sacraments, &c. :—that then at length (on either hypothesis of the temple of his enthronization) he would begin to display his real spirit of cruelty, as well as blasphemy; and commence that terrible persecution of the 1260 days against Christ's two witnesses and the saints, which prophecy had so fearfully depicted, and which would be marked with the very energy of Satan.

Such I believe is a tolerably correct abstract of the general patristic expectations in regard of the religion of Antichrist :-expectations how different from the views of those of the Futurist school, who with Mr. Maitland would represent it as the openly-avowed and legalized atheism and rejection of Christianity, and the as openly avowed and legalized licentiousness of the French Revolution! Further, after one important and evidently necessary correction,-how consistent both with Scripture prophecy as predicting, and with the Roman Papacy as fulfilling!

The point on which I conceive correction clearly necessary has reference to the supposed connection of Antichrist with Judaism and the Jews; his origin out of, and re-establishment of, it and them. And, considering its importance, perhaps it may be permitted me to deviate a few moments from my immediate controversy with the Futurists, (if indeed it be a deviation,) in order to its explanation.It is justly observed by the Oxford Tractarian, that there seems little in Scripture prophecy to sanction such an idea. In truth the whole tendency of the prophecies concerning Antichrist is to shew that he was to be an enemy both springing out of, and reigning within, the pale of the professing Christian Church. For how could he be an apostate, and head of the apostacy, and antitype of the apostle Judas, (not to say how the Latin man also, and horn out of the old Roman Empire,) if by nation and profession a Jew? Or again, as before ων, και ή εκ Αληθεια τυγχανεσα, αλλα ψευδος, φάσκει ειναι ἑαυτην την Αληθειαν, τοτε καθοπλισάμενος ὁ Λόγος κατα το ψευδες, αναιρει αυτο τῷ πνεύματι του σώματος αυτού, και καταργει τη επιφάνεια της παρουσίας αυτου. (Ed. Huet.)

3

So Jerom; "Mutabit, et augere tentabit (Antichristus) sacramenta ecclesiæ." 2" At first sight we should not suppose that there was much evidence from the sacred Text for Antichrist taking part with the Jews, or having to do with their temple." p. 19. Nor does he proceed to give any such evidence: but only refers to the fact of Julian's attempting to rebuild the Jewish temple, as a remarkable coincidence with the patristic expectations.

a Irenæus' idea seems to have been that, after gaining supremacy in the empire,

observed, how with a false prophet for his abetter that had horns like a lamb's, unless professedly of Jesus Christ's religion; the Messiah of Jewish expectation being the lion-like Messiah, and the lamb-like Messiah an abomination to them ?—It is difficult fully to account for the patristic error on this matter. Did we judge simply from the statements of Irenæus, and Hippolytus, it might seem to have originated, in part at least, from a singular misunderstanding of Christ's prophecy respecting the abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place at Jerusalem, (a prophecy which doubtless had reference to the Roman besieging army and its idolatrous standards gathering into the sacred precincts of the Jewish City,') as if intended of Antichrist's later and very different abomination. Hence, it might be, their construction of the temple in which St. Paul said that Antichrist would exalt himself, as the Jewish Temple: hence perhaps their supposition of his being himself a Jew; and that the exclusion of Dan, as one accursed, from the twelve tribes out of which God's true servants were sealed in the Apocalypse, marked his tribe.—But the reasons for a different view of these prophecies were too strong and obvious to allow of a general concurrence in the misunderstanding of them. By Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, and others of the Fathers, the prophecy respecting the abomination of desolation was explained to have been then already fulfilled by the Roman armies that destroyed Jerusalem; 3 and the temple in St. Paul's prophecy construed, as a little while since said, of the Christian Church.4 though a Jew, he would transfer the seat of empire from Rome to Jerusalem; "Transferet regnum in eam (Jerusalem) &c." p. 46. And so too I suppose Lactantius; "Nomen imperii sedemque mutabit." B. P. M. iii. 669.—But the incompatibility of the two suppositions is apparent.-Victorinus and others, as we have seen in Note 3 p. 549 suprà, expected Antichrist in the first instance to be of Roman extraction; being Nero raised from the dead: and that his connexion with the Jews would follow afterwards.

1 See Bishop Newton in illustration.

Irenæus v. 25, Hippolytus § 43.

8 Chrysostom on Dan. ix refers it to the Roman armies of Adrian, that effected the ultimate destruction of the Jewish city and nation: Jerome and Augustine more properly to the Roman besieging army under Titus.

4 See my Vol. i. 365-367 and Vol. iii. 82 just before referred to p. 549. It will be seen that Chrysostom asserts unreservedly the fact of Antichrist sitting in the Christian Church, and that Jerome decidedly prefers that view of the Temple prophesied of; "Antichristus sedebit in templo Deo: vel Hierosolymis, ut quidam putant; vel in ecclesia, ut verius arbitramur." Augustine mentions the two interpretations without deciding between them: and Cyril only decides in favour of the literal interpretation from the feeling, " God forbid that it should be the Christian Church!"

Moreover a Christian application was made by others of the Apocalyptic symbol of the twelve tribes of Israel. So that on the whole there appears to have been nothing in these prophecies sufficiently Judaic, according even to patristic views, to account for the first origination of this idea of Antichrist being a Jew.

Which being so, and conjecture permissible in the want of a satisfactory explanation on historic testimony, I would venture to suggest one thing, upon conjecture, as a possible, probable, and I think I may say, adequate originating cause of the error. It is well known with how much earnestness and solemnity St. Paul warned the early Church of the Judaic heresies that were even then stealing into it; -the Judaist's will-worship of asceticism and abstinence from meats and marriage, their observance of days, undue and erroneous views of the benefit of mere outward circumcision, attachment to the Levitical ritual, and worshipping of angels with voluntary humility; -the latter, I presume, under profession of unworthiness to make direct use of the mediatorship of Christ.2 Now it is difficult to suppose but that St. Paul in all this spoke with reference to more than the dangers of the time then present and denounced therein the first elements (Judaic elements) of the great apostacy of prophecy, and leaven of that deceivableness of unrighteousness which was first to prepare for, and then to constitute the religion of, Antichrist. If so, and this be the right account of the origin of the patristic notion respecting Antichrist's Judaism, then there is a residuum of important truth hidden in it. And adopting it, so expounded and corrected, we shall find it to supply almost all that was wanting of correspondence between the patristic anticipations concerning the apostacy and Antichrist's religion, and the actual religious history and character of the Roman Papacy, as history afterwards evolved it.

For we know, and indeed have traced in history,3-how these Judaizing errors increased continually in the Church, though under a more seemly and professedly Christian form; 4—including the veneration of that austerity, asceticism of life, and celibacy that Clement 1 E. g. Augustine and Primasius.

2 Col. ii. 16-29. See Macknight ad loc.

3 See Vol. i. pp. 259, 306, 380, &c.

4 I mean that whereas the Judaizers of the first age magnified the outward forms of Jewish rites and ceremonies, the successors of their spirit, in the next age, magnified the outward forms of Christian rites and ceremonies.

objected to Tatian,-the corruption of the simplicity of the Christian ministry and service into resemblance to the Levitical priesthood and Levitical ritual,-the undue and erroneous estimate of mere outward baptism, as before of outward circumcision,-the perversion of Scripture and substitution of the authority of an unwritten tradition in the priest's keeping,-and the looking into things unseen, and worshipping departed saints as mediators, to the supercession of Christ.We know how, with all this, there was also more and more a departure on the part of the people from the love of gospel truth to the love of exciting pulpit oratory, and then of fables and legends about saints; as also from real holiness of life to a fictitious and mere ceremonial righteousness, somewhat like what Cyril and Chrysostom deprecated; and how a departure moreover (according to Chrysostom's forewarning,) on the part of priests and teachers, from love to neglect and dislike of the written word; together with a spirit of worldliness, lucre-loving, and ambition.'-We know once more that then, and thereby, a preparation having been made for him,-viz. by the establishment of this irreligious system of religion, this unchristian kind of Christianity, with all profession of righteousness, and much of the deceivableness of unrighteousness,-the Pope of Rome,-at first prudent, like the first Gregory, respectable in morals, professedly humble, but crafty and politic,-adopting this whole system of apostacy as its head and patron, and so gathering round him as subjects the great body of the apostates of Christendom, did, conjointly with them, not only establish the Apostacy in the new Romano-Gothic kingdoms, which constituted the body of the Apocalyptic Beast, but as it were authoritatively consecrate it; proclaiming it, with its ceremonies of an almost Judaic ritual, to be the only orthodox Christianity, and Rome, (the Apocalyptic Babylon,) now vacated of its Emperors and become the Papal capital, to be the Jerusalem of Christianity: 3-at the same time that he shewed himself in its temples and churches as not merely antitype to the High Priest of the Jews, but Christ's appointed representative and Vicar for the rule of

1 See the abstract of patristic views pp. 546-550 suprà.

"Servus servorum Dei," was the title of humility adopted by Gregory and transmitted to his successors in the Popedom.-Compare Gregory's character also with Cyril's λόγιος τις και σύνετος, See this illustrated in my Vol. iii. p. 261.

the Church on earth; and in this character claimed to himself, and received, the worship due to Christ, i. e. to God.'

In concluding this Head, let me be permitted to express my deliberate conviction, with reference to the Futurists' view of Antichrist's religious or rather anti-religious profession, as if that of an open avowed atheist, that it is not merely unaccordant with the Apocalyptic and the other cognate prophecies of Antichrist, but that it is, even intellectually speaking, a mere rude and common-place conception of Satan's predicted master-piece of opposition to Christ, compared with what has been actually realized and exhibited in the Papacy. My opinion of the Pope's being Antichrist is not indeed founded on any

Let me observe, with reference to another point in Antichrist's religious system, on which Mr. Maitland seems to me to have expressed a most inadequate judgment, -I mean the Pope's" forbidding to marry,"*-that in the view of profest religion being made effectual to subserve both irreligion and worldly policy, it was one of his measures the most characteristic, and most extraordinary. Extending not merely to the parochial clergy of Western Europe, but to the numberless communities of monks and nuns, its first effect was to consecrate, at the same time that with the strong arm of power it enforced upon them, that rule of celibacy which, under the semblance of purity and holiness, opened wide the way, and almost precipitated them into it, of licentiousness. And when direct Papal rule was established over the convents (not now to speak of the priesthood), then in those innumerable monasteries, male and female, containing within their walls members from most of the high and considerable families in the several Western kingdoms, and absorbing into their domains no small proportion of the national territory, the accumulated result, it was said, of the piety, but rather of the superstition of successive generations,-I say in these monasteries, thus as an act of religion endowed, and thus as an act of religion peopled with devotees, it was found that he had formed and held in his grasp, so many almost inexpugnable fortresses, filled with hostages for its fidelity, in the heart of each kingdom of Western Christendom. Was there ever such a "forbidding to marry,” in any other Church or Sect that Mr. M. has put forward for comparison on this head? And was it not then a fit subject for prominent specification (especially in an Epistle,) like that to Timothy, chiefly concerning ministers of the church) among the predictive sketches of the Popedom?

* Mr. Maitland speaks of celibacy under the Popedom as if, first, it extended only to the parochial Clergy, and affected one sex only; secondly, as if it was only enforced on the Clergy from the view (perhaps mistaken view, he says) of their so better performing their clerical functions. This is not the way Ranke speaks of it. See Vol. iii. p. 170. And assuredly it was not the master motive that induced the Papal determinate enforcement of it at all hazards.

+ See the historical illustrations given by me, Vol. ii. 12, 27.

So Sir R. Baker, speaking of Henry VIIIth's dissolution of monasteries: Thinking the work not sufficiently done, so long as Abbeys and Priories kept their station; which were as it were the Pope's fortresses. Quoted by Daubuz, p. 738."