The secrets of black arts!

[Illustration:P]erhaps the title of this Book―“The Devil’s Legacy to Earth Mortals” may at first seem somewhat strange; they will pause as they do at a Witches Prayer, and wonder whether they had best look into it or no, lest they should really raise the Devil by reading what he has bequeathed to mankind.

It is a question, not yet determined by the learned, whether the word Devil be singular, that is to say, the name of a person standing by himself, or a noun of multitude; if it be a singular, and so must be used personally only as a proper name, it consequently implies one imperial devil, monarch, or god of the whole clan of Hell; justly distinguished by term, The Devil, or as the Scots call him, The muckle-horned Dee’l, or as others in a wilder dialect, The Devil of Hell, that is to say, The Devil of a devil; or (better still) as the Scriptures expresses it, by way of emphasis, the great red dragon, the Devil, and Satan.

But if we take this word to be, as above, a noun of multitude, and so to be used ambidexter, as occasion presents, singular or plural, then the Devil signifies Satan by himself, or Satan with all his legions at his heels, as you please, more or less. It is thus expressed in Scripture, where the person possessed (Matt. iv. 24.) is first said to be possessed of the Devil, singular; and our Saviour asks him, as speaking to a single person, WHAT IS THY NAME? and is answered in the plural and singular together, MY NAME IS LEGION, FOR WE ARE MANY.

Nor will it be any wrong to the Devil, supposing him a single person, seeing entitling him to the conduct of all his inferior agents, is what he will take rather for an addition to his infernal glory, than a diminution or lessening of him in the extent of his fame.

Very few, if any, of those who believe there is a God, and acknowledge the debt of homage which mankind owes to the supreme Governor of the world, doubt the existence of the Devil, except here and there one, whom we call practical atheists; and it is the character of an atheist, if there is such a creature on earth, that he believes neither God nor Devil.

As the belief of both these stands upon a level, and that God and the Devil seems to have an equal share in our faith, so the evidence of their existence seems to stand upon a level too, in many things; and as they are known by their works in the same particular cases, so they are discovered after the same manner of demonstration.

Nay, in some respects, it is equally criminal to deny the reality of them both, only with this difference, that to believe the existence of a God is a debt to nature, and to believe the existence of the Devil is a like debt to reason; one is a demonstration from the reality of visible causes, and the other a deduction from the like reality of their effects.

One demonstration of the existence of God is from the universal well-guided consent of all nations to worship and adore a supreme power; one demonstration of the existence of the Devil, is from the avowed ill-guided consent of some nations, who, knowing no other god, make a god of the Devil for want of a better.