just to suppose they suffered all that spirits of a seraphic nature were capable to sustain, consistent with their existence; notwithstanding which they retained still the hellishness of their rebellious principles; namely, their hatred and rage against God, and their envy at the felicity of his creatures.
As to how long their time might be, I shall leave that search, no lights being given me that are either probable or rational; and we have so little room to make a judgment of it, that we may as well believe Father M— — who supposes it to be an hundred thousand years, as those who judge it one thousand years; it is enough that we are sure, it was before the creation, how long before is not material to the Devil’s history, unless we had some records of what happened to him, or was done by him, in the interval.
During the wandering condition the Devil was in at that time, we may suppose him and his whole clan to be employed in exerting their hatred and rage at the Almighty, and at the happiness of the remaining faithful angels, by all the ways they had power to show it.
From this determined stated enmity of Satan and his host against God, and at everything that brought glory to his name, Mr. Milton brings in Satan, (when first he saw Adam in Paradise, and the felicity of his station there,) swelling with rage and envy, and taking up a dreadful resolution to ruin Adam and all his posterity, merely to disappoint his Maker of the glory of his creation. I shall come to speak of that in its place.
How Satan, in his remote situation, got intelligence of the place where to find Adam out, or that any such thing as a man was created, is matter of just speculation, and there might be many rational schemes laid for it. Mr. Milton does not undertake to tell us the particulars, nor indeed could he find room for it; perhaps, the Devil, having, as I have said, a liberty to range over the whole void or abyss, which we want as well a name for, as indeed powers to conceive of, might have discovered, that the Almighty creator had formed a new and glorious work, with infinite beauty and variety, filling up the immense waste of space, in which he, (the Devil,) and his angels, had roved for so long a time, without finding anything to work on, or to exert their apostate rage in against their Maker.
That at length they found the infinite untrodden space on a sudden, spread full with glorious bodies, shining in self-existing beauty, with a new and to them unknown lustre, calted light. They found these luminous bodies, though immense in bulk, and infinite in number, yet fixed in their wondrous stations regular and exact in their motions, confined in their proper orbits, tending to their particular centres, and enjoying every one their peculiar systems, within which were contained innumerable planets, with their satellites or moons, in which, again, a reciprocal influence, motion, and revolution, conspired to form the most admirable uniformity of the whole.
Surprised, to be sure, with this sudden and yet glorious work of the Almighty, (for the creation was enough, with its lustre, even to surprise the Devils,) they might reasonably be supposed to start out of their dark retreat, and with a curiosity not below the seraphic dignity (for these are some of the things which the angels desire to look into) to take a flight through all the amazing systems of the fixed suns or stars, which we see now but at a distance, and only make astronomical guesses at.
Here the Devil found not subject of wonder only, but matter to swell his revolted spirit with more rage, and to revive the malignity of his mind against his Maker, and especially against this new increase of glory, which to his infinite regret was extended over the whole waste, and which he looked upon, as we say in human affairs, as a pays conquis, or, if you will have it in the language of the Devil, as an invasion upon his kingdom.
Here it naturally occurred to them, in their state of envy and rebellion, that though they could not assault the impregnable walls of heaven, and could no more pretend to raise war in the place of blessedness and peace; yet that perhaps they might find room in this new, and however glorious, yet inferior kingdom or creation, to work some despite to their great Creator, or to affront his majesty in the person of some of his new-made creatures; and upon this they may be justly supposed to double their vigilance, in the survey they resolve to take of these new worlds, however great, numberless, and wonderful.
What discoveries they may have made in the other and greater worlds, than this earth, we have not yet had an account: Possibly they are conversant with other parts of God’s creation, besides this little, little globe, which is but as a point in comparison of the rest; and with other of God’s creatures besides man, who may, according to the opinion of our philosophers, inhabit those worlds; but as nobody knows that part but the Devil, we shall not trouble ourselves with the inquiry.
But it is very reasonable, and indeed probable, that the Devils were more than ordinarily surprised at the nature and reason of all this glorious creation, after they had, with the utmost curiosity, viewed all the parts of it. The glories of the several systems; the immense spaces in which those glorious bodies that were created, and made part of it, were allowed respectively to move; the innumerable fixed stars, as so many suns in the centre of so many distant solar systems; the (likewise innumerable) dark opaque bodies receiving light, and depending upon those suns respectively for such light, and then reflecting that light again upon, and for the use of, one another. To see the beauty and splendor of their forms, the regularity of their position, the order and exactness,