Although Faustus seems to know all along he cannot save himself , he hopes and wishes to save himself from the deal he made with the devil:
1. Faustus asks to make a kind of deal with God. He asks to be in hell a thousand or a hundred thousand years, and then reach salvation: "If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet for Christ’s sake whose blood hath ransom’d me,
Impose some end to my incessant pain;
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years—
A hundred thousand, and—at last—be sav’d!"
2.He calls upon metempsychosis, he asks for his soul to migrate and be changed to a beast: "Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
Unto some brutish beast:
All beasts are happy, for, when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;"
3.. He says he will burn all of his books and renounce to all knowledge. "Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books!—Ah Mephistophilis!"