AND BRUISED UNDER, NONE BUT BELIEVERS. 401

the "power of death"-he unquestionably retains still over all who do not savingly believe on him, and over believers themselves till they are in Christ; for it is of them only that the apostle says, and of them only is it true, that they are "delivered who were all their lifetime subject to bondage." In that "bondage to the fear of death," then, over which the devil presides, all are held who believe not-over them he still has "the power of death."

This is brought clearly out by the third and last passage:

Rom. xvi. 20: "THE GOD OF PEACE SHALL BRUISE SATAN UNDER YOUR FEET shortly."

This is spoken for the comfort of struggling Christians -announcing the speedy termination of all their troubles and annoyances, by the bruising under their feet of their grand adversary. This way of speaking clearly supposes that all that is hostile to the Christian, of whatever sort, is under the active presidency of Satan, and so holding of him, that the bruising of him under our feet-getting our feet upon the neck of Satan-is equivalent to the complete destruction of all that stands in the way of our salvation. If, then, there be a total cessation of Satanic power during the millennium, it must imply that, along with him, every thing that stands in the way of a sinner's salvation has been taken out of the way. But as few are prepared to go this length, the millennial "binding" of Satan must mean something short of this.

Taking these three passages together, then, they show clearly the connection of Satan with man in his fallen state. With that state he is bound up. As it came in by him, so it holds of him, and is never parted from him. We are in bondage to sin and him at once-we shake off both together. Sin and he are inseparable companions

on earth and in hell. The tyranny of both is destroyed in regeneration; the partial power of both remains till death, in the regenerate-but that of the one never more, and never less, than that of the other; and at death, the believer sees the backs of both together."

If this, now, be Scripture doctrine, the question of a total cessation of Satanic influence during the millennium is settled. If mankind during that period will get above the law and conditions of the fall, then may Satan have no power over them, and nothing to do with them. If man

* Mr. H. Bonar comments upon this and the preceding paragraph, as they appeared in my first edition, at great length, addressing himself to it once and again in the course of his volume. At one time he sees a denial of the personality of Satan; at another, a denial of the possibility of sin existing without the agency of Satan, and so, a denial of the total depravity of human nature. In view of this, he tells me I "stand on slippery ground." He "shall not employ," however, "language betokening any suspicion of my opinions regarding Satanic influence, for he has no such suspicion." For this I should be more grateful, if I thought I had written any thing to merit such suspicion. But I am quite content to leave that question to the intelligent reader of what I have written. I have slightly altered the former of the two paragraphs, which Mr. Bonar assails, merely to bring out what every one must have seen to be my meaning; but I have purposely left both paragraphs very much as they were, to show that I adhere to what I wrote. Not a word was said implying the impersonality of Satan; not a word to throw doubt upon the total depravity of human nature, or the possibility-if God had so willed it-of man being left to manifest that total depravity without any interference, the most remote, from Satan. But I had nothing to do with such possibilities. The only question handled in my paragraphs related to the matter of fact-whether the word of God warrants the belief that the depravity of human nature will ever be separated, in the way alleged, from the agency of "its father the devil." I have given some scripture grounds for believing that it will not, and that is all. The whole criticism I regard as frivolous in the extreme. Let my arguments be answered; but criticism of this sort will never advance the truth.

I do not apply these remarks to what Mr. Bonar has said on the way in which Satan is to be bound, and on my conception of what that binding is. His argument on these points will be noticed in its proper place.

BINDING OF SATAN-WHAT IT IS.

403

kind will not be divided, as now, into the two great classes of regenerate and unregenerate; if all will be of one class -"born of God;" if there will be none who "commit sin" and "do not righteousness,"-none who either die out of Christ, or, though not dying at all, are not vitally united to the Resurrection and the Life-then, but only then, will the devil have no children," none who are "of him," doing his work, yielding him service, and, "for fear of death," kept "all their lifetime subject to bondage" In a word, if the unregenerate be gone; if sin in the regenerate, with all its inseparable evils, be gone; if the fall itself be gone, during the millennium-then, undoubtedly, will it be distinguished by a total cessation of Satanic influence. But as this is not alleged-as no pre-millennialist has got this length-the doctrine which is built upon this one text of Scripture must be erroneous.

Having now seen what the predicted "binding" of Satan is not, let us now inquire what it is. Happily we possess a key to such language which all must admit to be unexceptionable. The Apocalypse is the best interpreter of itself; and a very little attention to its way of representing Satan's power, and loss of power, will make all plain.

or

In chap. ii. it is said of Pergamos, that "Satan's seat,"

"throne (@povos), was there," and that "there Satan dwet." (Verse 3.) This certainly refers to the powerful party which Satan had in that place, and the dominant influence which through them he exercised in opposition to the gospel-a party made up of persecutors on the one hand, and licentious corrupters of the truth on the other.*

* "This," says SCOTT, "must denote that Pergamos was not only a very wicked place in other respects, but also that it was, as it were, the head-quarters of both persecution and heresy, the two principal engines of the devil in opposing the pure gospel of Christ, and that from thence these dire evils diffused their baleful influence to other cities."

If this be correct, the unseating or dethroning of Satan in Pergamos-his banishment from "where he dwelt"-would not mean the total cessation of his influence in that city, but just the destruction of the party which represented him, and did his work in opposing the gospel there.

In chap. xii. we read:

"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." (Verse 7-12.)

The general voice of Protestant interpreters pronounces this to be a symbolic prediction of the fall of Paganism, and the Christianization of the Roman empire-the prophetic "earth"-under Constantine. The "heaven" of the vision -the high places of the empire-is the disputed field, whose it shall be; whether the dragon who had it shall keep it, or Christ, who had it not, shall get it. The empire was Pagan, idolatrous, bloody. There "Satan's throne was-there he dwelt." Possessing it as the very life of it, influencing and directing all its movements, he used it as a dread engine of hell to crush the gospel and extirpate the Christians. This

FALL OF PAGANISM DENOTED.

405

is the view of it given in the opening verses of the chapter, where the Church is represented as ready to give birth to her offspring a race of Christians who were ultimately to rule all nations with a rod of iron, or, in other words, to crush all her enemies, and rule the world. To prevent this destruction of his kingdom, Satan is seen as "a red dragon”—a bloody persecutor-having " seven heads and ten horns, and crowns upon the heads;" which just means the empire, as is known to all familiar with the symbols of this book. In this character, then-as the very life and moving spring of the empire, "he stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born"-in plain terms, to exterminate the Christians. Now Christ is resolved he shall not only fail in this, but lose even the ground he had. The empire shall no longer be wielded by him as a terrible engine against the Church, and its power shall change hands. Its high places shall be occupied by the very party, and for the very interest which he was determined to crush. The heaven of the vision is lost-the high places of the empire are wrenched away from The Christians supplant the Pagans in the throne, and all spheres of authority and influence under it. The empire, in this sense, is Christianised. What now becomes of him? He is "cast out into the earth, and his angels"-his minions in the war for Paganism-" are cast out with him;" and while rejoicings are held over his expulsion from the one sphere, a woe is pronounced over the other, because the devil has come down to it, all the more enraged since this first victory warns him to set his house in order, and be ready to quit that too. In other words, being expelled from power in the higher places of the empire, he is driven to try what he can do to keep possession in the lower-to preserve the Paganism of the masses, and the remote parts of the empire, and turn it still against the

his grasp.