CHAPTER XVI. Man of Sin and Son of Perdition.

We have traced the parallel to its grand culmination, and shown how close is the imitation in every stage of its course. The apostle adds a few touches to complete the portrait of the Antichrist, and in closing bestows a glance at the awful termination of his career. Let us rapidly survey what remains.

The apostle styles him as the “man if sin” and “son of perdition.” Christ is the man of holiness; the only holy man the world ever saw. “That holy thing,” said the angel when he announced His birth. “Thy holy Child Jesus,” said an apostle of Him, while another wrote of Him, “Holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” He was typified in the Lamb of the Passover as “without blemish.”

The Pope or Vice-Christ is the man of sin. He has invented sin, he has taught sin, he has enacted sin,” established iniquity by a law,” he has traded in sin, he sells indulgences and pardons; he has grown rich through the sins of Christendom. Sin is his being, and sin is his work. Popery is as purely an incarnation of sin as the Gospel is of holiness.

Everything that Popery touches it converts into sin. It possesses an accursed alchemy by which it transmutes what is good into evil. It has taken all the commandments of the decalogue and converted them into sin. It has taken all the doctrines of the Gospel and converted them into sin; it had taken all the sacraments of the Church and converted them into instruments of sin; it has taken all the offices and officers of the church and made them agents of sin; it has taken all that is subtle in intellect, all that is brilliant in genius, and all that is noble in eloquence, and used them in the service of sin. The policy of Popery is not to deny truth; it ever acts as a Vice-Christ, as a pretended friend; its policy is to pervert truth, to metamorphose it, and make it fight against itself. There is not a doctrine in the Bible which Popery does not in appearance admit; there is not a doctrine in the Bible which Popery does not in reality deny, and the saving effects of which it does not make void. It takes what is wholesome, and by its infernal skill changes it into what is poisonous. The spiritual apparatus which God has set up for His own glory and man’s salvation, Popery has laid hold of and works for just the opposite ends even -God’s dishonour and man’s ruin. It is a second and greater Jeroboam who has made Israel to sin. Verily, it is the “man of sin.”

Paul further styles him “the son of perdition,” a phrase of terrible significance. It is used in Scripture only once before, and in a connection that imparts to the phrase an awfully tragic meaning. It is applied to Judas after the devil had entered into him, and so worked upon him, that he rested not till he betrayed his Master. This first “son of perdition” went forth from the bosom of the infant church, where he had just partaken of the passover cup: he rose up from the very presence of the God-man, to enact his awful apostacy.

The second and greater “son of perdition,” in like manner, arose in the bosom of the primitive church. Satan having entered into him, his ambition began to burn, and he went forth to the princes of the world, and said unto them, “What will ye give me, and I will betray Christianity unto you?” Manifestly ye are not able to overthrow it. It has taken root and is filling the earth, despite your armies and your edicts. The fires of ten persecutions have blazed around it; but all in vain. The bush has burned, yet it is not consumed. You are labouring at a work beyond your power. If Christianity shall ever know extinction, its overthrow must come from within: it must come from myself and no other. Give me my hire; give me the seat of Caesar; give me the “kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,” and I will go forth and show myself to man as the Vice-Christ, and the world will believe on me, and follow me. Where your force has failed, my craft will triumph. The policy was astute as deep: need we say who was its prompter?

The apostle makes this point clear. The coming of the “man if sin,” he had said, was to be after “the working of Satan.” The head of the apostacy was to be energised, prompted, sustained, and led on by Satan, “the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil.” Popery is the son of perdition: the spawn, the offspring of Apollyon the destroyer, and it must needs do its father’s work. As it is God’s work to create, so it is Satan’s work to destroy. The fair fabric of nature he would if he could destroy; the moral constitution of society he has so far destroyed. His name is Apollyon the destroyer, and the work of Popery is the same. The principles of morality and evangelical virtue in man it destroys; the principles of renewing power in the Gospel it perverts and destroys. Wherever it has found a seat in Europe there is the blackness of perdition -ignorant men, mouldering cities, and enslaved and demoralised nations. “Apollyon the destroyer has passed this way,” we exclaim, “here are his footprints; all along his track is the blackness of physical, moral, and spiritual death. We think of the pale horse and his name that sat on him was Death, and hell followed him.”

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