He does his utmost to prove that the devil had nothing to do with the afflictions of Job; and here he is even more prolix than the friends of that holy man.
There is great probability that he was condemned only through the ill-humor of his judges at having lost so much time in reading his work. If the devil himself had been forced to read Bekker's "World Bewitched" he could never have forgiven the fault of having so prodigiously wearied him.
One of our Dutch divine's greatest difficulties is to explain these words: "Jesus was transported by the spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil." No text can be clearer. A divine may write against Beelzebub as much as he pleases, but he must of necessity admit his existence; he may then explain the difficult texts if he can.
Whoever desires to know precisely what the devil is may be informed by referring to the Jesuit Scott; no one has spoken of him more at length; he is much worse than Bekker.
Consulting history, where the ancient origin of the devil is to be found in the doctrine of the Persians, Ahrimanes, the bad principle, corrupts all that the good principle had made salutary. Among the Egyptians, Typhon does all the harm he can; while Oshireth, whom we call Osiris, does, together with Isheth, or Isis, all the good of which he is capable.
Before the Egyptians and Persians, Mozazor, among the Indians, had revolted against God and become the devil, but God had at last pardoned him. If Bekker and the Socinians had known this anecdote of the fall of the Indian angels and their restoration, they would have availed themselves of it to support their opinion that hell is not perpetual, and to give hopes of salvation to such of the damned as read their books.
The Jews, as has already been observed, never spoke of the fall of the angels in the Old Testament; but it is mentioned in the New.
About the period of the establishment of Christianity a book was attributed to "Enoch, the seventh man after Adam," concerning the devil and his associates. Enoch gives us the names of the leaders of the rebellious and the faithful angels, but he does not say that war was in heaven; on the contrary, the fight was upon a mountain of the earth, and it was for the possession of young women.
St. Jude cites this book in his Epistle: "And the angels, which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.... Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain.... And Enoch, also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these...."
St. Peter in his second Epistle alludes to the Book of Enoch when he says: "For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness...."