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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    If there is a God there cannot be a personal devil. There cannot be two omnipresents, two omnipotent^, two omniscients. The two cannot co-exist. If the devil is, and is such a being as he is represented to be, God must have created him; but can goodness create badness ? can mercy create cruelty ? can virtue beget vice ? can fullness of happiness create envy? can truth create error? can rectitude create deceit? When these can, then God can create a devil. The belief in the ever-present God negatives the existence of a devil. Where God is the devil cannot be. 240 Yet God is every where, and this must be known to the devil, if existing, for the possessions believe and tremble. How could he stay, if God be there. But it is said that God permits the devil to act. Then God rewards him. The common idea is, that the devil was cast out of heaven for his rebellion, and God sends him to the earth to create a rebellion there—what a method to punish a rebel—to give him a wide, broad field to carry on his hate upon. Talk of punishing the devil by casting him from heaven to earth—it was a reward: the very thing, no doubt, had he existed, which he wanted. Dismissed from heaven for disobeying God, he comes down to earth to teach men to disobey. If he is an enemy to God, God gives him a field, on which to show his enmity: if he has malice, here he has abundant opportunity to gratify his malevolent passion. But there is another point of view, in which the absurdity of the belief in the existence of a being, called the devil, becomes apparent. It is this, that there is no necessity for a devil. A heathen writer remarks, the Deity should not be called in, unless he is needed.241 The principle embodied in his recommendation is an excellent one. Let us seek its application, in the present instance. There is a certain recognized source of evil—of sin. It is the flesh : that is, active by itself, and not in conjunction with the higher faculties. The works of the flesh are described to be these: 242 “ Bor the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led by the spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are mani- fest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of the which I tell you before, as I have told you in times past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Now may it not be asked with confidence, if the flesh is capable of pro- ducing all these, what is left for the devil to do ? Is there any vice, any 240 The idea suggests itself, viewing the devil as self, falsely accusing the divine, that so, in the individual man, would the self-principle never be improperly active, if the man lived constantly“under the sense of the Divine presence. 241 Horace, Ars Poetica. 242 Galatians v. 17—21.