ht him upon
equal Hazard, in which the injur'd Person is as often kill'd as the
Person offering the Injury: Suppose now it be in the same Case _as
above_, a Man abuses my Wife, and then to give me Satisfaction, tells
me, he will fight me, which the _French_ call _doing me Reason_; _No
Sir_, say I, _let me lie with your Wife too, and then if you desire it,
I may fight you; then I am upon even Terms with you_; but this indeed is
the Reasoning which the _Devil_ has brought Mankind too at this Day: But
to go back to the Subject, _viz._ the Devil bringing the Nations to fall
out, and to quarrel for Room in the World, and so to fight in order to
dispossess one another of their Settlements: This began at a Time when
certainly there were Places enough in the World for every one to choose
in, and therefore the _Devil_, not the want of Elbow-room, must be the
Occasion of it; and 'tis carried on ever since, as apparently from the
same Interest, and by the same original.

But we shall meet with this Part again very often in the _Devil_'s
Story, and as we bring him farther on in the Management of Mankind, I
therefore lay it by for the Present, and come to the next Steps the
_Devil_ took with Mankind after the Confusion of Languages, and this was
in the Affair of Worship; It does not appear yet that ever the _Devil_
was so bold, as either,

1. To set himself up to be worship'd as a God, or which was still worse,

2. To persuade Man to believe there was no God at all to worship.

Both these are introduc'd since the Deluge, _one_ indeed by the _Devil_,
who soon found Means to set himself up for a God in many Parts of the
World, and holds it to this Day; but the _last_ is brought in by the
Invention of Man, in which it must be confess'd Man has out-sin'd the
Devil; for to do Satan justice, he never thought it could ever pass upon
Mankind, or that any Thing so gross would go down with them; so that,
_in short_, these modern Casuists, in the Reach of our Days, have, _I
say_, out-sin'd the _Devil_.

As then both these are modern Inventions, _Satan_ went on gradually, and
being to work upon human Nature by Stratagem, not by Force, it would
have been too gross to have set himself up as an Object of Worship at
first, it was to be done Step by Step; _for Example_.

1. It was sufficient to bring Mankind to a Neglect of God, to
worship him by halves, and give little or no Regard to his Laws,
and so grow loose and immoral, in