Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/409

Rh the Devil to our sympathy and compassion, though it is less consistent with the theory of God's omnipotence than that already stated. The Devil, it is stated, before his fall, was an Angel of the highest rank and the most splendid accomplishments, who placed his peculiar delight in doing good. But the inflexible grandeur of his spirit, mailed and nourished by the consciousness the purest and loftiest designs, was so secure from the assault of any gross or common torments, that God was considerably puzzled to invent what he considered an adequate punishment for his rebellion; he exhausted all the variety of smothering and burning and freezing and cruelly-lacerating his external frame, and the Devil laughed at the impotent revenge of his conqueror. At last the benevolent and amiable disposition which distinguished his adversary, furnished God with the true method of executing an enduring and terrible vengeance. He turned his good into evil, and, by virtue of his omnipotence, inspired him with such an impulse, as, in spite of his better nature, irresistibly determined him to act what he most abhorred, and to be a minister of those designs and schemes of which he was the chief and the original victim. He is for ever tortured with compassion and affection for those whom he betrays and ruins; he is racked by a vain abhorrence for the desolation of which he is the instrument; he is like a man compelled by a tyrant to set fire to his own possessions, and to appear as the witness against, and the accuser of his dearest friends and most intimate connexions; and then to be the executioner, and to inflict protracted torments upon them. As a man, were he deprived of all other refuge, he might hold his breath and die—but God