Children of the devil

“ Such devils can commit fornication with the maidens, and “are able to beget children which are simply devils”; [1111] for the devil will often drag a girl into the water, get her with child and keep her by him until she has borne her baby ”

“ It is more comfortable to have no children, than to beget and breed up children for the devil. Their natural corruption is advantage enough to Satan, to engage them to himself, and use them for his service: but when parents shall also take the devil's part, and teach their children by precepts or example how to serve him, and shall estrange them from God and a holy life, and fill their minds with false conceits and prejudice against the means of their salvation, as if they had sold their children to the devil ”

“ There is not a book in the Bible which justifies the inference that God loves his children who die in wickedness, or that His hell is for the welfare of its melancholy inmates, only for the vengeance of their Creator.
Out of this dark mass of evil in Himself He created the devil—absolutely evil—and hell; both to last for ever, each a finality. The devil is also a child of God, but not acknowledged—turned-off, an out-lying member of the Divine family, the Ishmael of the universe, his hand against God, God's against him. ”

“ These devils generally sympathized with man. In nearly all the theologies, mythologies and religions, the devils have been much more humane and merciful than the gods. No devil ever gave one of his generals an order to kill children and to rip open the bodies of pregnant women. Such barbarities were always ordered by the good gods! The pestilences were sent by the most merciful gods! The frightful famine, during which the dying child with pallid lips sucked the withered bosom of a dead mother, was sent by the loving gods. No devil was ever charged with such fiendish brutality. ”

“ After giving it as his opinion that all such beings and their offspring are wiles of the devil, he proceeds: "It is truly a grievous thing that the devil can so plague men that he begetteth children in their likeness. It is even so with the nixies in the water, that lure a man therein, in the shape of wife or maid, with whom he doth dally and begetteth offspring of them." ”

“ And many of them are made much more the Children of the Devil then before, like the Jewes Proselytes, Murthering and Persecuting, doing the Devils work, who is out of Truth; for Christ his Ministers and Apostles came to save Mens lives, but the Devils bait is, to Cloath his Ministers, Apostles, and Messengers with Sheepes Cloathing, And to keep People alwayes under Teaching, that they may be alwayes paying of them, destroying and Persecuting such as will not pay them ”

“ In the foreground a horrible devil with an iron club has just dashed down and scattered a pile of stones built by one of the children. The little ghost, seated by the ruin of its work, is crying, with both pretty hands to its eyes. The devil appears to sneer. ”

“ I know nothing about children, but I know something about the devil, and if ever the devil was in a woman’s face and voice the devil was in yours when you dragged the little creature from under the bed. ”

“ They select one who has to be the devil, she’s to stand against a wall, with a girl hid behind her. All the children have to try and light the fire, and each time the girl behind pinches them and they say “Oh, mother, the devil’s in fire.” ”

“ When they have done all this, the Devil gives notice of the next convent, and the witches take the children, and they grow up with their brothers and sisters just like any of the others, only that they are cross-grained children from that time forward, and are always getting into one mischief or another, and quarrelling, and fighting, and stealing, and lying, and doing the Devil’s work on earth ”

“ Note, The vexations of children are the trouble of parents, and nothing should be more so than their being under the power of Satan. Tender parents very sensibly feel the miseries of those that are pieces of themselves. "Though vexed with the devil, yet she is my daughter still." The greatest afflictions of our relations do not dissolve our obligations to them, and therefore ought not to alienate our affections from them. ”

“ In this connection did you ever think why it is that the devil is continually seeking the moral overthrow and eternal ruin of the human family? It is not because he has any ill feeling for cause against the children of men. They have never given him any occasion, and as we have seen, in their helpless condition, they could not if they would. According to the bible and the claims of Christians they have always done just as the devil wanted them to. ”

“ So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through an opening made in the shape of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's beak, and it is then said that the devil has swallowed them. ”

“ The devil keeps the only complete register to be found anywhere. Their trace is found oftenest by the coroner or the police; sometimes they may be discovered hiding in the advertising columns of certain newspapers, under the guise of the scarcely less heartless traffic in helpless children that is dignified with the pretense of adoption--for cash. ”

“ The only time when this devil and his rout make a prolonged stay in the town is on the evening before the day on which the newly initiated lads are to be brought back from the forest. Then the leader and his satellites parade the streets for hours, while all the uninitiated men, women, and children remain shut up in their houses, listening to the doleful strains of the flute, which signify that the devil is suffering the pangs of childbirth before he brings forth the initiated lads ”

“ When they become men and women they tell father's story of having seen the Devil to their children, and so the children and grandchildren not only believe, but think they know, that their father—their grandfather—actually saw a devil. ”

“ Some of the children complained lamentably of the misery and mischief they were forced sometimes to suffer off the devil and the witches.—The children being asked, Whether they were sure that they were at any time carried away by the devil? They all declared they were, begging of the commissioners, that they might be freed from that intolerable slavery.—Hereupon the witches themselves were asked, Whether the confessions of these children were true? and admonished to confess the truth, that they might turn away from the devil unto the [Pg 115] living God. ”

“ He then throws himself into the fire, and all his kindred manifest their joy by the playing of instruments until he is entirely consumed. Within three days of this ceremony two of the principal priests repair to his house, and thus address his children: "Prepare the house, for to-day you will be visited by your father, who will manifest his wishes unto you." Witnesses are selected among the inhabitants of the town, and lo! the devil appears in the image of the dead. ”

“ good-natured, generous, jolly, full of fun; there are a number of other names for the good qualities the devil leaves his children, as baits to catch gudgeons with. D'ye think folk could be led astray by one who was every way bad? ”

“ And must he not be already surprised and shocked at the precocious growth of the infant monster which he found and named? "So prone are mortals to their own damnation, it seems as though a devil's use were gone." ”

“ These devils assumed a thousand forms—countless disguises in their efforts to capture souls and destroy the church. They deceived sometimes the wisest and the best; made priests forget their vows. They melted virtue's snow in passion's fire, and in cunning ways entrapped and smirched the innocent and good. These devils gave witches and wizards their supernatural powers, and told them the secrets of the future.
Millions of men and women were destroyed because they had sold themselves to the Devil.
At that time Christians really believed the New Testament. ”

“ In every orthodox Sunday school children are taught to believe in devils. Every little brain becomes a menagerie, filled with wild beasts from hell. The imagination is polluted with the deformed, the monstrous and malicious. To fill the minds of children with leering fiends—with mocking devils—is one of the meanest and basest of crimes. In these pious prisons—these divine dungeons—these Protestant and Catholic inquisitions—children are tortured with these cruel lies. ”

“ All the fathers of the church believed in devils. All the saints won their crowns by overcoming devils. All the popes and cardinals, bishops and priests, believed in devils. Most of their time was occupied in fighting devils. The whole Catholic world, from the lowest layman to the highest priest, believed in devils. They proved the existence of devils by the New Testament. They knew that these devils were citizens of hell. They knew that Satan was their king. They knew that hell was made for the Devil and his angels. ”

“ Then the priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of chopping is heard, a fearful cry rings 109out, and a sword dripping with blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy’s head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the other world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men who act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a half-fainting state like messengers from another world. ”

“ We can have no idea of how horrible these devils are. Saint Catherine of Siena once saw a devil and she has written that, rather than look again for one single instant on such a frightful monster, she would prefer to walk until the end of her life along a track of red coals. These devils, who were once beautiful angels, have become as hideous and ugly as they once were beautiful. They mock and jeer at the lost souls whom they dragged down to ruin. It is they, the foul demons, who are made in hell the voices of conscience. Why did you sin? ”

“ Over three hundred boys and girls, from six to sixteen years of age, had been seduced, it was believed, by charms and cajolery to visit nightly the witches' meetings, and enroll themselves in Satan's ranks. The poor children freely and even eagerly confessed their guilt, clinging with tenacity to all the painful and grotesque details involved in such a story; babbling with infant tongues of things too evil for their understanding ”

“ At Hurdwar, in the great fair, among jugglers and tumblers, horse-tamers and snake-charmers, fakirs and pilgrims, I saw a small boy possessed of a devil,—an authentic devil, as of yore, meet for miraculous driving-out. ”

“ One of these bad angels was called Satan. He is the chief, or prince of the bad angels. He is called the devil.
The devil is very wicked, and hates God. He can never go back to heaven again, but he comes here where we live, and he brings the other devils with him. ”

“ There are a number of other names by which the Devil is called in Scripture, each of which expresses something of the essential nature of hell; such as, Angel of the bottomless pit, Prince of this world, Prince of darkness, Destroyer, Beelzebub, Belial, Adversary, Accuser, Deceiver, Liar, Murderer, Tormentor, Serpent, Lucifer, Leviathan and Dragon. Such are the significant names which we find in the Bible sometimes applied to the collective body of evil spirits in the other world, who, viewed as one individual, are more frequently called the Devil and Satan. ”

“ Let his Picture be consider’d, the Fire of Hell flames or sparkles in his Eyes, a voracious Grin sits upon his Countenance; Rage and Fury distort the Muscles of his Face; his Passions agitate his whole Body, and he is metamorphos’d from a comely Beauteous angelic Creature into a Fury, a Satyr, a terrible and frightful Monster, nay, into a Devil; for Satan himself is describ’d by the same Word which on his very Account is chang’d into a Substantive, and the Devils are call’d Furies. ”

“ When, as was the case last week, not far from my own field, the conversion of a daughter provokes the mother to disown her and to bid her leave home and look out for herself, we are set wondering what strange madness has wrecked that mother’s heart, and we ask, Is she possessed of the devil? ”

“ The old ashes of the sins of my youth are new fire of sorrow to me. I have seen the devil, as it were, dead and buried, and yet rise again, and be a worse devil than ever he was; therefore, my brother, beware of a green young devil, that hath never been buried. The devil in his flowers (I mean the hot, fiery lusts and passions of youth) is much to be feared: better yoke with an old grey-haired, withered, dry devil. ”

“ The devil was also held responsible for the appearance of monsters; it was believed that the ruler of hell helped young girls against their will to enjoy the delights of motherhood. However, these delights were said to be of a peculiar kind, in that intercourse with the devil was always bound to be followed by the birth of the most frightful monsters. ”

“ We see, then, that, according to the New doctrine, no single individual as chief of the fallen angels, is meant by these Scripture terms, but all evil spirits in the complex,—or some one of the infernal societies with whose every act and purpose the whole conspires. Devil is the term employed when hell is spoken of with more especial reference to the evil loves that reign there: and Satan, when it is spoken of with more especial reference to its false persuasions. ”

“ It is true, then, and in no way false, that the devil’s power is exorcised in infants, and that they renounce him by the hearts and mouths of those who bring them to baptism, being unable to do so by their own ”

“ Eh, my angel aunt?"
"Pamphile," said the old witch, "you are a devil, and I love you for it. In the old days at Chateau there were lovers like you, brave boys, fearing neither God nor man. Usually man is more to be feared, but in the end God and the devil. But the devil amuses one for a time. ”