fly to art and ftratagem for the carrying on his af fairs, much more now than he did then.

One reafon for this may be, that he has been more discovered and expofed in these ages, than he was before; then he could appear in the world in his own proper fhapes, and yet not be known; when the fons of God appeared at the divine fummons, Satan came along with them; but now he has played fo many fcurvy tricks upon men, and they know him fo well, that he is obliged to play quite out of fight, and act in difguife; mankind will allow nothing of his doing, and hear nothing of his faying, in his own name : and if you propofe any thing to be done, and it be but faid the Devil is to help in the doing it; or if you fay of any man, he deals with the Devil, or the Devil has a hand in it; every body flies him, and fhuns him, as the moft frightful thing in the world.

any

Nay, if any thing ftrange and improbable be done, or related to be done, we prefently fay the Devil was. at the doing it; thus the great ditch at NewmarketHeath is called the Devil's ditch; fo the Devil built Crowland abbey, and the whispering-place in Gloucefter cathedral: nay, the cave at Caftleton, only because there's no getting to the farther end of it, is called the Devil's A-, and the like: the poor people of Wiltshire, when you ask them how the great ftones at Stonehenge were brought thither; they will all tell you the Devil brought them: if mifchief extraor dinary befals us, we prefently fay the Devil was in it, and the Devil would have it fo: in a word, the Devil has got an ill name among us, and fo he is fain to act more in tenebris, more incog. than he ufed to do, play out of fight himfelf, and work by the fap, as the engineers call it and not openly and avowedly, in his own me and perfon, as formerly, though perhaps not with ecefs than he did before: and this leads me to more narrowly into the manner of the Devil's ment of his affairs, fince the Chriftian religion to fpread in the world, which manifeftly differs

from his conduct in more antient times: in which, if we discover some of the moft confummate fool's policy, the moft profound fimple craft: and the most fubtile fhallow management of things that can, by our weak underftandings, be conceived, we muft only refolve it into this, that, in fhort, it is the Devil.

CHA P. II.

Of Hell, as it is reprefented to us; and how the Devil is to be underfood, as being perfonally in Hell, when at the fame time we find him at liberty ranging over the world.

IT

T is true, as that learned and pleasant author, the inimitable Dr Brown, fays, the Devil is his own hell; one of the moft conftituting parts of his infelicity is, than he cannot act upon mankind brevi manu, by his own inherent power, as well as rage; that he cannot unhinge this creation; which, as I have obferved in its place, he had the utmoft averfion to from its beginning, as it was a ftated defign in the Creator, to fupply his place in heaven with a new fpecies of beings called men, and fill the vacancies occafioned by his degeneracy and rebellion.

This filled him with rage inexpreffible, and horrible refolutions of revenge; and the impoffibility of executing thofe refolutions torments him with defpair; this, added to what he was before, makes him a compleat Devil, with an hell in his own breaft, and a fire unquenchable burning about his heart.

I might enlarge here, and very much to the purpose, in defcribing fpherically and mathematically that exquifite quality called a devilifh fpirit; in which it would naturally occur, to give you a whole chapter upon the glorious articles of malice and envy, and efpecially upon that luscious, delightful, triumphant paffion called revenge; how natural to man, nay even to both fexes; how pleafant in the very contemplation, though there be not just at that time a power of exe

cution; how palatable it is in itself; and how well it relishes when dished up with its proper fauces; fuch as plot, contrivance, scheme, and confederacy, all leading on to execution: how it poffeffes an human foul in even the moft fenfible parts; how it impowers mankind to fin in imagination as effectually to all future intents and purposes (damnation), as if he had finned actually how fafe a practice it is too, as to punishment in this life; namely, that it impowers us to cut throats clear of the gallows, to flander virtue, reproach innocence, wound honour, and ftab reputation; and, in a word, to do all the wicked things in the world, out of the reach of the law.

It would also require fome few words to defcribe the fecret operations of thofe nice qualities, when they reach the human foul,-how effectually they form an hell within us, and how imperceptibly they affimilate and transform us into devils, mere human devils, as really devils as Satan himself, or any of his angels; and that therefore it is not fo much out of the way as fome imagine, to fay, fuch a man is an incarnate devil; for as crime made Satan a devil, who was before a bright, immortal feraph, or angel of light, how much more eafily may the fame crime make the fame devil, though every way meaner, and more contemptible, of a man, or a woman either? But this is too grave a fubject for me at this time.

The Devil being thus, I fay, fired with rage and envy, in confequence of his jealoufy, upon the creation of man, his torment is increased to the higheft by the limitation of his power, and being forbid to act against mankind by force of arms: this is, I fay, part of his hell, which, as above, is within him, and which he carries with him where-ever he goes; nor is it fo difficult to conceive of hell, or of the Devil either, under this juft description, as it is by all the ufual notions that we are taught to entertain of them, by (the old women) our inftructors for every man may, by taking but a common view of himself, and making a just scrutiny into his own paffions,

on fome of their particular excurfions, fee an hell within himself, and himself a mere devil as long as the inflammation lafts; and that as really, and to all intents and purposes, as if he had the angel (Satan) before his face, in all his locality and perfonality, that is to say, all devil and monster in his perfon, and an immaterial, but intenfe fire, flaming about and from within him, at all the pores of his body.

The notions we receive of the Deyil, as a person, being in hell as a place, are infinitely abfurd and ridicu lous. The first we are certain is not true in fact, because he has a certain liberty, (however limited, that is not to the purpose), is daily visible, and to be traced in his several attacks upon mankind, and has been fo ever fince his first appearance in Paradise. As to his corporeal vifibility, that is not the prefent queftion neither: it is enough that we can hunt him by the foot, that we can follow him as hounds do a fox upon an hot scent. We e can fee him as plainly by the effect, by the mifchief he does, and more by the mischief he puts us upon doing, I fay, as plainly, as if we faw him by the

eye.

It is not to be doubted but the Devil can fee us when and where we cannot fee him; and as he has a perfonality, though it be fpirituous, he and his angels too may be reasonably supposed to inhabit the world of spirits, and to have free accefs from thence to the regions of life, and to pass and repass in the air, as really, though not perceptible to us, as the spirits of men do after their release from the body, pafs to a place (where-ever that is) which is appointed for them.

If the Devil was confined to a place (hell) as a prifon, he could then have no business here; and if we pretend to describe hell as not a prison, but that the Devil has liberty to be there, or not to be there, as he pleased, then he would certainly never be there, or hell is not fuch a place as we are taught to understand it to be.

Indeed, according to fome, hell fhould be a place of fire and torment to the fouls that are caft into it, but

not to the devils themselves, whom we make little more or less than keepers and turnkeys to hell as a goal: that they are fent about to bring fouls thither, lock them in when they come, and then away upon the scent to fetch more: that one fort of devils are made to live in the world among men, and to be bufy continually debauching and deluding mankind, bringing them as it were to the gates of hell; and then, another fort are porters and carriers to fetch them in.

This is, in fhort, little more or less than the old ftory of Pluto, of Cerberus, and of Charon; only that our tale is not half fo well told, nor the parts of the fable so well laid together.

In all thefe notions of hell and the Devil, the torments of the firft, and the agency of the laft tormenting, we meet with not one word of the main, and perhaps only accent of horror, which belongs us to judge. of about hell; I mean, the absence of heaven, expulfion and exclufion from the prefence and face of the chief ultimate, the only eternal and fufficient Good; and this lofs fuftained by a fordid neglect of our concern in that excellent part, in exchange for the most contemptible and justly condemned trifles, and all this eternal and ir-recoverable. Thefe people tell us nothing of the eternal reproaches of confciences, the horror of defperation, and the anguish of a mind hopeless of ever feeing the glory, which alone conftitutes heaven, and which makes all other places dreadful, and even darkness itself.

And this brings me directly to the point in hand, viz. the state of that hell we ought to have in view, when we fpeak of the Devil as in hell. This is the very hell which is the torment of the Devil. In short, the Devil is in hell, and hell is in the Devil: he is filled with this unquenchable fire; he is expelled the place of glory, banished from the regions of light: abfence from the life of all beautitude is his curfe: defpair is the reigning paffion in his mind; and all the little conftituent parts of his torment, fuch as rage, envy, malice, and jealousy, are confolidated in this, to make his