Some have suggested, that there is yet a Time to come, when the Devil shall exert more Rage, and do more Mischief than ever yet he has been permitted to do; whether he shall break his Chain, or be unchain’d for a Time, they cannot tell, nor I neither; and ’tis happy for my Work, that even this Part too does not belong to his History; if ever it shall be given an Account of by Mankind, it must be after it is come to pass, for my Part is not Prophesy of foretelling what the Devil shall do, but History of what he has done.
Thus, good People, I have brought the History of the Devil down to your own Times; I have, as it were, rais’d him for you, and set him in your View, that you may know him and have a Care of him.
If any cunninger Men among you think they are able now to lay him again, and so dispose of him out of your Sight, that you shall be troubled no more with him, either here or hereafter, let them go to work with him their own Way; you know Things future do not belong to an Historian, so I leave him among you, wishing you may be able to give no worse an Account of him for the Time to come, than I have done for the Time past.
F I N I S.
Footnotes:
[1] N. B. He never refus’d setting his hand to any opinion, which he thought it for his interest to acknowledge.
[2] Mean’t of nothing.
[3] Mr. Pool’s words are these: Some refer the words, This day have I begotten thee, to the incarnation of the Son of God, others to the Resurrection: our Translators lay the stress on the preposition of which the verb is compounded, and by adding again, (viz.) rais’d up Jesus again, Acts xiii. 33. intend it to be understood of the Resurrection; and there is ground for it, in the context, for the Resurrection of Christ, is that which St. Paul had propounded in v. 30. of the same Chapter, as his theme or argument to preach upon.
Not that Christ at his Resurrection began to be the Son of God, but that he was manifested then to be so.