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This is such a kind of pleasure in Crime, such a fondness of doing Evil, that I am persuaded the Devil does not come up to; the Devil does not commit Sin as a pleasure, but with other and farther Views, such as affronting God his supreme Governor, and who he hates on innumerable Accounts; ruining Man, the subject of his Envy; lessening the Authority of Heaven, and counteracting divine Providence; and such other hellish Ends and Reasons, for which he exerts himself in Crime to the utmost; and the Pleasure the Devil takes in Crime is no otherwise, but more or less, as it answers some of these hellish Designs, and aims at more.
But my accurate Friend the 'Squire ——— pleases himself in the meer Crime, laughs in the Satisfaction he finds in the very Enjoyment of Vice; like a Man that would Blow up a House, and the whole Family in it, for the meer Satisfaction of hearing the Bounce; and please himself with it afterward, upon the meer Pleasure of seeing the innocent Wife and Children fly up in the Air, and be dash'd in Pieces with the Fall.
The Fact is not so bloody and cruel indeed, but the Principle is the same; he that can look back upon a hundred Adulteries, and act them all over again in his Imagination, with the same Pleasure as before, wishing for Occasions to commit a hundred more. I appeal to the learned Divines, who know what the meaning of that Text is, has committed Adultery with her already in his Heart, Matth. v. 28. whether such a Man is not really, tho' not actually, guilty of three hundred Adulteries, putting them all together.
It is a particular Snare to these Men, in the Case I am upon, that they say the Crimethey
