to lie many ages, to be tossed here and there by the diggers of earth, as is often the case, and perhaps be moulded into bricks, and other uses to the living? Who had not rather gain all this time thus lost to the body, and enjoy it in a happy existence, actively employed in the mystic evolutions of the operations of industrious heaven, than to be cast into darkness so great a lapse of ages, as may be the case? All this kind of good, which was intended in our first creation, has been thwarted by the occurrence of sin, in the persons of Adam and Eve.

A resurrection from the dead of all the human race, is the very evidence that God is not the author of death; for if he is, he would never thus counteract his own works by a resurrection, when, translation without the evil, the pain, and dishonor of death, would have, in a most glorious manner, produced the transition from earth to a celestial condition, in correspondence with a perpetuity of being, the inheritance of every intellectual creature of the universe, much better than to have passed thither through the gloomy horrors of a corporeal dissolution. There never was a more preposterous idea propagated, than that death is according to the original will of God, and everywhere takes place, according to the first and primeval order of nature, as it respected the race of man. Accordingly, from the good and benevolent nature of the Supreme Being, not an instant of time would be allowed to pass, ere pain, sickness and death, would be abolished from the earth, were it consistent, and the original plan go immediately into effect, that of translation from the earth to a spiritual condition. But so long as depravity and sin remain, so long will death reign; for by sin death, temporal, entered into the world, and has passed upon all men, because all men are concluded under sin, on account of the defalcation of the root and fountain of the race, Adam and Eve. Sin and depravity, the children of Satan, is the reason why Satan has a right to kill the inhabitants of the earth, as these qualifications are the agents and representatives of himself, who have been received and harbored by us; on which account we have struck hands with death, and chosen it for a companion, and entered into fellowship with it, and must therefore abide by it, till such time as God shall destroy in hell this author of death, which is the devil. But his power is restrained in some degree, on account of the atonement, which so far benefits every individual of human kind, as to allow them being, the blessings of animal and intellectual life, with an opportunity of obtaining salvation from sin, and an assurance of heaven; yet death must and will finally devour its victim, and hold it till the resurrection, which even the Divine Being cannot consistently prevent till that time. Till then, Satan will reign in a degree, and be a minister of distress, in as many cases as are possible; yet alleviating circumstances ob tained on the ground of the atonement, in the midst of sufferings

are dispensed; while it appears, that the atonement, as great as it is, cannot, till the round of certain periods, completely triumph over this destroyer.

That Satan is the sole cause of misery to the human race, we further prove from Luke, xiii. 16, as follows: "Ought not this woman, (said the Saviour,) being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, (to) be loosed from this bond?" from which he then set her free, so that she immediately walked erect and strong. On this subject we have the following from the pen of Adam Clarke: "The woman's infirmity, what was its origin? Sin. Had this never entered the world, there had been neither pain, distortion or death. Who was the principal in it? Satan; and demons have often acted in and on the persons of men and women; and it is not impossible that the principle part of unaccountable and inexplicable disorders, still come from that source."

In pursuance of this fact, that of Satan's having wickedly obtained a right to afflict the children of men, in certain degrees, and under certain limited conditions; which conditions are known to the invisible powers of both the good and the bad in another world; we have not a doubt but he had requested of our Lord, at a certain time, the privilege of tormenting Peter, the disciple of Christ, out of the ordinary way of human troubles, and in some very awful manner. We found our opinion respecting this, on the extraordinary announcement of the Saviour to that disciple, found Luke, xxii. 31: "And the Lord said Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." By which we understand, Satan desired to torment Peter, as he did poor Job, with the view of not only causing him to apostatize from Christianity, but to torment him with some dreadful disease in his flesh and mind, or both. Was it Peter's carnal mind, which had desired to sift him as wheat? and yet Peter, it seems, knew nothing about it until Christ informed him of it, saying, Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you; this must have been the fact, however, if Universalists are right on the subject of there being no devil but that of the human spirit.

Does not this notice of Satan by our Lord, prove beyond all contradiction, the real being of such a spirit? for in this case there was no sickness, no derangement of body or of mind, no wickedness, reproved in Peter, nor any slanderer or accuser of that disciple mentioned; but simply this, that Satan had desired to sift him by afflictions, as a fariner sifts his wheat in the wind, with great commotion and violence. Is it possible for desire to exist independent of being? We think not; yet here is a case of desire independent of any being, except it is allowed that Satan was that being, who originated that desire. Who ever heard of thought or desire existing in an abstract condition from

that of being? If the thing is impossible, it follows, therefore, that Satan, who desired to have Peter, was possessed of mind, and mind is being, and being is existence, which identifies the being called Satan, in that text, as a mental, conscious, thinking creature; and is all the evidence by which the identity of any being whatever can be ascertained, who are of an intellectual cast. This being, therefore, was the devil, whose ways and whose thoughts and desires were not hidden from the omniscient eye of God, to whom the thoughts of all the spiritual beings of eternity, are and were always open, as well as in that case; for he needed not that any one should inform him respecting the thoughts of spirits, any more than of the thoughts of man. That Satan sometimes has power, even over the bodies of good men, by the means of the wicked, is shown Rev. ii. 10: Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer; behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried." By which it appears there is not a doubt but they were tried by death, as martyrs; for when the Revelator wrote the above text, it was a time of great and dreadful persecution to the Christians, in all parts of the Roman empire. By which, and the foregoing, we are satisfied that Satan, with his evil angels, are the cause of all the sorrows and death of the human race, primarily, instead of the Divine Being. All those cases of judicial punishment by death, either according to the ecclesiastical law of the Jews, or by the immediate judgment of God, as in the case of Korah and his company, the false prophets slain by the hand of Elijah the Tishbite, in the temple of Baal, and at the brook Kishon; and those one hundred in number, who were destroyed by fire from heaven, at the intercession of Elisha the prophet, with Annanias and Saphira; the people who were drowned in the flood, and the Sodomites, with many other instances of the like character, mentioned in the Scriptures, are to be ascribed to the agency of evil spirits, in seducing mankind to sin against God, so that his providence is withdrawn, and they given over to this destroyer, the devil, so far at any rate, as relates to the life of the body, to which our remarks in this chapter are chiefly confined. But to close this subject, we will remark, that though Satan has, by the sin of our first parents, gained the power of death over our race, and would at one fell sweep have swept them in their federal head into hell, yet the atonement purchased back animal life, with all the ameliorating circumstances of human existence, from infancy till death, with all that train of things denominated the providence of God among men; but not to the exclusion of much sorrow and of final death, as this was impossible, or it would have been done.

On the subject of Evil Sprits, with Proofs of their being Supernatural Beings, and of their Acts among Men, still further than heretofore advanced in this Work; of Simon Magus, and the Gnostics, &c.

"There was an opinion extant among the Jews, and is yet extant, that there was a certain fallen angel, who was called Malak-hamaveth, the angel of death, i. e. he who had the power of separating the soul from the body, when God decreed that any one should die. Sammael is a common name for the devil among the Jews; and they have a tradition that the angel of death shall be destroyed by the Messiah, and that at a certain time Sammael said to the holy blessed God, "Lord of the world show me the Messiah?" The Lord answered, come and see him. And when Sammael had seen him he was terrified, and his countenance fell, and he said, most certainly this is the Messiah, who shall cast me and all the nations into hell, as it is written, Isaiah, xxv. 8: The Lord shall swallow up death forever. This is a remarkable account, and the Apostle shows that it is true, for the Messiah came to destroy him who had the power of death, which is the devil."-Clarke. The Apostle Paul speaks of this being, with others of the like character, in Ephesians, vi. 12, as follows: "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." That this allusion did not refer to kings, rulers, or powers, and combinations of men formed against the gospel, is evident from the Apostle's remarkable qualifying words, which are, "we wrestle not against flesh and blood," of which the human opponents of the religion of Christ were composed. And who are the rulers of the darkness of this world? The answer is according to the text, that Satan and the subordinate demons, the nobles of his empire. "Commentators in general," says Dr. Clarke, "on these verses, believe that by principalities and powers, is meant the different orders of evil spirits, who are employed under the devil, their great leader and head, to prevent the spread of the gospel in the world, and to destroy by sin the souls of mankind; and that they have their various stations in the regions of the air, all around the earth." "These are the spirits," says John Wesley, "who continually oppose faith, love, and holiness, and labor to infuse unbelief, pride, idolatry, lusts, malice, covetousness, envy, anger and hatred, into the minds of men."

That there are many evil spirits, fallen angels, or devils, is shown from all parts of the New Testament; a few of which we proceed to exhibit, more than already done. James, ii. 19:

"Thou believest that there is one God, thou doest well, the devils believe and tremble." Now if the Jews called the idols of the heathen devils, as appears they did-see Deut. xxxii. 17—— 2d Chron. xi. 15-and Psalms, cvi. 36, 37-yet by St. James, in the above text, we discover that such devils as he there speaks of, were no idols, or images of any description, but were in reality conscious beings, having a capacity of believing, of understanding, and of fearing; so much so, as that they knew there was one God, and trembled on that account. But why were the idols of the heathen called devils by the Jews? Because, as before shown, the devil was the author of that kind of worship, whereby he governed and subverted the passions of men the more effectually, and prostituted them to the basest of purposes. Out of this text of St. James, arises one idea which overturns one branch of Universalism at least, beyond all doubt, which even themselves can't help perceiving, blinded as they are with the sophisms of their belief. This idea is, that there is a state of suffering among some supernatural beings in another world, or in eternity, and consequently a hell beyond the grave; for sufferings there can be nothing short of a hell. If this is not so, why has St. James said, that the fact of the being of a God, causes beings, which he calls devils, to tremble, which is the sign of horror and distress; for he says the devils believe there is one God, and tremble on that account. Now who, or what, are those beings here called devils? They cannot have been the images or idols of the heathen, as they were not able to believe or disbelieve. They cannot have been the diseases of the bodies or minds of men, as disease of any and all descriptions, are incapable of believing or disbelieving any thing. They cannot have been the carnal mind, because this no more than the others, is capable of believing, or of being conscious of anything abstracted from the spirit or soul of man; as the carnal mind is but a quality of the nature of a sinful being, but not a being itself; on which account it could not believe or disbelive anything-fear, hate, or love anything and are therefore not the beings of which St. James speaks, called devils, as these could believe, fear and tremble, because there is a God who was opposed in his very nature to their characters. They cannot have been men, or human beings, as human beings are never called devils, in the sacred writings; and for another reason, St. James said even to the unbelieving Jews, that they did well in believing that there is one God, and therefore, that belief was to them no cause of terror or of trembling, as it was to the devils, or the fallen angels, who have reason to tremble at the idea of a God, whom they have caused to become their enemy, on account of their rebellion against his government. If this is not true, why do they tremble because there is a God, which to every redeemed being is the very climax of hope! To this there can be but one answer, and