To "destroy the works of the devil," and subvert his authority among mankind, was the avowed and leading object of Christ's mission, and He Himself describes the prince of the wicked spirits as it were cast down from Heaven in consequence of the triumph of His Gospel.* To the envy and influence of the same malicious being we are taught by St. John to ascribe the transgression of our first parents, and all the misery which their disobedience has entailed on their posterity. Cain, who slew his brother, was under the power of "that wicked one." It is he who soweth tares in the spiritual field of Christ's Church; he who taketh out the words of life from the hearts of men, lest they should believe and escape destruction. It was the devil who prompted the treason of Judas, and the hypocrisy of Ananias and Sapphira; the wicked who follow his pleasures are called his children; it was he who aspired to tempt the Son of God Himself by offering to His mortal view the power and pleasures of a worldly sovereign; and St. John expressly speaks of him as the fountain of all evil, when he tells us that "he that committeth sin is of the devil."

Nor is it only as the seducer of mankind from the paths of holiness that he approves Himself our deadly enemy: in several remarkable passages of Scripture he is represented as accusing the saints

* 1. St. John iii. 8. St. Luke x. 18.

† Rev. xii. 9. 1 St. John iii. 12. St. Matt. xiii. 39. St. Mark iv. 15. St. John xiii. 2.

xiii. 10. St. Matt. iv. 1.

Acts v. 3. St. John viii. 44. Acts

1 St. John iii. 8.

before God, and (either mediately through those men whom he has already ensnared, or by the immediate power of himself and his spiritual agents,) as impeding the progress of the truth upon earth ; and persecuting, both in their bodies and in their outward circumstances, the servants of God and the Messiah.*

And as he is thus, for a time, permitted by God to exercise the constancy and patience of His saints, so we are instructed to look forward to the period when Satan shall, by the same mighty Conquorer who hath already cut short his power, be beaten down beneath the feet of those whom he hath persecuted, in that day when everlasting fire is prepared for him and for his angels, and when, not only the wicked, but the devil who hath deceived them, shall be cast into the lake of torment.†

In all these places it is difficult to conceive that either allegory or metaphor can be intended. It is hard to suppose that, in books meant for general instruction, and composed, as most of the books of the New Testament are, in a style extremely remote from every thing like poetry or fable, a fabulous and poetical mythology should have been so closely interwoven with their most solemn and literal truths, their most practical precepts, and their most awful motives for faith and conduct. And however such terms as "the evil principle," the "powers of evil,"

* Job i. 6. Zech. iii. 1. Rev. xii. 10. Job ii. 5. 2 Cor. xii. 7. Rev. ii. 10.

+ St. Matt. xxv. 41. Rom. xvi. 20. Rev. xx. 10.

or "the gates of hell," or "the spirit of disobedience," might possibly have been explained away to mean "mischief" or "temptation" in the abstract, and from whatever cause arising, yet of " devils," of "spirits," of "Satan and his angels," we know, as well as any thing in the history of language can be known, the ancient and usual meaning; and it is certain that if such creatures be altogether fabulous, no words could possibly have been used by the Son of God and His apostles more likely to deceive their hearers.

Still, however, it is insisted that, admitting all these expressions to apply literally, and to be intended thus to apply to those evil and unfriendly angels of whom the Jews and Platonists stood in fear, yet the reality of such beings will not necessarily follow from the mention made of them in Scripture. "The doctrine in question," (I give the words of the modern leader of the Socinians,)" the doctrine of an evil spirit was unknown to the Jews previous to their captivity, but was, probably, borrowed by their learned men, at that time, from the oriental philosophy." "After their return it became, in process of time, the popular creed, and the popular language, being gradually fashioned to it, was adopted equally by those who did, and those who did not believe the theory on which it was founded." "But neither Jesus nor His apostles ever explicitly declare that they themselves admitted the philosophy which governed the language of the country in which they lived, much less do they

profess to teach it as of divine authority." "The first teachers of Christianity neither positively affirm, nor authoritatively contradict the existence and agency of an evil spirit." "The doctrine, therefore, rests on its own evidence, that is, on no evidence at all."*

How much credit should be given to the assertions, and how much weight allowed to the arguments contained in this plausible and ingenious statement, may be learnt from the following observations.

That the doctrine of an evil spirit was unknown to the Jews before the Babylonish captivity (though it be an opinion which some men of considerable learning have adopted and maintained), will not be readily granted by those who, without perplexing the question with ambiguous names, and extraneous and irrelevant superstitions, confine their attention to the essentials of that doctrine as received by rational Christians.

It is true, indeed, that the word Satan is employed by Moses in a different sense from that of an evil spirit†; and it is also true that this word, when it occurs in the prophecies anterior to the captivity, may bear the meaning of any adversary, either spiritual or merely human. But, though we should grant that the name does not occur in the more ancient writings of the Jews, though we should even grant that no allusion to the doctrine * Belsham, Review of Wilberforce, p. 36, 37. † Num. xxii. 22.

of an evil spirit is found in those writings, it would be a very hasty inference that, therefore, the ancient Jews must necessarily have been ignorant either of the one or the other; far more that the latter must, on this account, be abandoned as a vain and superstitious fable.

The books in question, which are, partly, the statute law of the Hebrew nation, partly some very brief and incidental notices of their history, and partly, religious admonitions addressed on various occasions to their rulers or the body of their tribes, are by far too few and too short to be received as containing the sum total of their opinions and their prejudices. Still less are we to condemn as absolutely untrue, whatever is not expressly revealed in the earlier parts of the Old Testament. It has been a question (for instance) with many learned men, whether the resurrection itself be really disclosed in the Jewish writings anterior to the captivity; but there are few who conclude from hence that the Hebrews first learned this doctrine from the Chaldeans, and still fewer, I trust, who on this account deny that the dead are raised. If, however (as many of the ancient and the most eminent of the modern commentators suppose), the book of Job were written or translated by Moses, it is certain that Moses was well acquainted both with the term "Satan,” and with the notion of that being to whom the term is now appropriated.*

* See on this question, Dupin. Canon. I. i. c. 3. Simon. Cri