our God could hear us up beyond the sun, he must needs be a greater God
than their Benamuckee, who lived but a little way off, and yet could not
hear, till they went up to the great mountains, where he dwelt, to speak
to him. I asked him, if ever he went thither to speak to him? He said,
No, they never went that were young men; none went thither but the old
men; whom he called their Oowookakee, that is, as I made him explain it
to me, their religious, or clergy; and that they went to say O! (so he
called saying prayers,) and then came back, and told them what
Benamuckee said. By this I observed, that there is priestcraft even
amongst the most blinded ignorant Pagans in the world; and the policy of
making a secret religion, in order to preserve the veneration of the
people to the clergy, is not only to be found in the Roman, but perhaps
among all religious in the world, even among the most brutish and
barbarous savages.

I endeavoured to clear up this fraud to my man Friday; and told him,
that the pretence of their old men going up to the mountains to say O!
to their god Benamuckee, was a cheat; and their bringing word from
thence what he said, was much more so; that if they met with any answer,
or spoke with any one there, it must be with an evil spirit: and then I
entered into a long discourse with him about the devil, the original of
him, his rebellion against God, his enmity to man, the reason of it, his
setting himself up in the dark parts of the world to be worshipped
instead of God, and as God, and the many stratagems he made use of, to
delude mankind to their ruin; how he had a secret access to our passions
and to our affections, to adapt his snares so to our inclinations, as to
cause us even to be our own tempters, and to run upon our own
destruction by our own choice.

I found it was not so easy to imprint right notions in his mind about