know that they are devils incarnate,) may, for ought we know, go on for God’s sake; torture, murder, starve to death, mangle, and macerate, and all for God, and God’s Catholic church; and it is certainly the Devil’s master-piece to bring mankind to such a perfection of devilisrn as that of the Inquisition is; for if the Devil had not been in them, could they christen such an hellfire judicature as the Inquisition is, by the name of the Holy Office? And so in paganism, how could so many nations among the poor Indians offer human sacrifices to their idols, and murder thousands of men, women, and children, to appease this god of the air, when he is angry, if the Devil did not act in them under the vizor of devotion?
But we need not go to America, or to the Inquisition, not to paganism or to popery either, to look for people that. are sacrificing to the Devil, or that give their peace-offerings to him, while they are offered upon God’s altar. Are not our churches, (ay, and meetinghouses too. as much as they pretend to be more sanctified than their neighbors,) full of Devil-worshippers?
Do not the sons of God make assignations with the daughters of men, in the very house of worship? Do they not talk to them in the language of the eyes? And what is at the bottom of it, while one eye is upon the prayer book, and the other adjusting their dress 7 Are they not sacrificing to Venus and Mercury, nay, and the very Devil they dress at?
Let any man impartially survey the church gestures, the air, the postures, and the behavior; let him keep an exact roll, and if I do not show him two Devilworshippers for one true saint, then the word saint must have another signification than I ever yet understood by it.
The church (as a place) is the receptacle of the dead, as well as the assembly of the living. What relates to those below, I doubt Satan, if he would be so kind, could give a better account of than I can; but as to the superficies, I pretend to so much penetration as to tell you, that there are more spectres, more apparitions always there, than you that know nothing of the matter, may be aware of.
I happened to be at an eminent place of God’s most devout worship the other day, with a gentleman of my acquaintance, who, I observed, minded very little the business he ought to come about; first I saw him al ways busy staring about him, and bowing this way and that way, nay he made two or three bows and scrapes when he was repeating the responses to the ten commandments, and assure you, he made it correspond strangely, so that the harmony was not so broken in upon as you would expect it should. Thus: Lord, (and a bow to a fine lady just come up to her seat,) have mercy upon us; (three bows to a throng of ladies that came into the next pew all together,) and incline (then stopped to make a great scrape to my Lord) our hearts just then the hearts of all the church were gone off from the subject, for the response was over; so he huddled up the rest in whispers; for God could hear him well enough, he said, nay, as well as if he had spoken as loud as his neighbors did.
After we were come home, I asked him what he meant by all this, and what he thought of it.
“How could I help it?” said he, “I must not be rude.”
“What,” said I, “ rude to whom?”
“Why,” says he, “ there came in so many ladies, I could not help it.”
“What,” said I, “ could not you help bowing when you were saying your prayers?”
“O sir!” says he, “ the ladies would have thought I had slighted them; I could not avoid it.”
“Very well,” said I, “then you would be rude to God, because you could not be rude to the Devil?”
“Why, that is true,” said he, “ but what can we do? There is no going to church, as the case stands now, if we must not worship the Devil a little between whiles.”
This is the case indeed, and Satan carries his point on every hand; for if the fair-speaking world, and the fair-looking world are generally devils, that is to say, are in his management, we are sure the foul-speaking and the foul-doing world are all on his side; and you have then only the fair-doing part of the world that are out of his class; and when we speak of them, O how few!
But I return to the Devil’s managing our wicked part; for this he does with most exquisite subtilty; and this is one part of it; namely, he thrusts our vices into our virtues, by which he mixes the clean and the unclean; and thus, by the corruption of the one, poisons and debauches the other, so that the slave he governs cannot account for his own common actions, and is fain to be obliged to his Maker, to accept of the heart, without the hands and feqt; to take, as we vulgarly express it, the will for the deed, and if Heaven was not so good to come into that half-and-half service, I don’t see but the Devil would carry away all his servants. Here indeed I should enter into a long detail of involuntary wickedness, which, in short, is neither more nor less than the Devil in everybody, ay, in every one of you, (our governors excepted,) take it as you please.
What is our language, when we look back with reflection and reproach on past follies? I think I was bewitched. I was possessed, certainly the Devil was in me, or else I had never been such a sot. Devil in you, sir, ay, who doubts it? you may be sure the Devil was in you, and there he is still, and next time he can catch you in the same snare, you will be just the same sot that you say you were before.
In short, the Devil is too cunning for us, and manages us his own way; he governs the vices of men by his own methods; though every crime will not make a man a devil, yet it must be owned, that every crime puts the criminal, in some measure, into the Devil’s power, gives him a title to the man, and he treats him magisterially ever after.
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