Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.Inman, Thomas
Religion
Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.
Inman, Thomas
Religions
If we now attempt to frame a history of the modern Hell, its rulers,
its angels, or its devils, we find, in the first place, that the Old
Testament contains no idea whatever of Satan being an angel originally
bright and fair, but subsequently disobedient, rebellious, conquered,
and punished. Nor is the New Testament much more communicative--we
find the arch-fiend described as a murderer and as a liar; he also is
associated with angels, as in the words, "the Devil and his angels."
He is described as "the Prince of the power of the air,"--as "a roaring
lion, seeking whom he may devour." He is "the spirit which worketh in
the children of disobedience." He is also represented as telling Jesus,
that he is able to dispose of all the kingdoms of the globe, and to give
their glory to whom he will. Yet nowhere is a hint breathed that he
was once an angel in heaven. The only verse in the whole Bible which is
supposed to bear upon this matter, shows that the devil and his imps
are not identical with the fallen angels, for Jude distinctly declares
(verse 6) that the latter are "reserved in everlasting chains, under
darkness, unto the judgment of the great day," a condition quite
incompatible with their identity with Satan, who is represented as
telling God that he had been going to and fro through the earth, and
walking up and down in it (Job ch. i., v. 7). A conversation then
follows the question, which must have been quite impossible had God
recognized him as an escaped convict.
Again, if we turn to the book of Enoch (an apocryphal production,
supposed for ages to have been lost, but discovered at the close of the
last century in Abyssinia, now first translated from an Ethiopian MS. in
the Bodleian Library, by Richard Laurence, LL.D., Archbishop of Cashel;
3d edition, 8vo. Oxford, 1838),--which is, and I think justly, believed
to be the authority quoted by Jude, we find a full confirmation of our
view of the independence of the Devil or Satan, and the fallen angels.
The foundation of the work is the story-told in the sixth chapter of
Genesis. In that work, the angels which kept not their first estate are
described as those who preferred intercourse with human females to
a celestial celibacy, for in those days there were sons of God and
daughters of men. Nay, in one verse (chap, liii. 6) it is distinctly
declared that one cause why the wrath of God came upon them was that
"they became ministers of Satan, and seduced those who dwell upon the
earth." In many places a reference is made to the close imprisonment of
the angels who had "been polluted with women;" one such will suffice,
(chap, xxi. 6), where, on seeing a terrific place, Enoch is told by Uriel
"this is the prison of the angels, and here are they kept for ever."
It is not even Satan who tempts the angels, for chapter lxviii. tells us
that it was Yekun and Kesabel, two of themselves, who gave evil counsel,
and induced their fellows to corrupt their bodies by generating mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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