temptations and
several engines, he seeks to captivate our souls. The Lord of Lies, saith
[1222]Austin, "as he was deceived himself, he seeks to deceive others," the
ringleader to all naughtiness, as he did by Eve and Cain, Sodom and
Gomorrah, so would he do by all the world. Sometimes he tempts by
covetousness, drunkenness, pleasure, pride, &c., errs, dejects, saves,
kills, protects, and rides some men, as they do their horses. He studies
our overthrow, and generally seeks our destruction; and although he pretend
many times human good, and vindicate himself for a god by curing of several
diseases, _aegris sanitatem, et caecis luminis usum restituendo_, as Austin
declares, _lib. 10, de civit Dei, cap. 6_, as Apollo, Aesculapius, Isis, of
old have done; divert plagues, assist them in wars, pretend their
happiness, yet _nihil his impurius, scelestius, nihil humano generi
infestius_, nothing so impure, nothing so pernicious, as may well appear by
their tyrannical and bloody sacrifices of men to Saturn and Moloch, which
are still in use among those barbarous Indians, their several deceits and
cozenings to keep men in obedience, their false oracles, sacrifices, their
superstitious impositions of fasts, penury, &c. Heresies, superstitious
observations of meats, times, &c., by which they [1223] crucify the souls
of mortal men, as shall be showed in our Treatise of Religious Melancholy.
_Modico adhuc tempore sinitur malignari_, as [1224] Bernard expresseth it,
by God's permission he rageth a while, hereafter to be confined to hell and
darkness, "which is prepared for him and his angels," Mat. xxv.

How far their power doth extend it is hard to determine; what the ancients
held of their effects, force and operations, I will briefly show you: Plato
in Critias, and after him his followers, gave out that these spirits or
devils, "were men's governors and keepers, our lords and masters, as we are
of our cattle." [1225]"They govern provinces and kingdoms by oracles,
auguries," dreams, rewards and punishments, prophecies, inspirations,
sacrifices, and religious superstitions, varied in as many forms as there
be diversity of spirits; they send wars, plagues, peace, sickness, health,
dearth, plenty, [1226]_Adstantes hic jam nobis, spectantes, et
arbitrantes_, &c. as appears by those histories of Thucydides, Livius,
Dionysius Halicarnassus, with many others that are full of their wonderful
stratagems, and were therefore by those Roman and