Page:History of the devil, ancient and modern (1).pdf/12

12 which was in imagination to reach up to heaven, was carried before it was interrupted, and the builders confounded; how their speech was altered, how many tongues it was divided into; or whether they were divided at all; and how many subdivisions or dialects have been since that, by which means very few of God's creatures, except the brutes, understand one another, or care one farthing whether they do or no.

In all these things, Satan who no doubt would make a very good chronologist, could settle every epocha, correct every calendar, and bring all our accounts of time to a general agreement; as well as the Grecian Olympiades, the Turkish Heghira, the Chinese fictitious account of the world's duration, as our blind Julian and Gregorgian accounts, which have put the world to this day, into such confusion, that we neither agree in our holy days or working days or feasts, nor keep the same Sabbaths in any part of the same globe.

The glorious figure which Satan is supposed to make, among the thrones and dominions in heaven, is such as we might dispose the highest angel in that exalted train could make.

Hence that notion (and not ill founded); namely that the first cause of his disgrace, and on which ensued his rebellion, was occasioned upon God's proclaiming his son generalissimo, and with himself supreme ruler in heaven: giving the dominions of all his works of creation, as well already finished, as not then begun, to him; which post of honour (say they) Satan expected to be conferred on himself, as next in honour, majesty and power, to God the supreme.