6. THE LUTHERAN DOCTRINE OF ANTICHRIST.

Martin Luther's famous protest adversus execrabilem bullam Antichristi inaugurated the Protestant Reformation (1520 A.D.). It was one of his firmest convictions, shared by all the great Reformers, that the Papal system was the Antichrist of prophecy; Luther expected that it would shortly be destroyed by Christ in His second advent. This belief was made a formal dogma of the Lutheran Church by the standard Articles of Smalkald (1537 A.D.)1. It has a place in the English Bible; the translators in their address to King James I. credit that monarch with having given, by a certain tractate he had published, "such a blow unto that Man of Sin, as will not be healed." Bishop Jewel's Exposition of the Thessalonian Epistles, delivered in the crisis of England's revolt from Rome, gives powerful expression to the Lutheran view. In the 17th Century, however, this interpretation was called in question amongst English Divines. Amongst its recent advocates, the late Bishop Wordsworth, in his Lectures on the Apocalypse and Commentary on the Greek Testament, has supplied a learned and most earnest vindication. This theory has impressive arguments in its favour, drawn both from Scripture and history. It contains large elements of truth. But many reasons forbid us to identify the Papacy with the Man of Lawlessness. Two must here suffice. (1) St Paul's words describe, as the early Fathers saw, a personal Antichrist; they cannot be satisfied by any mere succession of men, or system of Antichristian evil. (2) His Man of Lawlessness is to be the avowed opposer and displacer of God. Now, however gross the idolatry of which the Pope has been made the object, and however daring and blasphemous the arrogance of some occupants of the Papal Chair, one must seriously weaken and distort the words of the Apostle to adjust them to the Romanist pretensions. It is not true, in any strict sense of the words, that the Bishop of Rome "exalts himself against every one called God and every object of worship." The Roman Catholic system has multiplied, instead of abolishing objects of worship; its ruling errors have been those of superstition, not of atheism. At the same time, its exaltation of the Pope and the priesthood has debased the religious instinct of Christendom, and has nursed the spirit of anthropolatry-the man-worship, which St Paul believed was to have in the Man of Lawlessness its supreme object. Romanist teaching has prepared a fruitful soil for the seeds of atheism. It enervates the conscience, and loosens the bonds of moral obligation2.

7. ANTICHRIST IN MODERN TIMES.

It would occupy several pages merely to state the various theories promulgated upon this mysterious subject in recent times.

1 Melanchthon admitted a second Antichrist in Mohammed. He distinguished between the Eastern and Western Antichrists. The conjunction of Pope and Turk was common with our Protestant forefathers.

2 Whatever is said in condemnation of the Romanist system, is said in remem. brance and joyful recognition of the fact that within the Roman communion there are multitudes of sincere and exemplary Christians,

THESS.

12

Not the least plausible is that which saw "the apostasy" in the later developments of the French Revolution, with its apotheosis of an abandoned woman in the character of Goddess of Reason, and which identified Napoleon Buonaparte with the Man of Sin. The Empire of Napoleon was essentially a restoration of the military Cæsarism of the first century. He came within a little of making himself, like Julius Cæsar, dictator of the civilized world. To our minds, this unscrupulous despot, with his superb genius and insatiable egotism-the offspring and the idol, till he became the scourge of a godless democracy—is in the true succession of Antiochus Epiphanes and Nero Cæsar. He has set before our times a new and commanding type of the Lawless One. Nor is godlessness wanting in a bold and typical modern expression. Following upon the negative and destructive atheism of the last century, the scientific, constructive and humanistic atheism of this century has built up for itself an imposing system of thought and life. The theory of Positivism, as it was propounded by its great apostle, Auguste Comte, culminates in the doctrine that “Man is man's god." God and immortality, with the entire world of the supernatural, this philosophy abolishes in the name of science and modern thought. It sweeps them out of the way in order to make room for le grand être humain, or collective humanity; which is to command our worship through the memory of its heroes and men of genius, and in the person of woman, adored within the family. This scheme of religion Comte worked out with the utmost seriousness, and furnished with an elaborate hierarchy and ritual, based on the Roman Catholic model. Although Comte's religion of humanity is disowned by many of his followers, it is a phenomenon of great significance and interest. It testifies to the persistence of the religious instinct in our nature; and it shews the direction which that instinct is compelled to take when deprived of its rightful Object (see the Apostle's words in Rom. i. 23). Comte would carry us back, virtually, to the Pagan adoration of deified heroes and deceased Emperors, or to the Chinese worship of family ancestors. Moreover, Positivism provides in its Great Being an abstraction which, so far as it takes possession of the human mind, must inevitably tend to realise itself in concrete personal shape. It sets up a throne of worship which the man of destiny will be forthcoming "in his season" to occupy.

Since the time of Hugo Grotius (1583—1645 A.D.), the famous Dutch Protestant scholar, theologian, and statesman, numerous attempts have been made to demonstrate the fulfilment of N.T. prophecy within the Apostolic, or Post-apostolic age. This line of interpretation was adopted by Catholic theologians, as by Bossuet in the 17th century and Döllinger1 in our own times, partly by way of return to the Patristic view, and partly in defence against Protestant_exegesis. These præterist theories, restricting the application of St Paul's prediction to the first

1 Döllinger sees "the Lawless One" in Nero, in the first instance; and "the Withholder"-or, as he prefers to render the word, "the Occupier" (viz. of the seat of power)-in Claudius, Nero's predecessor; the latter a very improbable identification. He does not suppose the meaning of the prophecy exhausted by this first fulfilment, but expects a second at the end of the world. All intermediate applications he regards as speculative and illegitimate.

age of the Church, in various ways strain and minimize his language, in attempting to make it square with actual events. Or else they assume, as rationalistic interpreters complacently do, that such prophecies were incapable of real fulfilment, and have been refuted by the course of history. Almost every Roman Emperor, from Caligula down to Trajansome even of later times-has been adopted in turn for the Man of Sin or the Restrainer by one or other of the commentators. Nero figures in both characters; so does Vespasian. Others hold—and this view is partly combined with the last, as e.g. by Grotius-that Simon Magus, the traditional father of heresy, was the Lawless One; while others, again, see "the mystery of iniquity" in the Jewish nation of the Apostle's time. Outside the secular field, the power of the Holy Spirit, the decree of God, the Jewish Law, the believing remnant of Judaism, the Christian Church, and even Paul himself have been put into the place of "that which withholdeth," by earlier or later authors. But these fancies have never obtained much acceptance.

Like other great prophecies of Scripture, this word of the Apostle Paul has, it appears to us, a progressive fulfilment. It is carried into effect from time to time, under the action of Divine laws operating throughout human history, in partial and transitional forms, which prefigure and may contribute to its final realization. For such prophecies are inspired by Him Who "worketh all things after the counsel of His will;" and they rest upon the principles of God's moral government, and the abiding facts of human nature. We accept, with Chrysostom, an earnest of the accomplishment of St Paul's prediction in the person of Nero. We recognize, with the later Greek Fathers and Melanchthon, that there are plain Antichristian tokens and features in the polity of Mohammed. We recognize, with Gregory I. and the Protestant Reformers, a prelude of Antichrist's coming and conspicuous traits of his character in the spiritual despotism of the See of Rome; and we sorrowfully mark in the history of the Church how the tares ever grow beside the wheat, and in what manifold forms "the apostasy" which prepares the way of Antichrist and lays the foundations of his rule, has continued its baleful working. We agree with those who discern in the Napoleonic idea an ominous revival of the lawless absolutism and worship of human power that prevailed in the age of the Cæsars; while Positive and materialistic philosophy, with sensualistic ethics, unless we are much deceived, are making for the same goal1.

1 The following extract from Comte's Catéchisme Positiviste is a striking proof of the readiness with which scientific atheism may join hands with political absolutism: "Au nom du passé et de l'avenir, les serviteurs théoriques et les serviteurs pratiques de L'HUMANITÉ viennent prendre dignement la direction générale des affaires terrestres, pour construire enfin la vraie providence, morale, intellectuelle, et matérielle; en excluant irrévocablement de la suprématie politique tous les divers esclaves de Dieu, Catholiques, protestants, ou déistes, comme étant à la fois arrières et pertur bateurs."-The true Pontifical style! It is not a very long step from these words to that which the Apostles intimate in 2 Thess. ii. 4 and Rev. xiii. 16, 17, &c. It is significant that Comte issued this Catechism of the new religion just after the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon, whom he congratulates on "the happy crisis"! In the same preface he does homage to the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, as the sole truly eminent chief of whom our century can claim the honour, up to the present time.' Comte's

The history of the world is one; the first century lives over again in the nineteenth. All the factors of evil co-operate, as do those of good. There are, in truth, but two kingdoms, of Satan and of Christ; though to our eyes their forces lie scattered and confused, and we distinguish ill between them. But the course of time quickens its pace, as if nearing some great issue. Science has given an immense impetus to human progress in all directions, and moral influences propagate themselves with greater speed than heretofore. There is going on a rapid interchange and interfusion of thought, a unifying of the world's life, and a gathering together of the forces on either side to "the valley of decision," that seem to portend some world-wide spiritual crisis, in which the glorious promises, or dark forebodings of revelation, or both at once, will be anew fulfilled. But still Christ's words stand, as Augustine said, to "put down the fingers of all the calculators1." It is not for us to know times or seasons. What backward currents may arise in our secular progress, what new seals are to be opened in the book of human fate, and through what cycles the evolution of God's purpose for mankind has yet to run, we cannot guess.

The first disciples deemed themselves to live already in the dawn of the world's closing day. We in its later hours keep watch for the Lord Who said, "Behold, I come quickly,"-yet seems to tarry. Be it ours, none the less, with unwearied love and faith to repeat the cry which has never ceased from the lips of the Church, the Bride of Christ:

COME, LORD JESUS!

ignorance of politics is some excuse for these blunders; but the conjunction remains no less significant. Faith in God and faith in freedom are bound up together. See Arthur's Physical and Moral Law, pp. 231-237; and his Religion without God, on Positivism generally.

"Omnes calculantium digitos resolvit:" on Matt. xxiv. 36.

INDEX.

Words specially defined or explained are printed in italics. Such
references are omitted as are sufficiently indicated by chapter and