But Deliver Us From The Evil One

Whoever has God for his friend will find Satan to be his enemy. He receives the name of Satan, first, because he is the adversary of God himself; and next, because he is the adversary of those whom God honors with his friendship, who love God, who rank on the side of God, who bear his image, and reflect, in no inconsiderable degree, the brightness of the Divine glory. That wicked enemy is so inveterately opposed to the Divine majesty that he would gladly, if it were possible, overturn the throne of God. As he utterly despairs of accomplishing that object, he throws out all his venom against the elect, employs every expedient, and exhausts all his devices to enslave those whom the power of God has torn from his grasp. “The great red dragon,” when he was cast out from heaven, found a mad solace of his misery in drawing with his tail as large a proportion as he could of the stars of heaven, in removing them from their etherial abode, and sinking them in the bottomless pit (Rev 12:3,4). He assaulted the first Adam in Paradise, and “beguiled him through his subtlety” (2 Cor 11:3). He made an attempt on the second Adam in the wilderness, but his efforts were foiled. Disappointed in that expectation, he bends all his attack on those whom Christ has claimed to be his own. When he sees them extricated from his toils, loosed from his shackles and bolts, restored to liberty, and proceeding straight towards the glory of the heavenly kingdom,—he is roused to rage and fury, and, “like a roaring lion,” pursues and besets them from every quarter, “seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8)

—Herman Witsius, Sacred Dissertations on the Lord’s Prayer, trans. William Pringle (Edinburgh: Thomas Clark, 1839), 342–43.

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One comment

  1. A foaming at the mouth, rabid Hell hound on a chain, who doesn’t bother to bark at those who love to pet him.

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