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i. e. by magical incantations and devilish miracles.o

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But this point is more fully established by the testimony of Rev. XIII. where we read concerning the beast with seven heads and ten horns, whom we have identified with Antichrist, that the dragon (who is "that old serpent, called the devil and Satan," chap. XII. 9,) gave him his power, (dvvaμiv) and his seat, and great authority. And of that other beast who is called the false prophet, we read in verses 13, 14, that 'he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire to come down from heaven to the earth in the sight of men ; and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast. And these prevail over all but the elect."p Chapter XVI. 13, 14 reveals the same agency: I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and of the beast, and of the false prophet; for they are the spirits of devils working miracles, &c. ;" and through their operation is brought to pass that awful combination of the powers of earth and hell against the Lord and against his anointed, to which we have had such frequent occasion to refer. Now, can any doctrine be more strongly confirmed than that which is taught in 2nd Thess. II. 9, 10, by the Scriptures which have been adduced? Let it be carefully examined in connexion with them, and let its awful words sum up their concurrent testimony." His coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved."

It may appear strange to some • 2 Tim III.; Exod. vII.

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that Satan should be permitted to exercise such power on the earth; but the testimony of the Scriptures must be conclusive against all such thoughts in every Christian's mind. That he has heretofore exercised such influence we learn from the recorded miracles of the Egyptian Magicians, the afflictions of Job, the temptation of David, the warnings against witchcraft and magic and false prophets in Deuteronomy and elsewhere, the deceiving of Ahab, the temptation and apostacy of Judas, and the many cases of demoniacal possession in the days of our Lord and his apostles. But the probability of his future agency is strengthened by Rev. xii. 12, which can hardly be interpreted as yet fulfilled. And this is still further confirmed by the sixth and last division of our subject, which teaches us that there will be

VI. A Judicial blindness. (vv. 11, 12.) "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, (or the lie, r evde, the false pretensions of the man of sin,) that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." The apostle confirms this prediction by similar assertions in other epistles. In 1 Tim. iv. 2, he speaks, not only of seducing spirits, but of false teachers, who have their consciences seared as with a hot iron. In his second epistle chap. 11. 13, "Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived:" and chap. iv. 3, he urges ministerial diligence on his son Timothy by the consideration, that

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the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned

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In Isaiah xxx. 28 we read of a sifting of the nations, with the sieve of vanity; and a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to

err."

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On which the following note is in D'oyly and Mant's Bible :The fan (Kimchi observes) with which God shall winnow the nations will be the fan of emptiness and perdition; for nothing useful shall remain behind, but all shall come to nothing and perish. In like manner a bridle is designed to guide the horse in the right way; but the bridle, which God will here put into the jaws of the people, shall not direct them aright, but shall, in his judgment on their stubbornness, make them err and lead them into destruction." So in chap. LX. 2 it is declared "that darknes shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people, when the Lord shall arise upon Zion, and his glory shall be seen upon her." This blinding and hardening of men's hearts we find frequently mentioned in the Scriptures, as the judgment of God upon their obstinacy or unbelief. See amongst many other instances the case of Pharaoh, Exod. Iv. 21; Sihon Deut. II. 30; the Canaanites, Josh. xI. 20; Amaziah, 2 Chron. xxv. 20; and generally it is written in Rom. ix. 18"whom he will he hardeneth." Now the Lord gives up to Satan's power those whom he thus hardens. 1 Kings XXII. 23; John x111. 2, 27.

I will now bring to a close my attempt to illustrate this deeply interesting portion of God's word.

My object in the undertaking has been simply to search the Scriptures for an infallible exposition of its meaning, and to interpret it by an impartial comparison of its several parts with those other Scriptures which seem more or less clearly to refer to the same subjects. With what success this has been attended, as far as my readers are concerned, I must leave them to decide :

Feci quod potui-potui quod Christe dedisti. For myself I have the satisfaction of having attained to a settled conviction with regard to the principal subject of enquiry-" Is popery the apostacy and the Pope the man of sin?" The conclusions to which I have been led by the foregoing statements of Scripture, I would now humbly offer to the reader. And I do earnestly pray that He who has promised to guide us into all truth, and to shew us things to come, may bestow his blessing abundantly both on the writer and the reader, that the truth, and that alone, may be embraced by them.

It appears then from the foregoing Scriptures

1. That a general apostacy, affecting all Christendom, will take place towards the close of the present dispensation, shortly before the coming of the Lord, of whose near approach it will be the sign. By this apostacy the Gentiles will consummate the measure of their iniquities, and bring upon themselves the predicted judgments.

2. That "Antichrist," called also "the Man of Sin," and "the Wicked one"-has yet to be revealed. All other forms of evil have been only as it were the types and precursors of this last worst form of the mystery of iniquity. He will then be endued with Satanic power and wickedness to a degree far surpass

r Acts xx. 29, 30,

ing all his predecessors. He will assume divine honours, not in virtue of a delegated authority, or as the representative of the Invisible, but for himself; and will claim worship as God in his temple. By the miracles and wonders which are performed by himself or in his name, by "the false prophet," and by the Satanic influence with which he shall be attended, he will succeed in deceiving the whole professing Christian world, at least, except the elect, and these he persecutes even to the death. It appears also that he will be a bitter persecutor of the Jews, with whose future destiny he seems intimately connected. The temple where he sits as God appears to be the temple at Jerusalem, where he abolishes the daily sacrifice and places the abomination of desolation; and the place where he falls is the holy land, the mountains of Israel.

3. It seems probable that he will be first manifested somewhere in the northern part of the dominions possessed by Alexander the Great; and from the expressions in the 37th verse of Dan. XI. it would appear that he will be of Jewish origin: these things however I do not press as conclusions. There may be a question too whether the Antichrist be an individual, or a body of men animated by the same spirit of wickedness, and whether the term false prophet be only a name to characterize a number of persons deserving that appellation. Our Lord warns us in Matt. XXIV. that there shall be false Christs and false prophets, who shall succeed in deceiving all but the elect. Nevertheless, the actions and pretensions of the man

of sin in 2 Thess. of the king in Dan. VIII. and XI. and of the Assyrian, are those of an individual, and cannot well be otherwise interpreted than of a single person. The horns of the Ram and of the He Goat in Dan. vIII, denote individuals; and consistency would require that the little horn arising from one of the four notable horns which succeeded the great horn of the goat, should also be understood to mean an individual. The same rule should hold, I think, in the 7th chapter with respect to the eleven kings.

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From these considerations we must conclude it to be an erroneous view of the Scriptures which would confine the application of the foregoing prophecies to the Pope and the Romish apostacy. I would say that the church of Rome is not " apostacy," nor the Pope THE Antichrist." The church of Rome has erred grievously and fatally, by obscuring the truth committed to the keeping of the universal church and substituting in its stead commandments of men, both antiscriptural and superstitious. But though by thus acting, she may have become an apostate church and have forfeited her part in the church catholic; and though the pretensions of the Pope are blasphemous and antichristian, these charges will not prove the church to be the apostacy which the Holy Ghost contemplated, nor the Pope the man of sin. St. John in 1st Epl. chap. 11. speaks of many antichrists who had then appeared, and of THE Antichrist who had not appeared, but was expected.*

The Romish miracles, whether real or pretended, do not answer

* Some writers on prophecy seem to consider that the very essence of Protestantism consists in denouncing the church of Rome as the apostacy, and the Pope as the man of sin. I do not think that Protestantism will lose one iota of the truth which it asserts, by ceasing to make such an application of the Scriptures. This remark applies especially to the church of England, which at the Reformation simply renounced the

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the description given of those by
which the man of sin establishes his
pretensions for who was ever con-
verted to the Romish doctrines by
them ? What effect have they
wrought beyond their own credu-
lous followers? Yet so mighty is
the effect to be produced by the
Antichristian miracles, that the elect
only, and they hardly, escape. And
does the acknowledged fact that
pious and godly men have lived and
died in the communion of the church
of Rome correspond with the lan-
guage of the Scriptures concerning
the followers of Antichrist? It is
written "God shall send then strong
delusion, &c. that they all might be
damned, &c." "All that dwell on
the earth (except the elect) shall
worship the beast."
And if any
man worship the beast, &c. the same
shall drink of the wine of the wrath
of God." Rev. XIV. 9, 10.

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The argument need not be carried farther. The conclusions we have drawn above forbid the application against which we contend. Another apostacy more extensive and more fatal, another Antichrist more subtle and more powerful, are to be expected. Oh! who can tell how

soon these things may be manifested? The fatal snare is spreading. Indifference to the truth, which is the real meaning of the much vaunted liberalism in religion and politics, is preparing the way for the seducer; and we may be even now on the verge of the fulfilment of all the prophecies. Ye who look for the Lord, be not dismayed: when ye see these things come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, knowing that your redemption draweth nigh. Amen! W.

We have not interrupted the argument of our Correspondent by appending notes: but though we have deemed it expedient to give insertion to his communication, on account of the general importance of the subject, and the ability with which he treats certain particulars of it, we equally think it a duty not to let it pass without two or three concluding remarks upon it.

In his attempt to shew that all the notices in Scripture of an Antichristian power relate to one and the same power or person only, he overlooks, as we think some important circumstances in the pro

usurped authority of the Pope and the corruptions of faith and practice which had been introduced under that authority, while she retained the apostolic doctrine and discipline which she had received long before the emissaries of Rome set foot on these shores.

That the reformers might have thus applied the prophetic description of Antichrist to the church of Rome and her bishop, is not to be wondered at, if we consider the striking resemblance which she bears to them in many of her superstitious practices and arrogant pretensions. They had no conception of a more fatal perversion of Christianity than that from which they had been delivered. They saw a fearful development of the mystery of iniquity, and denounced it as that which they saw in the Scriptures. We should do well to follow them in hatred to the system which they reprobated, while we are on our guard against a still more formidable adversary which is ready to be revealed.

But by this is manifested the wonderful structure of the prophetic word, which is in itself an evidence of its divine inspiration-that it adapts itself to every successive manifestation of the mystery of iniquity, and affords to the Church, as it suffers under each, the consolation and support which is suited to its present necessity; while it is reserved for the full development of that mystery to give complete fulfilment to all its predictions; when it will be seen that the language in which they were couched was not too strong, nor the characteristic features at all redundant or difficult to trace in the reality.

phecies which describe these powers. 1st. He infers that the Little Horn of Dan. vII. and Dan. vIII. must be the same. The similarity of the description of these little horns in some of their particulars, and the difference in other respects, is an argument to our minds that they are not the same. For it seems to us unaccountable that immediately after the description of the rise of the little horn in the one chapter, there should follow another vision, the burden of which is likewise the history of the rise of a little horn. But what appears conclusive to us is, that the horn of chap. VII. arises out of the fourth beast, or Roman empire; whereas the horn of chap. v. arises out of one of the four horns which proceeded from the broken horn of the Goat, and this corresponds with the third beast, or leopard, of Dan. vIII.

2ndly. Our Correspondent conceives that the circumstance of the little horn of chap. VII. plucking up three of the ten horns before him, thereby making himself the eighth horn, is analogous to the eighth king of Rev. XVII. There is however this important difference: that the ten horns in Dan. vII. are evidently existing contemporaneously with each other; and so afterwards the eight. But the eight kings of Rev. xvii. exist successively; for five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come, &c.

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3rdly. A due consideration of the ends of the various Antichristian powers will lead to the conclusion, that they are not all the same. give only one instance.

The beast

of Dan. vII. is slain, and then his body or dead carcase is given to the burning flame: whereas the beast

and false prophet of Rev. xix. are taken captive and cast alive into the lake of fire, &c.

4th. A most important consideration likewise is, that the Antichrist of Dan. VII. evidently appears when the empire of the fourth beast, or Roman empire, is divided into ten kingdoms. But we have not only seen that empire long since broken up and divided; but it has since passed away; for who can tell us where it now is?

Finally, the argument of W. at p. 207, col. 2nd, that they cannot be different,-because, if two Antichristian powers were to exist at the same time, their independent and exclusive pretensions would set them disputing among themselves, instead of directing their forces against Christ and his church,-is quite contrary to manifest historical facts. The world has long seen two rival powers, viz. Mahomet and the Pope, both equally blasphemous and arrogant in their pretensions, and exerting their power against Christ. We have likewise seen Herod, Pontius Pilate, and Caiphas, (who appear from the Psalms, together with Judas, to have been types of the Antichristian powers,) quarreling among themselves, yet uniting against Christ. And we see in our own times papists and radicals most cordially hating each other in secret, and yet combining together, and directing their united energies against the church.

These circumstances lead us therefore to hesitate before we can receive the theory of our Correspondent as a whole; however we may think particular parts of it to be worthy of serious consideration. EDITOR.

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