The custom is humane and equitable which permits the accused to be heard
in their own behalf. It is a common saying, that even the prisoner now at
our bar is always entitled to his due and we cheerfully grant him
opportunity to defend himself. Under his alias, Satan, and using a
cultured Englishman as his amanuensis, he has recently favored the world
with his autobiography; in which he says,--
"I am a power. I am a power under God, and as such I perform a task which,
however unlovely and however painful, is destined to put forward God's
wise and benignant purposes for the good of man.... I am an image of the
evil that is in man, arising from his divinely-given liberty of moral
choice. That evil I discipline and correct, as well as represent; and so I
am also a divine school-master to bring the world to God. My origin is
human, my sphere of action earthly, my final end dissolution. Evil must
cease when good is universal. While, then, I cannot boast of a heavenly
birth, I disown fiendish dispositions. Worse than the worst man I cannot
be. I am indeed a sort of mongrel, born, bred, reared, and nurtured of
human fancy, folly, and fraud. As such I possess a sort of quasi
omnipresence and a quasi omniscience, for I exist wherever man exists,
and, dwelling in human hearts, know all that men think, feel, and do.
Hence I have power to tempt and mislead; and that power, when in my worst
moods, I am pleased to exercise.... I am a personification of the dark
side of humanity and the universe.... I exist in every land, and occupy a
corner in every human heart.... I am the child of human speculation: I
came into existence on the first day that man asked himself, 'Whence this
world in which I live and of which I am a part?'"[1]
[1] The Autobiography of Satan, edited by John R. Beard, D. D.,
London, 1872.
The frankness, perspicuity, definiteness, and point, taken in connection
with the calm, earnest tone, and gentle, candid spirit in which his then
placid Majesty dictated that account of himself to his Reverend scribe,
win our credence, and induce us to believe he utters only the simple truth
when he describes himself as "a personification of the dark side of
humanity and the universe,"--as one who "cannot boast of a heavenly
birth," but was "born, bred, and nurtured of human fancy, folly, and
fraud,"--as possessing "a sort of quasi omnipresence and a quasi
omniscience," existing "wherever man exists, ... dwelling in human
hearts," knowing "all that men think, feel, and do," having power "to
tempt and mislead," and, in his "worst moods, is pleased to exercise" that
power. Such a Satan, or devil, no doubt exists. But, though we admit that
he was a mighty impersonal power in the midst of witchcraft scenes, he was
vastly different from the heaven-born "Archangel fallen," whom the good
people of New England believed in, feared, and supposed themselves to be
fighting against.
A personification of the principle of evil, or "of the dark side of
humanity and the universe," is the only devil who is simultaneously
present with the whole human race. But hosts of unseen
personalities--earth-born, expanded, wily, malignant, and powerful--may
act upon man, and bands of such may be subservient to some abler ones of
their kind, who reign over them as princes of the dark powers of the air.
Malignant departed mortals are the only disembodied personal devils who
molest mankind. We believe in _many_ devils, but not in Christendom's
witchcraft chief _One_.
The devil of our fathers, though but a fiction, was chief cause of
witchcraft's woes, and therefore merits attention first, in any attempt to
subject that matter to new analysis.