An inquiry into the existence of a personal devil / [By John Epps.

Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the existence of a personal devil / [By John Epps. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Paul, with that far-seeing eye, with which he was endowed, foresaw the man of sin : he foresaw that the errors and the institutions of idolatrous paganism would hereafter spoil the truth and the simplicity of Christianity. He therefore warns Timothy against one of the sources, whence these errors would proceed. 143 The doctrine of these possessions, these departed human spirits, these dcufjLovLa, daimonia, he saw, would form a fruitful hot bed, out of which cunning priests would engender delusions to keep the people under their power. “144 Now the spirit speaketh expressly, that, in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doc- trines of devils,” (possessions) baifiovia, daimonia. Look at the nonsense, taught by the Romish priests, in reference to the power of departed saints : look at the rotten stuff, put forth in the temple of their merchandise, and sold under the name of “masses” for departed souls : look at the wasting of knees, in kneeling upon the boards, chattering gibberish, instead of being usefully employed in cleaning the boards : look at the wearying of fingers in counting beads, instead of using them in healthy, domestic, home-sided, family-comforting Christian duties: look at the prayers for the dead, in the Anglican daughter of the Romish whore, the mother of harlots, the English church establishment; where one sinner, who surely has enough to do to attend to his own salvation, is made busy in praying for the salvation of some one, who has already gone to his resting place : where one man, who is head and ears in debt, is busy trying to pay another’s debts as well as his own. Oh these men, who have put forth all this nonsense, who have enjoined all this mummery, who have burned people because they would not submit to it, are well described as “seducing spirits,” and equally well have their doctrines been defined as “ doctrines of possessions.” To conclude, the great secret of priestcraft is to attach to the worship of God so many piddling accounts, as Milton notes, that “common men cannot keep a stock going on in that trade.” Thus the priests have got the trade of religion into their own hands: and the people will never be free, will never be men, till they take back the great business of life, religion, in their own hands. It is, in conclusion, worthy of remark, that Paul, James, Peter, and Jude, never use the word daifuov, daimon: and that Paul, James, and John, use seldom, and Peter and Jude not at all, the word dai/xoviov. Indeed, Paul gives no sanction to the existence of these possessions. He refers to these only from incidental circumstances, that, he had in guarding the Christian disciples against malpractices and errors, to refer to practices and to errors in con- nexion with these possessions. And to argue, as some do, that, because Paul notices these possessions, he therefore believed in them, is not more absurd than would be the argument that because the missionary, in describing the gods of paganism, refers to them, he believes in their existence. 143 “ So much for the distinction uniformly observed in scripture, between the word 8td/3oAo?, diabolos, and Sai/xoviov, daimonion, to which I shall only add, that in the ancient Syriac version, these names are always duly distinguished. The words em- ployed in translating one of them, are never used in rendering the other; and in all the Latin translatious I have seen, ancient and modern, Popish and Protestant, this distinction is carefully observed. It is observed also in Diodati’s Italian version, and most of the late French versions; but in Luther’s German translation, the Geneva, French, and the common English, the words are confounded in the manner above observed.”—Professor Campbell’s Preliminary Dissertations on the Four Gospels, p. 206, vol. 1, 4to. 1782. H4 1 Tim. iv. 1.