The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 574

demonstrated that a day of 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

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