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

The Lying Spirit, 2 Chron. xxx.

The Tempter, Matt. iv. 3.

The Son of the morning, Isa. xiv. 12.

But to sum them all up in one, he is called in the new Testament plain Devil; all his other names are varied according to the custom of speech, and the dialects of the several nations where he is spoken of; But in a word, Devil is the common name of the Devil in all the known languages of the earth. Nay, all the mischiefs he is empowered to do, are in Scripture placed to his account, under the particular title of the Devil, not of Devils in the plural number, though they are sometimes mentioned too; but in the singular it is the identical individual Devil, in and under whom all the little Devils, and all the great Devils, if such there be, are supposed to act; nay, they are supposed to be govern’d and directed by him. Thus we are told in Scripture of the works of the Devil, 1 John iii. 8. of casting out the Devil, Mark i. 34. of resisting the Devil, James iv. 5. of our Saviour being tempted of the Devil, Mat. iv. 1. of Simon Magus, a child of the Devil, Acts xiii. 10. The Devil came down in a great wrath, Rev. xii. 12. and the like. According to this usage in speech we go on to this day, and all the infernal things we converse with in the world, are fathered upon the Devil, as one undivided simple essence, by how many agents soever working: Every thing evil, frightful in appearance, wicked in its actings, horrible in its manner, monstrous in its effects, is called the Devil; in a word, Devil is the common name for all Devils; that is to say, for all evil Spirits, all evil Powers, all evil Works, and even all evil things: Yet ’tis remarkable the Devil is no old Testament word, and we never find it used in all that part of the Bible but four times, and then not once in the singular number, and not once to signify Satan as ’tis now understood.

It is true, the Learned give a great many differing interpretations of the word Devil; the English Commentators tell us, it means a destroyer, others that it signifies a deceiver, and the Greeks derive it from a Calumniator or false witness; for we find that Calumny was a Goddess, to whom the Athenians built altars and offer’d Sacrifices upon some solemn occasions, and they call her Διαβολὴ from whence came the masculine Διάβολος which we translate Devil.

Thus we take the name of Devil to signify not persons only, but actions and habits; making imaginary Devils, and transforming that substantial creature call’d Devil into every thing noxious and offensive: Thus St. Francis being tempted by the Devil in the shape of a bag of money lying in the highway, the Saint having discover’d the fraud, whether seeing his Cloven-foot hang out of the purse, or whether he distinguish’d him by his smell of sulphur, or how otherwise, authors are not agreed; but, I say, the Saint having discover’d the cheat, and out-witted the Devil, took occasion to preach that eminent sermon to his disciples, where his Text was, Money is the Devil.

Nor, upon the whole, is any wrong done to the Devil by this kind of treatment, it only gives him the sovereignty of the whole army of Hell, and making all the numberless legions of the bottomless pit servants; or, as the Scripture calls them, Angels to Satan the grand Devil; all their actions, performances and atchievements are justly attributed to him, not as the prince of Devils only, but the Emperor of Devils; the prince of all the princes of Devils.

Under this denomination then of Devil, all the Powers of Hell, all the Princes of the air, all the black armies of Satan are comprehended, and in such manner they are to be understood in this whole work; mutatis mutandis, according to the several circumstances of which we are to speak of them.

This being premis’d, and my authority being so good, Satan must not take it ill, if I treat him after the manner of men, and give him those titles which he is best known by among us; for indeed having so many, ’tis not very easy to call him out of his name.

However, as I am oblig’d by the duty of an Historian to decency as well as impartiality, so I thought it necessary, before I used too much freedom with Satan, to produce authentick Documents, and bring antiquity upon the stage, to justify the manner of my writing, and let you see I shall describe him in no colours, nor call him by any name, but what he has been known by for many ages before me.

And now, though writing to the common understanding of my Readers, I am oblig’d to treat Satan very coarsly, and to speak of him in the common acceptation, calling him plain Devil, a word which in this mannerly age is not so sonorous as others might be, and which by the error of the Times is apt to prejudice us against his Person; yet it must be acknowledg’d he has a great many other names and sirnames which he might be known by, of a less obnoxious import than that of Devil, or Destroyer, &c.

Mr. Milton, indeed, wanting titles of honour to give to the Leaders of Satan’s Host, is oblig’d to borrow several of his Scripture names, and bestow them upon his infernal Heroes, whom he makes the Generals and Leaders of the armies of Hell; and so he makes Beelzebub, Lucifer, Belial, Mammon, and some others, to be the names of particular Devils, members of Satan’s upper house or Pandemonium; whereas indeed, these are all names proper and peculiar to Satan himself.

The Scripture also has some names of a coarser kind, by which the Devil is understood, as particularly, which is noted already, in the Apocalypse he is call’d the Great Red Dragon, the Beast, the Old Serpent, and the like: But take it in the Scripture, or where you will in History sacred or prophane, you will find that in general the Devil is, as I have said above, his ordinary name in all languages and in all nations; the name by which he and his works are principally distinguish’d: Also the Scripture, besides that it often gives him this name, speaks of the works of the Devil, of the subtilty of the Devil, of casting out Devils, of being tempted of the Devil, of being possess’d with a Devil, and so many other expressions of that kind, as I have said already, are made use of for us to understand the evil Spirit by, that in a word, Devil is the common name of all wicked Spirits: For Satan is no more the Devil, as if he alone was so, and all the rest were a diminutive species who did not go by that name; But, I say, even in Scripture, every Spirit, whether under his Dominion or out of his Dominion, is called the Devil, and is as much a real Devil, that is to say, a condemn’d Spirit, and employ’d in the same wicked work as Satan himself.

His Name then being thus ascertain’d, and his Existence acknowledg’d, it should be a little enquir’d what he is; we believe there is such a thing, such a creature as the Devil, and that he has been, and may still with propriety of speech, and without injustice to his Character be call’d by his antient name Devil.

But who is he? what is his original? whence came he? and what is his present station and condition? for these things and these enquiries are very necessary to his History, nor indeed can any part of his History be compleat without them.

That he is of an antient and noble original must be acknowledged, for he is Heaven-born, and of Angelic Race, as has been touch’d already: If Scripture-evidence may be of any weight in the question, there is no room to doubt the genealogy of the Devil; he is not only spoken of as an Angel, but as a fallen Angel, one that had been in Heaven, had beheld the face of God in his full effulgence of glory, and had surrounded the Throne of the most High; from whence, commencing rebel and being expell’d, he was cast down, down, down, God and the Devil himself only knows where; for indeed we cannot say that any man on Earth knows it; and wherever it is, he has ever since man’s creation been a plague to him, been a tempter, a deluder, a calumniator, an enemy and the object of man’s horror and aversion.

As his original is Heaven-born, and his Race Angelic, so the Angelic nature is evidently plac’d in a class superior to the human, and this the Scripture is express in also; when speaking of man, it says, he made him a little lower than the Angels.

Thus the Devil, as mean thoughts as you may have of him, is of a better family than any of you, nay than the best Gentleman of you all; what he may be fallen to, is one thing, but what he is fallen from, is another; and therefore I must tell my learned and reverend friend J. W. LL. D. when he spoke so rudely of the Devil lately, That in my opinion he abus’d his Betters.

Nor is the Scripture more a help to us in the search after the Devil’s Original, than it is in our search after his Nature: it is true, Authors are not agreed about his age, what time he was created, how many years he enjoy’d his state of blessedness before he fell; or how many years he continued with his whole army in a state of darkness, and before the creation of man. ’Tis supposed it might be a considerable space, and that it was a part of his punishment too, being all the while unactive, unemploy’d, having no business, nothing to do but gnawing his own Bowels, and rolling in the agony of his own self-approaches, being a Hell to himself in reflecting on the glorious state from whence he was fallen.

How long he remain’d thus, ’tis true, we have no light into from History, and but little from Tradition; Rabbi Judah says, the Jews were of the opinion, that he remain’d twenty thousand years in that condition, and that the World shall continue twenty thousand more, in which he shall find work enough to satisfy his mischievous desires; but he shews no authority for his opinion.

Indeed let the Devil have been as idle as they think he was before, it must be acknowledg’d that now he is the most busy, vigilant and diligent, of all God’s creatures, and very full of employment too, such as it is.

Scripture indeed, gives us light into the enmity there is between the two natures, the Diabolical and the Human; the reason of it, and how and by what means the power of the Devil is restrain’d by the Messias; and to those who are willing to trust to Gospel-light, and believe what the Scripture says of the Devil, there may much of his History be discover’d, and therefore those that list may go there for a fuller account of the matter.

But to reserve all Scripture-evidence of these things, as a Magazine in store for the use of those with whom Scripture-testimony is of force, I must for the present turn to other enquiries, being now directing my story to an age, wherein to be driven to Revelation and Scripture-assertions is esteem’d giving up the dispute; people now-a-days must have demonstration; and in a word, nothing will satisfy the age, but such evidence as perhaps the nature of the question will not admit.

It is hard, indeed, to bring demonstrations in such a case as this: No man has seen God at any time, says the scripture, 1 John iv. 12. So the Devil being a spirit incorporeal, an Angel of light, and consequently not visible in his own substance, nature and form, it may in some sense be said, no man has seen the Devil at any time; all those pretences of phrenziful and fanciful people, who tell us, they have seen the Devil, I shall examine, and perhaps expose by themselves.

It might take up a great deal of our time here, to enquire whether the Devil has any particular shape or personality of substance, which can be visible to us, felt, heard, or understood; and which he cannot alter, and then, what shapes or appearances the Devil has at any time taken upon him; and whether he can really appear in a body which might be handled and seen, and yet so as to know it to have been the Devil at the time of his appearing; but this also I defer as not of weight in the present enquiry.

We have divers accounts of Witches conversing with the Devil; the Devil in a real body, with all the appearance of a body of a man or woman appearing to them; also of having a Familiar, as they call it, an Incubus or little Devil, which sucks their bodies, runs away with them into the air, and the like: Much of this is said, but much more than it is easy to prove, and we ought to give but a just proportion of credit to those things.

As to his borrow’d shapes and his subtle transformings, that we have such open testimony of, that there is no room for any question about it; and when I come to that part, I shall be oblig’d rather to give a history of the fact, than enter into any dissertation upon the nature and reason of it.

I do not find in any author, whom we can call creditable, that even in those countries where the dominion of Satan is more particularly establish’d, and where they may be said to worship him in a more particular manner, as a Devil; which some tell us the Indians in America did, who worship’d the Devil that he might not hurt them; yet, I say, I do not find that even there the Devil appear’d to them in any particular constant shape or personality peculiar to himself.

Scripture and History therefore, giving us no light into that part of the question, I conclude and lay it down, not as my opinion only, but as what all ages seem to concur in, that the Devil has no particular body; that he is a spirit, and that tho’ he may, Proteus like, assume the appearance of either man or beast, yet it must be some borrow’d shape, some assum’d figure, pro hac vice, and that he has no visible body of his own.

I thought it needful to discuss this as a preliminary, and that the next discourse might go upon a certainty in this grand point; namely, that the Devil, however, he may for his particular occasions put himself into a great many shapes, and clothe himself, perhaps, with what appearances he pleases, yet that he is himself still a meer Spirit, that he retains the seraphic Nature, is not visible by our eyes, which are human and Organic, neither can he act with the ordinary Powers, or in the ordinary manner as bodies do; and therefore, when he has thought fit to descend to the meannesses of disturbing and frightning children and old women, by noises and knockings, dislocating the chairs and stools, breaking windows, and such like little ambulatory things, which would seem to be below the dignity of his character, and which in particular, is ordinarily performed by organic Powers; yet even then he has thought fit not to be seen, and rather to make the poor people believe he had a real shape and body, with hands to act, mouth to speak, and the like, than to give proof of it in common to the whole World, by shewing himself, and acting visibly and openly, as a body usually and ordinarily does.

Nor is it any disadvantage to the Devil, that his Seraphic nature is not confin’d or imprison’d in a body or shape, suppose that shape to be what monstrous thing we would; for this would, indeed, confine his actings within the narrow sphere of the organ or body to which he was limited; and tho’ you were to suppose the body to have wings for a velocity of Motion equal to spirit, yet if it had not a power of invisibility too, and a capacity of conveying it self, undiscover’d, into all the secret recesses of mankind, and the same secret art or capacity of insinuation, suggestion, accusation, &c. by which his wicked designs are now propagated, and all his other devices assisted, by which he deludes and betrays mankind; I say, he would be no more a Devil, that is a Destroyer, no more a Deceiver, and, no more a Satan, that is, a dangerous Arch enemy to the souls of men; nor would it be any difficulty to mankind to shun and avoid him, as I shall make plain in the other part of his History.

Had the Devil from the beginning been embodied, as he could not have been invisible to us, whose souls equally seraphic are only prescrib’d by being embody’d and encas’d in flesh and blood as we are; so he would have been no more a Devil to any body but himself: The imprisonment in a body, had the powers of that body been all that we can conceive to make him formidable to us, would yet have been a Hell to him; consider him as a conquer’d exasperated Rebel, retaining all that fury and swelling ambition, that hatred of God, and envy at his creatures which dwells now in his enrag’d spirit as a Devil: yet suppose him to have been condemn’d to organic Powers, confin’d to corporeal motion, and restrain’d as a Body must be supposed to restrain a Spirit; it must, at the same time, suppose him to be effectually disabled from all the methods he is now allow’d to make use of, for exerting his rage and enmity against God, any farther than as he might suppose it to affect his Maker at second hand, by wounding his Glory thro’ the sides of his weakest creature, Man.

He must, certainly, be thus confin’d, because Body can only act upon Body, not upon Spirit; no species being empower’d to act out of the compass of its own sphere: He might have been empower’d, indeed, to have acted terrible and even destructive things upon mankind, especially if this body had any powers given it which mankind had not, by which man would be overmatch’d and not be in a condition of self-defence; for example, suppose him to have had wings to have flown in the air; Or to be invulnerable, and that no human invention, art, or engine could hurt, ensnare, captivate, or restrain him.

But this is to suppose the righteous and wise Creator to have made a creature and not be able to defend and preserve him; or to have left him defenceless to the mercy of another of his own creatures, whom he had given power to destroy him; This indeed, might have occasion’d a general idolatry, and made mankind, as the Americans do to this day, worship the Devil, that he might not hurt them; but it could not have prevented the destruction of mankind, supposing the Devil to have had malice equal to his power: and he must put on a new nature, be compassionate, generous, beneficent, and steadily good in sparing the rival enemy he was able to destroy, or he must have ruin’d mankind: In short, he must have ceas’d to have been a Devil, and must have re-assum’d his original, Angelic, heavenly nature; been fill’d with the principles of love to, and delight in the Works of his Creator, and bent to propagate his Glory and Interest; or he must have put an end to the race of man, whom it would be in his Power to destroy, and oblige his Maker to create a new species, or fortify the old with some kind of defence, which must be invulnerable, and which his fiery darts could not penetrate.

On this occasion suffer me to make an excursion from the usual stile of this Work, and with some solemnity to express my Thoughts thus:

How glorious is the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator of the World! in thus restraining these seraphic outcasts from the power of assuming human or organic bodies! which could they do, envigorating them with the supernatural Powers, which, as Seraphs and Angels, they now possess and might exert, they would be able even to fright mankind from the face of the Earth, and to destroy and confound God’s Creation; nay, even as they are, were not their power limited, they might destroy the Creation it self, reverse and over-turn nature, and put the World into a general conflagration: But were those immortal Spirits embodied, tho’ they were not permitted to confound nature, they would be able to harrass poor weak and defenceless man out of his wits, and render him perfectly useless, either to his Maker or himself.

But the Dragon is chain’d, the Devil’s Power is limited; he has indeed a vastly extended Empire, being Prince of the Air, having, at least, the whole Atmosphere to range in, and how far that Atmosphere is extended, is not yet ascertain’d by the nicest observations; I say at least, because we do not yet know how far he may be allow’d to make excursions beyond the Atmosphere of this Globe into the planetary Worlds, and what power he may exercise in all the habitable parts of the solar system; nay, of all the other solar systems, which, for ought we know, may exist in the mighty extent of created space, and of which you may hear farther in its order.

But let his power be what it will there, we are sure ’tis limited here, and that in two particulars; first, he is limited as above, from assuming body or bodily shapes with substance; and secondly, from exerting seraphic Powers, and acting with that supernatural force, which, as an Angel, he was certainly vested with before the fall, and which we are not certain is yet taken from him; or at most, we do not know how much it may or may not be diminish’d by his degeneracy, and by the blow given him at his expulsion: this we are certain, that be his Power greater or less, he is restrain’d from the exercise of it in this World; and he, who was one equal to the Angel who kill’d 180000 men in one night, is not able now, without a new commission, to take away the life of one Job, nor to touch any thing he had.

But let us consider him then limited and restrained as he is, yet he remains a mighty, a terrible, an immortal Being; infinitely superior to man, as well in the dignity of his nature, as in the dreadful powers he retains still about him; it is true the brain-sick heads of our Enthusiasticks paint him blacker than he is, and, as I have said, wickedly represent him clothed with terrors that do not really belong to him; as if the power of good and evil was wholly vested in him, and that he was placed in the Throne of his Maker, to distribute both punishments and rewards; In this they are much wrong, terrifying and deluding fanciful people about him, till they turn their heads, and fright them into a belief that the Devil will let them alone, if they do such and such good things; or carry them away with him they know not whither, if they do not; as if the Devil, whose proper business is mischief, seducing and deluding mankind, and drawing them in to be rebels like himself, should threaten to seize upon them, carry them away, and in a word, fall upon them to hurt them, if they did evil, and on the contrary, be favourable and civil to them, if they did well.

Thus a poor deluded country fellow in our Town, that had liv’d a wicked, abominable, debauch’d life, was frighted with an Apparition, as he call’d it, of the Devil; He fancy’d that he spoke to him, and telling his tale to a good honest christian Gentleman his neighbour, that had a little more sense than himself; the Gentleman ask’d him if he was sure he really saw the Devil? yes, yes, Sir, says he, I saw him very plain, and so they began the following discourse.

Gent. See him! See the Devil! art thou sure of it, Thomas?

Tho. Yes, yes, I am sure enough of it, Master; to be sure ’twas the Devil.

Gent. And how do you know ’twas the Devil, Thomas? had you ever seen the Devil before?

Tho. No, no, I had never seen him before, to be sure; but, for all that, I know ’twas the Devil.

Gent. Well, if you’re sure, Thomas, there’s no contradicting you; pray what clothes had he on?

Tho. Nay, Sir, don’t jest with me, he had no clothes on, he was clothed with fire and brimstone.

Gent. Was it dark or day light when you saw him?

Tho. O! it was very dark, for it was midnight.

Gent. How could you see him then? did you see by the light of the fire you speak of?

Tho. No, no, he gave no light himself; but I saw him, for all that.