But there is so much to enquire of about _the Devil_, before we can bring his story down to our modern times, that we must for the present let them drop, and look a little back to the remoter parts of this history; drawing his picture that people may know him when they meet him, and see who and what he is, and what he has been doing ever since he got leave to act in the high station he now appears in. In the mean time, if I might obtain leave to present an humble petition to _Satan_, it should be, that he would according to modern usage oblige us all, with writing _the history of his own times_; 'twould, as well as one that is gone before it, be a Devilish good one; for as to the sincerity of the performance, the authority of the particulars, the justice of the characters, _&c._ if they were no better vouch'd, no more consistent with themselves, with charity, with truth, and with the honour of an historian, than the last of that kind which came abroad among us, it must be a reproach to _the Devil_ himself to be the author of it. Were _Satan_ to be brought under the least obligation to write truth, and that the matters of fact, which he should write, might be depended upon, he is certainly qualified by his knowledge of things to be a compleat historian; nor could the Bishop himself, _who, by the way, has given us already the Devil of a history_, come up to him: _Milton_'s _Pandemonium_, tho' an excellent dramatick performance, would appear a meer trifling sing-song business, beneath the dignity of _Chevy-chase_: The _Devil_ could give us a true account of all the civil wars in Heaven; how and by whom, and in what manner he lost the day there, and was oblig'd to quit the field: The fiction of his refusing to acknowledge and submit to the _Messiah_, upon his being declar'd Generalissimo of the Heavenly forces, which Satan expected himself, as the eldest officer; and his not being able to brook another to be put in over his head; I say, that fine-spun thought of Mr. _Milton_ would appear to be strain'd too far, and only serve to convince us that he (_Milton_) knew nothing of the matter. _Satan_ knows very well, that the _Messiah_ was not _declared to be the Son of God with power_ till by and after _the resurrection from the dead_, and that all power was then given him _in Heaven and earth_, and not before; so that _Satan_'s rebellion must derive from other causes, and upon other occasions, as he himself can doubtless give us an account, if he thinks fit, and of which we shall speak further in this work. What a fine History might this old Gentleman write of the Antediluvian world, and of all the weighty affairs, as well of state as of religion, which happen'd during the fifteen hundred years of the patriarchal administration!