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.

    9/104 (page 3)
    and Grecian mythologies*, and, modified by circumstances, and, consequently in manifestation, traceable in the mythologies of almost all nations, the more uncivilised the nations, the ideas associated being the more absurd.7. But now, it is known, that all misery arises from the violation of the laws of the Creator, obedience to which is productive, necessarily productive, of hap- piness : and that all evil will cease when God’s laws, physical, intellectual, moral, and religious, are discovered and obeyed. As therefore the book of Creation can afford no knowledge of the Devil, the Scriptures must be the book where the natural history of the Devil must be learned. The importance of an accurate knowledge respecting the Devil must be apparent, when it is remembered, that his agencies and operations are regarded as extensive as is the out-spreading of the human family; as singularly power- ful, amounting almost to an omnipotent dominion; as producing multitudes of crimes 7 8 in connexion with the wicked, and excessive mental distress in connexion with the good and the excellent. If, therefore, there is such a personal being as the Devil, to know him, must be highly advantageous ; and if there is not such a being, it must be equally necessary, yea, more so, to be aware and thoroughly convinced of his ^o^-existence, as thus the mind will be led to seek for other causes for the results, which are supposed to be dependent upon his agencies, and, by their discovery, the discoverer will gain the power of getting rid of these results by removing their causes. The words, devil and devils, occur nearly one hundred and twenty times in the COMMON TRANSLATION. The first step in the enquiry respecting the Devil, is, Are these words in- variably represented by the same word in the original Scriptures F An examination demonstrates that this is not the case; that two distinct words are used; and, that eighty-two passages, of the one hundred and twenty, are represented by a word quite distinct from that which, in the thirty-eight passages, is the representative of the word devil in the common translation. Allowing, for the present, that the word devil is the proper interpretation of the Greek word in these thirty-eight passages, it is quite certain, that the word devil cannot be the proper interpretation of the other Greek word, occurring in the other passages; and consequently such interpretation must lead into error. For, it is a principle, that all who study the Scriptures, regarding them as the product, through human agency, of Divine wisdom, must allow, that that Divine wisdom would never employ two distinct words, if one conveyed the meaning.9 All arguments, therefore, in relation to the Devil, as derived from 7 “ And the further nations seem to be from civilization, the more fixed seems to be the belief in the devil.”—Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, p. 309, new series. No. 46, in a Review of New South Wales, by Mrs. Charles Meredith. John Murray, London. 8 Copy of indictment for murder, Chitty’s Burn’s Justice of the Peace, vol. iii., p. 259, 26th edit., 1831.—The Jurors of our Lord the King upon their oath present, that not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, on in the year of the reign of with force and arms, at the parish of aforesaid, in the county of aforesaid, in and upon one in the peace of God and our said the Lord the King, then and there being feloniously, wilfully, and of his malice aforethought, did make an assault, and that &c. 9 Hamilton, the inventor of that mighty improvement in the teaching of language, the literal interlinear translation, remarks, in his preface to the Gospel of St. John: b2