The Roman Catholics have been educated in the full persuasion that the devil appears in bodily form, and often in the high style of some great personage. I have more than once listened to an honest Irish Catholic while gravely relating the manner in which Satan appeared on horseback with a splendid retinue, and took possession of a gentleman's palace in Ireland, after the massacre of the Romish priests. His majesty having taken possession of the palace, a Protestant minister was sent to drive him to his own abode, but he was received with a laugh and sneer, as possessing no power. But at length a Catholic priest, who had been secreted in a cavern during the massacre, was sent, and he no sooner entered than the devil in a fright, flew up the chimney, carrying an iron pot from over the fire, and in passing out carrying off the top of the chimney. The Irishman entertained not the least doubt of the reality of the transaction; and added that the chimney still remains in the same state, no one daring to mend it. Some old seamen admire to be considered as being on familiar terms with the devil. The following story has often been related by sailors in the full belief of its truth. A sailor sold himself to the devil, on condition that he should enjoy all the good things and pleasures of this life for fifty years, when he would give himself up; but the devil was to perform any one thing which the sailor might desire before he surrendered. At the expiration of fifty years, Satan came for his man. The sailor acknowledged that the time had expired, but one thing was to be done. Satan was required to pump the sea dry, but the cunning son of Neptune had so placed the pump that the water from it flowed directly into the sea again. The devil was so enraged at this cunning artifice, that he gave him a tremendous blow with his tail and vanished in a cloud of smoke and brimstone. The Reformation of the 16th century, although it in a great measure broke the shackles which bound the human intellect, and taught men to think, did not altogether eradicate heathen and popish absurdities, even from the reformers themselves. What, but a spirit of bigotry, could influence the great mind of Martin Luther gravely to declare that he experienced several personal encounters with the devil, in consequence of his being engaged in reforming the abuses of the Catholic Church, and particularly that his 'Satanic majesty entered his bolted chamber one night, stole his hazel nuts, and cracked them on his bed-post, to his no small annoyance?'