218 THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES

I endeavoured to clear up this fraud to my man Friday; and told
him, that the pretence of their old men going up to the mountains to
say O! to their god Benamuckee, was a cheat; and their bringing
word from thence what he said, was much more so; that if they met
with any answer, or spoke with any one there, it must be with an evil
spirit: and then I entered into a long discourse with him about the
devil, the original of him, his rebellion against God, his enmity to man,
the reason of it, his setting himself up in the dark parts of the world
to be worshipped instead of God, and as God, and the many stratagems
he made use of to delude mankind to their ruin ; how he had a secret
access to our passions and to our affections, to adapt his snares so to
our inclinations, as to cause us even to be our own tempters, and to
run upon our own destruction by our own choice.

I found it was not so easy to imprint right notions in his mind about
the devil, as it was about the being of a God: nature assisted all my
arguments to evidence to him even the necessity of a great First
Cause, and overruling governing Power, a secret directing Providence,
and of the equity and justice of paying homage to Him that made us,
and the like: but there appeared nothing of all this in the notion of
an evil spirit, of his original, his being, his nature, and, above all, of
his inclination to do evil, and to draw us in to do so too: and the poor
creature puzzled me once in such a manner, by a question merely
natural and innocent, that I scarce knew what to say to him.

I had been talking a great deal to him of the power of God, his
omnipotence, his dreadful aversion to sin, his being a consuming fire
to the workers of iniquity; how, as he had made us all, he could
destroy us, and all the world, in a moment; and he listened with great
seriousness to me all the while. After this, I had been telling him
now 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 Fri-
day, ‘“‘but you say God is so strong, so great, is he not much strong,
much might as the devil ?’—‘‘ Yes, yes,” said I, “Friday, God is
stronger than the devil; God is above the devil; and therefore we pray
to God to tread him under our feet, and enable us to resist his temp-
tations, and quench his fiery darts.’’—“‘ But,” says he again, “if God
much strong, much might, as the devil, why God not kill the devil,
so make him no more wicked ?”

I was strangely surprised at his question; and, after all, though I
was now an old man, yet I was but a young doctor, and ill enough
qualified for a casuist, or a solver of difficulties: and, at first, I could
not tell what te say; so I pretended not to hear him, and asked him