by him, an
embodiment of his will, and expressing his claims upon his creatures;
the other, a revised edition of that law, emanating from the pope of
Rome, and expressing his will. And how is it to be determined which of
these powers the people honor and worship? It is determined by the law
which they keep. If they keep the law of God as given by him, they
worship and obey God. If they keep the law as changed by the papacy,
they worship that power. But further, the prophecy does not say that the
little horn should set aside the law of God and give one entirely
different. This would not be to change the law, but simply to give a new
one. He was only to attempt a change, so that the law as it comes from
God, and the law as it comes from the hands of the papacy, are precisely
alike, excepting the change which the papacy has made therein. They have
many points in common. But none of the precepts which they contain in
common can distinguish a person as the worshiper of either power in
preference to the other. If God's law says, "Thou shalt not kill," and
the law as given by the papacy says the same, no one can tell by a
person's observance of that precept whether he designed to obey God
rather than the pope, or the pope rather than God. But when a precept
that has been changed is the subject of action, then whoever observes
that precept as originally given by God is thereby distinguished as a
worshiper of God; and he who keeps it as changed, is thereby marked as a
follower of the power that made the change. In no other way can the two
classes of worshipers be distinguished. From this conclusion, no candid
mind can dissent; but in this conclusion we have a general answer to the
question before us, "What constitutes the mark of the beast?" THE MARK
OF THE BEAST is THE CHANGE HE HAS MADE IN THE LAW OF GOD.

We now inquire what that change is. By the law of God, we mean the moral
law, the only law in the universe of immutable and perpetual obligation,
the law of which Webster says, defining the terms according to the sense
in which they are almost universally used in Christendom, "The moral law
is summarily contained in the decalogue, written by the finger of God on
two tables of stone, and delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai."

If, now, the reader will compare the ten commandments as found in Roman
Catholic catechisms with those commandments as found in the Bible, he
will see in the catechisms that the second commandment is left