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This is the way it works: You drop some unbelief into the slot, and you get darkness and fear; doubts, and you get gloom and despondency; disobedience, and you get condemnation; fear, and you get weakness; murmuring, and you get discouragement. Oh, there are many things you can get out of Satan’s machine; and he is very glad to have you get them.
It must be admitted, however, that it was not altogether original with him. The idea was taken from E. Th. There were others, too, who claimed to have been honoured by his Satanic Majesty to edit his “journal.” J. R. Beard, a Unitarian minister, published in 1872 an Autobiography of Satan. This book has just appeared in English under the title Satan’s Diary.
Reprinted from Edition of 1660. As Satan’s malice, and man’s wickedness, cease not to molest the thrice happy estate of the church of Christ, so hath the eternal council of the only wise God predetermined the coming of offences, persecutions, heresies, schisms and divisions, that professors may be proved before they be as approved and made manifest, 1 Cor. xi. 19.
Some said he came direct from Satan’s kitchen, and that when he gives up keeping ordinary, he will return there again, though the generally-received opinion at Paris was, that he was at one time butler to King Pharaoh; and that, after lying asleep for four thousand years in a place called the Kattycombs, he was awaked by the sound of Nelson’s cannon at the battle of the Nile, and going to the shore, took on with the admiral, and became, in course of time, ship steward; and that after Nelson’s death he was captured by the French, on board one of whose vessels he served in a somewhat similar capacity till the peace, when he came to Paris, and set up an ordinary for servants, sticking the name of Katcomb over the door, in allusion to the place where he had his long sleep.
As for the story of his coming direct from Satan’s kitchen, I place no confidence in it at all, as Black Jack had nothing of Satan about him but blackness, on which account he was called Black Jack.
Satan’s red beard recalls the Scandinavian god Donar or Thor, who is of Phoenician origin. Judas was always represented in mediaeval mystery-plays with a red beard; and down to the present day red hair is the mark of a suspicious character. The devil also appears as yellow, and even blue, but never as white or green. The yellow devil is but a shade less bright than his fiery brother.
“And how may that be?” said the prior; “the false fiend hath deceived me; I have given him my soul, but have received no worldly benefit in return. Brother! dear brother! how may I escape?” “I will tell thee. As soon as I heard the voice of blessed St. “It is the express condition of the agreement,” said the unhappy monk, “I must say no prayer, or that instant I become Satan’s, body and soul.”
In Gorky’s story “The Devil” the devil himself suffers from ennui. But Baudelaire believed he had good reason to doubt Satan’s word, and, therefore, prayed to the Lord to make the devil keep his promise to him. He had little faith in the father of lies.
A poem, The Diabo-Lady, or a Match in Hell, appeared in London in 1777. According to Teutonic mythology, this diabolical Madonna is the mother or the grandmother of Satan. The mother or grandmother of Grendel, the Anglo-Saxon evil demon, became Satan’s mother or grandmother by adoption. A mother was a necessary part of the devil’s equipment.
Nothing could be more false; nothing could more obscure what salvation has done for him. Nothing could tend more to make him indifferent and careless. I want to oppose that idea with all my strength, for it is Satan’s lie.
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