“A devil is a fallen angel, an angel fallen from the fear and love of God, and from all celestial glories; but fallen to all manner of wretchedness and cursedness....  There are multitudes, multitudes, in the valley of destruction, where the devils are!  When we speak of the devil, ’tis a name of multitude....  The devils they swarm about us, like the frogs of Egypt, in the most retired of our chambers.  Are we at our boards? beds?  There will be devils to tempt us into carnality.  Are we in our shops?  There will be devils to tempt us into dishonesty.  Yea, though we get into the church of God, there will be devils to haunt us in the very temple itself, and there tempt us to manifold misbehaviors.  I am verily persuaded that there are very few human affairs whereinto some devils are not insinuated.  There is not so much as a journey intended, but Satan will have an hand in hindering or furthering of it.”

“...’Tis to be supposed, that there is a sort of arbitrary, even military government, among the devils....  These devils have a prince over them, who is king over the children of pride.  ’Tis probable that the devil, who was the ringleader of that mutinous and rebellious crew which first shook off the authority of God, is now the general of those hellish armies; our Lord that conquered him has told us the name of him; ’tis Belzebub; ’tis he that is the devil and the rest are his angels, or his soldiers....  ’Tis to be supposed that some devils are more peculiarly commission’d, and perhaps qualify’d, for some countries, while others are for others....  It is not likely that every devil does know every language; or that every devil can do every mischief.  ’Tis possible that the experience, or, if I may call it so, the education of all devils is not alike, and that there may be some difference in their abilities....”

What was naturally the effect of such a faith upon the sensitive nerves of the women of those days?  Viewed in its larger aspects this was an objective, not a subjective religion.  It could but make the sensitive soul super-sensitive, introspective, morbidly alive to uncanny and weird suggestions, and strangely afraid of the temptation of enjoying earthly pleasures.  Its followers dared not allow themselves to become deeply attached to anything temporal; for such an emotion was the device of the devil, and God would surely remove the object of such affection.  Whether through anger or jealousy or kindness, the Creator did this, the Puritan woman seems not to have stopped to consider; her belief was sufficient that earthly desires and even natural love must be repressed.  Winthrop, a staunch supporter of colonial New England creeds as well as of independence, gives us an example of God’s actions in such a matter:  “A godly woman of the church of Boston, dwelling sometime in London, brought with her a parcel of very fine linen of great value, which she set her heart too much upon, and had been at charge to have it all newly washed, and curiously folded and pressed, and so left it in press in her parlor over night.”  Through the carelessness of a servant, the package caught on fire and was totally destroyed.  “But it pleased God that the loss of this linen did her much good, both in taking off her heart from worldly comforts, and in preparing her for a far greater affliction by the untimely death of her husband...."[9]