The Devil repainted-Satan a divine agent-St. Orain's heresy- Primitive universalism-Father Sinistrari-Salvation of demons- Mediæval sects-Aquinas-His prayer for Satan-Popular antipa- thies-The Devil's gratitude-Devil defending innocence-Devil against idle lords-The wicked ale-wife-Pious offenders punished -Anachronistic Devils-Devils turn to poems · Devil's good advice-Devil sticks to his word-His love of justice-Charle- Celsus on Satan-Ferocities of inward nature-The Devil of Lust- Celibacy-Blue Beards-Shudendozi-A lady in distress-Bahi- rawa-The Black Prince-Madana Yaksenyo-Fair fascinators— Devil of Jealousy - Eve's jealousy - Noah's wife- How Satan entered the Ark-Shipwright's Dirge-The Second Fall--The Drunken curse-Solomon's Fall-Cellar Devils-Gluttony-The 7. Adam Signing Contract for his Posterity to Satan. 8. Seth Offering a Branch to Adam 9. Procession of the Serpent of Sins 10. Ancient Russian Wall-Painting II. Alexander VI. as Antichrist 12. The Pope nursed by Megæra 13. Antichrist's Descent 14. Luther's Devil as seen by Catholics 15. The Pride of Life 16. The Artist's Rescue. 17. Luther's Devil 18. Devils from Old Missal 19. Carving at Corbeil. 20. Lilith as Cat 21. A Witch from Lyons Cathedral 22. Seal from Raven Book LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. THE DEVIL. CHAPTER I. DIABOLISM. Dragon and Devil distinguished-Dragons' wings-War in HeavenExpulsion of Serpents-Dissolution of the Dragon-Theological origin of the Devil-Ideal and actual-Devil Dogma-Debasement of ideal persons-Transmigration of phantoms. 'WE are all nothing other than Wills,' says St. Augustine; and he adds that of the good and bad angels the nature is the same, the will different. In harmony with this John Beaumont says, 'A good desire of mind is a good God."1 To which all the mythology of Evil adds, a bad desire of mind is a Devil. Every personification of an evil Will looks beyond the outward phenomena of pain, and conceives a heart that loves evil, a spirit that makes for wickedness. At this point a new element altogether enters. The physical pain incidentally represented by the Demon, generalised and organised into a principle of harmfulness in the Dragon, begins now to pass under the shadow cast by the ascending light of man's moral nature. Man becomes conscious of moral and spiritual pains: they may be still imaginatively connected with bodily 1 Treatise of Spirits.' By John Beaumont, Gent. London, 1705. VOL. II. Α agonies, but these drop out of the immediate conception, disappear into a distant future, and are even replaced by the notion of an evil symbolised by pleasure. The fundamental difference between either a Demon or Dragon and a Devil may be recognised in this: we never find the former voluntarily bestowing physical pleasure or happiness on man, whereas it is a chief part of the notion of a Devil that he often confers earthly favours in order to corrupt the moral nature. There are, indeed, apparent exceptions to this theorem presented in the agatho-dragons which have already been considered in our chapter on the Basilisk; but the reader will observe that there is no intimation in such myths of any malign ulterior purpose in the good omens brought by those exceptional monsters, and that they are really forms of malevolent power whose afflictive intent is supposed to have been vanquished by the superior might of the heroes or saints to whose glory they are reluctantly compelled to become tributary. Undoubtedly the Dragon attended this moral and religious development of man's inward nature very far, and still occupies, as at once prisoner and gaoler in the underworld, a subordinate relation to it. In the long process he has undergone certain transformations, and in particular his attribute of wings, if not derived from the notion of his struggle against holier beings, seems to have been largely enhanced thereby. The exceptional wings given to serpents in Greek art, those, for instance, which draw Demeter and Persephone in their chariot, are trifling as compared with the fully-developed wings of our conventional Dragon of the christian era. Such wings might have been developed occasionally to denote the flying cloud, the firebreathing storm, or explain how some Ráhu was enabled to pursue the sun and moon and swallow them temporarily in the phenomena of eclipse. But these wings grew to more important dimensions when they were caught up into the Semitic conception of winged genii and destroying angels, and associated with an ambitious assault on heaven. and its divine or angelic occupants. 'There was war in Heaven,' says the Apocalypse. The traditional descriptions of this war follow pretty closely, in dramatic details, other and more ancient struggles which reflect man's encounters with the hardships of nature. In those encounters man imagined the gods descending earthward to mingle in the fray; but even where the struggle mounted highest the scenery is mainly terrestrial and the issues those of place and power, the dominion of visible Light established above Darkness, or of a comparatively civilised over a savage race. The wars between the Devas and Asuras in India, the Devs and Ahuras in Persia, Buddha and the Nagas in Ceylon, Garúra and the Serpent-men in the north of India, gods and Frost-giants in Scandinavia, still concern man's relation to the fruits of the earth, to heat and frost, to darkness or storm and sunshine. But some of these at length find versions which reveal their tendency towards spiritualisation. The differences presented by one of these legends which has survived. among us in nearly its ancient form from the same which remains in a partly mystical form will illustrate the transitional phase. Thus, Garúra expelling the serpents from his realm in India is not a saintly legend; this exterminator of serpents is said to have compelled the reptile race to send him one of their number daily that he might eat it, and the rationalised tradition interprets this as the prince's cannibalism. The expulsion of Nagas or serpents from Ceylon by Buddha, in order that he might consecrate that island to the holy law, marks the pious accentuation |