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negligent of himself and the whole of Christianity, as to lead innumerable souls with him to hell, yet ought no man to rebuke him, for he hath power to judge all men, and ought to be judged of none.' Bishop by the grace of the Apostolic See"-not of the living God. The same thing was repeated in 1842. The popish Bishop of Toronto called himself" Bishop by the grace of God and of the Holy Romish See." "The monks,

held up the Pope to the veneration of the people, even as a God." Such, we repeat, are some of the phrases employed by papists themselves in describing their infallible head. Without any comment, they exhibit the blasphemies to which this idolatrous system has led, the degradation which it inflicts even on the Godhead, by putting a creature, and that too frequently a grossly corrupt and profligate creature, on a level with the King of kings. From time to time, symptoms of relenting appear among these extravagant idolators. For example, Eberhard, bishop of Saltzburg, (1240) declared that the Popes, under a shepherd's skin, concealed the wolf, and that Hildebrand had founded the kingdom of Antichrist. Walter Brute, a Welshman, called the Pope "Antichrist, and a seducer of the people." Wickliffe, it is well known, waged a life-long warfare against this "fellow of God, this deity on earth," and boldly declared that he was potissimus Antichristus; but these are the exceptions, and the nations went wondering after the beast. He himself uttered words of blasphemy; his worshippers in multitudes caught up the impious assumption, and the predictions of the Apocalypse (chap. xiii.) became mournful realities, dishonouring to God, ruinous to men-at once the characteristics and the curse of the Papacy. "Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth

speaking great things, and blasphemies: and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."

As allied to these iniquitous assumptions, we may contemplate next the unbridled pride of the Papacy. Not merely did emperors swear to be submissive to the Pope and the Roman Church. Nicholas I. (860) commanded Louis II. to hold the bridle of the Pope's mule. In 1155, F. Barbarossa was obliged to do the same; and up to the sixteenth century the proud ceremony was observed. As it was not murder to slay a heretic, so it was not treason to trample on a king; nay, the kings of the earth held their crowns as the grant of his Holiness, and forfeited them at his nod. It was not enough to persecute and put to death the poor saints of God under opprobrious epithets, the titled and the crowned heads must bow before the substitute and antagonist of Christ.* It was not enough to carry desolation under the name of Crusades, not against the Saracens, but against the saints of God, among the nations of Europe,-no rival could be tolerated by the system whose head exalted himself above all that is called God. Pope Gregory the Great bewailed the state of the clergy, and described them as an army prepared for the Antichrist." He spoke of bishops as "wolves in sheep's clothing," and unconsciously applies to them the marks which the Apocalypse applies to his own apostate church. Cyprian of

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The ignorance of the truth under the Papacy, is at once a cause and an effect of such a sumption on the one hand, and abjectness on the other. According to Christianity, faith is the act of receiving Christ, and salvation in him. According to Popery, as expounded by Bellarmine, faith "principally consists in two mysteries implied in the sign of the holy cross," and then he gives a recipe for making that sign in an orthodox way. Religion has become a charm at Rome, and operates like amulets, or the mysteries of the Cabala.

Carthage condemned the assumption of supremacy on the part of Rome; but, unchecked alike by enemies and friends, the man of sin extended his usurpations till both Europe, and the new world, indeed "all the kingdoms of the earth," as known, groaned or bled beneath his despotism.

We have space now for only a few illustrations of this usurpation of Antichrist, and we select rather those that are most convenient, than those which are most elaborately descriptive of the point.

Rome, then, as we have just seen, had long been regarded as the "head of the world," her popes as the successors of Peter, the substitute of Christ, and as GOD ON EARTH. "He held the keys of the kingdom for the illumination of all," and being "judge in place of God, he could himself be judged by no one.”

Let us contem

plate some of the titles by which this Vice-Christ or vice-God was known.

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Leo. X. has just been elected Pope, and his election proclaimed by the cardinals in words that were impiously applied, "I bring you tidings of great joy." He had before been spoken of "in whom all nations shall be blessed," and he is now described as if he was "the Redeemer of mankind entering Jerusalem, there being substituted only for hosanna to the Son of David,'' Viva Papa Leone!" The history, titles, and offices of Christ were ascribed to the new Pope amid the ceremonies of his inauguration. Did the Magi worship Christ? They do the same to Leo. Did they offer presents to the infant Redeemer? Men do the same to his vicar. Did Jesus dispute with the doctors when a youth? So did Leo. Was Christ baptized by John ? That also is pictorially represented at the installation of the new Pope, who is referred to as God admired among his saints." In like manner, the offices of Christ as priest, mediator, and captain of his Church, were ascribed to Leo. On one scenic representation relating to the pontiff, the words, "The King of glory has come forth," were read; in

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another, he was represented with one foot on the land, and another on the sea, while below was the legend, "In thy hand I behold the empire of earth, sea, and heaven." He was called "The Lion of the tribe of Judah;" and every thing was done which could shew that as the Pope is the head of the grand apostacy, so he is the proud usurper of Christ's prerogative and titles-in his high festivals, impiously converting the very altar into his footstool. To complete the profanation, the Saviour himself was there-the wafer-God, guarded in solemn mockery by a small body of attendants, contemptible in contrast with that which swelled the retinue of Antichrist. "The heaven-sent one!"-" The King of glory!" "The envoy of heaven !" were common titles for the pontiff; and at his assumption or lifting up to the papal throne, an impious travesty of Christ's ascension to glory, these titles were bestowed in abundance.* The countenance of Leo was described in his presence, by a fulsome orator, as "beaming forth the insupportable lustre of divine Majesty." He was spoken of as "full of truth"-as 66 'revealing and opening to men the way to heaven." He was perpetually addressed as God

a God to weak mortals." He was recognised as "the fountain of divine grace and mercy;" and if we can quote the words without contracting a taint from their impiety, Tetzel is known to have said, "The Lord our God is God no more, he has resigned all his power to the Pope." The vicar of God and of Christ was thus served by the blaspheming priests, whose doctrines he sanctioned, and by whose lies and delusions his coffers were filled. The same lion claimed the whole world as his prey, because God "had given to the Son the heathen for his inheritance." He sat in the Lateran Church receiving the adoration of an assembled council, representing the whole Papacy throughout the world, and submitting to be hailed with the titles and offices of the eternal God; in a word, and without a figure, "he is

*See Elliott Hor. Apocal. vol ii. passim.

sitting in the temple of God, and shewing himself that he is God." "Thou art our shepherd, our physician-in short, a second God on the earth." "On thee, O most blessed Leo, we have fixed our hopes as the promised Saviour"—such were phrases blasphemously addressed to the Pontiff, while other portions of Scripture were with like impiety applied to him. "Thou shalt rule from sea to sea" is one of these; and more offensive still, the words, "I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto me," referring to Leo's elevation to the popedom. He was made "the heir of the world ;" and, in brief, was as distinctly a substitute for Christ as if he had, in terms, avowed his purpose to arrogate the honours, functions, and prerogatives of the eternal Son of God.

Now, without entering into an elaborate analysis or classification of these blasphemous claims, we remark that Leo arrogated or submitted to hear ascribed to him the power of pardoning, justifying, and saving sinners by his indulgences, and is thus Antichrist, by opposing the Saviour as the only justifier. The Pope claimed dominion over the kingdoms of the world, and was therefore a counter-Christ, as usurping the province of him who "has the heathen for his inheritance."

He was, moreover, declared to be Antichrist, by assuming the title of "the lion of the tribe of Judah❞—the Christ of the living God. His impiety equally appears in arrogating what belongs only to Christ the judge of allthe right and the power to excommunicate, cut off, and destroy. In a word, we may tax our ingenuity to the utmost, and yet not find an office, or a function, or an attribute of God our Saviour, which has not been usurped by Antichrist-except indeed his love. The Papacy had reached its zenith of glory in the times of Leo, just before the outbreak of the Reformation; and then as it stands out fully developed and all complete, history is worthless, and its facts bring no lessons to re

flective minds, if we may not conclude that the Pope of Rome, or the system of which he is the head, is the Antichrist, the enemy of God and man— whose "superhuman pride, self-exaltation, blasphemy towards God, and oppression of the saints," are not less plainly predicted than revoltingly realized in the history of the Papacy, and the Bishop of Rome. The lawless one of St Paul's prediction tyrannized over every created thing—but that was little. Though the language may seem impious, he would be a God even to God; and is not this the Antichrist? Is Christ the good Shepherd ? The Pope is the same. Is Christ the

way, the truth, and the life? All these are found ascribed to the Antichrist. Is Christ the Holy One? Then is not the Bishop of Rome the counterpart of that-His Holiness? The antagonism is here distinct, the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot fail to trace it, if only he understands the truth as it is in Jesus—if the gospel be not hid from him as one of the lost. Would Romanists listen to Huss, to Ambrose, Ansbert, or, better still, to Thomas Aquinas, they might be convinced that these arrogant claims of the Pope incontrovertibly prove that he is the Antichrist. Leo X. was likened to the sun-he sanctioned the comparison; and what does the angelic Aquinas say? "Effudit phialam en solem; id est Antichristum qui se solem existimabit et dicet mundum illuminatum per eum esse. Ipse enim usurpabit nomen veri solis, id est Christi; de quo dicitur, Ego Esum lux mundi.”

"'*

It were superfluous to proceed further in this painful enumeration. We need not tell that the Pope's decrees are still called "divine oracles," and so placed on a level with the word of God. Nor need we shew how even Luther at one period wrote to the Bishop of Rome, "Most blessed father,

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I will acknowledge thy voice as the voice of Christ presiding and speaking in thee." He lived to be convinced that Paul's predicted Antichrist was then reigning at Rome; but at one

*Elliott Hor. Apocal. ii. 98. See also 37-87.

time even Luther bowed down his whole soul before that counter-Christ. Awed and subdued, like meaner minds, he long trembled before what he afterwards described as the "infernal voice of Antichrist."

Nor need we dwell on the imageworship of Rome as another scriptural criterion of Antichrist. Neither can we refer in detail to the ever accumulating corruptions of the Papacy, till it reached its consummation as a persecuting system, proclaiming war against all that would not worship the beast. Nor can we tarry to record the Waldensian view of Antichrist, though the topic be curious and instructive. We remark, in general, that the Waldenses regard the Papacy as a system devised, First, to defraud God of his worship; Secondly, Christ of his glory, as the Lord our righteousness; and, Thirdly, the Spirit of his, as the converter and sanctifier of the soul-each feature of the abhorrent system being intrinsically Antichristian. "The origin of this Antichristian religion was (according to the Waldenses,) the covetousness of the priesthood-its tendency to lead men away from Christ-its essence, a vain ceremonial-its foundation, the false notions of grace and forgiveness."

His atrocious anathemas are at once a farther criterion and a characteristic of Antichrist. "We shut heaven against them.” "We send upon them famine, and thirst, and drought, and call fire from heaven to consume and devour them." "Let them be consigned to perpetual flames with the devil and his angels." These are the condemnations hurled by the vicar of Christ against those who preferred the Son of God to the Son of Perdition. And these anathemas were not brute thunder-they were followed up with alacrity by blood-thirsty men, and at last the melancholy sentence could be uttered without hyperbole, in the hearing of the Pope. “Now, no one resists there is not one to oppose." "The whole body of Christendom is now seen to be subjected to its Head, that is, to

Leo." About the year 1500, spiritual death reigned throughout the empire of Antichrist; he had culminated, the world appeared prostrate at his feet, and

when Leo became Pope the resolution was formed to exterminate heretics,— and thus announced, "I will not leave

one." The proud boast seemed verified, and Antichrist was monarch of all he surveyed till Luther arose to challenge his usurped supremacy.

The Apocalyptic Beast then received a wound, and was long supposed to be sinking in dissolution. In our day, however, he has revived with marvellous power, and his modern developments seem likely to lead to results as ominous to the religion of truth and the freedom of man as his ancient tyranny

was.

Throughout the world he is resuming his old position. The Papacy has altered its policy, and become by turns a liberal and humane, or a bigotted and oppressive system, according as expediency demands or power is possessed. There is verisimilitude in the views of a recent writer who concludes that Popery must die by some violent plunge; it cannot disappear like a candle burnt down in the socket

“it must die in a convulsion, and such a convulsion as will shake Europe to its foundation." What that shall be, or when, or where, is with Him who sees the end from the beginning. But symptoms are numerous, and crowding fast upon us, which show that Popery is preparing not for a dying struggle, but for an effort to grasp the mastery of the world again. It expends annually about £180,000 in promoting a creed whose head is Antichrist, and it boasts the expectation of raising that revenue to £600,000. Then Puseyism in England is gradually abetting the growth of the Papacy. Untaught by all the past-ignorant of Scriptural truth-blind to the lessons of history—unwarned by all the beacons which God has in providence erected and set to blaze through the past ten centuries, men are hastening to unprotestantize England, and mourning over the sectarianism of the Reformation. "That deplorable schism" is the term invented to describe the glorious emancipation of a large portion of Europe. Newman developes God's word of truth into a huge mass Popish absurdities, with Antich. the apex of the pile. The

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Critic, in a fine phrenzy, exclaims, Baptismal Regeneration, the sacred presence in the eucharist, the oneness of the visible Church, the primacy of St Peter, are among the Catholic verities, impressed on the surface of Scripture." "Tradition is infallible," exclaims Mr Newman. Mr Palmer expresses the desire to see" the patriarch of Constantinople, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, walk barefoot to Rome, fall on the Pope's neck, kiss him, and persuade him to be reasonable." Froude, in poetry, calls Rome "The Saviour's holy home;" and Dr Pusey, in prose, says, "Rome is your mother, by whom ye were born to Christ." Finally, Newman thus eulogizes the mass, which he has now gone to perform: "Our Reformers, in not adopting the canon of the mass, which is a sacred and most precious monument of the apostles, mutilated the tradition of 1500 years." It is thus that Puseyism, according to its own boast, is making it "a matter of life and death," to exalt Antichrist as of old. It declares that the cardinal doctrine of justification is "an idol of the evangelic doctrinists worthy only of being broken to pieces ;" and in keeping with this, it proclaims the reign of the bloody Mary to have been a great advantage to the Church of England. Even one of the Wilberforces has described her as "not the bloody, but the blessed Queen Mary." testantism in its essence, and in all its bearings, is characteristically the religion of corrupt human nature." "The Protestant tone of doctrine and thought is essentially Antichrist,"it is with words like these on their lips, that misguided men are hastening back to Rome, and in their precipitation, tearing up the foundations on which the hopes of sinners repose. Clerical celibacy-auricular confession-prayers for the dead-canonical hours-all that is essentially papistical, have been pled for or adopted by Puseyites, and Rome is a-tip-toe expecting, as she has reason, the return of England to her arms; and for aught that her esta

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blished church can achieve, popery is likely to see her hope become fruition.

In former times, Rome rigidly forbade all preaching and reference to Antichrist within her borders. The measure was characterized by her usual craft, and resembled the policy of the Scottish persecutors two centuries ago, when they prohibited our forefathers from lecturing. We must learn wisdom from that prohibition by Rome. We must revive the half-forgotten truth that the Pope is Antichrist. We must attest and prove his title to the name. Prophecy indicates that his fall is approaching-though facts too plainly proclaim that ere he finally fall, he will struggle, and for a time, with success, to regain his power to destroy. But the time, times, and half a time must be near their close, when all that is Papal or Antichristian shall be destroyed by the brightness of Christ's coming. The 66 desperate plunge" may be made- -success may for a time appear to reward the effort; but would Christians awake to their peril-would they look at Popery as it is in itself— in the word-and in the record written in the blood of the saints, its "plunge" would indeed be the convulsive death struggle of the colossal and satanic system. We have wandered over the breakwater at Plymouth, when the tide was ebb, and seen scattered over the slope which faces the ocean, masses of stone, each of them as large as a cottage, which we were told the sea in a tempest would toss and displace as a child does a pebble. pery will deal thus with Christians who are found disunited, and therefore weak. But in that same mass there are rocks embedded, clamped, and made all but solid granite by man's device and power-over these the sea rolls and foams in vain. So will it be with Christians united by the one Spirit, and all "one in Christ." Safety to man and glory to God our Saviour, thus equally demand a bold, wise, and united opposition to Antichrist. If public opinion be asleep, it must be aroused-if it be non-existent, it must

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*See for these and many other quotations relative to Puseyism, Elliot, Hor. Apocal. iv. p. 45-65.

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