Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/400

386 same manner as a skilful watchmaker, who, if he has diamonds, and steel, and brass, and gold, can compose a time-piece of the most accurate workmanship, could produce nothing beyond a coarse and imperfect clock, if he were restricted to wood, as his material. The Christian theologians have invariably rejected this hypothesis, on the ground that the eternity of matter is incompatible with the omnipotence of God. Like panic-stricken slaves in the presence of a jealous and suspicious despot, they have tortured themselves to devise some flattering sophism, by which they might appease him by the most contradictory praises—endeavouring to reconcile omnipotence, and benevolence, and equity, in the author of an universe, where evil and good are inextricably entangled, and where the most admirable tendencies to happiness and preservation are for ever baffled by misery and decay. The Christians, therefore, invented or adopted the Devil to extricate them from this difficulty.

The account they give us of the origin of the Devil is curious:—Heaven, according to the popular creed, is a certain airy region inhabited by the Supreme Being, and a multitude of inferior Spirits. With respect to the situation of it theologians are not agreed, but it is generally supposed to be placed beyond the remotest constellation of the visible stars. These spirits are supposed, like those which reside in the bodies of animals and men, to have been created by God, with foresight of the consequences which would result from the mechanism of their nature. He made them as good as possible, but the nature of the substance out of which they were formed, or the unconquerable laws according to which