APPENDIX. 



APPLICATION. 



If there be a plurality of devils, Ignorance must 

 be their king ; and through his influence only men 

 are wicked ; and, under him and his satellites, the 

 wretchedness they have dealt out to mankind ever 

 since their chequered reign began has disfigured 

 the fair face of nature ; and they have too often 

 succeeded, in the struggles between virtue and 

 vice, in obscuring the reasoning powers of man, 

 and bringing him down to the level of the brute. 

 For no sooner was it decreed by Omnipotence that 

 his reasoning creatures should live in a state of 

 civilised society, suitable to their natures and befit- 

 ting so high a behest, than these enemies to this 

 good order of things obtruded themselves upon 

 it, and have too long and too often succeeded in 

 baffling the efforts of good men in their aims at 

 approaching towards perfection, and in thwarting 

 the progress of mental improvement, and the con- 

 sequent happiness of the human race. They have, 

 with the glimmering light of their ignis fatuus, led 

 their devotees in zig-zag, backward and forward 

 paths, through misty bogs and quagmires, into 

 the midnight glooms and chaotic darkness which 

 envelop their wretched dens. The bloody pages 

 of history have in part recorded some of the many 

 miseries which have from time to time been inflicted 

 upon their victims ; but to enumerate only a portion 

 would be an irksome as well as an endless task. 



