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This being premised: and my authority being so good Satan must not take it ill, if I treat him after the manner of men, and give him those titles which he is best known by among us; for indeed, having so many, it is not very easy to call him out of his name.
But who is he? What is his original? Whence came he? And what is his present station and condition? For these things, and these inquiries, are very necessary to his history; nor indeed can any part of his history be complete without them.
Thus the Devil, as mean thoughts as ye may have of him, is of a better family than any of you; nay, than the best gentleman of you all. What ye may be fallen to, is one thing; but what he is fallen from is another; and therefore, I must tell my learned and reverend friend J. W. L. L. D. when he spoke so rudely of the Devil lately that in my opinion he abused his betters.
How long he remained thus, it is true, we have no light into from history. and but little from tradition, Rabb Judah says, the Jews were of opinion, that he remained twenty thousand years in that condition; and that the world would continue twenty thousand more, in which he shall find work enough to satisfy his mischievous desires: but he shews no authority for his opinion. Indeed let the Devil have been as idle as they think he was before, it must be acknowledged, that now he is the most busy, vigilant, and diligeat of all God's creatures, and very full of employment too, such as it is.
Scripture indeed gives us light into the enmity there is between the two natures, the
