My reason for doing so is simply this,-that on so difficult a subject as unfulfilled prophecy, I really can have no opinion of my own, nor indeed is it desirable I should have, or at least that I should put it forward in any formal way. The opinion of any one person, even if he were the most fit to form one, could hardly be of any authority, or be worth putting forward by itself; whereas the judgment and views of the early Church claim and attract our especial regard, because for what we know they may be in part derived from traditions of the Apostles, and because they are put forward far more consistently and unanimously than those of any other set of teachers. Thus they have greater claims on our attention than those of other writers, be their claims little or great; if they are little, those of others are still less. The only really strong claim which can be made on our belief, is the clear fulfilment of the prophecy. Did we see all the marks of the prophecy satisfactorily answered in the past history of the Church, then we might dispense with authority in the parties setting the proof before us. This condition however can hardly be fulfilled, because the date of Antichrist comes close upon the coming of CHRIST in judgment, and therefore cannot have happened so as to allow of being appealed to. Nor is any history producible which fulfils all the marks of Antichrist clearly, though some are fulfilled here and there. Nothing then is left us, (if we are to take up any opinion at all,—if we are to profit, as Scripture surely intends, by its warnings concerning the evil which is to come), but to go by the judgment of the Fathers, whether that be of special authority in this matter or not. To them therefore I had recourse last week, and now shall have recourse again. To continue then the subject with the early Fathers as my guides. 1. It seems clear that St. Paul and St. John speak of the same enemy of the Church, from the similarity of their descriptions. They both say, that the spirit itself was already at work in their day. "That spirit of the Antichrist," says St. John in the text, "is now already in the world." "The mystery of iniquity doth already work," says St. Paul. And they both describe the enemy as characterized by the same especial sin, open infidelity. St. John says, that "he is the Antichrist that denieth the FATHER and the SoN:" while St. Paul speaks of him in like manner as "the adversary and rival of all that is called GOD, or worshipped;" that "he sitteth as God in the temple of GOD, setting forth himself that he is GOD." In both these passages, the same blasphemous denial of GOD and religion is described; but St. Paul adds, in addition, that he will oppose all existing religion, true or false, "all that is called God, or worshipped." Two other passages of Scripture may be adduced, predicting the same reckless impiety; one from the eleventh chapter of Daniel: "The king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished. . . . Neither shall he regard the GOD of his fathers, nor the Desire of women (that is, as it would appear, the Messiah, to be His mother being the especial privilege and object of hope among the Jewish women), nor regard any god-for he shall magnify himself above all." The other passage is faintly marked with any prophetic allusion in itself, except that all our SAVIOUR's sayings have a deep meaning, and the Fathers take this in particular to have such. "I am come in My FATHER'S Name, and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive'." This they consider to be a prophetic allusion to Antichrist, whom the Jews were to mistake for the Christ. He is to come "in his own name." Not from God, as even the Son of GOD came, who if any might have come in the power of His essential divinity, not in God's Name, not with any pretence of a mission from Him, but in his own name, by a blasphemous assumption of divine power, thus will Antichrist come. To the above passages may be added those which speak generally of the impieties of the last age of the world, impieties which we may believe will usher in and be completed in Antichrist: "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. 1 John v. 43. VOL. V. No. 83. C : ....Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand1." "In the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof ":" "scoffers walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming?" "despising government, presumptuous . . . self-willed, not afraid to speak evil of dignities. ... promising men liberty, while themselves the servants of corruption":" and the like. 2. I just now made mention of the Jews: it may be well then to state what was held in the early Church concerning Antichrist's connexion with them. Our LORD foretold that many should come in His name, saying "I am Christ." It was the judicial punishment of the Jews, as of all unbelievers in one way or another, that having rejected the true Christ, they should take up with a false one; and Antichrist will be the complete and perfect seducer, towards whom all previous ones are approximations, according to the text just quoted, "If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." To the same purport are St. Paul's words after describing Antichrist; "whose coming," he says, "is . . . with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the Truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause GOD shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the Truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Hence, considering that Antichrist would pretend to be the Messiah, it was of old the received notion that he was to be of Jewish race and to observe the Jewish rites. Further, St. Paul says that Antichrist should "sit in the 1 Dan. xii. 4. 10. 2 2 Tim. iii. 2-5. 42 Pet. ii. 10. 19. Temple of GOD;" that is, according to the earlier Fathers, in the Jewish Temple. Our SAVIOUR'S Own words may be taken to support this notion, because He speaks of "the Abomination of Desolation" (which, whatever other meanings it might have, in its fulness denotes Antichrist) "standing in the holy place." Further, the persecution of CHRIST's witnesses which Antichrist will make, is described by St. John as taking place in Jerusalem. "Their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, (which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt,) where also our LORD was crucified." Now here a remark may be made. At first sight, I suppose, we should not consider that there was much evidence from the Sacred Text for Antichrist taking part with the Jews, or having to do with their Temple. It is, then, a very remarkable fact, that the apostate emperor Julian, who was a type and earnest of the great enemy, should, as he did, have taken part with the Jews, and set about building their temple. Here the history is a sort of comment on the prophecy, and sustains and vindicates the early interpretations of it which I am relating. Of course I must be understood to mean, and a memorable circumstance it is, that this belief of the Church that Antichrist should be connected with the Jews, was expressed long before Julian's time, and that we still possess the works in which it is contained. We have the writings of two Fathers, both Bishops and martyrs of the Church, who lived at least one hundred and fifty years before Julian, and less than one hundred years after St. John. They both distinctly declare Antichrist's connexion with the Jews. The one of them speaks as follows: "In the Temple which is at Jerusalem the adversary will sit, endeavouring to show himself to be the Christ1." And the other says, "Antichrist will be he who shall resuscitate the kingdom of the Jews 2." 1..."cujus (Dei) jussu hoc, quod est in Hierosolymis, factum est Templum, ob eas caussas quæ a nobis dictæ sunt; in quo adversarius sedebit, tentans semetipsum Christum ostendere, sicut et Dominus ait, Quum autem videritis Abominationem desolationis,'" &c. Iren. Hær. v. 25. 2 ... ὅπερ δέδεικται οὐχ ἕτερον ἀλλ ̓ ἢ ὁ ̓Αντίχριστος, ὁ ἐγειρόμενος, ὃς What makes this still more observable is, that the recent Shadow of Antichrist, whom our fathers or we ourselves saw, by a sort of fatality (so to speak) took up the cause of the Jews, and was almost hailed by them as their Messiah, and seemed to be drawn irresistibly towards and to hover about the Holy Land, which the early Church considered would be the scene of Antichrist's exploits. 3. Next let us ask, Will Antichrist profess any sort of religion at all? Neither true God nor false God will he worship: so far is clear, and yet something more, and that obscure, is told us. Indeed, as far as the prophetic accounts go, they seem at first sight incompatible with each other. Antichrist is to "exalt himself over all that is called God or worshipped." He will set himself forcibly against idols and idolatry, as the early teachers agree in declaring. Yet in the book of Daniel we read, "In his estate shall he honour the God of forces; and a God whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold and silver, and with precious stones and pleasant things. Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange God, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory'." What is meant by the words translated "God of forces," and afterwards called " a strange God," is quite hidden from us, and probably will be so till the event; but any how some sort of false worship is certainly predicted as the mark of Antichrist, with this prediction the contrary way, that he shall set himself against all idols, as well as against the true GOD. Now it is not at all extraordinary that there should be this contrariety in the prediction, for we know generally that infidelity leads to superstition, and that the men most reckless in their blasphemy are cowards also. They cannot be consistent if they would. But let me notice here again a remarkable coincidence, which is contained in the history of the καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν Ἰουδαίων βασιλείαν ἀναστήσει. Hippol. de Antichristo, § 25. St. Cyril of Jerusalem also speaks of Antichrist building the Jewish Temple; and he too wrote before Julian's attempt, and (what is remarkable) prophesied it would fail, because Julian was not the Antichrist, who alone could do it. Vide Ruff. Hist. x. 37. 1 Dan. xi. 38, 39. |