They shall go down to the bars of the pit,
when our rest together is in the dust.
Job 17:16
"Fifteenth chapter of Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, paragraph 17; he says of the heathen in the inquiry after the immortality of the soul:
"In the sublime inquiry, their reason had been often guided by their imagination, and their imagination had been prompted by their vanity." Mark it.
Q: Reason of what kind of a mind?
A: [Congregation: "The carnal mind."]
Q: Guided by the imagination of what kind of a mind?
A: [Congregation: "The carnal mind."]
Q: And the imagination prompted by the vanity of what kind of a mind?
A: [Congregation: "The carnal mind."]
Q: Is not that exactly the mind of Satan?
--The Formula--
Vanity the root of the inquiry,
and self the root of the vanity.
I read on:
When they viewed with complacency the extent of their own mental powers, when they exercised the various faculties of
memory, of fancy, and of judgment, in the most profound speculations, or the most important labors, and when they reflected on the desire of fame, which transported them into future ages, far beyond the bonds of death and of the grave; they were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of the field or to suppose that a being, for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration, could be limited to a spot of earth and to a few years of duration. What is that but the description of Satan's career when he started. His reason prompted by his imagination; his imagination guided by his vanity, and viewing
with complacency the extent of his own mental powers; the desire for fame beyond that of God, and unwilling to allow that a person for whose dignity he entertained the most sincere admiration could be properly confined to a subordinate place in the universe of God.
---Is not this an exact description of mankind in a heathen condition, written by a philosopher, looking only at the question from man's side of it?
Could there be a clearer description of the working of Satan in his original career?"
A.T.Jones 1893 Sermon
