The History of the Devil, As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts

And the bright Angel to a frightful Devil turns.
Thus Hell began; the fire of conscious rage
No years can quench, no length of time asswage.
Material Fire, with its intensest flame,
Compar’d with this can scarce deserve a Name;
How should it up to immaterials rise,
When we’re all flame, we shall all fire despise.
This fire outrageous and its heat intense
Turns all the pain of loss to pain of sense.
The folding flames concave and inward roll,
Act upon spirit and penetrate the soul:
Not force of Devils can its new powers repel,
Where’er it burns it finds or makes a Hell;
For Satan flaming with unquench’d desire
Forms his own Hell, and kindles his own fire,
Vanquish’d, not humbl’d, not in will brought low,
But as his powers decline his passions grow:
The malice, Viper like, takes vent within,
Gnaws its own bowels, and bursts in its own sin:
Impatient of the change he scorns to bow,
And never impotent in power till now;
Ardent with hate, and with revenge distract,
A will to new attempts, but none to act;
Yet all seraphick, and in just degree,
Suited to Spirits high sense of misery,
Deriv’d from loss which nothing can repair,
And room for nothing left but meer despair.
Here’s finish’d Hell! what fiercer fire can burn?
Enough ten thousand Worlds to over-turn.
Hell’s but the frenzy of defeated pride,
Seraphick Treason’s strong impetuous tide,
Where vile ambition disappointed first,
To its own rage and boundless hatred curst;
The hate’s fan’d up to fury, that to flame,
For fire and fury are in kind the same;
These burn unquenchable in every face,
And the word Endless constitutes the place.

O state of Being! where being’s the only grief,
And the chief torture’s to be damn’d to life;
O life! the only thing they have to hate;
The finish’d torment of a future state,
Compleat in all the parts of endless misery,
And worse ten thousand times than not to Be!
Could but the Damn’d the immortal law repeal,
And Devils dye, there’d be an end of Hell;
Could they that thing call’d Being annihilate,
There’d be no sorrows in a future state;
The Wretch, whose crimes had shut him out on high,
Could be reveng’d on God himself and die;
Job’s Wife was in the right, and always we
Might end by death all human misery,
Might have it in our choice, to be or not to be.

Chap. IV

Of the name of the Devil, his original, and the nature of his circumstances since he has been called by that name

The Scripture is the first writing on earth where we find the Devil called by his own proper distinguishing denomination, DEVIL, or the[5 - The meaning of the word Devil is Destroyer. See Pool upon Acts xiii. 10.]Destroyer; nor indeed is there any other author of antiquity or of sufficient authority which says any thing of that kind about him.

Here he makes his first appearance in the world, and on that occasion he is called the Serpent; but the Serpent however since made to signify the Devil, when spoken of in general terms, was but the Devil’s representative, or the Devil in quo vis vehiculo, for that time, clothed in a bodily shape, acting under cover and in disguise, or if you will the Devil in masquerade: Nay, if we believe Mr. Milton, the Angel Gabriel’s spear had such a secret powerful influence, as to make him strip of a sudden, and with a touch to unmask, and stand upright in his naked original shape, meer Devil, without any disguises whatsoever.

Now as we go to the Scripture for much of his history, so we must go there also for some of his names; and he has a great variety of names indeed, as his several mischievous doings guide us to conceive of him. The truth is, all the ancient names given him, of which the Scripture is full, seems to be originals derived from and adapted to the several steps he has taken, and the several shapes he has appeared in to do mischief in the world.

Here he is called the Serpent, Gen. iii. 1.

The old Serpent, Rev. xii. 9.

The great red Dragon, Rev. xii. 3.

The Accuser of the Brethren, Rev. xii. 10.

The Enemy, Matt. xxiii. 29.

Satan, Job i. Zech. iii. 1, 2.

Belial, 2 Cor. vi. 15.

Beelzebub, Matt. xii. 24.

Mammon, Matt. vi. 24.

The Angel of light, 2 Cor. xi. 14.

The Angel of the bottomless pit, Rev. ix. 11.

The Prince of the power of the air, Eph. ii. 2.

Lucifer, Isa. xiv. 12.

Abbaddon or Apollion, Rev. ix. 11.

Legion, Mark v. 9.

The God of this world, 2 Cor. iv. 4.

The Foul Spirit, Mark ix. 5.

The Unclean Spirit, Mark i. 27.