13 September 2015 A.D. Herman Witsius—“But Deliver Us From Evil”
13 September 2015
A.D. Herman Witsius—“But Deliver Us From Evil”
Witsius, Herman. “But Deliever Us From Evil One.” Heidelblog. 13 Sept 2015. http://heidelblog.net/2015/09/deliver-us-from-evil-one/.
Accessed 13 Sept 2015.
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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