such being as the devil. Were the eternal happiness of man really endangered by the assaults of such a subtle, powerful, indefatigable, and relentless enemy as the devil, it is surely natural to suppose that the subject of one of the first " errands of supernal grace" on which our gracious Creator senthis " winged messengers to this nether world, that the purpose of one of the first communications which Divine goodness vouchsafed to man, would have been to warn him to provide against the machinations of his formidable foe. But although the Pentateuch is a history of many, including the first, divine revelations to man, and of man's transgressions of the divine, laws, there is not in the whole volume the slightest foundation for the popular belief in the existence of a diabolical personage. The arguments generally adduced, to prove that the temptation of the protoplasts

was the work of a devil, are-1. that no being but the devil could wilfully seduce creatures from the obedience which they owed to their Creator; 2. that no animal like a serpent, naturally a dumb brute, could have discourse of reason," unless the devil was in him. It is scarcely necessary to observe, that both these questionbegging arguments rest solely on the assumption that God did not design the disobedience of the protoplasts. I trust that I have already demonstrated the fallacy of this assumption, à priori, from its incompa tibility with the omnipotence of God, and, à posteriori, by shewing that it was necessarily the first step whereby man attained just conceptions of the Divine attributes; and by clearly tracing, to the physical and moral evil produced by it, all the excellencies of which human nature is capable, or,

in other words, all the happiness which man enjoys in this world, or can hope to enjoy in another.

It surely is not too much to suppose, that if Moses intended that his countrymen, for whose instruction he wrote his history, should believe that the devil tempted the protoplasts, he would have distinctly stated that important fact. But far from representing the devil as the author of any one of the long catalogue of crimes recorded in the Pentateuch, Moses no where asserts his existence. And surely a doctrine of such vast importance, as the existence of such a being as the devil is said to be, ought to rest on nothing but the most direct and unequivocal as well as most sacred testimony: and of all the possible interpretations which any well-authenticated passage of a sacred narrative could bear, the last which sound

reason would impute to it is the inculcation of the existence of such an anomalous monstrosity as a devil. But the words in which Moses relates the temptation of the protoplasts, and the consequent penal sentence pronounced on the serpent and the woman, wholly preclude the possibility of attributing to him an intention to authorise a be"Now lief of the existence of such a being. the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made: and he said unto the woman," &c. suredly these words do not countenance the dogma, that it was not a serpent, but a devil in the shape of a serpent, that addressed Eve: and still less do the words in which God is recorded to have passed sentence on the serpent" And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this thou art cursed above all cattle, and above

As

every beast of the field." It is here observable, that the serpent is cursed because be tempted Eve. But if it was the devil who, in the guise of a serpent, tempted her, it appears by this passage that he was not cursed until he had done so, or, in other words, that he was not a devil; the idea of a devil being that of a cursed or damned creature: for the nature and extent of the curse are quite irreconcilable with the supposition that it was an aggravation of a sentence already passed on a damned being: the serpent is "cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field." The sentence proceeds: " upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat, all the days of thy life." It is clearly impossible to force these words into any application to the devil.

"And I will put enmity between thee