Doubtless they believed it a thousand times more fully than it had
ever been believed before. They would have shrunk with horror from
saying that any one but God had made the heavens and the earth. But
Christians clung, for many hundred years, even almost up to our own
day, to old heathen superstitions, which they would have cast away if
their faith had been full, and if they had held with their whole
hearts and souls and minds, that there was one God, of whom are all
things. They believed that the Devil and evil spirits had power to
raise thunderstorms, and blight crops, and change that course of
nature of which the Psalmist had said, that all things served God,
and continued this day as at the beginning, for God had given them a
law which could not be broken. They believed in magic, and
astrology, and a hundred other dreams, which all began from secret
disbelief that God made the heaven and the earth; till they fancied
that the Devil could and would teach men the secrets of nature, and
the way to be rich and great, if they would but sell their souls to
him. They believed, in a word, the very atheistic lie which Satan
told to our blessed Lord, when he said that all the kingdoms of the
world and the glory of them were his, and to whomsoever he would he
gave them--instead of believing our Lord's answer, 'Get thee behind
me, Satan: it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
him only shalt thou serve.
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