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 Appearance for God's Worship that ever the World saw; I say, in the middle of all this, he drew him into such immoderate and insatiable an Appetite for Women, as to set up the first, and perhaps the greatest _Seraglio_ of Whores that ever any Prince in the World had, or pretended to before; nay, and to bring whoring so much into Reputation, that, as the Text says, seven hundred of them were Princesses; that is to say, Ladies of Quality: Not as the Grand Seigniors, and Great Moguls, (other Princes of the Eastern World) have since practised, namely, to pick up their most beautiful Slaves; but these, it seems, were Women of Rank, King's Daughters, as _Pharaoh_'s Daughter, and the Daughters of the Princes and prime Men among the _Moabites_, _Ammonites_, _Zidonians_, _Hittites_, &c. 1 _Kings_ xi. 1.