And thus has the "earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood;" so
that the woman remains comparatively safe "from the face of the serpent"
in the very obscurity of her position. Some of her sons, from time to
time, venturing abroad from their secluded place in the wilderness,
becoming weary of sackcloth and aspiring to worldly distinction, have
been borne along by the waters of the flood, and _drowned in the general
deluge_. Against the force of this strong current of popular errors,
nothing will avail the seed of the woman but the "living water" which
Jesus imparted to the woman of Samaria. To him who partakes of this
water, those of the dragon will be distasteful; for "it shall be in him
a well of water springing up into everlasting life." (John iv. 14.)
Since the middle of the seventeenth century, when by the reformation in
Europe and the British Isles, the dragon was cast down from the symbolic
heaven, he has been assailing in "great wrath" all ranks and degrees of
men, not, as before, with fire and sword, with scaffolds, gibbets,
thumb-screws,--torturing and destroying their mortal bodies, that he
might reach their immortal souls: but by bringing them together in
_voluntary associations_ on principles of the covenant of works,
subversive of the covenant of grace, and consequently aiming at the
drowning of the mystic woman. This the enemy of all righteousness has
been attempting, and with too much success, by public and professed
ecclesiastical and Christian associations; such as Jesuits, Socinians
and other self-styled Unitarians, Latter-day Saints, Mormons,--or by
combinations in secret and sworn confederacies; such as Odd Fellows,
Freemasons, Sons and Daughters of Temperance, with other affiliated
fellowships innumerable. The special subtlety of the serpent consists in
blending these two kinds of communions, so that under the name of
reform, moral and spiritual, those who fear God may be unconsciously
drawn into the snare. And alas! how many simple ones have been thus
carried away by the waters of the flood! And many strong men have been