Or, as Augustine's great contemporary Chrysostom expressed it

"As long as the (Roman) empire shall stand, no one will submit himself to Antichrist; but after the dissolution of the empire, Antichrist will invade the vacant seat, and endeavour with all his might to draw unto himself the empire both of God and man.'

918

St. Paul, in the prophecy respecting "the man of sin," tells his readers that "the mystery of iniquity" was already silently at work within the Church, doing such fatal injury to those who listened to the syren's voice; but as the subject of "the

8 Chrysostom, in 2 Epist. ab Thess., c. ii., Hom. iv., t. xi., p. 530; Paris, 1738. The expectation of both Augustine and Chrysostom respecting " Antichrist," who was unrevealed in their day, has been proved by subsequent history to be far nearer the truth than the speculative ideas of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, who preceded them by about a century, and who has written more at length on the subject than any other of the early doctors of the Christian Church. Whoever takes the trouble to read his treatise on Christ and Antichrist, will find that he treats the subject of Scripture prophecy in a threefold manner. When he explains the prophecies of Daniel respecting the four monarchies, he adopts the correct and ordinary interpretation of assigning them to the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman monarchies, the last of which was ruling when Hippolytus wrote. When he attempts to interpret the prophecy of St. John concerning "Babylon the Great," he contents himself with merely quoting the apostle's words, without the slightest attempt to explain their meaning. But when he seeks to explain his views of Antichrist, he falls into the wildest system of interpretation, like the most speculative Futurist of the present day. Thus, to mention one or two specimens, he contends that his ideal individual Antichrist must arise from the Israelite tribe of Dan, because Dan is compared in the dying Jacob's prophecy to a "serpent biting the horse heels"! Isaiah's prophecy (ch. xviii.), which reads "woe (or ho!) to the land shadowing with wings," is interpreted to mean, "the Churches in the world"!! While Isaiah's prophecy (ch. xiv. 4-14) respecting "the King of Babylon," and which can only apply to Nebuchadnezzar, of whom Isaiah predicted between one and two centuries before he appeared, Hippolytus applies to " Antichrist," which is about as incorrect a speculation, as one of the prophets of the so-called 66 Anglo-Israelite party in the present day, who interprets this same prophecy of the great statesman, Mr. Gladstone, because he takes exercise in felling trees, and the prophecy says (ver. 8) that "the cedars of Lebanon rejoice," because, " since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us"!!!

mystery" will have to be more particularly considered in the next chapter, we may pass on to a brief consideration of the final mark mentioned by the apostle, when he says, after the removal of the restraining power, "Then shall the lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of his mouth, and destroy with the manifestation of his coming.'

was

The term which the apostle employs to mark the man of sin as emphatically THE LAWLESS ONE ( avoμos) refers to the ancient term applied to the Roman emperor, Legibus solutus, "freed from all law;" which expression, Gibbon remarks, supposed to exalt the emperor above all human restraints, and to leave his conscience and reason as the sacred measure of his conduct." In the same way it was said, Papa solutus est omni lege humanâ, "The Pope is exempt from all human law." 2 The sentence, "whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of his mouth, is taken from Isaiah xi. 4, " He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked," which words are thus explained in the Chaldee Paraphrase, "The wicked, i.e., the Romans." 3

Mr. Gladstone in one of his admirable pamphlets, when exposing the monstrous claims of the Papacy, after calling attention to the fact of " Dr. Newman being in flat contradiction to the official letter of Cardinal Antonelli," hints at a case which had previously been alluded to in the Times, and which, he says, may possibly again become the object of public notice," as a specimen of the Papal claim to be "above all law" in England, and which is thus set forth in Macmillan's Magazine (February 1875): "Dr. Manning will not deny that within the last few years a marriage has been celebrated in an English Roman Catholic Church, one of the parties to which was already lawfully married according to British law, and whose

92 Thess. ii. 8.

1 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, c. viii.

2 Extr. de Const. Licens. ix. Quest. 3, quoted by Bishop Jewel in his Comment. on 2 Epist. to the Thessalonians.

3 See Lightfoot, vol. xi., p. 296.

4 Vaticanism; by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., pp. 35, 36.

lawful wife (a Protestant) was and is still living; nor can he deny that this scandalous act is stated to have been performed in accordance with the advice of religious persons learned in the law of marriage, as recognised in the Roman Catholic Church."

It is an unquestioned historical fact that when the Patriarch John, Archbishop of Constantinople, first assumed the title of "UNIVERSAL BISHOP," it so excited the anger of his rival, Gregory I. (A.D. 590—604), the reigning Pope, and Archbishop of old Rome, that he wrote furiously to protest against any one assuming so illegal, so wicked, and so Antichristian a title, little foreseeing that within three years after his own death, it would be appropriated by his next successor but one, Pope Boniface III., and has remained the fatal and damning appendage of the Popes of Rome even since! Gregory, however, thundered forth against his haughty rival at Constantinople in the following way:

"I confidently say, that whosoever calls himself UNIVERSAL BISHOP, or desires to be so called, in his pride, is the forerunner of ANTICHRIST, because in his pride he prefers himself to the rest; and he is led into error by a similar pride; for as that Lawless one wishes to appear as a god above all men, so is he who, desiring to be called Universal Bishop, extols himself above all other bishops."

"If any one in the Church assumes the name of UNIVERSAL to himself, as in the opinion of all good men he (John, Patriarch of Constantinople) has done, then the whole Church falls when he who is called UNIVERSAL falls. Let, then, that name of BLASPHEMY be absent from the hearts of Christians, by which, when it is madly assumed by ONE, the honour of the priests is taken away.... My fellow-priest John attempts to be called UNIVERSAL BISHOP. I am compelled to exclaim, Oh, times! Oh, manners! Priests seek to themselves names of vanity and glory in new and profane appellations."6

As some consider that the word rendered "bishop (sacerdos) which Gregory uses is not the true meaning of the term, we may refer to a note of the Benedictine editors of his works to this effect, "Per sacerdotes intelligendi fere semper episcopi." So

5 Pope Gregory I. to Mauricius Augustus, Regist., lib. vii., Indict. 15, Epist. 33.

Idem, lib. iv., Epist. 20. 7 Epist. xlix., lib. ii., Indict. x., Bened. edit.

978

likewise in the "forged" decree, commonly called "the Donation of Constantine" to the Church of Rome, the expression "Romani pontifices vel sacerdotes "s sufficiently denotes how the word is to be understood and applied. We thus see how distinctly Pope Gregory applies the very term "the Lawless one (avouos) to any one who should assume the title of "Universal Bishop," as his rival John, Partriarch of Constantinople, had done. By a remarkable judgment in the second year following the death of Gregory, which took place A.D. 604, Pope Boniface III. had this very title as the price of blood conferred upon him by the Emperor Phocas (one of the greatest monsters that ever disgraced a throne), who enacted a law, by which he prohibited the Bishop of Constantinople from retaining the title of Universal, declaring that it belonged to none but the Bishop of Ancient Rome, and which title the successors of Boniface have retained ever since. Cardinal Bellarmine, writing nearly a thousand years after the time of Boniface, sums up the titles of the Bishops of Rome as follows:

"Pope, Father of Fathers; Pontiff of Christians; High Priest; Prince of priests; Vicar of Christ; Head of the body, i.e., the Church; Foundation of the building of the Church; Father and Doctor of all the faithful; Ruler of the house of God; Keeper of God's Vineyard; Bridegroom of the Church; Ruler of the Apostolic See; THE UNIVERSAL BISHOP."9

When it is remembered that Judas, a "son of perdition," was a chosen apostle, and not an open opposer of Christ, and that David spoke of him prophetically 1000 years before the Saviour came as "mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread," we can understand the Scriptural meaning of the term "son of perdition;" or as in another Psalm, speaking of the same individual, it is written, "It was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have borne it; neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me, then I would have hid myself from

9 Gratian, Distinc. xcvi., 14.

• Bellarmine's Treatise on the Roman Pontiffs, book ii., c. 31; Ingolstadt, 1590.

1 Psalm xli. 9.

him; but it was thou, a man mine equal, or of my rank (marg.), my guide and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company." 2 Hence St. Peter, immediately after the ascension, and previous to the choice of another apostle to supply the vacancy, spake of the fallen Judas in the following terms, "It is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein; and his bishoprick let another take." Hence we naturally conclude that the terms "man of sin," "son of perdition," "the lawless one," who would "magnify himself" against "all that is called God," is to be looked for, not as some erroneously imagine, amongst avowed infidels, or the openly profane, but in a professing Christian bishop, who makes peculiar claims to obedience as a successor of the apostles. Yet the evidence which has been already adduced must be sufficient to convince every unprejudiced mind, that the succession of the Popes, or Bishops of Rome, is from Judas the apostate, and not from Peter the apostle. Hence the striking remark of a distinguished Roman Catholic historian, when drawing the portrait of the Bishops of Rome in the middle ages :

"Fifty Popes," says Genebrard, "in one hundred and fifty years, from John VIII. till Leo IV. (A.D. 873-1048), entirely degenerated from the sanctity of their ancestors, and were apostatical rather than apostolical."

Notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of the application of St. Paul's prophecy to none other than the Church of Rome, and the Popes as its recognised head, there are many in the present day, notably amongst the Futurists, who refuse to acknowledge what our three National Churches have authoritatively taught. And this need cause no surprise, as the Futurist school of prophetic interpreters have followed a scheme invented by a Jesuit priest of Salamanca, named Ribera,5 towards the 2 Psalm lv. 12-14. 3 Acts i. 20. 4 Genebrard, c. iv. See also other Roman Catholic authorities, such as Platina, 128; and Du Piu, ii. 156; for the apostasy of the Popes during the middle ages, as will be shewn in chapter ix., "Babylon the Great."

5 In Elliott's great work on the Hora Apocalypticæ, vol. iv., pp. 480-3, fifth edit., there is a good account of Ribera's Futurist scheme, which, strange to say, has bewitched so many Protestants in the present day.