Goethe’s Faust makes not a pact with the Devil…

Goethe’s Faust makes not a pact with the Devil, but a wager.

“Only in Faust: Part One (1808) does Goethe commit himself to his second great divergence from the traditional fable: his Faust now makes not a contract with the Devil but a wager. Faust wagers that, however much of human life the Devil shows him, he will find none of it satisfying—and if he is wrong (i.e., if he is satisfied), he is willing to give up living altogether.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. (2010). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved March 11, 2010, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online

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“The authority for such pacts is *Isaias*

“The authority for such pacts is *Isaias*

(*Isaiah*) xxviii which in the Vulgate translation reads: “For
you have said we have entered into a league with death, and we
have made a covenant with hell.” Both Origen and Augustine
mention these pacts and the scholastic philosophers distinguish
between express and implied pacts. The former consists in
actually evoking the demon, the latter in merely expecting help
from him. The demon here refers to any evil spirit, and there
were vast numbers of such.” http://www.satanservice.org/propaganda/occ.60sc.txt

A History of Witchcraft, Magic and Occultism, by W.B. Crow,
Wilshire Book Company, 1968; pp. 228-30.

Pasted from <http://www.satanservice.org/propaganda/occ.60sc.txt>