CHAPTER 3 ANTICHRIST A PECULIAR POWER

IN designating the person of Christ, the Holy Scriptures have specified, not only the place and time of his birth, but have also furnished certain traits of character, by which he might be distinguished from all others. The same course has been pursued in this holy volume in its description of Antichrist. Not only are the place and time of this extroardinary power given, but certain peculiar and characteristic marks are furnished, by which he may be distinguished from all other powers. In the present chapter, it is our design to consider the peculiarity of the power of Antichrist; or, some of those things in which he differs from all other political governments. In explaining to Daniel the symbol of the “little horn,” the angel said, “he shall be diverse from the rest.” Daniel 7:24. As the word which is here rendered diverse is variously translated, it will be proper, first to settle its import. The original is — Aˆm ançy awjw aymdq — and he shall be hated more than the first. So the word is literally translated, and so it is uniformly rendered in almost every instance in our English version. The seventy have rendered the passage thus, “oJv uJperoisei kakoiv pantav touv emprosqen” — who shall excel in wickedness all that were before him. The Apostle Paul seems to refer to this version, where he calls the same power, oJ anqrwpov thv aJmartiav and oJ anomov “that man of sin” and “that wicked.” The Vulgate renders the phrase in the following Latin: “Et ipse potentior erit prioribus” — “and he shall be more powerful than his predecessors.” This version is followed by the Doway Bible; “and he shall be mightier than the former.” Luther also adopts the same sense — “der wird maichtiger seyn denn der vorigen keiner” — “he will be more powerful than any that were before him.” The French agrees with our English version — “qui sera different des premiers;” — “who shall be diverse from the first.”

Probably the context will furnish us with a clue to the right meaning. The little horn is represented as having “eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things;” as being “more stout than his fellows,” and as “subduing three kings.” A horn is a scriptural symbol for a king or kingdom. Eyes denote cunning and craft, and a mouth speaking great things, indicates boastful pretensions and ambitious designs. Certainly a kingdom of this sort, growing up among other kingdoms, must be very dissimilar to its neighbors; it is likely to be more powerful, and in the end it must be hated. All these translations therefore substantially agree; and they all indicate certain peculiarities in which the power foretold, differs, not only from those around it, but from all preceding forms of government. This power we have already asserted to be the Papacy, which differs from other European governments in several respects. The Papacy is a spiritual power. Other European governments profess to be spiritual only in the sense, in which Paul asserts that “the powers that be are ordained of God;” that is, they are providentially appointed. Not so the Papacy. Its authority is professedly derived immediately from heaven. “The Pope receives power and jurisdiction,” says Dens, “immediately from Christ.” (Theol. iv.) “The authority given to St. Peter and his successors,” says the bull of Sixtus V., “excels all the powers of earthly kings and princes.”1 “One sword,” says Pope Boniface VIII., “must be under another, and the temporal authority must be subject to the spiritual power.”2 Again, Dens, in his Moral Theology, in answer to the question, “Has the supreme Pontiff a certain temporal and civil power?” gives the following answers: “There have been those, who ascribed to the Pontiff by divine right the most plenary and direct power over the whole world, as well in temporal as in spiritual things.” Others, he says, maintain that, “when the spiritual power cannot be freely exercised, nor the Pope’s object be obtained by spiritual, then he may have recourse to temporal means; and thus it has been done by Pontiffs more than once.” Here, according both to popes and doctors, the papacy is supreme in one way or another, and that by divine right, over all the kingdoms of the earth. This is certainly, one point of diversity, between this power and all others. No European kingdom, no kingdom that has ever existed, has assumed so much as this.

Another peculiarity of this power is, its awfully despotic character. In other governments there are privileges, there are checks upon power. But what privileges have Papists? What checks are there to papal tyranny? None, whatever. The supreme pontiff domineers over all. Having on his head Christ’s crown, and in his hand his rod of iron, he sets absolute defiance to all inferior orders and ranks of men. “Go and contemplate him in the Vatican,” says Gaussen, “as I have done; you will there see the painting which represents the Emperor Henry the Fourth, stripped before Gregory the Seventh, placed in the royal saloon, through which the ambassadors of all the powers of Europe pass; and in another, the heroic and powerful Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, on his knees before Pope Alexander the Third, in the public square at Venice. The Pope’s foot is on his shoulder; his scepter is thrown upon the ground, and underneath are these words, Fredericus supplex adorat, fidem et obedientiam pollicitus — “Frederic, having promised faith and obedience, as a suppliant adores,” (the Pope!) Where is the king of the west, who is carried on men’s shoulders, and surrounded by peacock’s feathers? Incense is burnt before him as an idol; he is knelt to on both knees; his slipper is kissed on his foot; and he is adored. Venite, adoremus — “Come, let us worship,” exclaim the cardinals, when they go to him.3

The following are extracts from the bishops’ and archbishops’ oath. “I.N., of the church of N., from henceforth will be faithful and obedient to St. Peter the Apostle, and to the Holy Roman Church, and to our Lord, the lord N., Pope N., and to his successors, canonically coming in. Heretics, schismatics and rebels to our said lord, or his aforesaid successors, I will to my power persecute, and oppress. The possession belonging to my table, I will neither sell, nor give away, nor mortgage, nor grant anew in fee, nor any wise alienate, no not even with the consent of the chapter of my church, without consulting the Roman Pontiff.”4 Surely, if kings and emperors, cardinals, archbishops and bishops, are thus miserably enslaved, the people cannot know what freedom is. A tyranny like this, has positively never existed besides it, on the earth. And the only wonder is, that men can be found so blinded by priestcraft, so passively tame in their tempers, as to submit to such an arbitrary and unnatural domination. And yet for ages on ages, not only the ignorant and the ignoble, but the proud and the great in Europe, have lain submissively under this galling yoke of bondage. The will of the Pope has been the fiat of the Almighty, and kings and emperors have trembled before him, as they would beneath the thunders of Jehovah.

The government of the Pope is also diverse from all other governments in the extent of its domination. Most governments have been satisfied with comparatively contracted territorial limits. Even those which have been the greatest and the most ambitious, have ruled over but a part of mankind. Neither the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, nor the Roman empire filled the world. The pretensions, however, of the successors of St. Peter, have uniformly extended to the entire globe. That Christ possessed “all power on earth,” none can deny who receive the New Testament as of divine authority. But Christ gave his power to St. Peter. and St. Peter left it to his successors in the papal chair at Rome. Whatever of power therefore, Jesus Christ has over the nations, the same has the Pope.5 Nor has this result of the papal system been denied by the abettors of popery. On the contrary, they constantly maintain it. The following is the established doctrine on this point as derived from their own divines. Prima sententia est, summum Pontificem jure divine habere plenissimam potestatem in universum orbem terrarum, tam in rebus ecclesiasticis quam civilibus.6 “The primary doctrine is, that the chief pontiff possesses by divine right, plenary power throughout the whole world both in ecclesiastical and civil matters.”7 In one of the canon laws of popery, it is affirmed that, ”The Roman Pontiff bears the authority, not of a mere man, but of the true God upon earth.” (Veri Dei vicem gerit in terris.8) “Under the Pope’s nose,” says Barrow, “and in his ear, one bishop styled him, ‘prince of the world;’ another orator called him, ‘king of kings and monarch of the earth;’ another great prelate said of him, that ‘he had all power above, all power in heaven and earth!”9

Presumption like this, we hesitate not to say, has not a parallel in the history of our race. No government has aspired to a dominion so great as this, nor has the most ambitious conqueror ever conceived, that a domain so vast, was to lie beneath his victorious sword. No; such ambition, such claims were left alone for the bishops of Rome to exhibit.

Another grand peculiarity of the papal power is to be found in the nature of the sanctions by which its laws are enforced. In all other human governments, offenses are punished by ordinary and temporal punishments. A man is fined, is deprived of certain privileges, is imprisoned, or is executed. In this case, a civil offense is followed by a 153 civil punishment. But the Papacy is a spiritual, as well as a temporal power. It draws out offenses from the conscience and the heart. Its inquisitorial confessions and courts, employ their interrogatories and their irons, as a sort of priestly omniscience, to survey all the secret chambers of the soul. When, too, the crime is ascertained, it is visited not simply with confiscation and burning, but with anathema. The temporal power of the ecclesiastical monarch enkindles the fires of the auto-da-fe, while his spiritual power consigns him to those of hell.

As the power of Christ was supreme, not only on earth, but also “in heaven,” the legal heir of his power is not satisfied with a divided patrimony; he must have all. Hence his keys, his masses, his prayers, open and shut the invisible world at pleasure. “He openeth and no man shutteth, he shutteth and no man openeth.” Leo X., one of the best of the Roman pontiffs, uses this language: “The Roman pontiff, the successor of Peter, in regard to the keys, and the vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, possessing the power of the keys, may, for reasonable causes, by his apostolic authority, grant indulgences out of the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints, to the faithful, who are united to Christ by charity, as well for the living as for the dead. Wherefore, all persons, whether living or dead, who really obtain any indulgences of this kind, are delivered from so much temporal punishment, due according to divine justice for actual sins, as is equivalent to the value of the indulgence bestowed and received.”10 “You may buy,” says Dr. Sturtevant, “as many masses as will free your souls from purgatory for twenty-nine thousand years, at the church of St. John’s Lateran, on the festa of that saint. Those that have interest with the Pope may obtain an absolution in full, from his holiness, for all the sins they ever have committed or may choose to commit.”11 “Because private believers,” says Dens, “may apply their own satisfactions to souls in purgatory, therefore the Pope may apply to them the satisfaction of Christ and the saints from the treasury of the church.”12 How long, therefore, a soul shall remain in purgatory, or whether it shall ever get out, depends upon the will of the Pope, exercised either by himself, or by some of his viceregents. And when we remember, that purgatory is one of the four divisions of hell, and that Bellarmine and others maintain, that its fires are of the same nature as those of hell, the power of the keys must surely give to the successors of St. Peter no ordinary influence over the fears, the purses, and the persons of his widely extended flock. Now, all other kings and sovereigns have left the infliction of such punishment with God only. They have punished men but as the subjects of civil law, and as amenable to civil penalties. They have not followed the departed spirit to eternity, and there also haunted it with their chains and instruments of torture. They have usually supposed that their work was ended at death. Not so the Pope and his priesthood. The iron grasp of their tyranny is not broken even by the power of the grave. They hold their subjects amenable even beyond time. They torture or bless them even in eternity itself. Surely, a government like this, cannot be found besides it, in the history of the world.

The possession of absolute infallibility is another peculiarity of the Papacy. The old Latin adage, “humanum est errare” — it is human to err — has so commended itself to the experience of mankind, that it has been converted into a sort of moral axiom, which no one doubts, and every one believes. Nor is it human for individuals simply to err; governments also err. Hence, in every wise civil constitution, there is always an article provided against the mistakes which may have crept into such constitution, even despite the wisdom of its framers. And in all courts of law, even in those from which there is no appeal, it is yet believed, that there may be erroneous decisions and that the condemned must sometimes look, not to the tribunals of man, but to the judgments of God for ultimate justice. Nor can there be found in the history of the world, a solitary king, sovereign, or saint, in whom there have not been either the ebullitions of passion; or the mistakes of the understanding. One perfect or infallible man has never yet existed, save the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was more than man. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, and Peter, plead no exemption from universal human frailty. Yet, this is the boast of the Roman Pontiff! As a man, it is allowed, even he may err; but as the vicar of Christ, like Christ himself, his judgments, are infallible. “The supreme Pontiff,” says Dens, “determining from the throne, matters relating to faith or customs, is infallible: which infallibility proceeds from the especial assistance of the Holy Ghost.”13 Blessed Spirit of the living God! one is ready to exclaim — are all the blunders, the errors, the follies, the madness, the persecutions, the bloodshed, of the Roman Pontiffs, many of which have disgraced mankind, are all these to be ascribed to thy direction and counsel! Yet, such are the pretensions of the Pope, such is the creed of Romanists! Poor pitiable sovereigns of Europe! How unfortunate is your condition! Ye are guilty of errors. Your blunders are on the page of history. But your venerable father, your endeared brother, the Pope, has none of your frailties, none of your human weaknesses! Why, then, do ye not all seek wisdom from him; take counsel from him? Why debate so long in your national legislatures? Why not send an express to Rome to gain infallible decisions?

Thus stands the Roman pontificate — a sui generis in fact, as well as a sui generis in vision. Well might Daniel gaze in astonishment, “because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake!” It is worthy of notice here, that this ancient seer expresses no astonishment whatever at the appearance of the other horns. Each one of them was the symbol of a kingdom as well as “the little horn.” Yet the attention of the prophet is wholly turned to the contemplation of the little horn.” This horn was to him a matter of the greatest wonder. Unlike the other horns, it had “eyes and a mouth speaking great things.” Though little, “its look was more stout than its fellows.” It seemed, too, to be filled with the most inveterate hatred to the saints. The prophet gazed and wondered when he contemplated this horn; because, while the other horns were the symbols of ordinary, political kingdoms, the little horn, in which so many contraries met, was the symbol of a kingdom, the like to which had never existed, either in the heaven above or on the earth beneath. It was to be diverse from all kingdoms.

Now, where is the king or kingdom, in which the peculiarities of the little horn are to be found? Not in Antiochus. Not in Julius Caesar. Not in Mohammed. None of these men were so peculiarly distinguished from their fellow men; nor did any of them, save Caesar, have any connection with the Roman beast. Where then shall we find the reality of which “the little horn” is the symbol? In Antichrist, says the Romanist; but Antichrist has not yet come. In Antichrist, we say; but Antichrist has already been in the world for more than a thousand years. Thus does the anomalous character of the Papacy prove it to be the antitype of “the little horn.” This power is unlike all others; is uncongenial with all others. It is a usurper, a supplanter. We can readily conceive, how a spiritual power, either associated with the state, or entirely independent of the state, may exist without discord or collision. If the church be entirely distinct from the political institutions of a people, there can of course be no disturbance, as there is no contact. And if a church be established by law, as the operations of the religious and the political systems are kept in distinct spheres, there may be but occasional evils growing out of such union. But for a government that claims its existence jure divino, that sets up a universal empire, that arrogates to itself supremacy in all civil, as well as ecclesiastical matters — for a government that considers itself infallible, and which requires absolute submission in all its subjects — for such a government to exist in the midst of other governments; in its very principles trampling upon their rights and privileges; wielding both a temporal and a spiritual sword; punishing offenders both in this world and the next — for such a government to exist in harmony with other governments, is impossible, absolutely impossible. The papal system can harmonize with no other, whether religious or political. To the religious world, it exhibits one supreme pontiff of Christendom, and requires for him universal obedience. To the political world, it presents one great monarch, whose throne is above every throne, and whose will is law throughout the globe. No the Papacy is a unit, and presents the front of positive hostility to every thing that is not consolidated in itself. It may not be able to carry out its principles and wishes, but this is its nature. It is “diverse from all other governments; it is the adversary of all other governments.

1 Barrow.
2 Idem.
3 Geneva and Rome.
4 Barrow.
5 Some may suppose that the former pretensions of the occupants of the
chair of St. Peter, have been relinquished by his more modern
successors. Such, however, is by no means the case. In a letter to his
brothers, Counts Gabriel, Joseph, and Gaetano Mastai Feretti, dated
Rome, June 16, 1846, the recently elected Pope, Pius IX., uses the
following language — “The blessed God, who humbles and exalts, has
beep pleased to raise me from insignificance to the most sublime
dignity on earth.” It is evident, therefore, that however weak the more
modern Popes are in reality, their opinions as to the exalted dignity of
their Stations, are perfectly coincident with the views of
6 Gregory VII. or Innocent III.
7 Barrow.
8 Church of Rome compared, p. 29.
9 Supremacy, 17.
10 Le Plat. quoted by Cramp, 341.
11 Letters from Rome.
12 Theol., chap. xl.
13 Theol., ch.iv .

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