01-27-2021, 11:25 PM
LECTURE II.
SUCH, then, is the Revolt, which has been gathering strength these 1800 years, and ripening for the hour when it shall receive its leader and head.
The interpretation universally received by anti catholic controversialists, whereby, first, Antichrist is held to be a spirit or system, and not a person, and next, to be the Catholic or Roman Church, or the Vicar of the Incarnate Word, is the master stroke of deceit. It allays all fear, and inspires presumption and confidence, and fixes the attention of men to watch for the signs of his appearing any where except where they are to be seen; and draws it off from the quarter where they are already visible. .
Now, I do not hesitate to say, that, in all the prophecies of Revelation, there is not one among them which relates to the coming of Christ more explicit and express than those which relate to the coming of Antichrist.
1. He is described with all the attributes of a person. In this one passage St. Paul calls him “that wicked one,’ o ávopos, ille iniquus; the ‘man of sin,’ avOpotros Tſis àpaptias, homo peccati; and ‘son of perdition,’ vios Tſis àToMetas. And St. John in four places speaks of him as the Antichrist. To deny the personality of Antichrist, is therefore to deny the plain testimony of Holy Scripture: to ex plain away these personal terms and titles as of a system or spirit, is as rationalistic as the impiety of Strauss in denying “the historical,” that is, the personal, Christ.
It is a law of Holy Scripture, that when persons are prophesied of, persons appear; as, for instance, the prophecies of St. John Baptist, or of the Blessed Virgin, or of our Lord Himself.
All the Fathers, both of the East and West,- St. Irenaeus, St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, St. John Chrysostom, Theophylact, Ecumenius, all interpret these passages of a literal and personal Antichrist. What I may call the corporate interpretation is modern, heretical, controversial, and un reasonable. This fanciful and contradictory system has been sufficiently destroyed even by Protestant writers: as by Todd in his work on Antichrist, a creditable and learned book, though somewhat de faced by the reliquioe of Protestant prejudice; by Greswell, in his Exposition of the Parables; and by Maitland on Daniel and St. John. In Germany, even among Protestant interpreters, to maintain the antiCatholic interpretation is looked on as a
surrender of the character of a biblical scholar. The Protestants of England are still, as they always were, the least cultivated and reasonable. It is true, indeed, that the Antichrist has had, and may still have, many forerunners, as had also Christ Himself: as Isaac, Moses, Josue, David, Jeremias, were types of the one, so Antiochus, Julian, Arius, Mahomet, and many more, are the types of the other; for per sons typify persons. So, again, as Christ is the Head and Representative in which the whole mystery of godliness (To Tijs eigeBeias Avarſipuov*) has been summed up and recapitulated, so also the whole mystery of impiety (to uvoatriptov tijs dvopuiast+) will find its expression and its head in the person of Antichrist. He may indeed embody a spirit and repre sent a system, but is not less, therefore, a person. So also the theologians. Bellarmine says, “All Catholics hold that Antichrist will be one individual person.”1 Lessius says, “All agree in teaching that the proper Antichrist will be not many, but one only person.”§ Suarez goes so far as to say that this doctrine of the personal Antichrist of faith is “certain de fide.” ll
* 1 Tim. iii. 16.
+ 2 Thess. ii. 7.
1 Bellarm. de Summo Pontif lib. iii, c. 2.
§ De Antichristo, Tertia Dem.
ll In iii. p. D. Thomae, Disp. liv. s. 1.