e
Interposition of some Medium which might receive their Adorations in his
Name.

Hence it occur'd presently, that subordinate Gods were to be found out
and set up, to whom the People might pay the Homage due to the supreme
God, and who they might worship in his Name; this I take from the most
ancient Account of Idolatry in the World; nor indeed could the Devil
himself find out any other Reason why Men should Cannonise or rather
Deify their Princes and Men of Fame, and worship them after they were
dead, as if they could save them from Death and Calamity, who were not
able to save themselves when they were alive; much less could _Satan_
bring Men to swallow so gross, so absurd a Thing as the bowing the Knee
to a Stock or a Stone, a Calf, an Ox, a Lion, nay the Image or Figure
of a Calf, such as the _Israelites_ made at Mount _Sinai_, and say,
_These be thy Gods, O_ Israel, _who brought thee out of the Land of_
Egypt.

Having thus, I say, brought them to satisfy themselves that they
worship'd the true God and no other, under the Figures and Appearances
which they made to represent him, it was easy after that to worship any
thing for the true God; and thus in a few Ages they worship'd nothing
but Idols, even throughout the whole World; nor has the _Devil_ lost
this hold in some Parts of the World, nay not in most Parts of the World
to this Day; He holds still all the Eastern Parts of _Asia_, and the
Southern Parts of _Africa_, and the Northern Parts of _Europe_, and in
them the vast Countries of _China_ and _Tartary_, _Persia_ and _India_,
_Guinea_, _Ethiopia_, _Zanquebar_, _Congo_, _Angola_, _Monomotapa_, &c.
in all which, _except Ethiopia_, we find no Vestiges of any other
worship but that of Idols, Monsters, and even the _Devil_ himself; till
after the very coming of our Saviour, and even then, if it be true that
the Gospel was preach'd in the _Indies_ and _China_ by St. _Thomas_, and
in other remote Countries by other of the Apostles; we see that whatever
Ground _Satan_ lost, he seems to have recovered it again; and all _Asia_
and _Africa_ is at present overrun with Paganism or Mahometanism, which
I think of the two is rather the worst; Besides all _America_, a Part of
the World, as some say, equal in Bigness to all the other, in which the
_Devil_'s Kingdom was never interrupted from its first being inhabited,
_whenever it was_, to the first Discovery of it by the _European_
Nations in the sixteenth Century.

In a