SECT. X.
Obj. IX.BUT (IX) it may be suggested farther, That it cannot be imagin'd what design the Devil should have in making those solemn compacts, since Persons of such debauch'd and irreclaimable dispositions as those with whom he is supposed to confederate, are pretty securely his, antecedently to the bargain, and cannot be more so by it, since they cannot put their Souls out of possibility of the Divine Grace, but by the Sin that is unpardonable; or if they could so dispose and give away themselves, it will to some seem very unlikely, that a great and mighty Spirit should oblige himself to such observances, and keep such ado to secure the Soul of a silly Body, which 'twere odds but it would be His, though he put himself to no farther trouble than that of his ordinary Temptations.
TO which suggestions 'twere enough to say, that 'tis sufficient if the thing be well prov'd, though the design be not known. And to argue negatively a side, is very unconclusive in such matters. The Laws and Affairs of the other World (as hath been intimated) are vastly differing from those of our Regions, and therefore 'tis no wonder we cannot judge of their designs, when we know nothing of their menages, and so little of their Natures. The Ignorant looker on can't imagine what the Limner means by those seemingly rude Lines and scrawls which he intends for the Rudiments of a Picture, And the Figures of Mathematick operation are nonsence, and dashes at a venture, to one uninstructed in Mechanicks. We are in the dark to one anothers Purposes and Intendments; and there are a thousand Intreagues in our little matters, which will not presently confess their design even to sagacious Inquisitors. And therefore 'tis Folly and Incogitancy to argue any thing one way or other from the designs of a sort of Beings, with whom we so little communicate, and possibly we can take no more aim, or guess at their Projects and designments, than the gazing Beasts can do at ours, when they see the Traps and Gins that are laid for them, but understand nothing what they mean. Thus in general.
But I attempt something more particularly, in order to which I must premise, that the Devil is a name for a Body Politick in which there are very different Orders and Degrees of Spi-
