Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/408

It is far from inexplicable that earthly tyrants should employ these kind of agents, or that God should have done so with regard to the Devil and his Angels; or that any depositary of power should take these measures, with respect to those, by whom he fears lest that power should be wrested from him. But to tempt mankind to incur everlasting damnation, must, on the part of God, and even on the part of the Devil, arise from that disinterested love of tormenting and annoying, which is seldom observed on earth. The thing that comes nearest to it is a troop of idle dirty boys baiting a cat; cooks skinning eels, and boiling lobsters alive, and bleeding calves, and whipping pigs to death; naturalists anatomizing dogs alive, (a dog has as good a right and a better excuse for anatomizing a naturalist,) are nothing compared to God and the Devil judging, damning, and then tormenting the soul of a miserable sinner. It is pretended that God dislikes it, but this is mere shamefacedness and coquetting, for he has everything his own way and he need not damn unless he likes. The Devil has a better excuse, for, as he was entirely made by God, he can have no tendency or disposition, the seeds of which were not originally planted by his Creator; and as everything else was made by God, those seeds can have only developed themselves in the precise degree and manner determined by the impulses arising from the agency of the rest of his creation. It would be as unfair to complain of the Devil for acting ill, as of a watch for going badly; the defects are to be imputed as much to God in the former case, as to the watchmaker in the latter. There is also another view of the subject, suggested by mythological writers, which strongly re-