I have since learned definitely that the Devil was in good earnest, and has retired into a voluntary exile, whence endless deputations of learned, suppliant, apologetic and furious theologians have endeavored to coax him, but entirely in vain. He has abdicated, he replies steadfastly, forever; and the desperate situation of the theologians, whose calling and character is seriously imperiled by his obstinacy, leaves him perfectly unmoved. He declares he has been long abandoned by those who flourished upon the pleasantries which he devised to make life amusing, and being under no sort of moral obligation to ingrates who have publicly held his name and character in abhorrence, he cheerfully abandons them to their wretched fate. He himself is humbled; let them taste of his bitterness, as they have shared in his prosperity, without any honest acknowledgment of his benefaction

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