There is another part of these machines yet wanting; but by what I
have said, it would have been easily supplied by a judicious writer.
He could not have failed to add the opposition of ill spirits to the
good; they have also their design, ever opposite to that of Heaven;
and this alone has hitherto been the practice of the moderns: but
this imperfect system, if I may call it such, which I have given,
will infinitely advance and carry farther that hypothesis of the
evil spirits contending with the good. For being so much weaker
since their fall than those blessed beings, they are yet supposed to
have a permitted power from God of acting ill, as from their own
depraved nature they have always the will of designing it--a great
testimony of which we find in Holy Writ, when God Almighty suffered
Satan to appear in the holy synod of the angels (a thing not
hitherto drawn into example by any of the poets), and also gave him
power over all things belonging to his servant Job, excepting only
life.
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