is the word Satan to be restricted to the common affairs of man, any more than the word good? If the word Satan is to be restricted, and made to signify the opposition one man may have to another; how is it that St. Peter has named but one?-see his 1st Epistle, v. 8, where he warns all Christians to be sober, to be vigilant, because their adversary, Satan, or the devil, as a roaring lion went about, seeking whom he might destroy. We repeat it, how is it that he has named but one, seeing thousands of the Jews were opposed to the infant church? Surely thousands and tens of thousands could not have meant but one; surely, if it did, St. Peter should have warned them against many Satans, instead of one-and but one.

Balfour contends that it was God who afflicted Job, and not Satan, or the Christian devil as he calls him-nor the Persian An iman and evil being. Because Job says, chap. xxi. the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. This was said by Job because he supposed it was sowe have no evidence that Job then knew that Satan had appeared among the angels, the sons of God, and accused Job of serving God from interested purposes, namely, because he allowed him to become rich. But the fact of Satan's being allowed to afflict him, is what is meant by Job, when he said the Lord did it, he did it by this agent. Moses in relating this story, makes even God to say that it was Satan who moved him against Job without a cause. This is extremely singular, for the Persian Ahriman or the Christian Satan, being both of them a perfect nonentity, according to Balfour, puts the whole affair upon God, and makes Moses say that God moved God against Job without a cause--which is considerably worse than nonsense. At the end of Job's trial, there is no doubt but he was given to understand this whole matter, and the particular reason why the Lord had suffered Satan to thus torment him without any seeming reason-and that it was the devil, ever eager for work of the kind, who had moved him thereto, which he had consented tofor the very purpose of destroying a doctrine which it seems men had imbibed, namely, that in this life the good and the bad have their rewards-a doctrine precisely the same with that now held by modern Universalists. But God, in the affair of Job, shows it to be a false doctrine. And seeing Job was a good and righteous man, we do not exactly understand how it is that Universalists justify the Divine Being in afflicting Job unjustly; as they teach that all men suffer only as they sin, and that instantly. Job being righteous, how was it just in God thus to have tormented him? But on the orthodox plan, we at once understand the reason, which was two fold; namely, to destroy the Universalist notion of the age, which was that the bad were punished in this life, while the good were rewarded with riches, favors, &c. and also to show that many are the afflictions of the right

cous; and that the Lord chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth; a point of the divine administration, exactly opposite to the Universalist opinion.

Balfour seems to think the Satan which is so often spoken of in the book of Job, and is there shown as being the cause of Job's sorrows, was the freebooters of the country, the Chaldeans, Sabeans, &c. This being true-how could Moses by any stretch of language whatever, either allegorical or parabolical, say that the freebooters of the country, came and appeared before God on a certain day, when the sons of God came together? and more than this, how could he say that it was the Chaldeans and Sabeans who smote Job with sore biles? He could not; it is impossible. That this is Balfour's opinion, see his Second Enquiry, page 57. It were equally easy to show from the book of Job that Moses has there said nothing about the being of God, as that he has said nothing about the being of Satan; and as well might it be urged by Universalists that the book of Job was written for the express purpose of proving that there is no God, as that it was written to prove there is no Satan who exists as a real being. If the book of Job was intended as a mere irony by Moses, and on that account the Ahriman or Satan of those ages, was allowed to personify the principle of evil, surely it became the honor the dignity as well as the truth of inspiration, to have said as much, and most certainly-if we might not exactly look for this in the book itself, we might expect it in the commentaries of the Jews, and most of all in the New Testament, from the lips of Christ or some of disciples, who wrote his life. But it does not appear in any of these. Surely, an irony or a sarcasm, when carried so far, looks very much as if it were really meant to be truth of the soberest kind, and such we believe it is.

Balfour complains that none of the early writers of the Bible have said any thing about the devil being a fallen angel; but to this we need only remark, that it was taken for granted all along from what Moses had said about the being who deceived Eve, in the matter of the command respecting the forbidden fruit, never even dreaming that it was not, or that it was, as Universalists now-a-days contend, namely, that it was merely the innocent appetite of the first woman.

This writer also makes himself much sport about what he calls the Christian devil, and that the orthodox hold him, or rather represent him as the great rival of the Eternal God. But this we deny, as there can be no rival to the Supreme Being. Satan is as far from bearing this character as any other enemy of all holiness; as the utmost he can do is to tempt such as are not as bad as himself, and such as are on probation. But if orthodox Christians are accused of setting up Satan as the rival of God, whom we believe to be a fallen angel, what are we to think of Universalists, and what ought they to think of them

selves, when they say the devil of the Scriptures, which they believe is human nature, the work of God's own hand, is set up by them as this rival? for they have never attempted to abate one jot or tittle of the virulence of this devil, but allowed it to take the exact place of the orthodox devil, in their theology. Now, who most dishonors God, the orthodox believer, who says, a fallen free-agent, or angel, is this opponent to the ways of God, or the Universalist, who says human nature, which God himself has made, is this opponent? Has God made an enemy to himself? The idea is unfounded and utterly preposterous and impossible. In support of the opinion that it was a fallen angel called Satan, who by the permission of God, for a wise reason before noticed, we bring a strange concession from Mr. Balfour himself, on this subject, which the reader may find in his book, called his Second Enquiry, pages 58, 59. He says, the ancient heathen Persians, in the time of Job, held that there were two gods; the one the author of all good, and the other of all evil. This latter god, however, he says, the Old and New Testament esteemed (see p. 56 of the Second Enquiry) as the principle of evil driñed, and not as a being. But whereabouts this is so considered in the Bible we are not able to ascertain. This being the case, namely, that the heathen in the time of Job are considered, as Balfour says, even by the Bible itself, to have worshipped or rather deified the mere principle of evil, says, "it is strange, and has always appeared strange, that in this account Satan, (or this evil,) should be represented as conversing freely and familiarly with God." This we consider a grand concession; as indeed it is passing strange that divine inspiration should thus state the matter, if it was not so in fact. Would the Holy Ghost, who moved men of old to write the Scriptures, have so far respected the opinion of the heathen Persians of the time of Job, as to have given it the name of Satan, the identity of a being, and of such a being as could reason, accuse, abuse, traduce, pass up and down in the earth, doing any and all things, like a real being, and yet a mere fiction, or abstract principle, which cannot reason, or do any thing else, in and of itself; for if there be no being which is evil, there can exist no abstract evil. Satan is a being, therefore, and so considered by the sense of the Scripture; and no wonder Mr. Balfour has said, "it has always appeared strange to him, that in this account, Satan should be represented as conversing freely and familiarly with Gcd," a thing, we add, an abstract principle could not do.

Balfour, in trying to show that Christianity, as held by the orthodox sects, respecting the being of the devil, was derived from Zoroaster, the great reformer of the more ancient Magian religion of the ancestors of the Medes and Persians, and that in doing this he incorporated into it one new idea, which was that there was one supreme and eternal God, who was above all, and

was the author of all good. Previous to his time, they had held that there were two gods, one good and the other bad, whose powers were equal; but Zoroaster exploded this doctrine, and gave to the Supreme God exclusive rule, the same as the Scriptures do, while the evil god or angel was far less, and was finally to be overcome and destroyed in everlasting darkness. He also taught, says Balfour, as he is informed by P. Michaelis, the doctrine of a final resurrection. No doubt both these opinions he had learned of the Jewish Scriptures, as he thinks he was a Jew by birth and education, and was deeply learned, and thinks it very likely that he was, when young, a servant to one of the prophets, of whom the true sense of the Scriptures might have been learned by him.

All this we do not doubt, but now comes the wonder. This same Zoroaster taught also the doctrine of a final day of judgment, and the being of a devil, who was inferior to God, just the same as Christianity teaches now-a-days, as promulged by the orthodox churches; and yet he never could have learned it from the Bible, says Balfour, when both opinions had been taught many hundred years before Zoroaster was born, both by Job and by Moses. Is not this a wonder?. What is the reason that these two latter doctrines could not have been learned of him from the same writings that the other two were, when they are equally plainly taught, especially in the book of Job. How is it that Zoroaster could learn the doctrine of the resurrection from a mere trait in the book of Job, where he says, he knew that his Redeemer lived, and that in the latter day he should stand upon the earth and that although worms should devour his skin, yet in his flesh he should see God; and not also learn a belief in the being of the devil, when it is over and over again taught by his being named, identified and conversed with by the Almighty?

This is the most illogical conclusion we have ever met with in the writings of any man, for Balfour does not say that Zoroaster learned the opinion of the inferiority of the Persian evil god from them, but invented it himself, as well as that of a day of judgment; and on this account he is chiefly to be considered as a much greater impostor than Mahomet was. But because he taught a final resurrection from the dead, he is, we suppose, in this, no impostor at all, because Universalists believe this: but because he taught as he had learned from Moses, Job and David, the belief in a hell, a devil, and a day of judgment, he was therefore a very great impostor-the same which the Saviour and all the New Testament writers taught, and yet these were not impostors: how wonderful!

Here follows another strange conclusion, and equally logical with the other: which is, (pages 70, 71,) that Zoroaster, impostor as he was, did not choose to make God the author of evil, and that his conscience was more scrupulous than this-in which he

excelled some Christians; and yet Universalists teach us a doctrine, everywhere to be viewed, that if the evil exists at all, it is by the appointment of the Creator, for the wisest and best of purposes; for, says Ballou, God has a use for every volition of man, and that he is so situated as that he acts wholly from necessity. Whose conscience in this thing is the best, the universalist or the orthodox? We leave Universalists themselves to judge; for we make evil to arise from the abuse of free-agency, while Univer salists make God its direct author. They are worse, therefore, from their own showing, than Zoroaster was.

We conclude this chapter, therefore, being satisfied that it is impossible for any man, after duly considering this subject, to deny that Moses has in a manner satisfactory to the Jews, their prophets, to Jesus Christ and his disciples, and the church in all ages stated as plainly as pleased the holy ghost-that Satan, an evil apostate or fallen angel, beguiled the first woman with arguments and false reasoning, such as no beast or the appetites of Adam and Eve, could ever have made use of, as neither of them were capable, in the least degree, of moral perception, or power of reasoning; leaving the mind convinced that there must have been just such a being as the devil is supposed to be, who misled her, or she was not misled at all. Or if, as Mr. Ballou supposes, the whole account of Eve's fall is but an allegory, intended to teach the final predominance of her passions over her reasonyet, this will not meet even one difficulty, arising out of such a position. For if Moses invented an allegory for the above puposenamely, to illustrate the power of Eve's passions over her reason and innocence, yet it could not have been right, or according to truth, for her to make his allegory tell lies, as he has, if the account is but allegory. But how is this, says one; how does it tell lies, even allowing the account to be an allegory? We will show you-does not Moses say, that the serpent (which Mr. Balfour says was her lusts or appetites for food,) told her that her eyes should be opened, and that she should become as the gods, in the day she should eat of that fruit. Now this was false in the allegory, as it was impossible for the serpent (if that serpent was nothing more than her appetites,) for it to foretell any thing about it, as there is no perception in the mere cravings of hunger, or any other animal desire of her nature, or in any body else, since the world began. Eve's whole powers of body, mind and spirit, put together, could never have unaided by supernatural assistance-foreseen, foretold, or foreknown, one jot or tittle of the effects of her eating that fruit; how much less, therefore, her appetites, or the serpent of Universalists. To suppose it was an allegory, is much worse than Balfour's opinion, which is that it was a real conflict, or dialogue, in her mind, relative to eating of that tree; it is worse, because the sense is more hidden and ab