were so persuaded it would be so, that you at last imagined he was come for you indeed; that you saw him and heard him; whereas, you may depend upon it, if you commit sin every night, the Devil will hold the candle, or do anything to forward it, but will never disturb you; he is too much a friend to your wickedness; it could never be the Devil, Thomas; it was only your own guilt frightened you, and that was Devil enough too; if you knew the worst of it, you need no other enemy.
Tho. Why that’s true, master; one would think the Devil should not bid me repent, that’s true; but certainly it was the Devil for all that.
Now Thomas was not the only man that, having committed a flagitious 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; it is 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 it is no sin, no offence, no breach of God’s law, and the like, when really it is both; but to press them to repent, when they have offended, that is quite out of his way; it is 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, notwithstanding 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 arid 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, &c., 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.
1. 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 were in his power.
2. 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 creation, 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 at 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 ex plained 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 an hypocrite of, that could be made, and therefore the most fitted for his purpose.
1. 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 in 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 ground work of his project; there needed no more than to bring her to be vain of it, and to conceit that it either was so, or was infinitely more sublime and beautiful than it really was; and having thus tickled her vanity, to produce 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.
2. 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 hei 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.
3. But, besides this, he found, upon the very first survey of her outside, something so very charming in her mien and behavior, so engaging as well as agreeable in the whole texture of her person, and withal such a sprightly wit, such a vivacity of parts, such a fluency of tongue, and, above all, such a winning, prevailing whine 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, who he found set not only a great value upon her person, hut 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 Satan 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, arid 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,
