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298 Devil. On my obtaining from him the declaration that the Bible was the Word of God, I referred to the commencement of Genesis—In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. But I gained nothing by this, for I was triumphantly told that this God was not Jehovah, but the Elohim; and the doctrine of the Gnostics repeated with sufficient consistency to silence one so unlearned as myself.

The Preface to the Excursion, especially the verses quoted from book i. of the Recluse, so troubled him as to bring on a fit of illness. These lines he singled out:

Does Mr. Wordsworth think he can surpass Jehovah? There was a copy of the whole passage in his own hand, in the volume of Wordsworth's poems sent to my chambers after his death. There was this note at the end: 'Solomon, when he married Pharaoh's daughter, and became a convert to the Heathen Mythology, talked exactly in this way of Jehovah, as a very inferior object of Man's contemplations; he also passed him unalarmed, and was permitted. Jehovah dropped a tear and followed him by his Spirit into the abstract