coming," or in other words, the clear shining of gospel light, that shall at the same time be vouchsafed, will "abolish” every trace of the anti-christian system, and usher in the time when the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, when " men shall be blessed in Christ, when all nations shall call him blessed." CHAPTER VI. The Energy of Satan. The Signs and Lying Wonders of the Man of Sin. 2 THESSALONIANS ii. 9. Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and SIGNS, AND LYING WONDERS. E We have here a distinct intimation, both of the real author of the apostacy, and of one of the grand engines he would make use of in promoting it. 1. The Devil is expressly declared to be the author of Popery. "The coming of the Man of Sin," says Paul," is after the working of Satan." It was not mere human wisdom that was to be concerned in planning-not mere hu Р man agency employed in carrying out the system of antichrist. The system was to be concocted in hell, and the arch fiend was to organize and direct its movements. Ambitious and wicked churchmen have been Satan's tools; but from the beginning he has himself been actively engaged in the management of the whole machinery of the mystery of iniquity. Nay, it is here intimated, that his chief strength would be put forth in the Apostacy. "The working of Satan," in the original, is "the energy or mighty power of Satan ;" and Popery may most justly be characterized, as it has been by Cecil, as " Satan's masterpiece." As the gospel is "the power of God unto salvation," so Popery is emphatically "the power of Satan unto perdition." In leading captive the heathen, who had the mere light of reason to guide them, the enemy of souls had comparatively an easy task to perform; but after that the day-spring from on high had visited mankind-after that life and immortality had been brought to light by the gospelafter that the word of God had been preached to all nations to envelope these nations again in worse than Pagan darkness, was a much more arduous undertaking. This was the object, to effect which, Satan addressed himself; and this, in the unsearchable wisdom of God, was he permitted to accomplish. At the Reformation, indeed, his wonted skill seemed to desert him. He committed blunder after blunder; and his throne seemed to totter to its fall. But the defeat which Satan at that time sustained, has only been the means of showing more clearly the mighty resources which are at the command of his malignity. The deadly wound inflicted on his antichristian kingdom has been healed; and the Papacy is again instinct with even more than the ancient 66 energy of Satan." The spread of science, the invention of printing, the march of mind, the open Bible itself, and the thousand advantages which have raised the present age intellectually above all preceding ages, have not secured the nations of Protestant Europe against the seductions of Rome. Human wisdom has been trust ed in; and human wisdom, as might have been expected, has been found no match for the subtlety of the old serpent, sharpened, as that subtlety is, by the experience of six thousand years. Philosophers are amazed at the return of obsolete and exploded superstitions; and politicians, who thought to outwit the Man of Sin, find themselves duped and helpless in his hands. The rapidity with which Popery spreads, amid all the illumination of the nineteenth century, surpasses any thing ever known before. "The growth of the Popish system," observes an able writer, "at first was a work of ages; but in the present case, it grows more in a year than it did then in half a century. It would seem as if the old sorceress had reserved this unparalleled effort of skill to the last. That she should have bewitched and enslaved the comparatively barbarous tribes of Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries, or that she should have swayed a sceptre of absolute sovereignty over the dark ages, was nothing so extraordinary. But to reconquer England, that has |