n a moment;
and he listened with great seriousness to me all the while. After this,
I had been telling him how the devil was God's enemy in the hearts of
men, and used all his malice and skill to defeat the good designs of
Providence, and to ruin the kingdom of Christ in the world, and the
like. "Well," says Friday, "but you say God is so strong, so great; is
he not much strong, much might as the devil?"--"Yes, yes," says I,
"Friday, God is stronger than the devil: God is above the devil, and
therefore we pray to God to tread him down under our feet, and enable us
to resist his temptations, and quench his fiery darts."--"But," says he
again, "if God much stronger, much might as the devil, why God no kill
the devil, so make him no more do wicked?" I was strangely surprised at
this question; and, after all, though I was now an old man, yet I was
but a young doctor, and ill qualified for a casuist, or a solver of
difficulties; and, at first, I could not tell what to say; so I
pretended not to hear him, and asked him what he said; but he was too
earnest for an answer, to forget his question, so that he repeated it in
the very same broken words as above. By this time I had recovered myself
a little, and I said, "God will at last punish him severely; he is
reserved for the judgment, and is to be cast into the bottomless pit, to
dwell with everlasting fire." This did not satisfy Friday; but he
returns upon me, repeating my words, "_Reserve at last_! me no
understand: but why not kill the devil now; not kill great ago?"--"You
may as well ask me," said I, "why God does not kill you and me, when we
do wicked things here that offend him: we are preserved to repent and be
pardoned." He mused some time on this: "Well, well," says he, mighty
affectionately, "that well: so you, I, devil, all wicked, all preserve,
repent, God pardon all." Here I was run down again by him to the last
degree; and it was a testimony to me, how the mere notions of nature,
though they will guide reasonable creatures to the knowledge of a God,
and of a worship or homage due to the supreme being of God, as the
consequence of our nature, yet nothing but divine revelation can form
the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of redemption purchased for us, of a
Mediator of the new covenant, and of an Intercessor at the footstool of
God's throne; I say, nothing but a revelation from Heaven can form these
in the soul; and that, therefore, the gospel of our Lord and Saviour