Tom never really says how he knows that "Old Scratch" is the Devil; in fact, he never even explicitly states that the two are one and the same. However, in the language of the time period, "Scratch" is synonymous with the Devil, and the connotation probably would have been far more obvious to a contemporary reader than to a modern one, since the phrase has not entered common usage.
Tom really only knows that the man in the forest is the Devil because he deduces it from the clues and titles that are provided to him. Among the hints he provides are the fact that he is black, but not African, nor is he "red" or "white" - meaning that he identifies as none of the human races present in Massachusetts. He names himself as the one to whom the Native Americans dedicated places and rituals, which means he probably predates the colonization of the area by Europeans.
Perhaps most significantly, he calls himself the "grand master of the Salem witches" - referring to an infamous series of trials and executions that marked colonial Massachusetts as a place fraught with religious superstition and paranoia, which even in their time were regarded with some scorn and derision for their injustice. This might be a simple and straightforward way of saying that the accused women really were witches, and the Devil was their leader, or it might be a more subtle way of saying that though the women were innocent, the Devil was nevertheless their "master" in that he ensured their deaths, perhaps as another avenue of amusement for himself. Regardless, this is enough information for Tom to deduce that the man is the Devil.
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