reat Mortification, it amounts to no more than this;
namely, that in such Cases the _Devil_ has been out-voted; but it does
not argue but he might have been present there, and have push'd his
Interest as far as he could, only that he had not the Success he
expected; for I don't 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 baulk'd;
and where he has met with a little Check in his Politicks, has
notwithstanding, so soon and so easily recover'd himself, regain'd his
lost Ground, or replac'd himself in another Country when he has been
supplanted in one, that his Empire is far from being lessen'd 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 'tis a
Question not yet thorowly decided, whether that Medley of Superstition
and horrible Heresies, that Mass of Enthusiam and Idols call'd the
Catholick 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 _Epocha_ 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 regain'd 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, receiv'd its Death's Wound at the Battle of _Prague_, _Ann._