Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

mind prudent counsels, profitable designs, and pious purposes; and thus
minister to thee as a child of God and an heir of salvation.
Previously to our Lord's ascension to heaven these holy beings could
have little knowledge of the necessity, reasons, and economy of human
salvation, nor of the nature of Christ as God and man. St. Peter informs
us that the angels desire to look into these things, 1 Pet. i, 12. And St.
Paul says the same thing, Eph. iii, 9, 10, when speaking of the revelation
of the gospel plan of salvation, which he calls "the mystery which from
the beginning of the world had been hid in God;" and which was now
published, that "unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places
might be made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God." Even
those angelic beings have got an accession to their blessedness by an
increase of knowledge in the things which concern Jesus Christ, and the
whole scheme of human salvation, through his incarnation, passion,
death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification.
BAD ANGELS—There are many demons mentioned in Scripture; but
the word Satan, or devil, is never found in the originals of the Old and
New Testaments in the plural number. Hence we reasonably infer that all
evil spirits are under the government of one chief, the devil, who is more
powerful and more wicked than the rest. From the Greek comes
the Latin diabolus, the Spanish diablo, the French diable, the Italian
diavolo, the German teuffel, the Dutch duivel, the Anglo-Saxon deovle,
and the English devil, which some would derive from "the evil;" the evil
one, or wicked one.
I have remarked, among the simple, honest inhabitants of the counties
of Antrim and Londonderry, in Ireland, that the common name for the
devil or Satan was "the sorrow;" a good sense of the original word,—"the
wicked one, the evil one, the sorrow;" he who is miserable himself, and
whose aim is to make all others so.
It is now fashionable to deny the existence of this evil spirit; and this
is one of what St. John, Rev. ii, 24, calls "the depths of Satan;" as he well