The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 286

those who have been degraded and brutalized through his cruel power
achieve their freedom, he urges them on to excesses and atrocities. Then
this picture of unbridled license is pointed out by tyrants and oppressors
as an illustration of the results of liberty.
When error in one garb has been detected, Satan only masks it in
a different disguise, and multitudes receive it as eagerly as at the first.
When the people found Romanism to be a deception, and he could not
through this agency lead them to transgression of God’s law, he urged
them to regard all religion as a cheat, and the Bible as a fable; and,
casting aside the divine statutes, they gave themselves up to unbridled
iniquity.
The fatal error which wrought such woe for the inhabitants of France
was the ignoring of this one great truth: that true freedom lies within
the proscriptions of the law of God. “O that thou hadst hearkened
to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy
righteousness as the waves of the sea.” “There is no peace, saith the
Lord, unto the wicked.” “But whoso hearkeneth unto Me shall dwell
safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.” Isaiah 48:18, 22; Proverbs
1:33.
Atheists, infidels, and apostates oppose and denounce God’s law; but
the results of their influence prove that the well-being of man is bound
up with his obedience of the divine statutes. Those who will not read
the lesson from the book of God are bidden to read it in the history of
nations.
When Satan wrought through the Roman Church to lead men away
from obedience, his agency was concealed, and his work was so
disguised that the degradation and misery which resulted were not seen
to be the fruit of transgression. And his power was so far counteracted
by the working of the Spirit of God that his purposes were prevented
from reaching their full fruition. The people did not trace the effect to
its cause and discover the source of their miseries. But in the

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