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alone constitutes heaven, and which makes all other places dreadful, and even darkness itself.

And this brings me directly to the point in hand, riz., the state of that hell which we ought to have in view when we speak of the Devil as in hell; this is the very hell which is the torment of the Devil; in short, the Devil is in hell, and hell is in the Devil; he is filled with this unquenchable fire, he is expelled the place of glory, banished from the regions of light; absence from the life of all beatitude is his curse, despair is the reigning passion in his mind; and all the little constituting parts of his torment, such as rage, envy, malice, and jealousy, are consolidated in this, to make his misery complete, viz., the duration of it all, the eternity of his condition; that he is without hope, without redemption, without recovery.

If anything can inflame this hell, and make it hotter, it is this only, and this does add an inexpressible horror to the Devil himself; namely, the seeing man (the only creature he hates) placed in a state of recovery, a glorious establishment of redemption formed for him in heaven, and the scheme of it perfected on earth; by which this man, though even the Devil by his art may have deluded him, and drawn him into crime, is yet in a state of recovery, which the Devil is not; and that it is not in his (Satan's) power to prevent it. Now take the Devil as he is in his own nature, angelic, a bright immortal seraph, heaven-born, and having tasted the eternal beatitude, which these are appointed to enjoy; the loss of that state to himself, the possession of it granted to his rival, though wicked like and as himself; I say, take the Devil as he is, having a quick sense of his own perdition, and a stinging sight of his rival's felicity, it is hell enough, and more than enough, even for an angel to support; nothing we can conceive of can be worse.

As to any other fire than this, such and so immaterially intense as to torment a spirit, which is itself fire also, I will not say it cannot be, because to Infinite everything is possible, but, I must say, I cannot conceive rightly of it.

I will not enter here into the wisdom or reasonableness of representing the torments of hell to be fire, and that fire to be a commixture of flame and sulphur; it has pleased God to let the horror of those eternal agonies about a lost heaven be laid before us by those similitudes or allegories which are

most moving to our senses and to our understandings; nor will I dispute the possibility, much less will I doubt but that there is to be a consummation of misery to all the objects of misery, when the Devil's kingdom in this world, ending with the world itself, that liberty he has now may be farther abridged; when he may be returned to the same state he was in between the time of his fall and the creation of the world, with perhaps some additional vengeance on him, such as at present we cannot describe, for all that treason and those high crimes and misdemeanors which he has been guilty of here in his conversation with mankind.

As his infelicity will be then consummated and completed, so the infelicity of that part of mankind who are condemned with him may receive a considerable addition from those words in their sentence, to be tormented with the Devil and his angels; for, as the absence of the supreme Good is a complete hell, so the hated company of the Deceiver, who was the great cause of their ruin, must be a subject of additional horror; and they will be always saying as a Scotch gentleman who died of his excesses said to the famous Dr. Pwho came to see him on his death-bed, but had been too much his companion in his life,

O tu fundamenta gessisti

I would not treat the very subject itself with any indecency, nor do I think my opinion of that hell which, I say, consists in the absence of him in whom is heaven, one jot less solemn than theirs who believe it all fire and brimstone; but I must own, that to me, nothing can be more ridiculous than the notions that we entertain and fill our heads with about hell, and about the devils being there tormenting of souls, broiling them upon gridirons, hanging them up upon hooks, carrying them upon their backs, and the like; with the several pictures of hell, represented by a great mouth with horrible teeth, gaping like a cave on the side of a mountain; suppose that appropriated to Satan in the Peak, which indeed is not much unlike it, with a stream of fire coming out of it, as there is of water, and smaller devils going and coming continually in and out, to fetch and carry souls the Lord knows whither, and for the Lord knows what.

These things, however, intended for terror, are indeed so ridiculous, that the Devil himself, to be sure, mocks at them,

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and a man of sense can hardly refrain doing the like, only I avoid it, because I would not give offence to weaker heads.

However, I must not compliment the brains of other men at the expense of my own, or talk nonsense because they can understand no other; I think all these notions and representations of hell and of the Devil to be as profane as they are ridiculous, and I ought no more to talk profanely than merrily of them.

Let us learn to talk of these things, then, as we should do ; and as we really cannot describe them to our reason and understanding, why should we describe them to our senses? we had, I think, much better not describe them at all, that is to say, not attempt it: the blessed apostle St. Paul was, as he said himself, carried up, or caught up, into the third heaven, yet when he came down again he could neither tell what he heard, or describe what he saw; all he could say of it was, that what he heard was unutterable, and what he saw was inconceivable.

It is the same thing as to the state of the Devil in those regions which he now possesses, and where he now more particularly inhabits; my present business, then, is not to enter into those grave things so as to make them ridiculous, as I think most people do that talk of them; but as the Devil, let his residence be where it will, has evidently free leave to come and go, not into this world only (I mean, the region of our atmosphere), but, for aught we know, to all the other inhabited worlds which God has made, wherever they are, and by whatsoever names they are, or may be, known or distinguished; for, if he is not confined in one place, we have no reason to believe he is excluded from any place, heaven only excepted, from whence he was expelled for his treason and rebellion.

His liberty, then, being thus ascertained, three things seem to be material for us to give an account of, in order to form this part of his history.

1. What his business is on this globe of earth, which we vulgarly call the world; how he acts among us; what affairs mankind and he have together; and how far his conduct here relates to us, and ours is, or may be, influenced by him.

2. Where his principal residence is, and whether he has not a particular empire of his own, to which he retreats upon proper occasions, where he entertains his friends when they come under his particular administration,

and where, when he gets any victory over his enemies, he carries his prisoners of war.

3. What may probably be the great business this black emperor has at present upon his hands, either in this world or out of it, and by what agents he works.

As these things may perhaps run promiscuously through the course of this whole work, and frequently be touched at under other branches of the Devil's history, so I do not propose them as heads of chapters or particular sections, for the order of discourse to be handled apart; for, by the way, as Satan's actings have not been the most regular things in the world, so, in our discourse about him, it must not be expected that we can always tie ourselves down to order and regularity, either as to time, or place, or persons; for Satan being hic et ubique, a loose, ungoverned fellow, we must be content to trace him where we can find him.

It is true, in the foregoing chapter I showed you the Devil entered into the herd ecclesiastic, and gave you some account of the first successful step he took with mankind since the Christian epoch; how, having secretly managed both temporal and spiritual power apart, and by themselves, he now united them, in point of management, and brought the church usurpation and the army's usurpation together: the pope to bless the general, in desposing and murdering his master, the emperor; and the general to recognise the pope in dethroning his master, Christ Jesus.

From this time forward you are to allow the Devil a mystical empire in this world; not an action of moment done without him, not a treason but he has a hand in it, not a tyrant but he prompts him, not a government but he has a

in it; not a fool but he tickles him, not a knave but he guides him; he has a finger in every fraud, a key to every cabinet, from the divan at Constantinople to the Mississippi in France, and to the South-Sea cheats at ; from the first attack upon the Christian world in the person of the Romish antichrist, down to the bull Unigenitus; and from the mixture of St. Peter and Confucius in China, to the holy office in Spain; and down to the Emlins and Dodwells of the current age.

How he has managed, and does manage, and how in all probability he will manage till his kingdom shall come to a period, and how at last he will probably be managed himself, inquire within, and you shall know farther.

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OF

CHAPTER III.

THE MANNER OF SATAN'S ACTING AND CARRYING ON HIS AFFAIRS IN THIS WORLD, AND PARTICULARLY OF HIS ORDINARY WORKINGS IN THE DARK, BY POSSESSION AND AGITATION.

THE Devil being thus reduced to act upon mankind by stratagem only, it remains to inquire how he performs, and which way he directs his attacks; the faculties of man are a kind of a garrison in a strong castle, which as they defend it on the one hand under the command of the reasoning power of man's soul, so they are prescribed on the other hand, and can not sally out without leave; for the governor of a fort does not permit his soldiers to hold any correspondence with the enemy, without special order and direction. Now the great inquiry before us is, How comes the Devil to a parley with us? how does he converse with our senses, and with the understanding? how does he reach us? which way does he come at the affections? and which way does he move the passions? It is a little difficult to discover this treasonable correspondence, and that difficulty is indeed the Devil's advantage, and, for aught I see, the chief advantage he has over mankind.

It is also a great inquiry here, whether the Devil knows our thoughts or no: if I may give my opinion, I am with a negative; I deny that he knows anything of our thoughts, except of those thoughts which he puts us upon thinking, for I will not doubt but he has the art to inject thoughts, and to revive dormant thoughts in us: it is not so wild a scheme as some take it to be, that Mr. Milton lays down, to represent the Devil injecting corrupt desires and wandering thoughts into the head of Eve, by dreams, and that he brought her to dream whatever he put into her thoughts, by whispering to her vocally when she was asleep; and to this end, he imagines the Devil laying himself close to her ear, in the shape of a toad, when she was fast asleep; I say, this is not so wild a scheme, seeing even now, if you car whisper anything close to the ear of a person in a deep sieep, so as to speak distinctly to the person, and yet not awaken him, as has been frequently tried, the person sleeping shall dream