The greatest Part of the Terror we are usually in upon this Occasion, is from a Supposition, that when this _Hell-Fire Contract_ is once made, God allows the _Devil_ to come and take the wicked Creature, how and in what manner he thinks fit, as being given up to him by his own Act and Deed; but in my Opinion there's no Divinity at all in that; for as in our Law we punish a _Felo de se_, or Self-murtherer, because, _as the Law suggests_, he had no Right to dismiss his own Life; that he being a Subject of the Common-wealth, the Government claims the _Ward_ or Custody of him, and so 'twas not Murther only, but Robbery, and is a Felony against the State, robbing the King of his Liege-Man, as _'tis justly call'd_; so neither has any Man a Right to dispose of his Soul, which belongs to his Maker in Property and in Right of Creation: The Man then having no Right to sell, Satan has no Right to buy, or at best he has made a Purchase without a Title, and consequently has no just Claim to the Possession. It is therefore a Mistake to say, that when any of us have been so mad to make such a pretended Contract with the Devil, that God gives him leave to take it as his Due; _'tis no such thing_; the _Devil_ has bought, what you had no Right to sell, and therefore, as an unlawful Oath is to be repented of, and then broken; so your Business is to repent of the Crime, and then tell the _Devil_, you have better consider'd of it, and that you won't stand to your Bargain, for you had no Power to sell; and if he pretends to Violence after that, I am mistaken; I believe the _Devil_ knows better. It is true, our old Mothers and Nurses have told us other Things, but they only told us what their Mothers and Nurses told them, and so the Tale has been handed down from one Generation of old Women to another; but we have no Vouchers for the Fact other than Oral Tradition, the Credit of which, I confess, goes but a very little Way with me; nor do I believe it one Jot the more for all the frightful Addenda which they generally join to the Tale, for it never wants a great Variety of that Kind. Thus they tell us the Devil carried away Dr. _Faustus_ and took a Piece of the Wall of his Garden along with them: Thus at _Salisbury_ the _Devil_ as it is said, and publickly printed, carried away two Fellows that had given themselves up to him, and carried away the Roof of the House with them, _and the like_; all which I believe my Share of; besides, if these Stories were really true, they are all against the Devil's true Interest, _Satan_ must be a Fool, which is indeed what I never took him to be in the Main; this would be the Way not to encrease the Number of Desperadoes, who should thus put themselves into his Hand, but to make himself a Terror to them; and this is one of the most powerful Objections I have against the Thing, for the Devil, I say, is no Fool, that must be acknowledg'd; he knows his own Game, and generally plays it sure.