as it is but reasonable to conceive it should do, and though careful enough to reveal a future World to us, leaves us to find out this as we can by our own Difcoveries. You believe I dare say, that there is fuch a Place as America, but may as foon find a World in the Moon, as that new found out World in the Scriptures, and in the Opinion of fome indeed a great deal fooner; as a Plurality of Worlds is what fome think may be found in them, though no Account of that large Part of this.

I like your Answer fo well, replies PHILANDER, that I am not forry now that I interrupted you. It is I fee the chief End of the Scriptures to teach us Divinity, and to make us good Chriftians rather than good Philofophers, which they leave to our own Speculations.But you were going to give an Account of the Fall of the Angels.

Or rather to fhew you, fays THEOPHILUS, the Account the Scriptures gives of it, which is all that it is poffible for us to know of it. As the common Scheme, as you have just observ'd, has no good Proof from Scripture to fupport it, we are therefore under no Obligation to receive it as Part of our Creed. For as to Satan's falling from Heaven in the Time of our Saviour like Lightning, or the War between Michael D 2

and

and Him in the Book of the Apocalypfe, as whatever be the Meaning of these, they can by no means relate to their first and original Fall, but rather to fome further Diminution of their Power fome Ages after it, they are therefore no Proof in the least of common Account of their Warring in Heaven before our World was form'd; which is not only an Account no way favour'd in Scripture, but inconfiftent with feveral Parts of it. For if they were caft down, as St. Peter fays, into the lower Air, [See Whitby on 2 Pet. ii. 4.] it could not be till this World was created. And had they finn'd before in any other State, why fhould the Air near this Earth be their Prison? Why was the Enemy let into Paradife, if his Actions had declar'd him before-hand to be fuch? And which is an Argument I own of no fmall Weight with me, why should they be referv'd to the fame Time of Judgment with us, if they fall, as fome fuppofe, fo long before us? Does this look as if Angels belong'd to a prior Creation? Or does it not rather imply that they belong to ours? Mofes does not mention them indeed exprefsly; but he mentions the Heavens, and the Earth, and all the Hoft of them, under which Angels may be fairly included: And though he does not fix the Day of their

Creation,

Creation, we may yet conclude it was one of the fix, and as fome conceive the Morning of the First, from their being stiled in the Book of Job the Morning Stars. But be this as it will, it must be most agreeable both to Reason and Scripture, to think that the Inhabitants of the Heavens were not created till the Heavens themselves were: And confequently not till that Beginning of Things which Mofes fpeaks of, and which he closes with the following Account, that God faw every Thing that he had made, and bebold, it was very good.

There were fome of the Angels however, as St. Jude expreffes it, that kept not their firft Eftate any more than Man did. St. John fpeaking of their Chief exprefsly tells us, that he finned from the Beginning. Nor will it be difficult, I imagine to find what this Sin was, if we will but attend to the Words of our Saviour, as the fame St. John has tranfmitted them to us. [John viii. 44.] He was a Murderer, fays our Lord, from the Beginning, and abode not in the Truth, because there is no Truth in him. When he fpeaketh a Lie, he fpeaketh of his own: For he is a Liar, and the Father of it. Thefe Words feem to glance fo plainly at Man's Seduction, that one can scarce help concluding, but that our Lord intended hereby

to inftruct us, that this was the very Offence which first degraded him, and from an Angel of Light turn'd him into an Angel of Darkness: An Offence indeed of a most heinous Nature, and fuch as aim'd at deftroying the whole World of Men,

He was a Murderer from the Beginning, a Man-flayer, as the original Word fignifies, and that as it may be faid, from his very Beginning, for he abode not in the Truth, he return'd his Integrity but a little While, because there is no Truth, no true Love or Affection to it in him. But when be speaketh a Lie, he fpeaketh of his own, he acts but in Character, and like what he is: For he is a Liar, and the Father of it. And what's the firft Lie that we read of, but the Lie that the Devil told Eve? A Lie as big with Ingratitude to God his Maker, as it was with Envy and Malice to Man. Ye fhall not furely die, fays he, for God knows that in the Day that ye eat of it, your Eyes fhall be open'd: and ye shall be as God's knowing Good and Evil. Rather than fail of feducing Man, he does not fcruple most abominably to afperfe even God himself. God has told you, fays he, a Falfhood. Ye shall not furely die. There is nothing of Death in this Tree; and that God knows: Nor does he forbid it out of any Good-will to you; but because

he

he is defirous to keep you in Ignorance, and would not have you fo wife, as he knows this Tree will make you.

What could move him to act fuch a Part may be hard to fay; whether he look'd on Man's Happiness with an Evil Eye, and thought he stood too high in the Creator's Favour; or whether he thought it too mean an Employment for Spirits of Heaven to be miniftring Spirits to Men made of Earth; which of these was his Motive is what we can only conjecture, as the Scripture has not thought proper to give us a fuller Account of it. This however is certain, that the Murderer's Act was committed, and the devilish Scheme was contrived, pursued, and executed, and which of it was not the first Sin he was guilty of, is however the first that we know of, or of which we have any Account in the Scripture. And if his first Sin was Man-killing and Falfhood, as the Words of our Lord feem to intimate, and he declin'd from the Truth as it were from the very Beginning, at what Period of Time can we better fix his Fall than that now mention'd? We read nothing in short of his deceiving any other World, or of any other Works of the Devil that our Saviour was fent to destroy, but what are all confin'd to the World in which we live.

D 4

Nor

can