It is not to be doubted but the Devil can see us when and where we cannot see him. And as he has a personality, though it be spirituous, he and his angels too may be reasonably supposed to inhabit the world of spirits, and to have free access from thence to the regions of life, arid 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, pass to a place (wherever that is) which is appointed for them.
If the Devil was confined to a place (hell) as a prison, 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 such a place as we are taught to understand it to be.
Indeed, according to some, hell should be a place of fire and torment to the souls that are cast into it, but not to the devils themselves; whom we make little more or less than keepers and turnkeys to hell, as a gaol; that they are sent about to bring souls thither, lock them in when they come, and then away upon the scent to fetch more. That one sort of devils are made to live in the world among men, and to be busy continually debauching and deluding mankind, bringing them as it were to the gates of hell; and then, another sort are porters and carriers to fetch them in.
This is, in short, little more or less than the old story of Pluto, of Cerberus, and of Charon; only that our tale is not half so well told, nor the parts of the fable so well laid together.
In all these notions of hell and the Devil, the torments of the first, and the agency of the last tormenting, we meet with not one word of the main, and perhaps only accent of horror, which belongs to us to judge of about hell, I mean the absence of heaven; expulsion and exclusion from the presence and face of the chief Ultimate, the only eternal and sufficient Good; and this loss sustained by a sordid neglect of our concern in that excellent part, in exchange for the most contemptible and justly condemned trifles, and all this eternal and irrecoverable. These people tell us nothing of the eternal reproaches of conscience, the horror of desperation, and the anguish of a mind hopeless of ever seeing the glory, which alone constitutes heaven, and which makes all other places dreadful, and even darkness itself.
And this brings me directly to the point in hand; namely, the state of that hell we ought to have in view, when we speak 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; absence from the life of all beatitude is his curse; despair is the reigning passion in his mind; and all the little constituent parts of his torment, such as rage, envy, malice, and jealousy, are consolidated in this, to make his misery complete; namely, the duration of it all, the eternity of his condition; that he is without hope, without redemption, without recovery.
If anything can inflame this hell, and make it hotter, it is this only, and this does add an inexpressible horror to the Devil himself; namely, the seeing man (the only creature he hates) placed in a state of recovery, a glorious establishment of redemption formed for him in heaven, and the scheme of it perfected on earth; by which this man, though even the Devil by his art may have deluded him, and drawn him into crime, is yet in a state of recovery, which the Devil is not; and that it is not in his (Satan’s) power to prevent it. Now take the Devil as he is in his own nature angelic,. a bright immortal seraph, heaven-born, and having tasted the eternal beatitude, which these are appointed to enjoy; the loss of that state to himself, the possession of it granted to his rival, though wicked like and as himself; I say, take the Devil as he is, having a quick sense of his own perdition, and a stinging sight of his rival’s felicity, it is hell enough, and more than enough, even for an angel to support; nothing we can conceive, can be worse.
As to any other fire than this, such, and so immaterially intense, as to torment a spirit, which is itself fire also; I will not say it cannot be, because to Infinite everything is possible; but I must say, I cannot conceive rightly of it.
I will not enter here into the wisdom or reasonableness of representing the torments of hell to be fire, and that fire to be a commixture of flame and sulphur; it has pleased God to let the horror of those eternal agonies about a lost heaven be laid before us by those similitudes or allegories, which are most moving to our senses, and to our understandings; nor will I dispute the possibility; much less will I doubt but that there is to be a consummation of misery to all the objects of misery, when, the Devil’s kingdom in this world ending with the world itself, that liberty he has now may be farther abridged; when he may be returned to the same state he was in between the time of his fall and the creation of the world; with perhaps some additional vengeance on him, such as at present we cannot de scribe, for all that treason, and those high crimes and misdemeanors, which he has been guilty of here, in his conversation with mankind.
As his infelicity will be then consummated and completed, so the felicity of that part of mankind, who are condemned with him, may receive a considerable addition from those words in their sentence, to be tormented with the Devil, and his angels; for as the absence of the supreme Good is a complete hell, so the hated company of the deceiver, who was the great cause of his ruin, must be a subject of additional horror, and he will be always saying, as a Scotch gentleman, who died of his excesses, said to the famous Dr. P— — who came to see him on his death-bed, but had been too much his companion in his life,
“It is no time to trifle with truth.”
I would not treat the very subject itself with any indecency; nor do I think my opinion of that hell’, which I say consists in the absence of him, in whom is heaven, one jot less solemn than theirs who believe it all fire and brimstone; but I must own, that, to me, nothing can be more ridiculous, than the notions that we entertain, and fill our heads with, about hell, and about the Devil’s being there tormenting of souls, broiling them upon gridirons, hanging them up upon hooks, carrying them upon their backs, and the like; with the several pictures of hell, represented by a great mouth with horrible teeth, gaping like a cave on the side of a mountain; suppose that appropriated to Satan in the Peak, which indeed is not much unlike it, with a stream of fire coming out of it, as there is of water, and smaller devils going and coming continually in and out. to fetch and carry souls the Lord knows whither, and for the Lord knows what.
These things, however intended for terror, are indeed so ridiculous, that the Devil himself, to be sure, mocks at them; and a man of sense can hardly refrain doing the like; only I avoid it, because I would not give offence to weaker heads.
However, I must not compliment the brains of other men at the expence of my own, or talk nonsense be cause they can understand no other. I think all these notions and representations of hell, and of the Devil, to be as profane as they are ridiculous; and I ought no more to talk profanely than merrily of them.
Let us learn to talk of these things then, as we should do; and as we really cannot describe them to our reason and understanding, why should we describe them to our senses? We had, I think, much better not describe them at all, that, is to say, not attempt it. The blessed Apostle St. Paul was, as he said himself, carried up, or caught up, into the third heaven; yet, when he came down again, he could neither tell what he heard, or describe what he saw; all he could say of it was, that what he heard was unutterable, and what he saw was inconceivable.
It is the same thing as to the state of the Devil, in those regions which he now possesses, and where he now more particularly inhabits. My present business then is, not to enter into those grave things so as to make them ridiculous, as I think most people do that talk of them; but as the Devil, let his residence be where it will, has evidently free leave to come and go, not into this world only, (I mean the region of our atmosphere,) but, for aught we know, to all the other inhabited worlds which God has made, wherever they are, and by whatsoever names they are, or may be, known or distinguished; for if he is not confined in one place, we have no reason to believe he is excluded from any place, heaven only excepted, from whence he was expelled