This story, however, may solve a great many of those things which pass for apparitions in the world, and which are laid to the Devil's charge, though he really may know nothing of the matter; and this would bring me to defend Satan in many things wherein he may truly be said to suffer wrongfully; and, if I thought it would oblige him, I might say something to his advantage this way; however, I will venture a word or two for an injured devil, take it as you will.

First, it is certain, that as this invisibility of the Devil is very much to our prejudice, so the doctrine of his visibility is a great prejudice to him, as we make use of it.

By his invisibility he is certainly vested with infinite advantages against us; while he can be present with us, and we know nothing of the matter, he informs himself of all our measures, and arms himself in the best and most suitable manner to injure and assault us, as he can counteract all our secret concerted designs, disappoint all our schemes, and, except when heaven apparently concerns itself to overrule him, can defeat all our enterprises, break all our measures, and do us mischief in almost every part of our life; and all this because we are not privy to all his motions, as he is to

ours.

But now for his visibility, and his real appearance in the world, and particularly among his disciples and emissaries, such as witches and wizards, demoniasts, and the like; here I think Satan has a great deal of loss, suffers manifest injury, and has great injustice done him; and that therefore I ought to clear this matter up a little, if it be possible to do justice to Satan, and set matters right in the world about him, according to that useful old maxim of setting the saddle upon the right horse, or giving the Devil his due.

First, as I have said, we are not to believe every idle head, who pretends even to converse face to face with the Devil, and who tell us they have thus seen him and been acquainted with him every day; many of these pretenders are manifest cheats, and however they would have the honour of a private interest in him, and boast how they have him at their beck, can call him this way and send him that, as they please, raise him and lay him, when, and how, and as often as they find for their purpose; I say, whatever boasts they make of this kind, they really have nothing of truth in them.

Now the injuries and injustice done to the Devil in these cases are manifest; namely, that they entitle the Devil to all the mischief they are pleased to do in the world; and if they commit a murder or a robbery, fire a house, or do any act of violence in the world, they presently are said to do it by the agency of the Devil, and the Devil helps them; so Satan bears the reproach, and they have all the guilt. This is, 1, a grand cheat upon the world, and 2, a notorious slander upon the Devil; and it would be a public benefit to mankind to have such would-be devils as these turned inside out, that we might know when the Devil was really at work among us, and when not; what mischiefs were of his doing, and which were not; and that these fellows might not slip their necks out of the halter by continually laying the blame of their wickedness upon the Devil.

Not that the Devil is not very willing to have his hand in any mischief, or in all the mischief that is done in the world; but there are some low-prized rogueries that are too little for him, beneath the dignity of his operation, and which it is really a scandal to the Devil to charge upon him. I remember the Devil had such a cheat put upon him in East Smithfield once, where a person pretended to converse with the Devil face to face, and that in open day, too, and to cause him to tell fortunes, foretell good and evil, &c., discover stolen goods, tell where they were who stole them, and how to find them again, nay, and even to find out the thieves; but Satan was really slandered in the case, the fellow had no more to do with the Devil than other people, and perhaps not so much neither: this was one of those they called 'cunning men,' or, at least, he endeavoured to pass for such a one; but it was all a cheat.

Besides, what had the Devil to do to detect thieves and restore stolen goods? Thieving and robbing, trick and cheat, are part of the craft of his agency, and of the employ ments which it is his business to encourage: they greatly mistake him, who think he will assist anybody in suppressing and detecting such laudable arts and such diligent servants. I will not say, but the Devil, to draw these people we call cunning men into a snare, and to push on his farther designs, may encourage them privately, and in a manner that they themselves know nothing of, to make use of his name, and abuse the world about him; till at last they may really believe that they do deal with the Devil, when, indeed, it is

only he deals with them, and they know nothing of the

matter.

In other cases he may encourage them in these little frauds and cheats, and give them leave, as above, to make use of his name, to bring them afterwards, and by degrees, to have a real acquaintance with him; so bringing the jest of their trade into earnest, till, at length, prompting them to commit some great villany, he secures them to be his own by their very fear of his leaving them to be exposed to the world; thus he puts a Jonathan Wild upon them, and makes them be the very wretches they only pretended to be before; so old Parsons of Clithroe, as fame tells, was twenty-five years a cunning man, and twenty-two years a witch; that is to say, for five-and-twenty years he was only pretending to deal with the Devil, when Satan and he had no manner of acquaintance, and he only put his legerdemain upon the people in the Devil's name, without his leave; but, at length, the Devil's patience being tired quite out, he told the old counterfeit that, in short, he had been his stalking-horse long enough, and that now, if he thought fit to enter himself and take a commission, well and good, and he should have a lease to carry on his trade for so many years more, to his heart's content; but if not, he would expose his knavery to the world, for that he should take away his people's trade no longer, but that he (Satan) would set up another in his room that should make a mere fool of him, and carry away all his customers.

Upon this the old man considered of it, took the Devil's counsel, and listed in his pay; so he, that had played his pranks twenty-five years as a conjuror when he was no conjuror, was then forced really to deal with the Devil for fear the people should know he did not: till now he had ambo dexter, cheated the Devil on one hand, and the people on the other; but the Devil gained his point at last, and so he was a real wizard ever after.

But this is not the only way the Devil is injured neither, for we have often found people pretend upon him in other cases, and of nearer concern to him a great deal, and in articles more weighty; as, in particular, in the great business of possession. It is true, this point is not thoroughly understood among men, neither has the Devil thought fit to give us those illuminations about it, as, I believe, he might do; particularly that great and important article is not, for aught

GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE.

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I can see, rightly explained, namely, whether there are not two several kinds of possession; viz., some wherein the Devil possesses us, and some in which we really possess the Devil; the nicety of which, I doubt, this age, with all its penetration, is not qualified to explain; and a dissertation upon it being too long for this work, especially so near its conclusion, I am obliged to omit, as I am also all the practical discourses upon the usefulness and advantages of real possession, whether considered one way or other to mankind, all which I must leave to hereafter.

But to come back to the point in hand, and to consider the injustice done to the Devil, in the various turns and tricks which men put upon him very often in this one article, viz., pretending to possession, and to have the Devil in them, when really it is not so; certainly the Devil must take it very ill, to have all their demented lunatic tricks charged upon him, some of which, nay, most of which are so gross, so simple, so empty, and so little to the purpose, that the Devil must be ashamed to see such things pass in his name, or that the world should think he was concerned in them.

It is true, that possession, being one of the principal pieces of the Devil's artifice in his managing mankind, and in which, with the most exquisite skill, he plays the Devil among us, he has the more reason to be affronted when he finds himself invaded in this part, and angry that anybody should pretend to possess, or be possessed, without his leave; and this may be the reason, for aught we know, why so many blunders have been made, when people have pretended to it without him, and he has thought fit not to own them in it of which we have many examples in history, as in Simon Magus, the Devil of London, the Fair Maid of Kent, and several others, whose history it is not worth while to enlarge upon.

In short, possessions, as I have said, are nice things, and it is not so easy to mimic the Devil in that part, as it may be in some other: designing men have attempted it often, but their manner has been easily distinguished, even without the Devil's assistance.

Thus the people of Salem, in New England, pretended to be bewitched, and that a black man tormented them by the instigation of such and such, whom they resolved to bring to the gallows this black man they would have be the Devil, employed by the person who they accused for a witch: thus

:

making the Devil a page or a footman to the wizard, to go and torment whoever the said wizard commanded, till the Devil himself was so weary of the foolish part, that he left them to go on their own way, and at last they overacted the murdering part so far, that when they confessed themselves to be witches, and possessed, and that they had correspondence with the Devil, Satan not appearing to vouch for them, no jury would condemn them upon their own evidence, and they could not get themselves hanged, whatever pains they took to bring it to pass.

Thus you see the Devil may be wronged, and falsely accused in many particulars, and often has been so; there are likewise some other sorts of counterfeit devils in the world, such as gipseys, fortune-tellers, foretellers of good and bad luck, sellers of winds, raisers of storms, and many more, some practised among us, some in foreign parts, too many almost to reckon up; nay, I almost doubt whether the Devil himself knows all the sorts of them; for it is evident he has little or nothing to do with them, I mean not in the way of their craft.

These I take to be interlopers, or, with the Guinea merchants leave, separate traders, and who act under the screen and protection of Satan's power, but without his license or authority; no doubt these carry away a great deal of his trade, that is to say, the trade which otherwise the Devil might have carried on by agents of his own; I cannot but say, that while these people would fain be thought devils, though they really are not, it is but just they should be really made as much devils as they pretended to be, or that Satan should do himself justice upon them, as he threatened to do upon old Parsons of Clithroe, above mentioned, and let the world know them,

CHAPTER XI.

OF DIVINATION, SORCERY, THE BLACK ART, PAWAWING, AND SUCH LIKE PRETENDERS TO DEVILISM, AND HOW FAR THE DEVIL IS OR IS NOT CONCERNED IN THEM.

THOUGH I am writing the history of the Devil, 1 have not undertaken to do the like of all the kinds of people, male or female, who set up for devils in the world: this would be a task for the Devil indeed, and fit only for him to undertake