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The Great Controversy
adapted to meet the wants of all these. It is prepared for two classes
of mankind, embracing nearly the whole world—those who would
be saved by their merits, and those who would be saved in their sins.
Here is the secret of its power.
A day of great intellectual darkness has been shown to be favorable
to the success of the papacy. It will yet be demonstrated that a day of
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great intellectual light is equally favorable for its success. In past ages,
when men were without God’s word and without the knowledge of
the truth, their eyes were blindfolded, and thousands were ensnared,
not seeing the net spread for their feet. In this generation there are
many whose eyes become dazzled by the glare of human speculations,
“science falsely so called;” they discern not the net, and walk into it as
readily as if blindfolded. God designed that man’s intellectual powers
should be held as a gift from his Maker and should be employed in the
service of truth and righteousness; but when pride and ambition are
cherished, and men exalt their own theories above the word of God,
then intelligence can accomplish greater harm than ignorance. Thus the
false science of the present day, which undermines faith in the Bible,
will prove as successful in preparing the way for the acceptance of the
papacy, with its pleasing forms, as did the withholding of knowledge
in opening the way for its aggrandizement in the Dark Ages.
In the movements now in progress in the United States to secure
for the institutions and usages of the church the support of the state,
Protestants are following in the steps of papists. Nay, more, they are
opening the door for the papacy to regain in Protestant America the
supremacy which she has lost in the Old World. And that which gives
greater significance to this movement is the fact that the principal
object contemplated is the enforcement of Sunday observance—a
custom which originated with Rome, and which she claims as the sign
of her authority. It is the spirit of the papacy—the spirit of conformity
to worldly customs, the veneration for human traditions above the
commandments of God—that is permeating the Protestant churches
and leading them on to do the same work of Sunday exaltation which
the papacy has done before them.
If the reader would understand the agencies to be employed in the
soon-coming contest, he has but to trace the record of the means which
Rome employed for the same object in ages past. If he would know
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how papists and Protestants united will deal with those who reject