the house from the Devil, conquered, naked, and wounded, but of this power of the Devil I shall speak by itself.

In a word, and to sum up all the Devil's story from his first expulsion, it stands thus: for so many years as were between his fall and the creation of man, though we have no memoirs of his particular affairs, we have reason to believe he was without any manner of employment, but a certain tormenting endeavour to be always expressing his rage and enmity against heaven. I call it tormenting, because ever disappointed; every thought about it proving empty; every attempt towards it abortive; leaving them only light enough to see still more and more reason to despair of success; and that this made his condition still more and more a hell than it was before.

After a space of duration in this misery, which we have no light given us to measure or judge of, he at length discovered the new creation of man, as above, upon which he soon found matter to set himself to work upon, and has been busily employed ever since.

And now, indeed, there may be room to suggest a local hell, and the confinement of souls (made corrupt and degencrate by him) to it, as a place; though he himself, as is still apparent by his actings, is not yet confined to it; of this hell, its locality, extent, dimensions, continuance, and nature, as it does not belong to Satan's history, I have a good excuse for saying nothing, and so put off my meddling with that, which if I would meddle with, I could say nothing to the purpose.

CHAPTER VIII.

F THE POWER OF THE DEVIL AT THE TIME OF THE CREATION OF THIS WORLD; AND WHETHER IT HAS NOT BEEN FARTHER STRAITENED AND LIMITED SINCE THAT TIME, AND WHAT SHIFTS AND STRATAGEMS HE IS OBLIGED TO MAKE USE OF TO COMPASS HIS DESIGNS UPON MANKIND.

CUNNING men have fabled, and though it be without either religion, authority, or physical foundation, it may be we may like it never the worse for that, that when God made the stars and all the heavenly luminaries, the Devil, to mimic his Maker, and insult his new creation, made comets, in imitation of the fixed stars; but that the composition of them being

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combustible, when they came to wander in the abyss, rolling by an irregular ill-grounded motion, they took fire, in their approach to some of those great bodies of flame, the fixed stars; and being thus kindled, like a firework unskilfully let off, they then took wild and eccentric, as also different motions of their own, out of Satan's direction, and beyond his power to regulate ever after.

Let this thought stand by itself, it matters not to our purpose whether we believe anything of it or no; it is enough to our case, that if Satan had any such power then, he has no such power now, and that leads me to inquire into his more recent limitations.

I am to suppose, he and all his accomplices being confounded at the discovery of the new creation, and racking their wits to find out the meaning of it, had at last, no matter how, discovered the whole system, and concluded, as I have said, that the creature called man was to be their successor in the heavenly mansions; upon which, I suggest that the first motion of hell was to destroy this new work, and, if possible, to overwhelm it; but when they came to make the attempt, they found their chains were not long enough, and that they could not reach to the extremes of the system; they had no power either to break the order, or stop the motion, dislocate the parts, or confound the situation of things. They traversed, no doubt, the whole work, visited every star, landed upon every solid, and sailed upon every fluid in the whole scheme, to see what mischief they could do; but, upon a long and full survey, came to this point in their inquiry, that, in short, they could do nothing by force; that they could not displace any part, annihilate any atom, or destroy any life in the whole creation; but that as omnipotence had created it, so the same omnipotence had armed it at all points against the utmost power of hell, had made the smallest creature in it invulnerable, as to Satan; so that without the permission of the same power which had made heaven, and conquered the Devil, he could do nothing at all, as to destroying anything that God had made, no, not the little diminutive thing called man, who Satan saw so much reason to hate, as being created to succeed him in happiness in heaven; Satan found him placed out of his power to hurt, or out of his reach to touch; and here, by the way, appears the second conquest of heaven over the Devil; that having placed his rival, as it

were, just before his face, and showed the hateful sight to him, he saw written upon his image, Touch him, if you dare.

It cannot be doubted, but, had it not been thus, man is so far from being a match for the Devil, that one of Satan's least imps or angels could destroy all the race of them in the world, ay, world and all, in a moment; as he is prince of the power of the air, taking the air there for the elementary world, how easily could he, at one blast, sweep all the surface of the earth into the sea, or drive the weighty immense surges of the ocean over the whole plane of the earth, and deluge the globe at once with a storm; or how easily could he, who, by the situation of his empire, must be supposed able to. manage the clouds, draw them up in such position as should naturally produce thunders and lightnings, cause those lightnings to blast the earth, dash in pieces all the fine buildings, burn all the populous towns and cities, and lay waste the world; at the same time command suited quantities of sublimated air to burst out of the bowels of the earth, and overwhelm and swallow up in the opening chasms, all the inhabitants of the globe. In a word, Satan, left to himself as a Devil, and to the power, which by virtue of his seraphic original he must be vested with, was able to have made devilish work in the world, if by a superior power he was not restrained.

But there is no doubt, at least to me, but that with his fall from heaven, as he lost the rectitude and glory of his angelic nature, I mean his innocence, so he lost the power too that he had before; and that when he first commenced devil, he received the chains of restraint too, as the badge of his apostacy, viz., a general prohibition to do anything to the prejudice of this creation, or to act anything by force or violence without special permission.

This prohibition was not sent him by a messenger, or by an order in writing, or proclaimed from heaven by a law; but Satan, by a strange, invisible, and unaccountable impression felt the restraint within him; and at the same time that his moral capacity was not taken away, yet his power of exerting that capacity felt the restraint, and left him unable to do, even what he was able to do, at the same time.

I make no question but the Devil is sensible of this restraint, that is to say, not as it is a restraint only, or as an effect of his expulsion from heaven; but as it prevents his capital

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design against man, who, for the reason I have given already, he entertains a mortal hatred of, and would destroy with all his heart, if he might; and, therefore, like a chained mastiff, we find him oftentimes making a horrid hellish clamour and noise, barking and howling, and frightening the people, letting them know that if he was loose he would tear them to pieces; but at the same time his very fury shakes his chain, which lets them know to their satisfaction, he can only bark, but cannot bite.

Some are of opinion that the Devil is not restrained so much by the superior power of his sovereign and Maker; but that all his milder measures with man are the effect of a political scheme, and done upon mature deliberation; that it was resolved to act thus in the great council or p— -t of devils, called upon this very occasion, when they first were informed of the creation of man; and especially when they considered what kind of creature he was, and what might probably be the reason of making him, viz., to fill up the vacancies in heaven; I say, that then the devils resolved, that it was not for their interest to fall upon him with fury and rage, and so destroy the species, for that this would be no benefit at all to them, and would only cause another original man to be created; for that they knew God could, by the same omnipotence, form as many new species of creatures as he pleased; and, if he thought fit, create them in heaven too, out of the reach of devils or evil spirits, and that therefore to destroy man would no way answer their end.

On the other hand, examining strictly the mould of this new creature, and of what materials he was formed; how mixed up of a nature convertible and pervertible, capable indeed of infinite excellence, and consequently of eternal felicity; but subject likewise to corruption and degeneracy, and consequently to eternal misery; that instead of being fit to supply the places of Satan and his rejected tribe (the expelled angels) in heaven, and filling up the thrones or stalls in the celestial choir, they might, if they could but be brought into crime, become a race of rebels and traitors like the rest, and so come at last to keep them company, as well in the place of eternal misery, as in the merit of it; and, in a word, become devils instead of angels.

Upon this discovery, I say, they found it infinitely more for the interest of Satan's infernal kingdom, to go another

way to work with mankind, and see if it were possible, by the strength of all their infernal wit and councils, to lay some snare for him, and by some stratagem to bring him to eternal ruin and misery.

This being then approved as their only method (and the Devil showed he was no fool in the choice), he next resolved that there was no time to be lost; that it was to be set about immediately, before the race was multiplied, and before, by that means, the work be not made greater only, but perhaps the more difficult too; accordingly, the diligent Devil went instantly about it, agreeable to all the story of Eve and the serpent, as before; the belief of which, whether historically or allegorically, is not at all obstructed by this hypothesis.

I do not affirm that this was the case at first, because being not present in that black divan, at least not that I know of, for who knows where he was or was not in his pre-existent state? I cannot be positive in the resolve that passed there; but except for some very little contradiction, which we find in the sacred writings, I should, I confess, incline to believe it historically; and I shall speak of those things which I call contradictions to it, more largely hereafter.

In the mean time, be it one way or other, that is to say, either that Satan had no power to have proceeded with man by violence, and to have destroyed him as soon as he was made; or that he had the power, but chose rather to proceed by other methods to deceive and debauch him; I say, be it which you please, I am still of the opinion that it really was not the Devil's business to destroy the species; that it would have been nothing to the purpose, and no advantage at all to him, if he had done it; for that, as above, God could immediately have created another species to the same end, whom he either could have made invulnerable, and not subject to the Devil's power, or removed him out of Satan's reach, placed him out of the Devil's ken, in heaven, or some other place, where the Devil could not come to hurt him; and that, therefore, it is infinitely more his advantage, and more suited to his real design of defeating the end of man's creation, to debauch him and make a devil of him, that he may be rejected like himself, and increase the infernal kingdom and company in the lake of misery in æternum.