The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

POPERY A COUNTERFEIT. 403fleet his glory, or most largely dispense his goodness;—thosun, as in Chaldea ; eminent men, the founders of tribes orthe inventors of the arts, as in Greece ; vile and creepingthings, as in Egypt ; and, as the course of this idolatry isever downward, in some tribes we find that the very idea ofGod had well-nigh perished. Falsehood is its own greatestenemy : its tendency is to destroy itself. Polytheism corruptedthe nations ; it thus came to lose its power over thohuman mind ; and the world had lapsed into scepticism,when Christianity, young, vigorous, and pure, came forthfrom her native mountains to renovate the earth,—to restorethat faith which is the life of man, and that religion whichis the strength of nations.This was the most powerful antagonistthat had yet appeared in the field against the interestsof Satan. It was the great original truth revivedwith new splendour,—man revolted from God, redeemed bythe Son, and sanctified by the Spirit,—the truth whichSatan had supplanted by his LIE of polytheism ; and, powerfulas true, it attested its power by planting its trophies andmonuments above the abjured creeds and prostrate templesof paganism.This antagonist Satan could confront with but his oldpolicy. That policy took a new form, to adapt itself to newcircumstances : its edge was finer, its complications greatlymore intricate, and its scale of operation vastly larger; stillit was the old policy, radically, essentially unchanged, beneathits new modifications and altered forms. Satan presentedover again to the world the counterfeit ; and hesucceeded once more in persuading the world to accept thecounterfeit and to banish the real. The great primal truthof God's unity and supreme and exclusive government wassupplanted in the old world by the device of making menadore inferior deities, not as God, but as representativesand vicegerents of God.So in the modern world the leadingChristian truth respecting Christ, and the oneness of hismediation, has been supplanted by the device of other mediators,and of another Christ,—Antichrist. Popery is the