By this world is meant the wicked part of it, the mere worldlings.
And the Prince of it is obviously
Satan, the evil Spirit, to whom, as the original author and continual promoter
of sin, sinners are, as it were, bound to yield obedience. Joh. 12:31; 14:30,
&c. He is said to blind the
understandings of the unbelieving, which many recent Commentators render:
“permit their understandings to be blind,” &c. But this is a very
precarious gloss. It is, indeed, found in the Greek Commentators; but they,
most unaccountably, take ὁ
θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος to denote the great God of the universe;
which cannot be admitted; since of this sense of the expression there is no
example in the New Testament; whereas, as denoting Satan, it occurs in Joh. 12:31; 14:30., and elsewhere. We must,
then, retain the common interpretation, and understand the blindness of such an
influence from the author of evil as may be consistent with the free agency of
man: a question which it would be out of place here to discuss. (S.
T. Bloomfield, Recensío Synoptíca
Annotationis Sacræ, 8 vols. [London: C. and J. Rivington; Longman, Green,
Longman, and Roberts, 1826–1860], 7:85-86).