It is hard, indeed, to bring demonstrations in such a case as this: _No man has seen_ GOD _at any time_, says the scripture, 1 _John_ iv. 12. So _the Devil_ being a spirit incorporeal, an Angel of light, and consequently not visible in his own substance, nature and form, it may in some sense be said, _no man has seen the Devil at any time_; all those pretences of phrenziful and fanciful people, who tell us, they have seen _the Devil_, I shall examine, and perhaps expose by themselves. It might take up a great deal of our time here, to enquire whether _the Devil_ has any particular shape or personality of substance, which can be visible to us, felt, heard, or understood; and which he cannot alter, and then, what shapes or appearances _the Devil_ has at any time taken upon him; and whether he can really appear in a body which might be handled and seen, and yet so as to know it to have been _the Devil_ at the time of his appearing; but this also I defer as not of weight in the present enquiry. We have divers accounts of Witches conversing with _the Devil_; the _Devil_ in a real body, with all the appearance of a body of a man or woman appearing to them; also of having a _Familiar_, as they call it, an _Incubus_ or _little Devil_, which sucks their bodies, runs away with them into the air, _and the like_: Much of this is said, but much more than it is easy to prove, and we ought to give but a just proportion of credit to those things. As to his borrow'd shapes and his subtle transformings, that we have such open testimony of, that there is no room for any question about it; and when I come to that part, I shall be oblig'd rather to give a history of the fact, than enter into any dissertation upon the nature and reason of it. I do not find in any author, whom we can call creditable, that even in those countries where the dominion of _Satan_ is more particularly establish'd, and where they may be said to worship him in a more particular manner, as _a Devil_; which some tell us the _Indians_ in _America_ did, who worship'd the _Devil_ that he might not hurt them; yet, _I say_, I do not find that even there the _Devil_ appear'd to them in any particular constant shape or personality peculiar to himself. Scripture and History therefore, giving us no light into that part of the question, I conclude and lay it down, not as my opinion only, but as what all ages seem to concur in, that the _Devil_ has no particular body; that he is a spirit, and that tho' he may, _Proteus_ like, assume the appearance of either man or beast, yet it must be some borrow'd shape, some assum'd figure, _pro hac vice_, and that he has no visible body of his own.