 Part 1, Chapter 4 of the History of the Devil. THE HISTORY OF THE DEVIL by Daniel Defoe, Part 1, Chapter 4 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 destroyer, nor indeed is there any other author of antiquity or of sufficient authority which says anything 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 Covis 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, mere 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, Genesis 3, verse 1. The old serpent, Revelations 12, verse 9. The great red dragon, Revelations 12, verse 3. The accuser of the brethren, Revelations 12, verse 10. The enemy, Matthew 23, verse 29. Satan, Job 1, Zechariah 3, verse 1 and 2. Beliel, 2 Corinthians 6, verse 15. Beelzebub, Matthew 12, verse 24. Mammon, Matthew 6, verse 24. The angel of light, 2 Corinthians 11, verse 14. The angel of the bottomless pit, Revelations 9, verse 11. The prince of the power of the air, Ephesians 2, verse 2. Lucifer, Isaiah 14, verse 12. Abaddon, or Apollyon, Revelations 9, verse 11. Legion, Mark 5, verse 9. The God of this world, 2 Corinthians 4, verse 4. The foul spirit, Mark 9, verse 5. The unclean spirit, Mark 1, verse 27. The lying spirit, 2 Chronicles 30. The tempter, Matthew 4, verse 3. The son of the morning, Isaiah 14, verse 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 has 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 in all the great devils, if such there be, are supposed to act. Nay, they are supposed to be governed and directed by him. Thus we are told in the scripture of the works of the devil. 1 John 3, verse 8. Of casting out the devil, Mark 1, verse 34. Of resisting the devil, James 4, verse 5. Of our savior being tempted of the devil, Matthew 4, verse 1. Of Simon Magus, a child of the devil, Acts 13, verse 10. The devil came down in a great wrath, Revelation 12, verse 12, and the like. According to this usage in speech, we go on to this day and all the infernal things we can verse with in the world are fathered upon the devil, as one undivided simple essence by how many agents so ever 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 singular number, and not once to signify Satan, as tis now understood. It is true, the learning 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 Calumni was a goddess to whom the Athenians built altars and offered sacrifices upon some solemn occasions, and they call her, readers note Greek lettering. From once came the masculine, readers note Greek lettering, 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 called devil into everything 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 discovered the fraud, whether seeing his cloven foot hang out of the purse, or whether he distinguished him by his smell of sulfur, or how otherwise authors are not agreed. But I say the saint having discovered the cheat and outwitted 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 achievements 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 premised 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, it is not very easy to call him out of his name. However, as I am obliged 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 authentic documents and bring antiquity upon the stage to justify the manner of my writing and let you see I shall describe him in no colors 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 obliged to treat Satan very coarsely 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 acknowledged he has a great many other names and surnames which he might be known by of a less obnoxious import than that of devil or destroyer, et cetera. Mr. Milton indeed wanting titles of honor to give to the leaders of Satan's host is obliged 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, Maman 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 called 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 profane, 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 distinguished. Also the scripture, besides that it often gives him this name, speaks of the works of the devil, of the subtlety of the devil, of casting out devils, of being tempted of the devil, of being possessed with the 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 condemned spirit and employed in the same wicked work as Satan himself. His name then being thus ascertained and his existence acknowledged, it should be a little inquired 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 called by his ancient 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 inquiries are very necessary to his history nor indeed can any part of his history be complete without them. That he is of an ancient and noble original must be acknowledged for he is heaven born and of angelic race as has been touched already. If scripture evidence may be of any weight in the question there is no room to doubt the genealogy of the devil. He's 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 expelled 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 columniator, 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 placed 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 has fallen from is another and therefore I must tell my learned and reverend friend, J. W. L. L. D., when he spoke so rudely of the devil lately that in my opinion he abused 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 enjoyed 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, unemployed, having no business, nothing to do but gnawing his own bowels and rolling and the agony of his own self approaches, being a hell to himself and reflecting on the glorious state from whence he was fallen. How long he remained 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 remained 20,000 years in that condition and that the world shall continue 20,000 more in which he shall find work enough to satisfy his mischievous desires but he shows no authority for his opinion. Indeed, let the devil have been as idle as they think he was before. It must be acknowledged 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 restrained by the messiahs 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 discovered 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 inquiries being now directing my story to an age wherein to be driven to revelation and scripture assertions is esteemed giving up the dispute. People nowadays 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. First John, four, verse 12. So the devil being a spirit in corporeal, 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 pretenses of friendsful 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 inquire whether the devil has any particular shape or personality of substance which can be visible to us, felt, heard or understood in 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 inquiry. We have diverse 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 borrowed 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 obliged 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 established 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 the devil that he might not hurt them. Yet I say I do not find that even there the devil appeared 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 though he may proteus like assume the appearance of either man or beast yet it must be some borrowed shape some assumed figure pro-hacvis 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 clothes himself perhaps with what appearances he pleases yet that he is himself still a mere 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 frightening 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 showing 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 confined or imprisoned 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 though 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 to in a capacity of conveying itself undiscovered into all the secret recesses of mankind and the same secret art or capacity of insinuation suggestion accusation etc by which his wicked designs are now propagated in 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 prescribed by being embodied and encased in flesh and blood as we are so you 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 conquered exasperated rebel retaining all that fury and swelling ambition that hatred of God and envy at his creatures which dwells now in his enraged spirit as a devil yet suppose him to have been condemned to organic powers confined to corporeal motion and restrained 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 allowed 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 through the sides of his weakest creature man he must certainly be thus confined because body can only act upon body not upon spirit no species being empowered to act out of the compass of its own sphere he might have been empowered 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 overmatched and not be any condition of self-defense 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 and snare 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 defenseless to the mercy of another of his own creatures whom he had given power to destroy him this indeed might have occasioned 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 ruined mankind in short he must have ceased to have been a devil and must have re-assumed his original angelic heavenly nature been filled 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 defense which must be invulnerable and which his fiery darts could not penetrate on this occasion suffer me to make an excursion from the usual style 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 and thus restraining these seraphic outcasts from the power of assuming human or organic bodies which could they do invigorating 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 itself reverse and overturn nature and put the world into a general conflagration but were those immortal spirits embodied though they were not permitted to confound nature they would be able to harass poor weak and defenseless man out of his wits and render him perfectly useless either to his maker or himself but the dragon is chained 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 ascertained by the nicest observations I say at least because we do not yet know how far he may be allowed 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 to his 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 diminished 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 restrained from the exercise of it in this world and he who was one equal to the angel who killed 180,000 men in one night is not able now without a new commission to take away the life of one Job nor to touch anything 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 enthusiasts 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 wither 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 favorable and civil to them if they did well thus a poor deluded country fellow in our town that had lived a wicked abominable debauched life was frighted with an apparition as he called it of the devil he fancied that he spoke to him and telling his tale to a good honest Christian gentleman his neighbor that had a little more sense than himself the gentleman asked 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 gentlemen see him see the devil aren't thou sure of it thomas? thomas yes yes I am sure enough of it master to be sure twas the devil gentlemen and how do you know twas the devil thomas? had you ever seen the devil before? thomas no no I had never seen him before to be sure but for all that I know twas the devil gentlemen well if you are sure thomas there's no contradicting you pray what clothes had he on? thomas nay sir don't jess with me he had no clothes on he was clothed with fire and brimstone gentlemen was it dark or daylight when you saw him? thomas oh it was very dark for it was midnight gentlemen how could you see him then? did you see by the light of the fire you speak of? thomas no no he gave no light himself but I saw him for all that gentlemen but was it within doors or out in the street? thomas it was within it was in my own chamber when I was just going into bed that I saw him gentlemen well then you had a candle hadn't you? thomas yes I had a candle but it burnt as blue and as dim gentlemen well but if the devil was clothed with fire and brimstone he must give you some light there can't be such a fire as you speak of but it must give a light with it thomas no no he gave no light but I smelt his fire and brimstone he left a smell of it behind him when he was gone gentlemen well so you say he had fire but gave no light it was a devilish fire indeed did it feel warm? was the room hot while he was in it? thomas no no but I was hot enough without it for it put me into a great sweat with the fright gentlemen very well he was all in fire you say but without light or heat only it seems he stunk of brimstone pray what shapes was he in? what was he like? for you say you saw him thomas oh sir I saw two great staring saucer eyes enough to fright anybody out of their wits gentlemen and was that all you saw? thomas no I saw his cloven foot very plain it was as big as one of our bullocks that goes to plow gentlemen so you saw none of his body but his eyes and his feet a fine vision indeed thomas sir that was enough to send me going gentlemen going what did you run away from him? thomas no but I fled into bed at one jump and sunk down and pulled the bed clothes quite over me gentlemen and what did you do that for? thomas to hide myself from such a frightful creature gentlemen why if it had really been the devil do you think the bed clothes would have secured you from him? thomas nay I don't know but in a fright it was all I could do gentlemen nay it was as wise as all the rest but come, thomas to be a little serious pray did he speak to you? thomas yes yes I heard a voice but who it was the Lord knows gentlemen what kind of voice was it? was it like a man's voice? thomas no it was a horse, ugly noise like the croaking of a frog and it called me by my name twice thomas Dawson thomas Dawson gentlemen well did you answer? thomas no, not I I could not have spoken a word for my life why I was frighted to death gentlemen did it say anything else? thomas yes when it saw that I did not speak it said thomas Dawson thomas Dawson you are a wicked wretch you lay with Jenny S. last night if you don't repent I will take you away alive and carry you to hell and you shall be damned you wretch gentlemen and was it true thomas? did you lie with Jenny S. the night before? thomas indeed master why yes it was true but I was very sorry afterwards gentlemen but how should the devil know it thomas? thomas nay he knows it to be sure why they say he knows everything gentlemen well but why should he be angry at that? he would rather did you lie with her again and encourage you to lie with forty whores than hinder you this can't be the devil thomas thomas yes yes sir it was the devil to be sure gentlemen but he bid you to repent too you say thomas yes he threatened me if I did not gentlemen why thomas do you think the devil would have you repent? thomas why no that's true too I don't know what to say to that but what could it be? was the devil to be sure it could be nobody else? gentlemen no no it was neither the devil thomas nor any body else but your own frightened imagination you had lain with that wench and being a young sinner of that kind your conscience terrified you told you the devil would fetch you away and you would be damned and you were so persuaded it would be so that you at least imagined he was come for you indeed that you saw him and heard him whereas you may depend upon it if Jenny S will let you lie with her every night the devil will hold the candle or do anything to forward it but will never disturb you he's too much a friend to your wickedness it could never be the devil thomas it was only your own guilt frighted you and that was deviled enough too if you knew the worst of it you need no other enemy thomas why that's true master one would think the devil should not bid me repent that's true but certainly was the devil for all that now thomas was not the only man that having committed a flogidious crime had been deluded by his own imagination and the power of fancy to think the devil was come for him whereas the devil to give him his due is too honest to pretend to such things tis his business to persuade men to offend not to repent and he professes no other he may press men to this or that action by telling them tis no sin no offense no breach of God's law and the like when really tis both but to press them to repent when they have offended that's quite out of his way tis none of his business nor does he pretend to it therefore let no man charge the devil with what he is not concerned in but to return to his person he is as I have said not withstanding his lost glory a mighty a terrible and an immortal spirit he is himself called a prince the prince of the power of the air the prince of darkness the prince of devils and the like and his attending spirits are called his angels so that however satan has lost the glory and rectitude of his nature by his apostate state yet he retains a greatness and magnificence which places him above our rank and indeed above our conception for we know not what he is any more than we know what the blessed angels are of whom we can say no more than that they are ministering spirits et cetera as the scripture has described them two things however may give us some insight into the nature of the devil in the present state he is in and these we have a clear discovery of in the whole series of his conduct from the beginning one that he is the vanquished but implacable enemy of God his creator who has conquered him and expelled him from the habitations of bliss on which account he is filled with envy rage malice and all uncharitableness would dethrone God and overturn the thrones of heaven if it was in his power two that he is man's irreconcilable enemy not as he is a man nor on his own account simply nor for any advantage he the devil can make by the ruin and destruction of man but in mere envy at the felicity he is supposed to enjoy as Satan's rival and as he is appointed to succeed Satan and his angels in the possession of those glories from which they are fallen and here I must take upon me to say Mr. Milton makes a wrong judgment of the reason of Satan's resolution to disturb the felicity of man he tells us it was merely to affront God his maker rob him of the glory designed in his new work of creations and to disappoint him in his main design namely the creating a new species of creatures in a perfect rectitude of soul and after his own image from whom he might expect a new fund of glory should be raised and who was to appear as the triumph of the Messiah's victory over the devil in all which Satan could not be fool enough not to know that he should be disappointed by the same power which had so eminently counteracted his rage before but I believe the devil went upon a much more probable design and though he may be said to act upon a meaner principle than that of pointing his rage at the personal glory of his creator yet I own that in my opinion it was by much the more rational undertaking and more likely to succeed and that was that whereas he perceived this new species of creatures had a sublime as well as a human part and were made capable of possessing the mansions of eternal beatitude from whence he Satan and his angels were expelled and irretrievably banished envy as such a rival moved him by all possible artifice for he saw him deprived of capacity to do it by force to render him unworthy like himself that bringing him to fall into rebellion and disobedience he might see his rival damned with him and those who were intended to fill up the empty spaces in heaven made so by the absence of so many millions of fallen angels be cast out into the same darkness with them how he came to know that this new species of creatures were liable to such imperfection is best explained by the devil's prying vigilant disposition judging or leading him to judge by himself for he was as near being infallible as any of God's creatures had been and then inclining him to try whether it was so or no modern naturalists especially some who have not so large a charity for the fair sex as I have tell us that as soon as ever Satan saw the woman and looked in her face he saw evidently that she was the best formed creature to make a tool of and the best to make a hypocrite of that could be made and therefore the most fitted for his purpose one he saw by some thwart lines in her face legible perhaps to himself only that there was a throne ready prepared for the sin of pride to sit and state upon especially if it took an early possession Eve, you may suppose, was a perfect beauty if ever such a thing may be supposed in the human frame her figure being so extraordinary was the groundwork of his project there needed no more than to bring her to be vain of it and to concede that it either was so or was infinitely more sublime and beautiful than it really was and having thus tickled her vanity to introduce pride gradually till at last he might persuade her that she was really angelic or of heavenly race and wanted nothing but to eat the forbidden fruit and that would make her something more excellent still two looking farther into her frame and with a nearer view to her imperfections he saw room to conclude that she was of a constitution easy to be seduced and especially by flattering her raising a commotion in her soul and a disturbance among her passions and accordingly he set himself to work to disturb her repose and put dreams of great things into her head together with something of a nameless kind which however some have been ill-natured enough to suggest I shall not injure the devil so much as to mention without better evidence three but besides this he found upon the very first survey of her outside something so very charming in her mean and behavior so engaging as well as agreeable in the whole texture of her person and with all such a sprightly wit such a vivacity of parts such a fluency of tongue and above all such a winning prevailing wine in her smiles or at least in her tears that he made no doubt if he could but once delude her she would easily be brought to delude Adam whom he found set not only a great value upon her person but was perfectly captivated by her charms in a word he saw plainly that if he could but ruin her he should easily make a devil of her to ruin her husband and draw him into any gulf of mischief were it ever so black and dreadful that she should first fall into herself how far some may be wicked enough from hence to suggest of the fair sex that they have been devils to their husbands ever since I cannot say I hope they will not be so unmerciful to discover truths of such fatal consequence though they should come to their knowledge thus subtle and penetrating has said and been from the beginning and who can wonder that upon these discoveries made into the woman's inside he went immediately to work with her rather than with Adam not but that one would think if Adam was fool enough to be deluded by his wife the devil might have seen so much of it in his countenance as to have encouraged him to make his attack directly upon him and not go round about beating the bush and plowing with the heifer setting upon the woman first and then setting her upon her husband who might as easily have been imposed upon as she other commentators upon this critical text suggest to us that Eve was not so pleased with the hopes of being made a goddess that the pride of a seraphic knowledge did not so much work upon her imagination to bring her to consent as a certain secret notion infused into her head by the same wicked instrument that she should be wiser than Adam and should by the superiority of her understanding necessarily have the government over him which at present she was sensible she had not he being master of a particular air of gravity and majesty as well as of strength infinitely superior to her this is an ill-natured suggestion but it must be confessed the impatient desire of government which since that appears in the general behavior of the sex and particularly of governing husbands leaves too much room to legitimate the supposition the expositors who are of this opinion add to it that this being her original crime or the particular temptation to that crime have in thought fit to show his justice in making her more entire subjection to her husband be a part of the curse that she might read her sin in the punishment namely he shall rule over the i only give the general hint of these things as they appear recorded in the annals of satan's first tyranny and at the beginning of his government in the world those that would be more particularly informed may inquire of him and no farther i cannot however but observe here with some regret how it appears by the consequence that the devil was not mistaken when he made an early judgment of mrs. eve and how satan really went the right way to work to judge of her to certain the devil had nothing to do but to look in her face and upon a near steady view he might easily see there an instrument for his turn nor has he failed to make her a tool ever since by the very methods which he at first proposed to which perhaps he has made some additions in the corrupting her composition as well as her understanding qualifying her to be complete snare to the poor weaker vessel man to weedle him with her sirens voice abuse him with her smiles delude him with her crocodile tears and sometimes cock her crown at him and terrify him with the thunder of her trouble making the effeminated male apple eater tremble at the noise of that very tongue which at first commanded him to sin for it is yet a debate which the learned have not decided whether she persuaded and entreated him or like a true she tyrant exercised her authority and obliged him to eat the forbidden fruit and therefore a certain author whose name for fear of the sex's resentment I conceal brings her in calling to Adam at a great distance in an imperious, haughty manner beckoning to him with her hand, thus here says she you cowardly, faint-hearted wretch take this branch of heavenly fruit eat and be a stupid fool no longer eat and be wise eat and be a god and know to your eternal shame that your wife has been made an enlightened goddess before you he tells you Adam hung back a little at first and trembled afraid to trespass what ails the sought says the new term again what are you afraid of did God forbid you yes and why that we might not be knowing and wise like himself what reason can there be that we who have capacious souls able to receive knowledge should have it withheld take it you fool and eat don't you see how I am exalted in soul by it and am quite another creature take it I say or if you don't I'll go and cut down the tree and you shall never eat any of it at all and you shall be still a fool and be governed by your wife forever thus if this interpretation of the thing be just she scolded him into it raided him and brought him to it by the terror of her voice a thing that has retained a dreadful influence over him ever since nor have the greatest of Adam's successors how light so ever some husbands make of it in this age been ever able since that to conceal their terror at the very sound nay if we may believe history it prevailed even among the gods not all the noise of Vulcan's hammers could silence the clamors of that outrageous whore his goddess nay even Jupiter himself led such a life with a termigant wife that once they say Juno outscolded the noise of all his thunders and was within an ace of brawling him out of heaven but to return to the devil with these views he resolved it seems to attack the woman and if you consider him as a devil and what he aimed at and consider the fair prospect he had of success I must confess I do not see who can blame him or at least how anything less could be expected from him but we shall meet with it again by and by and part one chapter four part one chapter five of the history of the devil this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The History of the Devil by Daniel Defoe part one chapter five of the station Satan had in heaven before he fell the nature and origin of his crime and some of Mr. Milton's mistakes about it thus far I have gone upon general observation in this great affair of Satan and his empire in the world I now come to my title and shall enter upon the historical part as the main work before me besides what has been said poetically relating to the fallen wandering condition of the devil and his host which poetical part I offer only as an excursion and desire it should be taken so I shall give you what I think is deducted from good origins on part of Satan's story in a few words he was one of the created angels formed by the same omnipotent hand and glorious power who created the heavens and the earth and all that is therein this innumerable heavenly host as we have reason to believe contained angels of higher and lower stations of greater and lesser degree expressed in the scripture by thrones, dominions and principalities this I think we have as much reason to believe as we have that there are stars in the firmament or starry heavens of greater and of lesser magnitude what particular station among the mortal choir of angels this arch-serif this prince of devils called Satan was placed in before his expulsion that indeed we cannot come at the knowledge of at least not with such an authority as may be dependent upon but as from scripture authority he is placed at the head of all the apostate armies after he was fallen we cannot think it in the least assuming to say that he might be supposed to be one of the principal agents in the rebellion which happened in heaven and consequently that he may be one of the highest indignity there before that rebellion the higher station, the lower and with a greater precipitation was his overthrow and therefore those words though taken in another sense may very well be applied to him how art thou fallen, O Lucifer son of the morning having granted the dignity of his person in the high station in which he was placed among the heavenly host it would become then necessarily to inquire into the nature of his fall and above all, a little into the reason of it certain it is he did fall was guilty of rebellion and disobedience the just effect of pride sins which in that holy place might well be called wonderful but what to me is more wonderful and which I think will be very ill accounted for is how came seeds of a crime to the rise in the angelic nature created in a state of perfect unspotted holiness how was it first found in a place where no unclean thing can enter how came ambition, pride or envy to generate there could there be offense where there is no crime could untainted purity breed corruption could that nature contaminate and infect which was always drinking in principles of perfection happiness to me that writing of history not solving the difficulties of Satan's affairs is my province in this work that I am to relate the fact not give reasons for it or sign causes if it was otherwise I should break off at this difficulty for I acknowledge I do not see through it neither do I think that the great Milton after all his fine images and lofty excursions upon the subject has left it one job clear then he found it some are of the opinion among them the great Mr. B underscore underscore S that crime broke in upon them at some interval when they omitted but one fixing their eyes and thoughts on the glory of the divine face to admire and adore which is the full employment of angels but even this though it goes as high imagination can carry us does not reach it nor to me make it one job more comprehensible than it was before all I can say to adhere is that so it was the fact was upon record and the rejected troop are in being whose circumstances confessed the guilt and still grown under the punishment if you will bear with a poetic excursion upon the subject not to solve but to illustrate the difficulty take it in a few lines thus thou sin of witchcraft first born of crime produced before the bloom of time ambitions made in sin and heaven conceived and who could have believed defilement could impurity begin and bright eternal day be soiled with sin tell us sly penetrating crime how camp shall there thou fault sublime how does thou past the adamantide gate and into spirit thyself insinuate from what dark state from what deep place from what strange uncreated race where was thy ancient habitation found before void chaos heard the forming sound was thou a substance or an airy ghost a vapor flying in the fluid waste of unconcocted air and how at first did those come there sure there was once a time when thou were not by whom was thou created and for what art thou esteem from some contagion damp exhaled how should contagion be entailed unbright serific spirits in place were all supreme and glories filled the space no noxious vapor there could rise for there no noxious matter lies nothing that's evil could appear sin never could serific glory bear the brightness of the eternal face which fills as well as constitutes the place would be a fire too hot for crime to bear twid calcing sin or melt into air how then did defilement enter in ambition thou first vital seed of sin thou life of death how camps thou there in what brown form did thou appear in what seraphic orb did thou stir eyes surely that place admits of no disguise eternal sight must know thee there and being known thou soon must disappear but since the fatal truth we know without the matter wentst or manner how thou high superlative of sin tell us thy nature where thou didst begin the first decree of thy increase debauched of regions of eternal peace and filled the breast of loyal angels there with the first treason and infernal war thou art the high extreme of pride and dust or lesser crimes preside not for the mean attempt of vice designed but to embroil the world and damn mankind transforming mischief now hath thou procured that lost that narrow to be restored and made the bright seraphic morning star in horrid monstrous shapes appear Satan that while he dwelt in glorious light was always then as pure as he was bright that in infulgent rays of glory shone excelled by eternal light by him alone distorted now and stripped of innocence and banished with thee from the high preeminence how has the splendid seraph changed his face transformed by thee and like thy monstrous race ugly as is the crime for which he fell fitted by thee to make a local hell for such must be the place where either of you dwell thus as i told you i only mortalize upon the subject but as to the difficulty i must leave it as to find it unless as i hinted at first i could prevail with satan to set pen to paper and write this part of his own history no question but he could let us into the secret but to be plain i doubt i shall tell so many plain truths of the devil in this history and discover so many of his secrets which it is not for his interest to have discovered that before i have done the devil and i may not be so good friends as you may suppose we are at least not friends enough to obtain such a favor of him though it be for public good so we must be content till we come on other side the blue blanket and then we shall know the whole story but now though as i said i will not attempt to solve the difficulty i may i hope venture to tell you that there is not so much difficulty in it as at first sight appears and especially not so much as some people would make us believe perhaps that may help us a little in the inquiry for to know what it is not is one help towards knowing what it is mr. milton has indeed told us a great many merry things of the devil in a most formal solemn manner till in short he has made a good play of heaven and hell and no doubt if he had lived in our times he might have had it acted out with our pluto and presser pine he has made fine speeches both for god and the devil and a little addition might have turned it a la modern into a harlequin do you and diable i confess i don't know well how far the dominion of poetry extends itself it seems the butts and bounds of pernassus are not yet ascertained so that for i know by virtue of their antian privileges called licentia poetarum there can be no blasphemy inverse as some of our divines say there can be no treason in the pulpit but they that will venture to write that way ought to be better satisfied about that point than i am upon this foot mr. milton to grace's poem and give room for his toe ring fancy has gone a great length beyond all that ever went before him since ovid is his metamorphosis he has indeed complimented god almighty with the flux of lofty words and great sounds and has made a very fine story of the devil but he has made a mere je ne sais quoi of jesus christ and one line he has a writing on a cherub and another sitting on a throne both in the very same moment of action in another place he has brought him and making a speech to his saints when tis evident he had none there for we all know man was not created till a long while after and nobody can be so dull as to say the angels may be called saints without the greatest absurdity in nature besides he makes christ himself distinguish them as in two several bands and of differing persons and species as to be sure they are stand till in bright array ye saints here stand ye angels par lost lib 6 foe 174 so the christ here is brought up in drawing up his army before the last battle and making a speech to them to tell them they shall only stand by in warlike order but that they shall have no occasion to fight for he alone will engage the rebels then in embattling his legions he places the saints here and the angels there as if one were the main battle of infantry and the other the wings of cavalry but who are those saints they are indeed all of Milton's own making tis certain there were no saints at all in heaven or earth at that time God and his angels filled up the space and tis some of the angels fell and men were created had lived and were dead there could have been no saints there St. Abel was certainly the proto saint of all that ever were seen in heaven as well as the proto martyr of all that have been upon earth just such another mistake not to call it a blunder he makes about hell which he not only makes local but gives it a being before the fall of the angels and brings it an opening its mouth to receive them this is so contrary to the nature of the thing and so great an absurdity that no poetic license can account for it for though posie may form stories as idea and fancy may furnish materials yet posie must not break in upon chronology and make things which in time were to exist act before they existed thus a painter may make a fine piece of work the fancy may be good the strokes masterly and the beauty of the workmanship in admittedly curious and fine and yet have some unpardonable improprieties which mar the whole work so the famous painter of Toledo painted the story of the three wise men of the east coming to worship and bring their presence to our lord upon his birth at Bethlehem where he represents them as three Arabian or Indian kings two of them are white and one black but unhappily when he drew the latter part of them kneeling which to be sure was done after their faces their legs being necessarily a little intermixed he made three black feet for the negro king but three white feet for the two white kings and yet never discovered the mistake till the piece was presented to the king and hung up in the great church as this was an unpardonable error in sculpture or limning it must be much more so in poetry where the images must have no improprieties much less inconsistencies in a word Mr. Milton has indeed made a fine poem but it is the devil of a history I can easily allow Mr. Milton to make hills and dales flowery meadows and plains and the like in heaven and places of retreat and contemplation in hell though I must add that it can be allowed to no poet on earth but Mr. Milton nay I will allow Mr. Milton if you please to set the angels a dancing in heaven lib v foe 138 and the devils a singing in hell lib I foe 44 though they are in short especially the last most horrid absurdities but I cannot allow him to make their music in hell to be harmonious and charming as he does such images being incongruous and indeed shocking to nature neither can I think we should allow these things to be placed out of time in poetry any more than in history tis a confusion of images which is allowed to be disallowed by the critics of which tribe or species so ever in the world and is indeed unpardonable but we shall find so many more of these things in Mr. Milton that really taking notice of them all would carry me quite out of my way I being at this time not writing the history of Mr. Milton but of the devil besides Mr. Milton is such a celebrated man that who but he that can write the history of the devil dare meddle with him but to come back to business as I cautioned you against running to scripture for shelter in cases of difficulty scripture weighing very little among the people I am directing my speech to so indeed scripture gives but very little light into anything of the devil's story before his fall and but to very little of it for some time after nor has Mr. Milton said one word to solve the main difficulty these how the devil came to fall and how sin came into heaven how the spotless Seraphic nature could receive infection whence the contagion proceeded what knocks matter could emit corruption there how and whence any vapor to poison the angelic frame could rise up or how it increased and grew up to crime but all this he passes over and hurrying up that part in two or three words only tells us his pride had cast him out of heaven with all of his host of rebel angels by whose aid aspiring he trusted to have equaled the most high Lib I foe three his pride but how came Satan while an archangel to be proud how did it consist that pride and perfect holiness should meet in the same person here we must bid Mr. Milton good night for in plain terms he is in the dark about it and so we are all and the most that can be said is that we know the fact is so but nothing of the nature or reason of it but come to the history the angels fell they sinned wonderful in heaven and God cast them out what their sin was is not explicit but in general it is called a rebellion against God all sin must be so Mr. Milton here takes upon him to give the history of it as particularly as if he has been born there and come down hither on purpose to give us an account of it I hope he is better informed by this time but this he does in such a manner as jostles with religion and shocks our faith in so many points necessary to be believed that we must forbear to give up to Mr. Milton or must set aside part of the sacred text in such a manner as will assist some people to set it all aside I mean by this his invented scheme of the sun's being declared in heaven to be begotten then and then to be declared general isimo of all the armies of heaven and of the fathers summoning all angels of heavenly host to submit to him and pay him homage the words are quoted already page 32 I must own the invention indeed is very fine the image is exceeding magnificent the thought rich and bright and in some respect truly sublime but the authorities fail most wretchedly and the mistiming of it is insufferably gross as is noted in the introduction to this work for Christ is not declared the Son of God but on earth tis true to spoken from heaven but then to spoken as perfected on earth if it was at all to be assigned to heaven it was from eternity and there indeed his eternal generation is allowed but to take upon us to say that on a day a certain day for so our poet assumes lib v fall 137 when on a day on such a day as heaven's great year brings forth the imperial host of angels by imperial sums called for width from all the ends of heaven appeared this is indeed too gross at this meeting he makes God declare the Son to be that day begotten as before had he made him not begotten that day but declared general that day it would be reconcilable with the scripture and with sense for either the beginning is meant of ordaining to an office or else the eternal generation falls to the ground and if it was to the office mediator then mr. Milton is out in ascribing another fixed day to the work see lib x fold 197 but then the declaring him that day is wrong chronology too for Christ has declared the Son of God with power only by resurrection of the dead and this is both a declaration in heaven and in earth Rome I for and Milton can have no authority to tell us there was any declaration of it in heaven before this except it be that dull authority called poetic license which will not pass and so Solomon affairs this but the thing was necessary to Milton who wanted to assign some cause or original of the devil's rebellion and so as I said above the design is well laid it only wants two trifles called truth and history so I leave it to struggle for itself this ground plot being laid he has a fair field for the devil to play the rebel in for he immediately brings him in not satisfied with the exultation of the Son of God the case must be thus Satan being an eminent archangel and perhaps the highest of all the angelic train hearing the sovereign declaration that the Son of God was declared to be head or generalissimo of all the heavenly host took it ill to see another put into the high station over his head as the soldiers call it he perhaps thinking himself the senior officer and disdaining to submit to any but to his former immediate sovereign in short he threw up his commission and in order not to be compelled to obey revolted and broke out in open rebellion all this part is a decoration noble and great nor is there any objection to be made against the invention because a deduction of probable events but the plot is wrong laid as is observed above because contradicted by the scripture account according to which Christ was declared in heaven not then but from eternity and not declared with power but on earth these in his victory over sin and death by the resurrection from the dead so that Mr. Milton is not orthodox in this part but lays in a vowed foundation for the corrupt doctrine of Arius which says there was a time when Christ was not the Son of God but to leave Mr. Milton to his flights I agree with him on this part these that the wicked or sinning angels with the great arch angel at the head of them revolted from their obedience even in heaven itself that Satan began the wicked defection and being a chief among the heavenly host consequently carried over a great part with him who all together rebelled against God that upon this rebellion they were sentenced by the righteous judgment of God to be expelled the holy habitation this besides the authority of scripture we have visible testimonies of from the devils themselves their influences and operations among us every day of which mankind are witnesses and all the merry things they do in his name and under his protection and almost every scene of life they pass through whether we talk of things done openly or in masquerade things done in or out of it things done in earnest or in jest but then what comes of the long and bloody war that Mr. Milton gives such a full and particular account of and the terrible battles in heaven between Michael with the royal army of angels on one hand and Satan with his rebel host on the other in which he supposes the numbers and strength to be pretty near equal but at length brings in the devil's army upon doubling their rage and bringing new engines of war into the field putting Michael in all the faithful army to the worst and in a word defeats them for though they were not put to a plane flight in which case he must at least have given an account of two or three thousand millions of angels cut him pieces and wounded yet he allows them to give over the fight and make a kind of retreat so making way for the complete victory of the Son of God now this is all invention or at least a borrowed thought from the old poets and the fight of the giants against Jupiter so nobly designed by Ovid almost two thousand years ago and there was well enough but whether poetic fancy should be allowed to fable upon heaven or no and upon the king of heaven too that I leave to the sages by this expulsion of the devils it is allowed by most authors they are ipso facto stripped of the rectitude and holiness of their nature which was their beauty and perfection and being engulfed in the abyss of irrecoverable ruin tis no matter where from that very time they lost their angelic beautiful form commenced ugly frightful monsters and devils and became evildoers as well as evil spirits filled with a horrid malignity and enmity against their maker and armed with a hellish resolution to shoe and exert it on all occasions retaining however their exalted spiritualist nature and having a vast extensive power of action all which they can exert in nothing else but doing evil for they are entirely divested of either power or will to do good and even in doing evil they are under restraints and limitations of a superior power which is their torment and perhaps a great part of their hell that they cannot break through end of part one chapter five recording by matthew newell part one chapter six of the history of the devil this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the history of the devil by Daniel Defoe part one chapter six what became of the devil and his host of fallen spirits after they're being expelled from heaven and his wandering condition till the creation was some more of Mr. Milton's absurdities on that subject having thus brought the devil and his innumerable legions to the edge of the bottomless pit it remains before I bring them to action that some inquiry should be made into the posture of their affairs immediately after their precipitate fall and into the place of their immediate residence for this will appear to be very necessary to Satan's history and indeed so as that without it all the farther account we have to give of him will be inconsistent and imperfect and first I take upon me to lay down some fundamentals which I believe I shall be able to make out historically though perhaps not so geographically as some have pretended to do one that Satan was not immediately nor is yet locked down into the abyss of a local hell such as is supposed by some and such as he shall be at last or that too if he was he has certain liberties allowed him for excursions into the regions of this air and certain spheres of action in which he can and does move to do like a very devil as he is all the mischief he can and of which we see so many examples both about us and in us in the inquiry after which I shall take occasion to examine whether the devil is not in most of us sometimes if not in all of us one time or other three that Satan has no particular residence in this globe or earth where we live that he rambles about among us and marches over and over our whole country he and his devils encamps volant but that he pitches his grand army or chief encampment in our adjacencies or frontiers which the philosophers call atmosphere and whence he is called the prince of the power of that element or part of the world we call air from whence he sends out his spies his agents and emissaries to get intelligence and to carry his commissions to his trusted well-beloved cousins and counselors on earth by which his business is done and his affairs carried on in the world here again I meet Mr. Milton full in my face who will have it at the devil immediately at his expulsion rolled down directly into a hell proper and local nay he measures the very distance at least gives the length of the journey by the time they were passing or falling which he says was nine days a good poetical flight but neither found it on scripture or philosophy he might every jot as well have brought hell up to the walls of heaven advance to receive them or he ought to have considered the space which is to be allowed to any locality let him take what part of infinite distance between heaven and a created hell he pleases but let that be as Mr. Milton's extraordinary genius pleases to place it the passage it seems is just nine days betwixt heaven and hell well might dive ease then see father Abraham and talk to him too but then the great gulf which Abraham tells him was fixed between them does not seem to be so large as according to Sir Isaac Newton Dr. Halley Mr. Winston and the rest of our men of science we take it to be but suppose the passage to be nine days according to Mr. Milton what followed why hell gaped wide opened its frightful mouth and received them all at once millions and thousands of millions as they were it received them all at a gulp as we call it they had no difficulty to go in no none at all the killest the census are wearing said woe carre grotem oak opus hick labore est virgin all this as poetical we may receive but not at all as historical for then come difficulties insuperable in our way some of which may be as follows one hell is here supposed to be a place may a place created for the punishment of angels and men and likewise created long before those had fallen or these had been this makes me say mr. Milton was a good poet but a bad historian taffit was prepared of old indeed but it was for the king that is to say it was prepared for those whose lot it should be to come there but this does not at all suppose it was prepared before it was resolved whether there should be subjects for it or no else we must suppose both men and angels were made by the glorious and upright maker of all things on purpose for destruction which would be incongruous and absurd but there is worse yet to come in the next place he adds that hell having received them closed upon them that is to say took them in closed or shut its mouth and in a word they were locked in as it was said in another place they were locked in and the key is carried up to heaven and kept there for we know the angel came down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit but first see mr. Milton nine days they fell confounded chaos roared and felt tenfold confusion in their fall hell at last yawning received them all and on them closed down from the verge of heaven eternal wrath burnt after them unquenchable this scheme is certainly deficient if not absurd and i think is more so than any other he has laid it is evident neither satan or his host of devils are no not any of them yet even now confined in the eternal prison where the scripture says he shall be reserved in chains of darkness they must have mean thoughts of hell as a prison a local confinement that can suppose the devil able to break jail knock off his feathers and come abroad if he had been once locked in there as mr. Milton says he was now we know that he is abroad again he presented himself before god among his neighbors when jobes case came to be disgorsed of and more than that is plain he was a prisoner at large by his answer to god's question which was whence come as thou to which he answered from going to and fro through the earth and this i say is plain and if it be ascertained that hell closed upon them i demand then how got he out and why was there not a proclamation for apprehending him as there usually is after such rogues as break prison in short the true account of the devil's circumstances since his fall from heaven is much more likely to be thus that he is more of a vagrant than a prisoner that he is a wanderer in the wild unbounded waste where he and his legions like the hordes of tartary who in the wild countries of car rocker fei the deserts of bark and casan and astra can live up and down where they find proper so satan and his innumerable legions rove about hick at ubiquay pitching their camps being beasts of prey where they find the most spoil watching over this world and all the other worlds for all we know and if there are any such i say watching and seeking who they may devour that is who they may deceive and elude and so destroy for devour they cannot say being thus confined to a vagabond wandering unsettled condition is without any certain abode for though he has in consequence of his angelic nature a kind of empire in the liquid waste or air yet this is certainly part of his punishment that he is continually hovering over this inhabited globe of earth swelling with the rage of envy at the felicity of his rival man and studying all the means possible to injure and ruin him but extremely limited in power to his unspeakable mortification this is his present state without any fixed abode place or space allowed him to rest the soul of this foot upon from his expulsion i take his first view of horror to be that of looking back towards the heaven which he had lost there to see the chasm or opening made up out at which as at a breach in the wall of the holy place he was thrust headlong by the power at which expelled him i say to see the breach repaired the mounds build up the walls garrisoned with millions of angels and armed with thunders and above all made terrible by that glory from whose presence they were expelled as is poetically hinted at before upon this site is no wonder if there was such a place that they fled till the darkness might cover them and that they might be out of the view of so hated a site wherever they found it you may be sure they pitched their first camp and began after many a sour reflection upon what was past to consider and think a little upon what was to come if i had as much personal acquaintance with the devil as would admit it and could depend upon the truth of what answer he would give me the first question i would ask him should be what measures they resolved on at their first assembly and the next should be how they were employed in all that space of time between their so flying the face of their almighty conqueror and the creation of man as for the length of the time which according to the learned was 20 000 years and according to the more learned not half a quarter so much i would not concern my curiosity much about it it is most certain there was a considerable time between but of that immediately first let me inquire what they were doing all that time the devil in his host being thus i say cast out of heaven and not yet confined strictly to hell to his plain they must be somewhere satan and all his legions did not lose their existence no nor the existence of devils neither god was so far from annihilating him that he still preserved his being and this not mr milton only but god himself has made known to us having left his history so far upon record several expressions in scripture also make it evident as particularly the story of joe mentioned before the like in our savior's time and several others if they did not immediately engulf them as milton suggests to certain i say that they fled somewhere from the anger of heaven from the face of the avenger and his absence and their own guilt wonder not edit would make hell enough for them wherever they went nor need we fly to the dreams of our astronomers who take a great deal of pains to fill up the vast spaces of the star heavens with innumerable habitable worlds allowing as many solar systems as there are fixed stars and that not only in the known constellations but even in galaxy itself who to every such system allow a certain number of planets and to every one of those planets so many satellites or moons and all these planets and moons to be worlds solid dark opaque bodies habitable and as they would have us believe inhabited by the like animals and rational creatures as on this earth so that they may at this rate find room enough for the devil and all those angels without making a hell on purpose nay they may for all i know find a world for every devil and all the devil's host and so everyone may be a monarch or master devil separately in his own sphere or world and play the devil there by himself and even if this were so it cannot be denied but that one devil in a place would be enough for a whole systemary world and be able if not restrained to do mischief enough there too and even to ruin and overthrow the whole body of people contained in it but i say we need not fly to these shifts or consult the astronomers and the decision of this point for wherever satan and his defeated host went at their expulsion from heaven we think we are certain none of all these beautiful worlds or be they worlds or no i mean the fixed stars planets etc had been any existence for the beginning as a scripture calls it was not yet begun but to speak a little by the rules of philosophy that is to say so as to be understood by others even when we speak of things we cannot fully understand ourselves though in the beginning of time all this glorious creation was formed the earth the star heavens and all the furniture thereof and there was a time when they were not yet we cannot say so of the void or that name was nowhere as i called it before which now appears to be somewhere in which these glorious bodies are placed that immense space which those took up and which they move in at this time must be supposed before they have been to be placed there as God himself was and existed before all being time or place so the heaven of heavens or the place where the thrones and dominions of his kingdom then existed inconceivable and ineffable had an existence before the glorious serifs the innumerable company of angels which attended about the throne of god existed these all had a being long before as the eternal creator of them all had before them into this void or abyss of nothing however unmeasurable infinite and even to those spirits themselves inconceivable they certainly launched from that bright precipice which they fell from and here they shifted as well as they could here expanding those wings which fear and horror at their defeat furnished them as i hinted before they hurried away to the utmost distance possible from the face of god their conqueror and then most dreaded enemy formally their joy and glory be this utmost removed distance where it will here certainly satan and all his gang of devils his numberlers though routed armies retired here milton might with some good ground have formed his pandemonium and have brought them in consulting what was next to be done and whether there was any room left to renew the war or to carry on the rebellion but had they been cast immediately into hell closed up there the bottomless pit locked upon them and the key carried up to heaven to be kept there as mr milton himself in part confesses and the scripture firms i say had this been so the devil himself could not have been so ignorant as to think of any future steps to be taken to retrieve his affairs and therefore a pandemonium or divan in hell to consult of it was ridiculous all mr milton scheme of satan's future conduct and all the scripture expressions about the devil and his numerous attendance and of his acting since that time make it not reasonable to suggest that the devils were confined to their eternal prison at their expulsion out of heaven but that they were in a state of liberty to act though limited in acting of which i shall also speak in its place end of part one chapter six