From The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain, Allan Massie writes:

"Monmouth may never have legitimately borne the name of Stuart; yet in person and fortune, he was in many ways characteristic of that remarkable family: he charmed easily, inspired devotion, failed his followers, showed himself to be possessed of lamentable judgement, and ran headlong to misfortune.  He was Stuart through and through; Stuart to the bone."

This promises to be good.

Burning the Voodoo Temple

Then there is this from my brother-in-law in Haiti.  He has a Wesleyan background, doesn't mind being called an Arminian, and is unquestionably given to the dramatic.  But I don't think he's a liar.  I believe the Lord has truly called him to minister there.  Here is one of his recent reports;  I don't know exactly what to make of it.

We Burned The  Voodoo Temple !

            Sunday May 20^th, A****** E****** a witchdoctor from ******** came up to visit one of his wives in *******. While in ******, he visited the church we planted in ******. At the end of the service he came forward and gave his life to Jesus Christ. Knowing his life was to change drastically, he asked several of us, pastors, to come to his home and his voodoo temple to help him make the break from voodoo. On Thursday, 24 May, we drove to ****** and met ******. He led us to his house where we met his family and several of his children. He then led us into a special room of the house set aside for ceremonies. A dozen or so of us formed a circle with ****** and we began to sing praises to God. We read the Bible from Isaiah 55 and I preached from God’s Word. None of ****** family is saved, so they heard the gospel for the first time in their own house, there in the same room that had been reserved for voodoo services. ****** pulled out all kinds of fetishes; bottles representing the presence of demons, handkerchiefs with spells, a voodoo drum, 2 gun shells folded up in fabric, and many more fetishes. The gun shells represented two zombies that he was using for protection from his enemies. Unfortunately, we didn’t know the bullets were there until after they exploded in the fire. There was a huge land crab hiding in the middle of the pile of fetishes, which really shook the pastors up. They called it djab, which means devil, and took it as a sure sign of the presence of an evil spirit. The pastors were glad I had my big pocket knife along; as I put the crab out of its misery and added it to the pile of fetishes we were preparing to burn. As we dragged out all the fetishes, ****** was so excited about burning everything that had to do with Satan; he even brought out the table the fetishes were sitting on and insisted we burn that too. We started carrying the things away from the house so we could burn them without smoke bothering anyone when ****** ran out angry and told us to burn everything right in front of the house for all the neighbors to see.

            When we finished burning the fetishes (and after the bullets exploded) ****** led us to his badji, as they call the voodoo temple. We walked as a group, quite a distance, in parade like fashion into a muddy area away from neighboring houses singing hymns the whole way. When we arrived, we saw a small yard enclosed by a bamboo type picket fence painted in blue and white. The place where they would meet for their services was a small structure covered by a tarp enclosed by the picket fence. There were several flags mounted throughout the badji, each flag represented one of the evil spirits that they would pray to. As we entered into the temple, a crowd gathered all around to see what would happen. Part of our group started singing as ******, Pastor ****** and I started tearing down the flags and breaking down the lean to and it’s blue and white picket fence. We tore down every piece of bamboo and wood used to build the badji, and piled it all up in the center of what used to be the courtyard of the temple, the same place crowds would gather to dance and worship Satan. We poured gas on the pile and lit the wood on fire. As the badji burned, ****** explained we were burning the temple because he had gotten saved and given his life to Christ.

            Please continue to pray for ******. As a new convert just out of voodoo, he has painted a target on himself and set himself in the firing line of Satan. He has just begun the battle of his new faith. Pray for the situation with his several wives, that God will give him strength and wisdom to do what he knows is right. Pray for him as he has lost his income and has no means to provide for his many children. Pray that he resists temptation to turn back to voodoo.

            Many have been praying for ****** who spiked a high fever (106 degrees) as soon as I left for ****** to burn the fetishes. While I was burning the temple itself, Dr. ****** checked on ****** who was having trouble with leg pain and severe neck pain and told ****** it looked like meningitis, but she couldn’t be sure yet. Just after the temple was burnt, ****** got the fever to go down after several cold baths. While on the road heading home, the fever broke and became controllable after with antibiotics and Tylenol. ****** is still on the antibiotics, but is acting more like herself.

            Thank you for your prayers and your concern for us here in Haiti. May God be glorified in all that is accomplished.

Jennings' Satan: III: His Dignity by Creation

CHAPTER III.

HIS DIGNITY BY CREATION.

Contents.
The Devil and the Archangel--The Prince of this world--The Devil’s lies
are superhuman--Where is Satan’s Throne--Saul a type of the Devil--
Retains his kingdom of the world to this day--Other names: “Prince of
the powers of the air”; “Prince of the Demons”; “God of this age.”

In full harmony with all that we saw in our last Chapter, we have the clearest and most explicit Scriptures for the transcendent dignity of our Subject, by his creation.

Let us look at what the Spirit of God writes by the Apostle Jude: “likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.” We must not pass this without a little consideration, for it throws its light on what follows.

The “dreamers” to whom reference is made are the men who have “crept in unawares” (v. 4) to Christian communion; have there assumed a place of teaching, and undeterred by such examples as the deaths in the wilderness (v. 5), the angels who had sinned (v. 6), and Sodom and Gomorrha (v. 7), still walked in the same path of assured judgment; for first “they defile the flesh”; secondly, they “despise lordship or dominion”; thirdly, they “speak evil of dignities or glories.”

In this three-fold evil may be recognized one of those references (apparently undesigned on the part of the human writer at least, and which thus brings out the divine authorship all the more clearly) to man’s tripartite being, each of which carries with it the responsibilities of a certain relationship.

“Defiling the flesh” is clearly personal: affects themselves in their bodies. They subvert (and mark this carefully) the divinely intended order of their beings, by which the spirit was enthroned as ruler; this government is deposed, and their bodies are used solely for the gratification of low sensual desires of varying character.

“Despising lordships” is the same equally rebellious way in which they bear themselves to the governments of earth, and with which they are in relation by their soul; here too they subvert the divine order. Finally “speaking evil of glories” ascends with the same pride, into the higher sphere of the spirit; and the word “glories” or dignities suggests a closer connection with what is divine.

They, in every sphere, in every relationship, subvert God’s order of government, and particularly have no reverence for those who have been divinely invested with personal dignity, or official authority; and are thus (and again carefully mark it) above them.

Now as a contrast--a striking contrast to these--look at the highest of the elect Angels. “Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him, a railing accusation, but said “The Lord rebuke thee.” There is such a glory--such a dignity conferred on him who is here called the Devil, that even the highest of the holy angels--the only one who is ever called archangel in scripture--recognizing that dignity, owns that he is in some way higher even than himself, for none but the Lord can rebuke him. The rebuking implies official superiority. It is quite becoming for a superior to rebuke an inferior; a parent rebukes his children; a ruler those beneath him; an elder may rebuke one younger; but the reverse is altogether out of order and unbecoming. If the archangel then were higher than the Devil, and could thus have rebuked him, it would not have been necessary to have appealed to the Lord to do so.

The evil men of whom Jude writes had no reverence for authority higher than themselves anywhere, either in earth or heaven; whereas in contrast to these, the highest angel reverenced an official authority or glory above himself, even in one so far morally below him as the Devil (one must always distinguish between moral condition and official dignity); a glory of which even his present condition has not as yet deprived him.

In view of this let me ask are all these foolish and repulsive pictures, all the unworthy or slurring thoughts that we have received and harboured as to the Devil, are they consistent with truth? Do they come from God or are they pleasing to Him? Surely not; nor is it perhaps the least clear evidence of the exceeding “subtlety” of our enemy that he himself has been the author of these very falsehoods as of all others; for if he can thus bring men, and especially the Lord’s people to despise him, they will be the less watchful, the less prayerful, feel less the need of being on their guard against him; of absolute dependence on the one single Arm that is stronger than his; and his control of them, quite unsuspected, will be the easier and more complete. In warfare nothing is of greater value than strategy, and well may our great enemy prove himself, in this, the greatest of strategists.

Nor do we honour Him who came “to destroy the works of the devil,” if we recognize His opponent to be any other, or less, than our verse in Jude proclaims him to be; the highest of all created Intelligences!

But to continue: in John xii. 30 and again in chap. xiv. 30 the Lord Jesus speaks of one as “the prince of this world”*[Not “age” in these cases], who can be none other than the same personage. It is not permitted us to suppose for one moment that this title gives a false, or exaggerated impression of his dignity. You and I are walking through a world, of which none other than the Son of God tells us that Satan is still its Prince. The silly parody, such as we have seen the popular conception to be, has nothing very “princely” in it surely.

The Lord does not indeed call him King, which is a title of absolute supremacy, as Peter says “the King as supreme,” but “Prince,” carrying with it, I conceive, a responsibility to recognize One still above him.

I shall seek to show later how he became Prince of this world; and why so recognized even by the Lord Jesus Himself, but the only purpose I have in referring to these Scriptures now, is to emphasize the simple fact of Satan’s dignity by creation.

In further complete harmony with this, turn to Luke iv. 5-6.
“And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.”

Now there is nothing to show that this is a false or extravagant claim, or that he could not do as he proposes, nor does the Lord find any fault with him on this ground, nor does He answer by telling him that he has not the Kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; but in quite another way.

We must ever remember that the Devil never lies exactly as man does. What he does he ever does superhumanly; and we must be further careful to remember that because a thing is superhuman, it does not follow that it is divine; it may be Satanic or demoniacal or angelic. There is a lie in the statement he made to our Lord; but it is not what we might naturally think it. It is recognized even amongst men, that, as Tennyson says,

A lie that is half a truth, is ever the blackest of lies,
A lie that is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

And so the Devil so wraps his lies round with an external covering of truth that, swallowing the truth, the lie may go with it; as bitter pills are coated with sugar that they may be the more acceptable.

One more scripture gives further strength to this. In the Lord’s letter to the church in Pergamos He says: “I know where thou dwellest, where Satan’s THRONE (Greek thronos) is; and this compels us to recognize first that Satan still has a throne; secondly that this throne is on earth, for Pergamos was nowhere else; and lastly that this idea of a throne is alone consistent with great, and, in its sphere, supreme dignity; although without denying a Throne outside that sphere that may still be superior.

Now that he holds that position in this day by divine right, we may well question; but that he does hold it we must not question. You will bear in mind too, that the overruling government of God so ordered the events of earth--or at least one particular portion of it--as to cause them to picture for us similar events in the far wider sphere of the unseen and spiritual world. I do not know what words I can use to impress my readers with the importance of this, for a right apprehension of our subject. We have the most direct and clearest ground for asserting it with regard to the inspired history of Israel–“All these things,” says the Apostle “happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come”; and he transfers from a literal to a spiritual sphere these recorded events, when, for instance, he says “that rock was Christ.”

I therefore confidently believe that we shall find profound teaching in this divinely given history that shall be most helpful to the clear understanding of our subject.

    Thus you remember that God permitted Israel to choose their first King, and they chose Saul; as to whom we are told that “from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.” Why are we told this? Have we exhausted its significance when we picture to ourselves the towering height of that human king? I am sure not; but rather would the Spirit of God, provide a perfect figure or type of him, who, exactly in the same way, towered over his fellows: in other words was, as the other Scriptures we have glanced at show, the most exalted of all created spiritual intelligences.

But Saul disobeys, or, to use language that shall suggest the parallel I desire to keep before us--“iniquity was found in him”; see Ezek. xxviii. 15; and he was set aside from his kingly office: the kingdom was rent from him (I Sam. xv. 27, 28), and then God anointed another king of His own choice: A shepherd king, David! Now no one questions David being a type of the beloved Son of God; why should not Saul afford us also a type of His opponent? He surely does.

But--and this is the point that must be carefully noted and weighed--Saul retains the throne of Israel, and is still recognized as the king, long after he is divinely rejected; the sentence is pronounced, but judgment is not at once executed, whilst David, the now true king, is “hunted like a partridge upon the mountains, or finds his refuge in the cave of Adullam!” God does not at once intervene by power, and take the dignities of the kingdom from Saul--although he has lost all title to them--and put them in David’s hand: the power is Saul’s-- the title is David’s. The latter is king de jure, the former de facto.
Do you not see the marvelous and clear analogy?

Satan too, whilst he may have forfeited all title to the throne of the earth--we shall consider this more carefully directly--still cleaves as did Saul, to its power and dignity; claims, as did Saul, all the power of its government; whilst the true David, to whom all belongs in title, is as it were, in the cave of Adullam, where a few “discontented” ones, those who are not satisfied with such a condition of things--have found their way to Him, and own Him, even in the day of His rejection, as rightful Lord of all. Therefore whilst Satan is the prince of this world at the present time, we are led by the analogy of the inspired history, as by every clear Scripture, to regard Him as its usurping prince: a prince in power, but not in title.

Yet whilst now a usurper, as Saul was, still since he was, also as Saul, divinely anointed as king, the dignity of that anointing still lingers on him, so that Michael recognized that dignity--not speaking evil, but reverently (even as David spoke of Saul ever as “the LORD’S anointed”) and saying “the Lord rebuke thee.”

Nor are his royal dignities exhausted by the title of “prince of this world”; he is also called “the prince of the power of the air,” that is, he is the recognized chief of all those spirit-beings who shared his sin, and are under him in his government of the earth, filling its atmosphere which is their natural habitation. Strange and wonder-inducing word! Are we indeed surrounded on all sides by unseen spirit personalities? Is the very air we breathe permeated and defiled with their presence? Was it due peradventure to this, their continued presence in it, that God refrained from calling the work of that second day, “good”? Do the claims of modern spiritualists, as of ancient witchcraft, receive this degree of clear confirmation from Scripture? Yes, surely yes, to every question: little as the consequences of such an answer may be realized by us.

Again we have a parallel title to the last in “prince of the devils” (Matt. xii. 24), assuming that Beelzebub is one of the names by which Satan was called by the Jews, as v. 26 would clearly justify. He casts out demons “by Beelzebub the prince of the devils,” they charged. “If Satan casts out Satan” the Lord answers: so Satan is surely the “prince of the devils.” [Jennings substitutes demons for devils here.]

The word “Demon” bears with it to our ears an idea of such utter repulsiveness, such moral uncleanness as to obscure or eclipse entirely any official dignity or personal glory by creation that might still attach to one so called. But as the Devil or Satan is called both Prince of the Powers of the Air, and Prince of the Demons, and these latter are as clearly spirits (see Matt. viii. 16, and Matt. xvii. 18, with Mark ix. 25) as the former; there would appear no good or sound reason for distinguishing between them.*[As does Pember in Earth’s earliest ages; but his argument is not convincing.]  We conclude that the Demons are but the Principalities and Powers who own Satan as Prince, only under another name; and one which by no means carried with it at all times its present low and repulsive idea.

But royalty is a civil dignity--a political glory--has he no spiritual or religious dignity? Indeed, yes, but we cannot admit that this is his by creation; but rather by his own inordinate pride and presumption than by any divine apportionment at all, or at any time. In 2 Cor. iv, he is called “the god of this world.” In this present system of things looked at morally and away from God, he so arranges not merely the politics of earth, or its immoralities, but its religion--for this is necessarily the force of this title “god” as in contrast with “prince”--as to suit his own ends.

He so weaves the course of this age: its religious forms, ceremonies, external decencies, respectabilities, and conventionalities as to form a thick veil, that entirely hides “the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus,” which consists in righteous mercy to penitent sinners only. This veil is not formed by evil-living, depravity, or any form of what passes as evil amongst men; but by cold formality, heartless decency, proud self-complacency, highly esteemed external respectability, and we must add church-membership--all without Christ. It is the most fatal of all delusions, the thickest of all veils, and the most common. It is the way that because it is religious, respectable, decent, “seems right unto a man but the end thereof is death”; for there is no Christ, no Lamb of God, no Blood of Atonement in it.

Jennings' Satan -- Chapter Two

SATAN by F. C. Jennings

CHAPTER II
THE SERPENT

Contents.
The most popular conception of the Devil--The possible basis for this
in Scripture--First introduction in Scripture.--Was the natural serpent
originally evil in craft?--Was it originally as now in form?--Object of
universal worship--Suggested meaning of “Dust shall be the Serpent’s meat.”

In considering the person of Satan, it may be well first to look at the common, vulgar, popular idea, such as is still held by the masses of Christendom, and such as is made the basis, or one of the bases, for the rejection of his very existence by many of the “learned” of the day.

The lowest possible, and yet the most widespread conception we have is in what one may term the stage idea, as we constantly see it on the posters in our streets. A human form, with leering face, characterized by a grin of low cunning, horns, hoofs, and forked tail; utterly obscene, and provoking nothing but contempt, ridicule, and disgust.

You have probably seen Albert Dürer’s pictures of him: a swine-like face, a bestial body, with, of course, the inevitable horns, hoofs, and tail. It is not very surprising, since that is the popular idea, men of refinement, or learning, should have pushed the whole thing on one side, and declared him to be the mere offspring of the superstitions of the dark ages. If such a picture were given in Scripture there might indeed possibly be some excuse not only for rejecting the person, as being only worthy of those dark ages, but also the authority for such a conception.*[The nearest approach to any Scriptural source for such a picture may possibly be found in a word used by Isaiah Ch. xiii. 21 translated “satyrs” in both A. V. and R. V. (“hegoats” in mar). We may have occasion to look at this again, but the word searim, there used, meaning literally “hairy ones,” translated also “goats” in Lev. iv, and yet devils in Lev. xvii and 2 Chron., may certainly account for the horns and hoofs of the popular picture referred to, without, however, justifying it at all.] But I hope to show that the Word of God is not responsible for a single line of such a picture as that.

Hardly had the human race been called into existence, than we find a strange enemy making his attack upon it under the guise of a serpent. Although the writer of this account gives no name to this creature, except “the serpent,” other Scriptures leave us no doubt as to who it was. Mere serpent, mere animal, it could not possibly be; for speech is the distinctive characteristic of the spirit, and that this serpent possessed the faculty of speech was, and is enough to prove that some one of a higher kingdom and order than that of the beasts was possessing it.

Here, then, this strange thing of a beast speaking, arguing, reasoning, clearly indicated that some spirit had taken possession of it, or had assumed the form.

But we are not left to these inevitable deductions. Subsequent Scripture fully confirms them. The apostle in writing to the Church in Corinth, likens that church to Eve, and the serpent to the Devil (2 Cor. xi), until finally and conclusively we hear the Devil plainly called “that old serpent” (Rev. xii. 9).

But as thus our first introduction to the Devil in Holy Writ is under this guise of a serpent, and as this points to some kind of harmony between the malign spirit and the beast whose form he assumed, and as that reptile is held to be amongst the lowest and most abhorred of the animal creation--ever loathed and loathsome--so the evil spirit is assumed to be, and ever to have been, not one of exalted dignity, but contemptible and base.
But even admitting the premises, the consequence need not so inevitably follow. Have we not been rather hasty in assuming that the serpent was always, from his very incipiency, exactly as we know him now, either in nature, form, or movement?

The word for serpent in Hebrew (and these Hebrew words are intended to give us valuable assistance in determining the nature of that to which they are applied) is nachash, which may come from the root nachash, to hiss; or, as Dr. Taylor Lewis writes, “is far more likely to have had its sense from the secondary meaning of that root--to shine, whence brass, the shining metal. This gives, as the first thought in the word for serpent, ‘splendour,’ ‘glistening,’ ‘bright,’ ‘shining,’ either from its glossy appearance, or, more likely, from the bright glistening of the eye. The first impressions of mankind in regard to the serpent were of the splendid and terrible kind--beauty and awe.” We shall find this absolutely confirmed, and in a most striking way later.

Nor does the fact that the serpent is called “more subtle than any beast of the field” necessarily predicate anything essentially evil in that creature before the fall of man, or apart from diabolical possession. There are words in Hebrew that might have been used here that would have had an unequivocally bad significance;*[eg. mismah always translated deceit, treachery, craft or guile.] yet such is not used; but ahroom, frequently translated prudent in quite a good sense, as “a prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself” (Prov. xxii. 3); so that it may have had, when applied to the denizen of an unfallen creation, a distinctly good meaning. Nay, when we remember that God “saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”--mark everything, the serpent included--that word “subtle” must have had a good, rather than bad sense.

As we shall see, in the spiritual world the wisdom of the highest creature was admirable, but that wisdom changed to craft after his fall; so in the animal creation of earth, the serpent’s original prudence became craft. The serpent that tempted Eve, being the Devil in that guise, the subtlety was of course unequivocally evil.
Nor would the sentence pronounced “upon thy belly shalt thou go” be of great significance, if this had always been the method of movement. It seems to afford some undoubted justification of the thought that many have had* of some great and radical change in the serpent’s form, quite in contrast with its original glory and beauty.

*So Milton:
Not with indented wave
Prone on the ground as since; but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze, his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnished neck of verdant gold erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape and lovely.

In all this we see why Adam called him Nachash. He looked at him, discerned his qualities thoroughly, and then gave the name that expressed those qualities perfectly: “the bright, shining, splendid one,” filled with a wisdom transcending all the other beasts that he had seen. Did not then the Devil assume his guise with consummate skill, in taking the form before Eve that had already awakened such considerations of admiration on the part of her husband? Might she not safely listen to one he had so named?

There is another phenomenon in connection with the serpent that is of intense significance and profound interest in the fact that we find it as an object of worship in all the ancient countries of the earth; everywhere it has been recognized as a god. This is a simple fact, account for it as one may. Scripture accounts for it by the fall of man from his original place of dependence upon, and confidence in, his Creator, to placing his trust in the opposing word of the enemy. What follows this? Naturally, reasonably, that enemy becomes, even in the likeness of that creature whose form he assumed, the “god of this world” (2 Cor. iv). The sentence “dust shall be the serpent’s meat” may well (I do but suggest it), in that intense pregnancy of meaning that characterizes these earliest Divine utterances, foreshadow this, the serpent’s portion; the serpent’s satisfaction, meat, or food, shall be the external worship of those whose spirit he has destroyed, and who are thus well pictured by the dust whence they came, and to which they return. But no worship willingly, intelligently rendered by man’s inmost being, “in spirit and in truth,” shall the Devil ever have. No loving heart-felt adoration of the soul shall he ever enjoy. No, no, dust, nothing but dust, the outward prostration of the body, and that in horror and terror, must suffice him, and be his “food” on this earth, through all time. Let us mark thankfully the confirmation that our Lord’s words give to this, even in their contrast to the Devil’s meat: when, as He led one poor sinner’s heart back to God, He said, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.” The Devil’s meat was to get man’s heart away from God, and God let him have it in a consequent external prostration to himself (as, indeed 1 Cor. x. 20 proves): the Lord Jesus’ meat is to get man’s heart back to God, and a consequent willing joyful worship of Him as Father, not external, but “in spirit and in truth”; forever be His Name adored.

I've been wanting to get back into this study for a while.  I felt real opposition at the first couple attempts.  Here is the first chapter from F. C. Jennings.  He is sometimes imaginative beyond prudence, but I have found him very valuable in past studies -- especially Isaiah.

Satan: His Person, Work, Place and Destiny
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.

Contents.
The subject both difficult and solemn--The divine inspiration of the
Scriptures must be assumed as forming a standard of truth--What
Science has to say to the subject--What Reason has to say.

The subject on which I desire to write is one of both peculiar difficulty and solemnity. Of difficulty on more accounts than one, but more particularly in view of the false, and, indeed, heathenish ideas that have been bequeathed to us from times of darkness and superstition; and the acceptance of which can only be due to a guilty neglect on our part of the plain teaching of God’s Word. This has indeed been largely modified of late years by many excellent works on this, and closely related subjects; and I have to express my indebtedness to these for the many suggestions they have given, and of which I have availed in the following pages.
But the subject is also one of profound solemnity, and weighty is the responsibility attached to undertaking its elucidation. We are well aware that it is only too customary, even amongst some Christians, to greet even the mention of the name of our dread enemy with a smile; or to turn a witticism with that name as though it really meant nothing; but grant even the possibility of such an existence, and none but fools would treat it with levity.
Grant, again I say, the bare possibility of the existence of such a being of transcendent powers, himself at the head of hosts of others similarly endued; to whom we owe the loss of original innocence and its accompanying happiness; who has overcome man in fair fight, even when not weighted, as now, with a corrupt nature; who is still pledged to withstand the return of every or any individual to God--grant the bare possibility, too, of every Christian being engaged in a conflict of life or death with such an one, and one is compelled to approach the subject--even on the assumption of these possibilities--with such awe, and so to feel the danger of either receiving or communicating any false view of it, as to cry, “Who is sufficient for these things?” Blessed be God, that we are permitted to add “Our sufficiency is of God.”
I am well aware that to assume the simple existence of the Devil will be looked upon as begging the whole question. That this, as well as all other points, must not be taken for granted, but must be proved. And this, I readily admit; only on the other hand, it must also be admitted that something must be mutually accepted as a standard of Truth to which appeal can be made for that proof.
Now, it is not within my purpose to write for those who doubt or question that those writings known as the Scriptures, or the Bible, give us exactly this standard. Were such readers as questioned this to be, at least primarily in view, it would be necessary first to seek to establish the authority of those Scriptures as providing a divine, and therefore perfect standard of truth; and however important a part this may have in Christian ministry in these days, I shall not esteem it to be necessary for those for whom I write. Yet will such a consideration of our subject--basing everything upon the Scriptures--(God giving His gracious blessing) surely result in establishing the authority of those Scriptures the more firmly where it is already held, and where there is even simple honesty and candour, it will at least be seen that they put nothing before us that is not worthy of unreserved acceptance; or that, in the dignity, reasonableness, sobriety with which they deal with this theme, give any ground for considering them other than the very Word of God. Nay, in the marvellous and beauteous light they afford on the unseen spiritual world, its inhabitants, and their connection with the Earth, and which in itself goes far reasonably to account for the contradictions and anomalies that so press upon every thoughtful mind in the things seen, they prove themselves to be as far above all human writings of all ages as the heavens are above the earth-- that is, they are Divine.
Granting this, then, the next step follows as a necessary consequence, that Satan or the Devil is an actual, literal, living personality.
It is quite true that if this were put to the vote of professing Christendom at large, and that vote taken, in accord with the fast-growing democratic principles of our day, as settling or governing things, we should find that the Devil did not exist at all. We have discovered a very easy and very flattering method of disposing of disagreeable subjects. They are entirely dependent on our own will and pleasure; all we have to do is to say “we do not believe in them,” or more effectually, “no one believes in them now”; or perhaps still more unanswerably, “no thoughtful person accepts them” (for we all desire to be considered “thoughtful”) and lo--they are not!
Neither Judgment, nor Hell, nor Satan exist unless we choose to believe in them; and in this convenient, if thoroughly childish method, the mass of professing Christians flatter themselves that, whilst they retain all that is pleasing to them in Revelation, they have got rid of what, after all, may equally prove eternal realities, simply because these realities intrude on, and clash with, the easy-going pleasure-loving spirit of the day. It is surely the part of simple reason to learn if there be not the same clear ground for accepting one set of these as the other. Indeed, if we do accept the Bible as giving us all the light we can possibly have on such mighty facts as Christ, heaven, life, surely it is worse than folly, it is literally suicidal, to deny or ignore it as an authority on themes that are exactly of the same nature, although of a contrasted character; the Devil, hell, judgment; for in so doing, we do really--however much one may wish to avoid such a consequence--shake the very basis of all our brightest hopes.
As far as the Scriptures go, the personality of the Devil is as clearly revealed as the personality of Christ. Indeed, those who deny that of the former, really destroy the latter as a Saviour; for if He were not externally tempted to evil--i. e., if those evil suggestions to make the stone into bread, to obtain the kingdom of the earth by devil-worship, or to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple--did not come to Him from some living intelligence (for it is impossible to conceive of such suggestions apart from intelligence) external to Himself, then must they have come from within; and that being the case, He Himself needed a Saviour rather than was one; may God forgive even a statement of a blasphemy we repudiate and abhor with all our heart.
The Devil is then, according to Scripture, an actual, living, reasoning being; and, in some way, the embodiment of evil, as God of good; and who can deny it? “Oh,” it is said, “such a thought even, is not in harmony with, or worthy of, the scientific attainments of our enlightened day.” But what has Science to do with such a question? Science is what is known by human research in the various fields of natural phenomena. It has to do, from its very name and nature, with what is knowable, or capable of recognition in some way, by man’s senses; that is, it is limited to, and has to do with ascertainable facts, ascertainable by man’s capacities, without supernatural assistance. The very denial of there being anything beyond the limit of man’s capacities is really, in the truest sense, unscientific, for it is an intrusion into that which, from its very nature, is beyond that limit, and how can he assume to know anything, either pro or con, of that? For unless man’s powers are infinite (in which case he is indeed God, and with such claimants argument would be thrown away) they must have a limit. If a limit, then he cannot go beyond that limit, either to deny or assert. And to claim capability for knowing what exists, or does not exist there, since this is clearly unknowable, is utterly unscientific.
It would be more strictly “scientific,” that is in accord with human knowledge and its necessary limitations, to say: “I know that since my capacities are not infinite but limited, there must be a sphere outside the limits of those capacities, as to which, from the very nature of the case, I must be dependent on external revelation coming from that sphere, if I attain to any knowledge at all.” That would at least be common sense, and common sense is not very far from true science.
But this being granted, we must also admit that there may be true, and indeed unavoidable deductions drawn from evident facts, as there may also be hypotheses more or less probable based upon them; but a clear distinction must ever be made between the basal facts, and the hypotheses. The former are within the sphere of true science, the latter are outside it, and simply the progeny of a science, falsely so-called, for hypothesis cannot possibly be knowledge; yet, simple truism as this is, it is constantly overlooked. For instance, there are clear similarities, and gradations of these, in the external forms of all creatures; as, for example, there is some external similarity between the body of man and the body of the anthropoid ape; this may be called Science, for it is capable of proof. Evolution is the hypothesis based on this fact, but this is not science, for it remains without proofs, and the voice of protest against its claims to being this, is becoming constantly louder, and its volume is now being swelled even by scientists themselves, amongst whom there is setting in that strange, restless reaction that in itself proves how, admirably selected was that word of Scripture that calls all this kind of thing “science falsely so called.” Nothing is more misnamed than this pseudo-science to which the mass of professing Christians are bowing the knee and receiving as if it were a god. It is. A false god.
Further, it is not without deep significance that ever increasing numbers of scientific men, men with certainly no bias towards faith in the supernatural, quite the reverse, have been, and are being compelled by the utterly inexplicable phenomena of so-called spiritualism, either to predicate some new “force” with regard to whose properties and powers they are in absolute ignorance, or plainly to give that “force” the name of “spirit.” It is true that they will admit of no spirits but those of the dead from among men, but that one need not discuss here. We know another solution to these mysterious manifestations, other spirits quite capable of producing them. The point is that when men like Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, A. R. Wallace, Professor Lombroso, and a host of thoughtful, careful, and, in a sense, sagacious men, who have a world-wide reputation for being “scientific,” are forced, against all preconceived views, constitutional bias, educational training, and temperamental prejudices, to recognize a spiritual sphere, it is not without the greatest significance. Indeed, so far has this gone, that the method hitherto adopted of dismissal of the subject by a kind of superior waive of the hand as being made up entirely of fraud, quite unworthy of being even considered by any one of discernment, is now rather an unconscious confession of superficiality and thoughtlessness, if not of sluggishness and cowardice, than evidence of any sincere or intelligent research, and conviction based upon it.
But it may be further urged, apart altogether from Science, Reason revolts at the assumption of such an existence as the Devil. But this objection at once provokes a counter question: “Whose reason?” It is beyond argument that, even up to the present moment, the reason of myriads of men, amongst whom may be counted many of the keenest human intelligence, and of profoundest human learning, has not revolted, but has unreservedly accepted such an existence as a fact, and as accounting, in a reasonable way, for facts otherwise inexplicable. That the reason of a Milton or of a Newton, or of a Faraday did not revolt against such an assumption is surely quite sufficient to prove that Reason, per se, does not necessarily reject this clearly revealed fact.
To this of course it will be objected that those grand intellects were themselves under the spell of the times in which they lived; even as a Socrates accepted the false gods of heathendom from the same cause. And it would be as reasonable to claim from this that idolatry was as much in harmony with reason as the existence of evil spirits. We fully concur, and admit that reason has never revolted at the recognition of some powers behind the idols, even the very demons of whom our subject is chief. We may say that the reason of a Socrates as of a Faraday accepted the same personality, although the one in heathen darkness and the other in the light of divine revelation, gave that personality differing names and attributes. But up to the present hour multitudes of not the least thoughtful or intelligent of mankind find nothing contrary to reason in such an existence as is so plainly revealed.
For revealed it is, and I shall not therefore esteem it necessary to go further in proving the personality of the Devil; nor would it come within the limits of my present purpose to go into the subject or even consider the striking and interesting correlative theme of demonology. Nor the closely allied one of what is called spiritualism, at least, with any detail.
I shall speak as a Christian believer, who accepts heartily and fully, and after over forty years of daily examination and search, the Bible, as a Divine revelation to men, to others of the same conviction; only seeking to get from that one pure source alone, and by the same goodness that gave it, such light as its author has seen fit to give us on the one single point of Satan, his person, work and destiny; and to sweep away the dust, and cob-webs of mere tradition, or popular folly that have buried this truth, obscured this light, and eventually given us a merely ridiculous parody on this, as on many other subjects, and to show that it is rather this parody that is rejected, and that this rejection does not affect in the slightest degree the truth of Scripture.

End of Chapter One
F. C. Jennings on Satan

There's nothing going on here; nothing to see. Move along.

John 12:31b: "Now shall the prince of this world be cast out."

I'm getting used to Calvin smoothing over everything and taking away the punch from passages that I thought hit hard.  Here is his take on the above verse fragment:

"This casting out must not be limited to any short period of time, but is a description of that remarkable effect of the death of Christ which is daily manifested."

Does He not say "now"?  How would Calvin's take be different for Adam and Eve or any saint previous to this statement?  Can't it mean something is changing "now" or soon?

Baptismal Regeneration

Here is part of Calvin's treatment of John 3:

It is true that, by neglecting baptism, we are excluded from salvation; and in this sense I acknowledge that it is necessary; but it is absurd to speak of the hope of salvation as confined to the sign.

This is shocking to me.  I assume that because many statements regarding infant baptism come so close to saying this anyway, it is not so shocking for the reformed church.