CHAPTER 9 ANTICHRIST THE POSSESSOR OF GREAT RICHES

ANOTHER scriptural mark of Antichrist is, the possession of great riches. “And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornications.” Revelation 17:4.

Again in chapter 18, verses 16, 17, John represents her merchants as exclaiming, upon her destruction, “Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones, and pearls, for, in one hour, so great riches is come to naught.” Bloomfield and Stuart apply the symbols in these chapters to pagan Rome; so, also, does the commentator on the Doway Bible. “By Babylon,” says this Roman Catholic interpreter, “is meant, either the city of the devil in general; or, if this place be to be understood of any particular city, pagan Rome, which then, and for three hundred years persecuted the church, and was the principal seat both of empire and idolatry.” Even this popish annotator, however, suggests another meaning: “The beast which supports Babylon,” says he, “may signify the power of the devil, which was and is not, being much limited by the coming of Christ, but shall again exert itself under Antichrist.” This is certainly preferable to the following: “The beast means the Roman emperors, specially Nero, of whom the report spread throughout the empire is, that he will revive, after being apparently slain, and will come as it were from the abyss, or hades.”1 This is certainly jejune and far-fetched enough! and I am sorry to say, that many of the interpretations of this learned expositor, are of a similar character.

That papal Rome is chiefly intended in each of these chapters, is almost absolutely certain. The whole prophecy is strikingly applicable to papal Rome, while but little of it can have any application to pagan Rome. The prophecy ends with a particular description of the entire destruction of the city spoken of: “The voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers and trumpeters, was to be heard no more at all in her; the light of the candle was to shine no more at all in her; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride was to be heard no more at all in her.” But the city of Rome has never to this day, been thus entirely destroyed. Similar prophecies are used in the Old Testament in reference to Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, and other cities. But such prophecies have been literally fulfilled. Where is Babylon? where is Nineveh? Their very sites can scarcely be found. But Rome still has music, and dancing, and the light of the candle, and the voice of the bride! These prophecies, then, have not all of them been fulfilled. But, if ever fulfilled, they must be in papal, and not in pagan Rome.

If, then, papal Rome be here meant, she is described as exceedingly rich. And that this part of the prophecy is as applicable to the Papacy, and has been as literally fulfilled as any other, we shall presently show. That the ministers of religion should be supported by those for whom they minister, is a dictate of common justice. If religion be without any foundation in truth, if indeed there be “no God,” then should the whole system be abolished as unnecessary and pernicious. If, however, there is a God, and if it is the duty of all men to worship and serve him, then ought the principles of religion to be taught, and its teachers, like all other citizens, should derive their support from the business to which they are devoted. Hence, among all nations, provisions have been made either by the state or by independent societies, for the support of the ministers of religion.

This principle was incorporated into the Jewish law, and has also been sanctioned by Christ and his Apostles.

“Even so,” says Paul, “hath the Lord ordained, that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.” 1 Corinthians 9:14. The Catholic priesthood, however, have turned the Christian ministry into the means of acquiring wealth. Originally, its object was to instruct and save men; support was only incidental to it. It was so among the Israelites; it was particularly so among the Apostles and ministers of Christ. Who has ever heard, that Peter or Paul, Timothy or Luke, was enriched by preaching the gospel? The first Christians

“took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, knowing that they had in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” Hebrews 10:34.

In those days, a profession of Christianity subjected men to the loss of their goods, and its official publication was attended with poverty, persecution, and even death. “At first,” says Neander, “it is highly probable, that those who undertook the church offices in various congregations, continued their former calling, and maintained themselves and their families by it afterwards, as they had done before. But when the members of the churches became more numerous, and the duties of the church officers were increased, it was often no longer possible for them to provide at the same time for their own support. From the church fund, which was formed by the voluntary contributions of every member of the church, at every Sunday service, or, as in the north African church, on the first Sunday of every month, a part was used for the pay of the spiritual order.”2 Such was the simple and moderate way in which the first ministers of the Christian religion gained their maintenance. Splendid endowments, large estates, vast incomes, were then not even thought of, as a compensation for ministerial labors. A support was all the spiritual teacher asked; it was all that the congregation provided. In after times, However, matters were reversed, and, by the indefinite multiplication of the ceremonies of Christianity, the means of wealth to the clergy became proportionally increased: the people thus became poor, and the clergy rich.

This change in the original economy of the church, began in the third century, when the church was united to the state by Constantine. “The bishops,” says Mosheim, “assumed in many places a princely authority. They appropriated to their evangelical function the splendid ensigns of temporal majesty. A throne, surrounded with ministers, exalted above their equals the servants of the meek and humble Jesus, and sumptuous garments dazzled the eyes of the multitude into an ignorant veneration for their arrogated authority.”3 “From the year 321,” says Daunou, “Constantine permitted the churches to acquire landed property, and he allowed individuals to enrich them by legacies.”4 Here was the commencement of that wealth which afterwards drained the resources of nations, and was one principal means of both power and corruption in the Christian church.

Monastic establishments were also another source of wealth to the papal church. These institutions were originally designed as sacred retreats from the fashions and pomp of the world; they soon, however, degenerated into the abodes of vice and crime, and became the banking-houses of all Catholic Europe. The novice was required to surrender, not simply himself, but also his possessions to the care of the holy brethren. Great sums were appropriated to them by the wealthy, and even governments assisted in annexing to them rich domains of landed properly. “Time,” says Gibbon, “continually increased, and accidents could seldom diminish, the estates of the popular monasteries; and in the first century of their institution, the infidel Zosimus has maliciously observed, that for the benefit of the poor, the Christian monks had reduced a great part of mankind to a state of beggary.” And yet he adds in a note, “the wealth of the eastern monks (of whom the above remark was made) was far surpassed by the princely greatness of the Benedictines.”5

State patronage, however, and monasteries, will by no means account for the vast wealth of the Roman Catholic communion. To ascertain this, we must descend into the deep caverns of superstition — we must follow all the windings of papal fraud and imposition — we must dig into her mines of relics — we must descend into purgatory, and look amid its fires; and, as if this were not enough, we must ascend up into heaven, and there, from amid the thrones of saints and intercessors, we must follow the golden streams that issue forth, and which, by means of priestcraft, are poured into the coffers of the Papacy; yes, heaven, earth and hell, are all laid under contributions by the inventions of this tyrannical religion, to sustain the power and increase the wealth of the hierarchy.

The following is the testimony of one who had for years been a Roman Catholic priest. “Look,” says he, “at all the Roman institutions; from its chief tenets, the real presence of God in the eucharist, and the infallibility of the church, down to the holy water and the wax-taper, and there is not one of them which is not either a means of grasping money, or power, or of entrapping the female sex! Ask,” continues he, “of popery, who instituted the belief of the real presence of God in the wafer? He will answer, Christ himself, when he said in the last supper — ‘hoc est corpus meum.’ Popery knows well the falsity of this answer; but in accordance with this creed, it has established the mass, which produces immense sums of money to the whole priesthood. Why has popery established indulgences? In appearance, it is a means of atoning for one’s sins; but in reality, it is to coin money from the sins of men. Why has popery instituted those thousand corporeal mortifications? In appearance, to show a great aversion to earthly pleasures; but in reality, to have an occasion for selling dispensations to many people, who have neither the courage nor desire to practice mortifications. Why has popery established those intimate relations between saints and men upon the earth, through relics, images, adorations, and a thousand other superstitions? In appearance, to help us in the great work of our salvation; but in reality, to place itself as an intermediate between saints and men, and to sell their intercession; to make money with all these practices and beliefs, and root more deeply its power in each mind.”6 Nor are facts like these supported by the testimony of a single priest — it is the testimony of all history. “Many of the peculiar and prominent characteristics in the faith and discipline of those ages,” says Hallam, “appear to have been either introduced, or sedulously promoted, for the purposes of sordid fraud. To those purposes conspired the veneration for relics, the worship of images, the idolatry of saints and martyrs, the religious inviolability of sanctuaries, the consecration of cemeteries — but above all, the doctrine of purgatory, and masses for the relief of the dead. A creed thus continued, operating upon the minds of barbarians, lavish though rapacious, and devout though dissolute, naturally caused a torrent of opulence to pour in upon the church. Donations of lands were continually made to the bishops, and still, in more ample proportions, to the monastic foundations. Large private estates, or, as they were termed, patrimonies, not only within their dioceses, but sometimes in distant countries, sustained the dignity of the principal sees, and especially that of Rome. The French monarchs of the first dynasty, the Carlovingian family and their great chief, the Saxon line of emperors, the kings of England and Leon, set hardly any bounds to their liberality, as numerous charters still extant in diplomatic collections attest. Many churches possessed seven or eight thousand mansi: one with only two thousand, passed for only indifferently rich. And, as if all these methods for accumulating what they could not legitimately enjoy, were insufficient, the monks prostituted their knowledge of writing to the purpose of forging charters in their own favor! If it had not been,” says the same author, “for certain drawbacks, the clergy must one would imagine, have almost acquired the exclusive property of the soil. They did enjoy nearly one half of England, and, I believe, a greater proportion in some countries of Europe.” In a note he also states, that “according to a calculation founded on a passage in Knyghton, the revenue of the English church in 1337, amounted to seven hundred and seventy thousand marks per annum;”7 that is, according to the estimate of the same author, about fifty-three million nine hundred thousand dollars! Nor is this all: the Pope came in for his share of the spoils. Besides tithes, Peter-pence, etc., which he usually received from the English church and government, in his war with the Emperor Frederic, he laid a special tax upon the church of England. “The usurers of Cahors and Lombardy,” says Hallam, “residing in London, took up the trade of agency for the Pope; and in a few years, he is said partly by levies of money, partly by the revenues of benefices, to have plundered the kingdom of nine hundred and fifty thousand marks; a sum, equivalent, I think, to not less than fifteen millions sterling at present.”

But let us adduce other testimony. Hume, in his History of England, states, that “among their other inventions to obtain money, the clergy had inculcated the necessity of penance, as an atonement for sin; and having again introduced the practice of paying them large sums, as a commutation, or species of atonement for the remission of those penances, the sins of the people by these means had become a revenue to the priests; and the king computed, that by this invention alone, they levied more money upon his subjects, than flowed by all the funds and taxes into the royal exchequer.”8 The same author states, that during the reign of Edward III., A.D., 1253-55, Otho, the Pope’s legate, “carried more money out of the kingdom than he left in it.” About this time, the chief benefices in England were conferred upon Italians, most of whom were non-residents. A complaint was consequently entered by the king and nobility before the Pope, at a general council held at Lyons, “that the benefices of the Italian clergy in England, had been estimated, and were found to amount to sixty thousand marks a year, a sum which exceeded the annual revenue of the crown itself.” Instead, however, of this complaint arresting the rapacity of the Pope, “Innocent exacted the revenues of all vacant benefices; the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues without exception, the third of such as exceeded a hundred marks a year, and the half of such as were possessed by non-residents. He claimed the goods of all intestate clergymen; he pretended a title to inherit all money gotten by usury; he levied benevolences upon the people; and when the king prohibited these exactions, he threatened to pronounce upon him the same censures, which he had emitted against the Emperor Frederic.”9

During the reign of Henry IV., A.D., 1413, “the Commons,” says the same author, “made a calculation of the ecclesiastical revenues, which, by their account, amounted to four hundred and eighty-five thousand marks a year, (about thirty-three millions nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars,) and contained eighteen thousand four hundred ploughs of land. They proposed to divide this property among fifteen new earls, one thousand five hundred knights, six thousand esquires, and a hundred hospitals; besides twenty thousand pounds a year which the king might take for his own use. and they insisted, that the clerical functions would be better performed than at present, by fifteen thousand parish priests, paid at the rate of seven marks a piece of yearly stipend.” According to this estimate of the House of Commons, the Roman Catholic religion taxed the English public in the reign of Henry IV., about twentysix millions six hundred thousand dollars of our money more than the support of the gospel in that kingdom required! This is also exclusive of the proceeds from the lands! Can any one imagine a greater oppression? Can any one conceive of a wider departure from the simple and unpretending religion of Jesus? And to make the picture still more dark, all this went to a priesthood, who, for the greater part, led vicious and dissolute lives.

The fiscal condition of the Catholic church in England during the reign of Henry VIII., and in the year 1538, when the monasteries and other religious institutions were suppressed, may be learned from a work in the British Museum, published in 1717. This work is termed, “A summary of all the religious houses in England and Wales, with their titles and valuations at the time of their dissolution.” The number of such houses “is stated to be one thousand and forty-one; the aggregate annual valuation of them at the same period was 273,106 pounds, reckoning only the rent of the manors and produce of the demesnes, and excluding fines, heriots, renewals, dividends, etc. This sum would be represented in 1717, a little less than two hundred years afterwards, as stated by the same authority, by 3,277,282 pounds, as a consequence of the decrease in the value of money. Assuming that the decrease has been the same in the last century, it would now be represented by about 20,000,000 pounds; or $96,000,000.

“The proportion of the land of the country, held by the church at that time and of which the monks were lords, is stated at fourteen parts in twenty. In 1815, the annual assessed value of the real property of England and Wales, as stated in parliamentary records was 51,874,490 pounds. Fourteen twentieths of this sum, being the ancient proportion of the church revenues, would be about 34,500,000 pounds, or, $166,987,168! a sum, three fourths as large as the present annual revenue of the government of Great Britain, from all its sources and for all its purposes. Besides, too, this amazing absorption of the public wealth by the regular orders of the priesthood, there were four orders of mendicant monks, who not only lived on the residue of the property of the country, but abstracted large sums for their pious purposes. It is also stated by the same authority, that the Grand Duke of Tuscany — which is a district of Italy one hundred and fifty miles by one hundred — once ascertained and published, that the Church of Rome absorbed seventeen parts in twenty of the revenue of the land within his jurisdiction”!10

Here then, is the state of things, at the time of the Reformation. Was ever an event more needed than that Reformation? Here we see the professed ministers of Christ, who himself “had not where to lay his head,” not only lording it over princes in power and authority, but actually undermining their thrones and all national prosperity, by an accumulation of wealth truly fearful.

But it is alleged, that Popery has changed, that it is not now so exorbitant. Let us see. “In France,” says the same author, “under the old regime in 1789, the annual revenues of the church were 405,000,000 francs; or, 16,200,000 pounds; or, $77,760,000. Under the present system it is but $6,182,400, and divided among Catholics and Protestants according to their numbers.” That is, when the Catholic church in France had full sway, and only as late as 1787, that church levied upon the country, 71,577,600 dollars, beyond the sum which is appropriated at present for the support of religion in France. The state of things is no better in Spain. “The sum which the church property of Spain would yield, after providing for the decent maintenance of the clergy, was calculated by the Cortes of 1822, when joined to certain royal domains, lying useless to the state, to amount to 92,00,000 pounds; or, $441,600,000! The present entire annual revenue of the Spanish church, is 10,514,000 pounds; that of the state as lately reported by Count de Toreno, is about 5,000,000 pounds;”11 that is, the Spanish church absorbs twice the income of the kingdom of Spain! The question naturally rises here, what becomes of so much money? The proper answer, no doubt is, that it requires all this capital to forge the bolts and bars, and to weld the chains, by which 200,000,000 of people are kept subject to a system of priestcraft and superstition, the most monstrous and terrific that has ever existed upon the earth. There is probably not a country on the globe, where the power of such capital is not felt. See at present, even in these United States, what European and priestly-gotten wealth is accomplishing! See the splendid cathedrals, the noble churches, the costly buildings, which these hidden streams of money are starting up among us!

Besides this general use of such funds, it requires vast resources to support Popery. Superstition is always an expensive system. Truth is simple; and requires but small means. Error, however, is complex and involved, and demands the glitter of much gold and silver to sustain it. The number of ecclesiastics in Spain as estimated within a few years past, is 160,043. Besides these, there are lay-assistants to the amount of 90,346; making a total to be provided for of 206,002. When the population of Spain is divided by this sum, it will give one ecclesiastic or lay-assistant, to about every sixty-seven persons. Now, how is it possible for sixty seven persons, large and small, either to take up the whole time of a religious teacher, or to render him a support? Add to this the princely mode of living among bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and popes, and we shall soon see, that the popish system is and must be, not only the most tyrannical system on the globe, but also, the most expensive.

But let us go to Rome itself. See there the successor of St. Peter occupying the throne of the Caesars — not only the king and sovereign of the States of the Church, but the emperor over far and distant nations. Look at the Vatican, look at St. Peter’s! What wealth, what immense wealth exhibits itself around the very seat of him, who styles himself, the vicegerent of Christ on earth! Nor is this all; all kinds of superstitions are practiced in Rome for the sake of getting money. “I thought,” says, Dr. Sturtevant, writing from Rome, “when I last wrote to you, that I had some faint glimpse of the deceits and delusions practiced on the followers of popery. I could see depths, frightful and immense, of treasures of gold and silver, which papal imposition had extorted from the ignorant and superstitious, to pamper and uphold the dominion of the prince of darkness; but I had not fathomed the greatest reservoir of all, I mean indulgences. No measures also are untried, that crafty policy suggests, to solicit contributions for the relief of suffering souls in purgatory. Agents bearing lanterns with a painted glass, representing naked persons enveloped in flames, parade the streets and enter houses with tales that alarm, and appeals that excite the compassion of these holy souls. So great is the dread of purgatory, that besides the satisfactions they make in their lifetime, many deluded souls leave large legacies to the church to procure masses daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, as far as their money will go. Many would rather starve their surviving families, than neglect the souls of the departed. This doctrine is a mine as profitable to the church as the Indies to Spain.”12 All this takes place under the eye, and by the authority of the Pope; yea, he himself is the chief tradesman in such things. The same writer speaks of the Pope himself, as at one time clothed “in robes of white and silver;” at another as decked “in scarlet and gold.” The crowns and miters of the bishops and cardinals who attended his Holiness, were also “glittering with jewels and set with precious stones.” Surely, we have here almost the exact counterpart of what John predicts — “And the woman was arrayed in purple, and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls.” And if we consider the vast treasures of the Roman Catholic priesthood in all countries, and the wonderful resources of Roman Catholic institutions, the exclamation “so great riches!” used by the inspired writer, will not be found inappropriate.

Thus have we ascertained another coincidence between Antichrist and the Papacy. Antichrist was to revel in wealth, and glitter in jewelry and pearls. He was to possess the riches of the nations. Rome has enjoyed all these for centuries. Seated as a queen, this idolatrous church has decorated herself for the espousals of all the kings and princes of Europe, and of the world. She has had no mean lovers; for the great and the noble, conquerors and sovereigns, have all bent at her feet and reveled in her smiles. But this very glory in which she arrays herself, these meretricious ornaments in which she displays herself before the nations, only proclaim with the tongue of living thunder, that she is not the spouse of Christ; and that the day of her doom is approaching, when “the voice of the bride will no longer at all be heard in her; and when the light of a candle shall no longer at all shine in her.” Hasten it, O Lord, in its time, and let all the powers of Antichrist fall before thy victorious truth!

1 Stuart.
2 Church Hist., part 2. sect. 2.
3 Century iii.
4 Court of Rome, p. 3.
5 Rome, chapter 37.
6 Con. Cath. Priest, pages 5-7.
7 Middle Ages, chapter 7.
8 Henry II., A.D. 1163.
9 Henry III.
10 Colton’s Four Years, ii. 113.
11 Colton’s Four Years, p. 115.
12 Letters from Rome.

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