fraud to my man Friday; and told him that
the pretence of their old men going up to the mountains to say O to their
god Benamuckee was a cheat; and their bringing word from thence what he
said was much more so; that if they met with any answer, or spake with
any one there, it must be with an evil spirit; and then I entered into a
long discourse with him about the devil, the origin of him, his rebellion
against God, his enmity to man, the reason of it, his setting himself up
in the dark parts of the world to be worshipped instead of God, and as
God, and the many stratagems he made use of to delude mankind to their
ruin; how he had a secret access to our passions and to our affections,
and to adapt his snares to our inclinations, so as to cause us even to be
our own tempters, and run upon our destruction by our own choice.

I found it was not so easy to imprint right notions in his mind about the
devil as it was about the being of a God. Nature assisted all my
arguments to evidence to him even the necessity of a great First Cause,
an overruling, governing Power, a secret directing Providence, and of the
equity and justice of paying homage to Him that made us, and the like;
but there appeared nothing of this kind in the notion of an evil spirit,
of his origin, his being, his nature, and above all, of his inclination
to do evil, and to draw us in to do so too; and the poor creature puzzled
me once in such a manner, by a question merely natural and innocent, that
I scarce knew what to say to him. I had been talking a great deal to him
of the power of God, His omnipotence, His aversion to sin, His being a
consuming fire to the workers of iniquity; how, as He had made us all, He
could destroy us and all the world in a moment; and he listened with
great seriousness to me all the while. After this I had been telling him
how the devil was God's enemy in the hearts of men, and used all his
malice and skill to defeat the good designs of Providence, and to ruin
the kingdom of Christ in the world, and the like. "Well," says Friday,
"but you say God is so strong, so great; is He not much strong, much
might as the devil?" "Yes, yes," says I, "Friday; God is stronger than
the devil--God is above the devil, and therefore we pray to God to tread
him down under our feet, and enable us to resist his temptations and
quench his fiery darts." "But," says he again, "if God much stronger,
much might as the wicked devil, why God no kill the d