o murther his Brother _Amnon_, in Revenge for
_Tamar_'s Maidenhead.

Then he made _Joab_ run _Absalom_ thro' the Body, contrary to _David_'s
Command.

And after _David_'s Death he brought _Adonija_ (weak Man!) to the Block,
for usurping King _Solomon_'s Throne.

As to _Absalom_, he tempted him to Rebellion, and raising War against
his Father, to the turning him shamefully out of _Jerusalem_, and almost
out of the Kingdom.

He tempted him, for _David_'s farther Mortification, to lie with his
Father's Wives, in the Face of the whole City; and had _Achitophel_'s
honest Council been follow'd, he had certainly sent him to Sleep with
his Fathers, long before his time--But there _Satan_ and _Achitophel_
were both out-witted together.

Thro' all the Reigns of the several Successors of _David_, the _Devil_
took care to carry on his own Game, to the continual insulting the
Measures which God himself had taken for the establishing his People in
the World, and especially as a Church; till at last he so effectually
debauch'd them to Idolatry; that Crime which of all others was most
provoking to GOD, as it was carrying the People away from their
Allegiance, and transposing the Homage they ow'd God their Maker, to a
contemptible Block of Wood, or an Image of a brute Beast; and this how
sordid and brutish soever it was in it self, yet so did his Artifice
prevail among them, that, first or last, he brought them all into it,
the ten Tribes as well as the two Tribes; till at last God himself was
provoked to unchurch them, gave them up to their Enemies, and the few
that were left of them, after incredible Slaughters and Desolation,
were hurried away, some into _Tartary_, and others into _Babylon_, from
whence very few, of that few that were carried away, ever found their
Way Home again; and some, when they might have come, would not accept of
it, but continued there to the very coming of the Messiah. See Epistles
of St. _James_ and of St. _Peter_, at the Beginning.

But to look a little back upon this Part (for it cannot be omitted, it
makes so considerable a Part of the _Devil_'s History) I mean his
drawing God's People, Kings and all, into all the Sins and Mischiefs
which gradually contributed to their Destruction.

First, (_for he began immediately with the very best and wisest of the
Race_) he drew in King _Solomon_, in the midst of all his Zeal for the
building God's House, and for the making the most glorious and
magnificent