Beyond Salem and Secularism: Jonathan Edwards and Satan in Early America

Abstract

Destroyer. Serpent. The Old Serpent. The Great Red Dragon. The Accuser of the Brethren. The Enemy. Belial. Beezlebub. Mammon. The Angel of Light. The Angel of the Bottomless Pit. The Prince of the Power of the Air. Lucifer. Abaddon. Apollyon. Legion. The God of this World. The Foul Spirit. The Lying Spirit. The Tempter. The Son of the Morning. Satan. Such are the Biblical names that Daniel Defoe, an adept commentator on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Christian traditions, identified for the being that many consider to be the bane of Christianity. Per Defoe’s observation, those names were largely confined to the Old Testament. In naming God’s rival, the second half of the Christian Bible was more concise.