Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/404

390 only not utterly forgotten because it will have participated in the eternity of genius. The Devil owes everything to Milton. Dante and Tasso present us with a very gross idea of him. Milton divested him of a sting, hoof, and horns, and clothed him with the sublime grandeur of a graceful but tremendous spirit.

I am afraid there is much laxity among the orthodox of the present day, respecting a belief in the Devil. I recommend to the Bishops to make a serious charge to their diocesans on this dangerous latitude. The Devil is the outwork of the Christian faith; he is the weakest point. You may observe that infidels, in their novitiate, always begin by tremulously doubting the existence of the Devil. Depend upon it, that when a person once begins to think that perhaps there is no Devil, he is in a dangerous way. There may be observed, in polite society, a great deal of coquetting about the Devil, especially among divines, which is singularly ominous. They qualify him as the evil spirit; they consider him as synonymous with the flesh. They seem to wish to divest him of all personality; to reduce him from his abstract to his concrete; to reverse the process by which he was created in the mind, which they will by no means bear with respect to God. It is popular, and well looked upon, if you deny the Devil "a local habitation and a name." Even the vulgar begin to scout him. Hell is popularly considered as metaphorical of the torments of an eval conscience, and by no means