Diabolus), an evil angel, one of those celestial spirits cast down from heaven for pretending to be equal with God. The Ethiopians paint the devil white, and are thus quits with the Europeans, who paint him black. There is no mention of the Devil in the Old Testament, but only of Satan and Belial; nor do we meet with the word in any heathen authors, in the sense in which it is used among Christians, that is, as a creature who had revolted against God. Their theology went no farther than evil genii or demons.

Some of the American idolaters have a notion of two collateral independent beings, one of whom is good and the other evil; the last, as they imagine, having the direction and superintendence of this earth, for which reason they chiefly worship him. The Chaldeans, in like manner, believed both in a good principle and an evil one, which last they imagined was the enemy of mankind. Isaiah, speaking, according to some commentators, of the fall of the devil, calls him Lucifer, from his former elevation and state of glory; but others explain this passage of Isaiah in reference to the king of Babylon, who had been precipitated from his throne and his glory. The Arabians call Lucifer Eblis, which some think is only a diminutive or corruption of the word Diabolus.