"The Book of Job belongs either to the ancient Persians, the Chaldeans, or the Egyptians; because the structure of it is consistent with the dogma they held, that of a good and evil spirit, called in Job God and Satan, existing as distinct and separate beings, and it is not consistent with any dogma of the Jews.... The God of the Jews was the God of everything. All good and evil came from him. According to Exodus it was God, and not the Devil, that hardened Pharaoh's heart. According to the Book of Samuel it was an evil spirit from God that troubled Saul. And Ezekiel makes God say, in speaking of the Jews, 'I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments by which they should not live.'... As to the precepts, principles, and maxims in the Book of Job, they show that the people abusively called the heathen, in the books of the Jews, had the most sublime ideas of the Creator, and the most exalted devotional morality. It was the Jews who dishonored God. It was the Gentiles who glorified him." Several passages in Paine's works show that he did not believe in a personal devil; just what he did believe was no doubt written in a part of his reply to the Bishop, which, unfortunately, he did not live to carry through the press. In the part that we have he expresses the opinion that the Serpent of Genesis is an allegory of winter, necessitating the "coats of skins" to keep Adam and Eve warm, and adds: "Of these things I shall speak fully when I come in another part to speak of the ancient religion of the Persians, and compare it with the modern religion of the New Testament" But this part was never published. The part published was transcribed by Paine and given, not long before his death, to the widow of Elihu Palmer, who published it in the _Theophilanthropist_ in 1810. Paine had kept the other part, no doubt for revision, and it passed with his effects into the hands of Madame Bonneville, who eventually became a devotee. She either suppressed it or sold it to some one who destroyed it. We can therefore only infer from the above extract the author's belief on this momentous point. It seems clear that he did not attribute any evil to the divine Being. In the last article Paine published he rebukes the "Predestinarians" for dwelling mainly on God's "physical attribute" of power. "The Deists, in addition to this, believe in his moral attributes, those of justice and goodness." Among Paine's papers was found one entitled "My private thoughts of a Future State," from which his editors have dropped important sentences.