100. It would seem to be an axiom, that whenever any event does not take place, it must be because there is no being who has at once the _power_ and the _wish_ to cause it to happen; and when any event does ensue, there can exist no being having at once the _power_ and _wish_ to prevent it from happening. Moreover, consistently, no agent can exist whose destruction is desired by another being, who, having the right, is competent by mere volition to destroy that agent. 101. It follows, that if there actually does exist any being, such as is designated by the words _Devil_, _Satan_, _Beelzebub_, to treat him as the _creature_ of God, would be inconsistent _either_ with the attribute of all goodness or of omnipotence. 102. Can any act be more devilish than that of creating a devil? Would it not be blasphemous to ascribe to a beneficent Deity a measure so truly diabolical? It has been said that the devil is a necessary agent in God’s providence. How necessary, if God be omnipotent? 103. Does not the necessity of employing a bad agent involve inability to create a good agent? 104. The evils which exist in the creation may, to a great extent, be explained by an inevitable limitation of power. Thus, probably, there could be no virtue were there no vice; no pleasure, were there no pain. Ecstasy might become painful by unlimited endurance. 105. Without appetites and passions, an animal would be reduced to the state of a vegetable, which lives without perception. 106. The language held by certain sectarians on such subjects, seems to me often contradictory of the idea they strive to enforce. Thus they represent that our sorrows and our pangs are intended for our amendment, or designed to prevent some greater evil _here_ or _hereafter_; but what can justify a painful remedy, if there be power to adopt one which, while equally efficacious, would be painless? 107. God is, on one side, represented as the cause of all the circumstances under which we exist; yet, on the other, is under the necessity of afflicting us in order to remove or to remedy them! If possessing both ability and disposition to reform us without causing us to suffer, could suffering be inflicted consistently with all goodness? 108. Of a most excellent Roman Catholic I inquired whether it was not held by their church that a belief in their tenets was necessary to salvation? The reply was in the affirmative. And yet, said I, of all who do believe, only those can be saved who do their Master’s will,—who add good works to an orthodox creed? The reply was again affirmative. Of all mankind, then, there is but a very small number, comparatively, who are not, according to the creed in question, to go to hell? Again I received an affirmative reply. I would then (I rejoined) when I die, rather go into an eternal sleep, than awake in heaven to find so many of my fellow-creatures in endless misery, the mere knowledge of which would make heaven itself a hell to a good-hearted angel.