decline his passions grow:The malice, Viper like, takes vent within,
Gnaws its own bowels, and bursts in its own sin:
Impatient of the change he scorns to bow,
And never impotent in power till now;
Ardent with hate, and with revenge distract,
A will to new attempts, but none to act;
Yet all seraphick, and in just degree,
Suited to Spirits high sense of misery,
Deriv’d from loss which nothing can repair,
And room for nothing left but meer despair.
Here’s finish’d Hell! what fiercer fire can burn?
Enough ten thousand Worlds to over-turn.
Hell’s but the frenzy of defeated pride,
Seraphick Treason’s strong impetuous tide,
Where vile ambition disappointed first,
To its own rage and boundless hatred curst;
The hate’s fan’d up to fury, that to flame,
For fire and fury are in kind the same;
These burn unquenchable in every face,
And the word Endless constitutes the place.
O state of Being! where being’s the only grief,
And the chief torture’s to be damn’d to life;
O life! the only thing they have to hate;
The finish’d torment of a future state,
Compleat in all the parts of endless misery,
And worse ten thousand times than not to Be!
Could but the Damn’d the immortal law repeal,
And Devils dye, there’d be an end of Hell;
Could they that thing call’d Being annihilate,
There’d be no sorrows in a future state;
The Wretch, whose crimes had shut him out on high,
Could be reveng’d on God himself and die;
Job’s Wife was in the right, and always we
Might end by death all human misery,
Might have it in our choice, to be or not to be.
Chap. IV
The Scripture is the first writing on earth where we find the Devil called by his own proper distinguishing denomination, DEVIL, or the5 Destroyer; nor indeed is there any other author of antiquity or of sufficient authority which says any thing of that kind about him.
Here he makes his first appearance in the world, and on that occasion he is called the Serpent; but the Serpent however since made to signify the Devil, when spoken of in general terms, was but the Devil’s representative, or the Devil in quo vis vehiculo, for that time, clothed in a bodily shape, acting under cover and in disguise, or if you will the Devil in masquerade: Nay, if we believe Mr. Milton, the Angel Gabriel’s spear had such a secret powerful influence, as to make him strip of a sudden, and with a touch to unmask, and stand upright in his naked original shape, meer Devil, without any disguises whatsoever.
Now as we go to the Scripture for much of his history, so we must go there also for some of his names; and he has a great variety of names indeed, as his several mischievous doings guide us to conceive of him. The truth is, all the ancient names given him, of which the Scripture is full, seems to be originals derived from and adapted to the several steps he has taken, and the several shapes he has appeared in to do mischief in the world.
Here he is called the Serpent, Gen. iii. 1.
The old Serpent, Rev. xii. 9.
The great red Dragon, Rev. xii. 3.
The Accuser of the Brethren, Rev. xii. 10.
The Enemy, Matt. xxiii. 29.
Satan, Job i. Zech. iii. 1, 2.
Belial, 2 Cor. vi. 15.
Beelzebub, Matt. xii. 24.
Mammon, Matt. vi. 24.
The Angel of light, 2 Cor. xi. 14.
The Angel of the bottomless pit, Rev. ix. 11.
The Prince of the power of the air, Eph. ii. 2.
Lucifer, Isa. xiv. 12.
Abbaddon or Apollion, Rev. ix. 11.
Legion, Mark v. 9.
The God of this world, 2 Cor. iv. 4.
The Foul Spirit, Mark ix. 5.
The Unclean Spirit, Mark i. 27.
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
The meaning of the word Devil is Destroyer. See
