vil_, there may much of his History be
discover'd, and therefore those that list may go there for a fuller
account of the matter.

But to reserve all Scripture-evidence of these things, as a Magazine in
store for the use of those with whom Scripture-testimony is of force, I
must for the present turn to other enquiries, being now directing my
story to an age, wherein to be driven to Revelation and
Scripture-assertions is esteem'd giving up the dispute; people
now-a-days must have demonstration; and in a word, nothing will satisfy
the age, but such evidence as perhaps the nature of the question will
not admit.

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 count