Henry Grattan Guinness D. D. (11 August 1835 – 21 June 1910) was an Irish Protestant Christian preacher, evangelist and author. He was the great evangelist of the Evangelical awakening and preached during the Ulster Revival of 1859 which drew thousands to hear him. He was responsible for training and sending hundreds of “faith missionaries” all over the world. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Grattan_Guinness)

The alternate title for this book is

Time as an Interpreter.

My good friend Dr. John Gideon Hartnett sent me the link to this book in PDF format on http://historicism.com/ PDF files are not nearly as easy for me to read as HTML.

H. Grattan Guinness He is also the author of Romanism and the Reformation which is also posted on this site.

The text is slightly edited. I just couldn’t take the time to make all the tables and add all the footnotes. I’m only interested in the message. Yes I know good documentation should have references. You can download and read for yourself the PDF file I got the text from.

This book is continued in Section X The Present Stage

PREFACE

THE lofty decree of Papal Infallibility issued by the Vatican Council of 1870, immediately followed by the sudden and final fall of the Papal Temporal Power, after a duration of more than a thousand years, was the primary occasion of my writing that series of works on the fulfilment of Scripture prophecy which has appeared during the last quarter of a century.

I left Paris, where I had been labouring in the Gospel, at the outbreak of the Franco-German war in July, 1870. It was in the light of the German bombardment of that city, of the ring of fire which surrounded it, and of the burning of the Tuileries, that I began to read with interest and understanding the prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse. Subsequent visits to Italy and Rome enlarged my view of the subject. A library of books bearing on it was accumulated, historical, astronomical, and prophetic, including 150 commentaries on the Apocalypse, ancient and modern, from the commentary of Victorinus in the third century., down to those of Elliott and others in the nineteenth. These studies laid the foundation of my works on prophecy.

The present work, which differs in important respects from my previous works, as being chiefly historical in character, may be fitly introduced by a brief explanation of the method of interpretation which it follows.

A great and incontrovertible principle underlies the method it pursues in the interpretation of the Apocalypse. Simply stated that principle is that :

In two ways does the great Revealer of the prophecy explain its meaning — by words, and deeds ; by written word, and acted deeds. He has given us a verbal explanation of its most central and important vision, one which stands in close and commanding connection with all its other visions and in the long course of Christian history he has fulfilled its predictions.

Thus Scripture is the key to Scripture; and Providence to Prophecy.

The historic interpretation of the Apocalypse which rests on this twofold foundation has been slowly developed under the influence of the divine action in Providence; it has changed in details with the changing currents of Providence; it has grown with the growth of the knowledge of the plans of Providence; it has been confirmed and sealed by the whole course of Providence. It is no vain, or puerile, or presumptuous speculation. It is a reverent submission to the very words of God, and a reverent recognition of His acts. God has spoken; He has given an explanation of the central and commanding vision of that prophecy; and God has acted; He has fulfilled its predictions. In pointing to the words and deeds of God we act as His witnesses. What hath God said? What hath He done? These are the questions. We are wearied with vain speculations as to the meaning of prophecy which have no other foundation than the assertions of men. We are wearied with speculations as to imaginary future fulfilments of prophecies which have been plainly accomplished before our eyes in the past; prophecies on whose accomplishment in the events of Christian history the structure of the great Reformation of the sixteenth century was built; on the fact of whose accomplishment in their days the confessors stood, and the martyrs suffered. Alas! the speculations of men have clouded these facts and brought into disrepute the Holy Word of God. Even good men have been led to neglect the voice of divine prophecy, and to refuse its lamp to light their steps, through the follies of its exponents. Is it not time that the last prophetic book in the Word of God, a book bearing the seal of the signature of the name of “JESUS” should be lifted up from dust of neglect, and set upon a candlestick in the midst of the house, to shed its clear light and cheering beams on all around? Let the reverent believer who “trembles” at God’s word, the patient student who has searched the records of the past, the uncompromising witness who fears not the faces of men, lift up that fallen lamp from the soil on which men have cast it, and place it where Copernicus placed the sun, as a kingly light enthroned in the centre of its system.

In agreement with the foregoing principle I have written, among others, two works, on the interpretation of the symbolical prophecies in Daniel and the Apocalypse by means (1) of divinely given explanations of their meaning contained in the books themselves, and (2) by the events of history. The first of these works, published in 1899, is entitled “A Key to the Apocalypse, or the seven divinely given Interpretations of symbolic prophecy.” The second is the present work.

In the first of these I have shown that as God has graciously given us His own all-wise and infallible explanations of the meaning of certain leading and determinative portions of the symbolical prophecies in the book of Daniel and the Apocalypse, no interpretation of these prophecies can be secure and trustworthy which does not rest on these divine explanations, and employ them as keys to unlock the meaning of the prophecies as a whole.

The seven divinely given interpretations of Daniel and the Apocalypse are the following :

I. The interpretation of the vision of the great image in Daniel 2.

II. The interpretation of the vision of the great tree in Daniel 4.

III. The interpretation of the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar’s Palace in Daniel 5.

IV. The interpretation of the ram and he-goat in Daniel 8. V. The interpretation of the four wild beast kingdoms, and of the kingdom of the Son of Man, in Daniel 7.

VI. The interpretation of the seven stars, and seven candlesticks in Revelation 1.

VII. The interpretation of the woman “ Babylon the great,” and of the seven-headed, ten-horned beast that carries her, in Revelation 17.

Concerning the last of these interpretations I have shown that “of all the visions in the prophetic part of the Apocalypse (chaps. vi-xxii), that of Babylon and the beast in chap. xvii, is the only one divinely interpreted;” and that through the interpretation of this vision a door is opened to the understanding of the rest of the prophecy.

(1) The woman is interpreted as signifying the city of Rome.

(2) The city is represented as sitting on “seven hills,” the well known seven hills of Rome.

(3) The “many waters” over which she rules are interpreted as “peoples, and multitudes, and nations and tongues.”

(4) The wild beast which sustains and carries her the ten horned wild beast of Daniel’s prophecies, the fourth of his four Gentile kingdoms, the kingdom of Rome-is interpreted in detail.

(a) Its seven heads are interpreted to represent ruling powers. Of these it is expressly stated “five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come.— Thus the sixth head of the wild beast power which carried the harlot is stated to have been in existence when the Apocalypse was written ; and must necessarily therefore refer to the government of the Cesars, as then represented by the Emperor Domitian. This locates the visions of the Apocalypse as relating to Roman and Christian history.

(b) The ten horns are interpreted as ten kingdoms, then future, into which the empire should be divided. These horns, or kingdoms first submit to the harlot city, and then rise against her and “ make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.”

As to the use of this central interpreted vision to explain the other visions of the Apocalypse I have pointed out that there are three visions in the Apocalypse of the ten horned wild beast power.

The first in chapter 12.
The second in chapter 13.
The third in chapter 17.

(1) That the interpretation of one of these in chapter 17, determines the meaning of all three.

(2) That these three visions of the wild beast power represent successive stages in the history of the Roman Empire, as first under the government of its seven heads; secondly under the government of its ten horns, for in the prophecy the crowns are transferred from the heads to the horns; and thirdly as carrying, and then casting off and destroying, the harlot Babylon.

(3) That the story of Babylon and the Beast occupies the largest and most central part of the Apocalyptic prophecy, being referred to in no less than ten successive chapters: Chapters 11. 125 131 141 15) 16, 17j 18, 19) 20.

(4) That to the visions relating to the Roman Empire under its revived eighth head prophetic times are attached representing

1. The period of the sun-clothed woman in the wilderness (chap. xii).

2. The period of the rule of the eighth head of the wild beast (chap. xiii).

3. The period during which the outer temple court is trodden under foot by the Gentiles (chap. xi).

4. The period during which the witnesses prophesy in sackcloth (chap. xi).

These four periods are manifestly the same period stated in three forms, as days, months, and “times,” or years 1,260 days; forty-two months, and three and one-half “times,” or years: and are to be interpreted on the year-day scale; a scale recognized in both the law and the prophets; the scale on which the ” seventy weeks” to Messiah are universally interpreted; a scale justified by the course and chronology of Christian history, and confirmed by the discoveries of astronomy as to the cyclical character of the prophetic times.

The interpretation of the Apocalypse thus reached is in harmony with that of the book of Daniel, and links both prophecies with one and the same series of events-the course of five kingdoms, the temporal kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and the eternal kingdom of God. The Apocalypse is simply the story told in advance of the two last kingdoms of Daniel’s prophecy; the story of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and of the rise and establishment of the kingdom of God.

From the interpretation of the Apocalypse by means of the divinely given explanation of its most central and commanding vision, we now advance to the subject of the present volume, the interpretation of the prophecy by the events of history.

History has ever been the interpreter of prophecy. It was so notably in New Testament times, for the sufferings and glories of our Lord, foretold in the Old Testament, remained uncomprehended until their meaning was revealed by the events of history. Similarly the predictions concerning the great apostasy, or “falling away ” from the faith and practice of Apostolic times which has taken place in the Christian Church, were not comprehended till explained by historical events. And thus has it been all along. From the beginning of the world to the present day Time has ever been the chief interpreter of prophecy. For prophecy is history written in advance. As the ages roll by history practically takes the place of prophecy, the foretold becoming the fulfilled.

A clear and comprehensive view of the leading events of Christian history up to the date of the Reformation is afforded by Gibbon’s noble work on “ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” This standard work embraces in a single view the history of the Roman Empire and Christian Church for fourteen centuries, from the time of the Antonines to the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire at the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. It is enhanced by its extensive learning, its philosophic spirit, the lucidity of its arrangement, and the majesty of its style. The value of Gibbon’s work as an unintended key to the Apocalypse is exhibited by the well-known commentator Albert Barnes in the following interesting account of his own experience:

“Up to the time of commencing the exposition of this book (the Apocalypse) I had no theory in my mind as to its meaning. I may add, that I had a prevailing belief that it could not be explained, and that all attempts to explain it must be visionary and futile. With the exception of the work of the Rev. George Croly, which I read more than twenty years ago, and which I had never desired to read again, 1 had perused no commentary on this book until that of Professor Stuart was published, in 1845. In my regular reading of the Bible in family and in private, 1 had perused the book often. 1 read it, as 1 suppose most others do, from a sense of duty, yet admiring the beauty of its imagery, the sublimity of its descriptions, and its high poetic character; and though to me wholly unintelligible in the main, finding so many striking detached passages that were intelligible and practical in their nature, as to make it on the whole attractive and profitable, but with no definitely formed idea as to its meaning as a whole, and with a vague general feeling that all the interpretations which had been proposed were wild, fanciful and visionary.

“In this state of things, the utmost that I contemplated when I began to write on it was, to explain, as well as I could, the meaning of the language and the symbols, without ‘attempting to apply the explanation to the events of past history, or to inquire what is to occur hereafter. I supposed that I might venture to do this without encountering the danger of adding another vain attempt to explain a book so full of mysteries, or of propounding a theory of interpretation to be set aside, perhaps, by the next person that should prepare a commentary on the book.

“Beginning with this aim, I found myself soon insensibly inquiring whether, in the events which succeeded the time when the ‘book was written, there were not historical facts of which the emblems employed would be natural and proper symbols, on the supposition that it was the divine intention in disclosing these visions to refer to them, and whether, therefore, there might not be a natural and proper application of the symbols to these events. In this way I examined the language used in reference to the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth seals, with no anticipation or plan in examining one as to what would be disclosed under the next seal ; and in this way also I examined ultimately the whole book: proceeding step by step in ascertaining the meaning of each word and symbol as it occurred, but with no theoretic anticipation as to what was to follow.

To my own surprise, I found, chiefly in Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ a series of events recorded such as seemed to me to correspond to a great extent with the series of symbols found in the Apocalypse. The symbols were such as it might be supposed would he used, on the supposition that they were intended to refer to these events; and the language of Mr. Gibbon was often such as he would have used, on the supposition that he had designed to prepare a commentary on the symbols employed by John. It was such, in fact, that if it had been found in a Christian writer, professedly writing a commentary on the book of Revelation, it would have been regarded by infidels as a designed attempt to force history to utter a language that should conform to a predetermined theory in expounding a book full of symbols. So remarkable have these coincidences appeared to me in the course of this exposition, that it has almost seemed as if he had designed to write a commentary on some portion of this book; and I found it difficult to doubt that that distinguished historian was raised up by an overruling Providence to make a record of those events which would ever afterwards be regarded as an impartial and unprejudiced statement or the evidences of the fulfilment of prophecy. The historian of the I Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ had no belief in the divine origin of Christianity, but he brought to the performance of his work learning and talent such as few Christian scholars have possessed. He is always patient in his investigations; learned and scholar-like in his references; comprehensive in his groupings, and sufficiently minute in his details; unbiased in his statement of facts, and usually cool and candid in his estimates of the causes of the events which he records; and, excepting his philosophical speculations, and his sneers at everything, he has probably written the most candid and impartial history of the times that succeeded the introduction of Christianity that the world possesses; and even after all that has been written since his time, his work contains the best ecclesiastical history that is to be found. Whatever use of it can be made in explaining and confirming the prophecies will be regarded by the world as impartial and fair; for it was a result which he least of all contemplated, that he would ever be regarded as an expounder of the prophecies in the Bible, or be referred to as vindicating their truth.

“It was in this manner that these Notes on the Book of Revelation assumed the form in which they are now given to the world; and it surprises me-and, under this view of the matter, may occasion some surprise to my readers-to find how nearly the views coincide with those taken by the great body of Protestant interpreters. And perhaps this fact may be regarded as furnishing some evidence that after all the obscurity attending it, there is a natural and obvious interpretation of which the book is susceptible ” (Barnes on the Revelation, preface, pp. xi-xiii).

The present volume traces the history of that interpretation, describes its progressive development under the modifying influence of the events of the last nineteen centuries from stage to stage, from its germinant form in the pre-Constantine centuries, through Medieval and Reformation times, down to the present day.

As written later than Elliott’s great work on the Horae Apocalypticae, whose five editions appeared in the years 1844-1862, the present work takes into account the long expected fall of the papal temporal power in 1870, immediately following the decree of papal infallibility; and the present deeply interesting Zionist movement dating from 1897, for the national restoration of the Jews to the land of their fathers.

An important confirmation of the historical interpretation of the Apocalypse afforded by the discovery of the astronomical features of the prophetic times, is briefly set forth at the close of the volume. The extensive astronomical tables published by the author in 1896 are based on the remarkable fact that the prophetic times of Daniel and the Apocalypse are extremely perfect astronomical cycles harmonizing solar and lunar revolutions. The year-day theory resting on Scripture analogy and historic strongly confirmed by the discovery, and the fulfilment is 1,260, 1,290, 1,335, and 2,300 ”days” of Daniel and the Apocalypse proved to represent the same number of years in Jewish and Christian history.

It is a deep satisfaction to the author to remember that whatever may be the views of a modern section of sceptical or speculative interpreters of the Apocalypse, who either see no reference to definite historical events in the prophecy, or relegate its fulfilment to future times, in accepting and advocating its historical interpretation, in regarding it as the story told in advance in symbolic language of the events of the Christian centuries, he is treading in the steps of the greater part of Apocalyptic interpreters from the earliest times, of Justin Martyr; Irenaeus ‘ Tertullian, Hippolytus, Victorinus, Methodius, Lactantius, Eusebius, Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine among the Fathers; of Bede and Anspert, Andreas and. Anselm, Joachim Abbas and Almeric of the middle ages, of the AIbigenses and Waldenses, of Wickliffe and the Lollards, of John Huss and Jerome of Prague of pre-Reformation times ; of the Reformers, English, Scottish, and Continental; of the noble army of Confessors and Martyrs who suffered under Pagan and Papal Rome; of the Puritan theologians, of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, of Mede and More, and Sir Isaac Newton, and Jonathan Edwards that greatest of American theologians, of Bengel the learned German exegete, of Alford and Wordsworth, of Birks and Bickersteth, of Faber and Elliott in England, and a host of others, men distinguished for their ability, their assiduity, their spirituality, their deep study of the prophetic world, in short by what appear to be the greatest and best of the expositors of the book. Modern historical interpreters of’ the Apocalypse are in good company; they stand with the Fathers, the Confessors, the Martyrs, the Reformers, with men who suffered for the truth they believed, and were practically guided and inspired by the interpretations they have handed down to posterity. The fanciful interpretations of the Preterists who falsely conceive the Apocalypse to bear a Neronic date, and to be Neronic in its references, have never been a practical power in the history of the Church; the vague interpretations of a modern school, German and English, which ignoring the clearly defined order of the Apocalyptic Visions, their synchronisms acid successions, their system of prophetic times, fixed acid absolute, and sure as the times of the celestial luminaries, reduce the prophecy to a nebulous mass of anticipations of things in general in human history, have wrought no victories, have accomplished no reformations, have sustained no martyrs, and are self-refuted by their impotence, and unworthiness as expositions of the last great revelation of Jesus Christ concerning “ the things” which were to “come to pass.” The same may be said as regards the reveries of the Futurists ; barren of practical and worthy effects, they have denied accomplishments recognized by the great mass of prophetic interpreters in the past; they have invented future fulfilments, as unsubstantial and impossible as the dreams of those who they have forsaken the great trend, the main path, the well trodden highway of Apocalyptic interpretation, based upon divine explanations of prophetic symbols, and unquestionable historic facts, for empty speculations about the future unprofitable speculations mistake bizarre imaginations for sober realities as to the coming universal dominion of a short-lived infidel antichrist, to be seated in a literal temple to be erected by the Jews in Palestine, who in the brief space of three and a half years is to fulfil all the wonders of the Apocalyptic drama, and exhaust the meaning of the majestic prophecy which the Church of God has been blindly misinterpreting and misapplying throughout all these ages. Surely it is time for such interpreters to consider the unscripturalness and unreasonableness of the method of interpretation which they employ, the absence of authority, of warrant, for their views, the entire lack of demonstration human or divine; and the fruitlessness of their speculations, as afford rig no present guidance to the Church, and their injuriousness as extinguishing the lamp which God has given His people to guide their steps along the perilous way of their pilgrimage. 1 am well convinced from wide observation that many excellent persons adopt these modern prophetic speculations because good men have advocated them, here and there and for no better reason; they have heard them advanced in prophetic conferences, they have read them in books. and tracts, full of confident assertions, superficial and dogmatic compositions on the sublimest questions which can exercise the human mind, and they have been satisfied to believe without proof, and to repeat without independent investigation the marvellous inventions of busy brains as to the antichrist of the future, without ever having soberly inquired whether the Reformers and Martyrs were right or not in their recognition of the antichrist as already come, and as long reigning in the professing Church, the Standard Bearer of an abominable apostasy, the very Masterpiece of Satan for the delusion of mankind. Let us appeal to such to open their eyes to the facts of history, to turn their thoughts for awhile to the sublime story of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, of the rise of the great apostasies in the Eastern and Western Church, of the testimony and sufferings of the Christian witnesses of the middle ages, and Reformation days, and of the retributive acts of Providence in our own time, the manifest and awful judgments which have been poured forth on Papal Rome in and since the French Revolution, judgments whose afterwaves are rolling and reverberating still, uttering with no uncertain sound the solemn conclusion that so far from living in days preceding the fulfilment of Apocalyptic prophecy, we are living in the closing days of the accomplishment of the things which it has foretold.

In writing thus, and in making this appeal, 1 write as one who has long and deeply studied both Prophecy and History, and as one who knows that his days are numbered, and that he must give account before long of his stewardship as a teacher in the Christian church, for in the present year of the publication of this volume I have entered on the fiftieth year of my ministry, a ministry in which I have striven to teach in harmony with the oracles of God,” and to declare, as far as in me lies, the whole counsel of God.” I have no private ends to accomplish by the publication of this book; it is written in the interest of truth, as a heritage for my children, a guide to those whom I would not and dare not mislead, a help to young men and women prosecuting their studies in their homes or colleges with a view to future usefulness; and for ministers of the gospel, most of them my younger brethren, to whom I would be of service; and for the sake of any into whose hands it may come, of open heart and unprejudiced mind, desirous of understanding more clearly the meaning of the last predictions in the Word of God. Brethren, beloved in the Lord, in writing thus, it is not 1 who testify, but the voice of a multitude of Witnesses, mostly gathered now before the throne of God. We shall spend eternity with them; are we prepared to join their songs of triumph, to echo the hallelujahs which break from their lips? Is the testimony of the Word of God to us what it was to them? Is our testimony in the world in harmony with theirs? Can we join the Reformers in their witness, and the Martyrs in their song? They stand on the sea of glass mingled with fire, having the harps of God, proclaiming the accomplishment of God’s judgments in the fall of Papal Babylon; shall we stand apart from them, electing to sing some little song of our own out of harmony with the great volume of the voice of God’s redeemed? Let it not be! It would be unworthy of us. Compassed about with “so great a Cloud of Witnesses ” let us lay aside indifference and ignorance, prejudice, and misconception, and take our place with these in the great arena of conflict, dyed with martyr blood, to maintain “the Testimony of Jesus Christ, looking away from all beside to Him as the Author and Finisher of our faith, whose hand has given us this final prophecy to be our armour in the day of battle, our guide in the perils and perplexities of our pilgrimage, our morning star amid the darkness which precedes the dawn of eternal day. Behold the volume whose seals his hand, his providence, have loosed. Seal it not again. Neglect it not. Doubt no more its meaning. For lo Time, that great Interpreter, has rolled back the veil which once hung upon its mysteries, and is irradiating its pages as with the sunlight of heaven.

IT was towards the close of the first century of Christian history, in the year 95 or 96, that the aged Apostle John, banished by the Roman Emperor Domitian, to the lonely island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, beheld the Apocalypse. More than sixty visions described in the eventful years had elapsed since the ascension of his blessed Lord. During that long period he had looked back to that sublime and glorious event, as the closing incident in his Master’s earthly history, and often had retraced in thought every step of his last walk with the risen Saviour over the Mount of Olives, to the sloping fields above the little village of Bethany with the deep Jordan valley and the blue far-off hills of Moab full in view. On countless occasions he had recalled his Lord’s last charge, and parting blessing, and gazed in thought on His ascending form, and on the white robed angels whose words directed the minds of the bereaved disciples from the sorrowing contemplation of their Lord’s departure, to the glad anticipation of His return, saying, “This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.” But when was it to be that promised return? Was it to take place in the lifetime of the disciple whom Jesus loved? Had not the Master said concerning that disciple when speaking to Peter, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou Me.” Peter had died, following his Lord to the cross. Was he, John, to escape death? Was he to enjoy translation with the saints who were to be ‘I alive and remain ” to the Second Advent? Yet he remembered that Jesus had not promised he should not die, but had only said, “If I will that he tarry till I come.” What could that mean? The strange mysterious sentence lived and lingered in his thoughts; he ends his gospel narrative with it. Was he to behold before his departure some glorious prefiguration of his Lord’s return, like the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration; some vision, unveiling the secrets of the future more fully than they had been foreshadowed by that memorable event? No such revelation had been given, and he was now grown old; a venerable, patriarchal man, gentle and gracious in mien; the last survivor of the apostles. He had shared the promised baptism of Pentecost; had witnessed the marvellous growth of the Christian Church; had seen the fall of Jerusalem; the destruction of its glorious temple, of which now not one stone was left standing upon another; had witnessed the accomplishment of those dreadful judgments on the Jewish nation in anticipation of which his Master’s tears had fallen on the Mount of Olives, bedewing the palm branches spread by the multitudes beneath His feet. He had seen too the preliminary fulfilment of the signs of the approach of the Second Advent which his Master had predicted; the earthquakes, famines, pestilences, wars, and persecutions, the appearance of false prophets, and false Christs, of fearful signs and wonders in heaven. The idolatrous ensigns of the desolating Roman power had been planted within the precincts of the Holy City. The triumphal arch of Titus had been reared in Rome, the mighty metropolis of the world, to commemorate Jerusalem’s fall; that arch on which were represented in striking sculpture the sacred vessels of the sanctuary carried in triumph by heathen hands; the seven branched golden candlestick, the table of the shew bread, and the book of the law. Jerusalem was no more. The Jewish Dispensation founded ages before by those supernatural revelations granted to Moses and Israel on Mount Sinai had come to an end. The kingdom of heaven had taken its place, growing up silently as a grain of mustard seed, from small and despised beginnings to far reaching development. From the upper chamber of Jerusalem it had spread through Judea, Samaria, Galilee, and across the Roman Empire, in which there was scarce a city of importance which had not a Christian Church. It had reached Antioch and Alexandria, Crete and Corinth, Philippi and Thessalonica, Ephesus and Smyrna, Pergamos and Thyatira, Athens and Rome; it had spread throughout Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Egypt, and even as far as the western confines of Spain, and the distant isles of Britain; and this in spite of the most violent opposition and persecution from Jews and Gentiles. The gospel had penetrated even to Caesar’s household, and won the hearts of some of his nearest kindred. The aged Clement presided over the Christian Church in the city of Rome, undeterred by threats of imprisonment and martyrdom; while another Clement of high born position had just witnessed for Christ even unto blood, whose wife Domitilla had been banished to the desolate island of Pandateria, where she was suffering the same punishment for the Christian faith as John himself was enduring in Patmos.

And with the lapse of time changes for the worse had taken place in many Christian Churches, gross corruptions of the pure doctrines of the gospel had appeared. Self-righteous legalism and Judaic ritualism on the one hand, and false philosophy, the boasted wisdom, of the Gnostics on the other, had perverted the minds of many, corrupting them from the simplicity which is in Christ. Sects had arisen in the Church which denied the divinity of Christ, and the atoning character of His death. Tares had been sown by the enemy among the wheat, and were already flourishing on every side. It appeared as though the Antichrist so long before foretold by Daniel, and so emphatically predicted by Paul, might speedily con; springing up as a horn or ruler among the kings of the divided Roman Empire, and exalting himself as an overseer in the Christian Church, in whose symbolical temple it was foretold he would sit supreme, clothed with divine honours and prerogatives, and deceiving many to their eternal destruction. These things were to be, and the times seemed dark enough to indicate that they might even then be at hand. Daniel had revealed in mystical language the time of the manifestation of this antichristian power, and the period of its continuance. But what was the exact meaning of those times of Daniel? What meant the “time, times, and a half time,” of which he spoke; the 1,260, 1,290. and 1,335 days; the 2,300 ,evenings and mornings”; the periods which were to reach to the resurrection and promised “rest”, of the righteous at the end of the days ? Were they literal days which were meant, or were the days he spoke of symbolical of larger periods? Were these revelations in Daniel the last to be granted on the subject, or was more light to shine forth through communications of the truth yet to be given to the Church of “the last days”? Questions such as these may well have occupied the mind of the aged apostle in the lonely hours of his banishment.

We can conceive him standing on the rocky height of some Patmos headland watching the western sun descending over the blue waters of the Aegean Sea, making a broad pathway of golden light on the waves, till they shone like “a sea of glass mingled with fire,” or beholding the sun rise in the glowing cast over the Asiatic shores, transporting his thoughts to the advent of the “morning without clouds,” yet to shine upon the world. Or when he watched the host of heaven come forth by night, and fill the glittering canopy above the lonely isle, while the “many mansions ” of which his Master had spoken came to his mind, and the angel hosts who do His bidding, can we not conceive him longing that one of these glorious beings might be sent to him as of old one had been sent to Daniel, the man “greatly beloved,” to impart some of that knowledge of the future enjoyed in higher and holier realms? We know not what he thought or desired, but we know what God granted to the aged and privileged apostle.

It was on one Lord’s day of his sojourn in Patmos, the day commemorating Christ’s triumphant ‘resurrection, that being alone, and ‘I in the spirit,” or rapt in ecstasy from the outward world, and oblivious of its presence, he suddenly heard behind him a great voice as of a trumpet, speaking to him such words as mortal car had never heard before.

” I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, and what thou seest write in a book and send it unto the seven Churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”

And turning in the direction of the Voice he saw seven golden candlesticks, and standing in their midst, One whom he recognized as “like unto the Son of Man,” but 0 how changed from the Christ on whom he had so often looked in Galilee, and on whose bosom he had leaned in the upper chamber at Jerusalem! For every trace of humiliation was gone. No tears upon the cheek, no thorns upon the brow, He stood there transfigured and glorified; His face as the noonday sun shining in its strength; His garment white and glittering, and girt at the waist with a golden girdle; the hair of His head white with the snows of dateless years, as the “Ancient of days ” beheld by Daniel; His eyes like a flame of fire; needing no exterior light to aid their vision, but penetrating the secrets of the soul with holy searching gaze; His feet as burning brass, strong as the pillars of heaven, and glowing as though they burned in a furnace; His voice as the mighty and majestic sound of many waters; seven stars glittered in His right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword, the evident symbol of the Word of God, living and powerful, and piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, proceeded from His lips.

At this sudden and marvellous apparition of the glorified Redeemer all strength forsook the aged apostle. Falling at the feet of the Son of God he lay there as one dead. Then touching his prostrate form with His right hand, the Lord strengthened him, saying in His own well-remembered voice, ‘I Fear not; I am the First and the Last; I am He that liveth, and was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore. Amen; and have the keys of death and of hades.”

And now aroused to wondering attention, the aged apostle received from the lips of Christ the divine commission to communicate to the seven Churches of Asia, representing symbolically the entire Christian Church throughout the world, a faithful record of all that he had seen, and was yet to behold.

“Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things, which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.-“

And first to the seven Churches of Asia Minor John is directed to write brief letters, charged with lofty meaning; letters appreciating, judging, encouraging, rebuking, and counselling these representative Churches; and conveying through them messages from the glorified Redeemer to the whole Christian Church throughout the world. In these letters, bearing on their forefront descriptive titles of Christ referring to attributes suited to the character and condition of the Churches addressed, our Lord speaks in the tone of sovereign authority, perfect knowledge, burning holiness, and tender love. His eyes as a flame of fire search the secrets of hearts, yet beam with infinite compassion. His lips are full of promises, his hands of gifts and graces. Every sentence in these celestial communications bears the impress of His personality. In listening to their words we car the very voice of the Son of God speaking to our individual souls, out of the world of glory. ,I know thy works.” “I have somewhat against thee.” “I am He that searcheth the reins and hearts.” “I will give unto every one of you according to your works.” I have set before thee, an open door.” ”I have loved thee.” “I will keep thee”. “I would thou wert cold or hot.” “I will spew thee out of My mouth.” “I counsel thee.” “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” “I stand at door and knock; if any man hear My voice and open to Me, I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with Me.” Each letter closes with a special promise of glorious and eternal reward “to him that overcometh”; and with the solemn appeal to the individual Christian conscience, “he that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches.”

Having received these communications from the Lord Jesus Himself, standing amid the golden candlesticks which symbolized the Churches He addressed, John now beholds heaven opened, and sees the throne of God, and the worshipping hosts before the throne, and hears them crying, ” Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come; ” ” Thou art worthy, 0 Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power, for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” In the right hand of Him who sits on the throne, John now beholds a seven sealed book, and hears an angel cry with a loud voice, cc Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? ” None in heaven or earth is found worthy to open the book or look thereon. Then appears the sublime and solitary Exception. In the midst of the throne, standing among the four living creatures and adoring elders, is seen “a Lamb as it had been slain.” He who had redeemed man by His blood shed on Calvary’s tree, is there enthroned. Lo! The Lamb advances and takes the seven scaled book from the hands of Him who sits upon the throne, while the songs of the redeemed proclaim Him worthy to open its seals. and countless myriads of holy angels cry, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.” The whole creation takes up the anthem and sounds forth His praise. Then the Lamb opens the seals of the sacred and mysterious book, and unveils the contents of this final revelation of providence and prophecy.

As He opens the seven seals, successive visions appear to the gaze of the inspired seer of Patmos. First four horses, white, red, black, and livid, are beheld issuing forth, with their various riders. The souls of the martyrs are seen under the altar of sacrifice, and their cry for righteous retribution is heard. Heaven and earth are then shaken with the judgments attending the day of “the wrath of the Lamb. “A pause follows in which the destructive winds of judgment are stayed, while a definite number of saints are sealed out of the twelve symbolical tribes of Israel. Then an innumerable multitude of the redeemed from all nations, kindreds, peoples and tongues, is seen gathered before the throne of glory, with palm branches of victory, and songs of grateful joy. “They have come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The Lamb who has redeemed them leads them to fountains of living water, and God wipes away all tears from their eyes.

At the opening of the seventh seal there is silence in the symbolical heaven of the vision, during which seven angels prepare to sound trumpets of woe. At the successive sounding of these trumpets various judgments fall on the earth, seas, rivers, and sun of the symbolical world scene. After the sixth of these woe-trumpets occur parenthetical visions, followed by the sounding of the seventh trumpet, proclaiming the advent of ‘”the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.” The parenthetical visions are then continued. There is seen the persecution of a sun-clothed woman by a wild beast power. Three stages of the conflict are marked. First the Draconic world power is cast down by “Michael and his angels,” who overcome by “the blood of the Lamb,” and the witness of martyrs who loved not their lives unto the death.” Then the woman fees to the wilderness, from the persecutions of the revived wild beast power, who makes war against the saints and overcomes them. Lastly, under the judgments of the seven vials, the persecuting wild beast power, and that of Babylon the great, are utterly destroyed. Great Babylon is burned, the beast is cast into the lake of fire, and Satan bound for a thousand years, while the saints and martyrs reign with Christ. The final judgment of the great white Throne succeeds, and the New Jerusalem, arrayed in the glory of God, as the Bride of the Lamb, descends from heaven into the new earth, and becomes the everlasting abode of righteousness and bliss.

Such in brief is the general outline of the Apocalyptic drama. How great the progress it depicts! At the beginning the crowns of glory and dominion are worn by the potentates of the world ; the saints are oppressed and persecuted, forced to flee to the wilderness, and trodden under foot; at the close, dominion, crown, and glory are transferred to the suffering saints and their great Leader. The Lamb is crowned with “many crowns,” and the victorious martyrs are exalted to reign with Him in His eternal kingdom.

Prefacing his description of these visions by the title “The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto Him to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass,” John wrote as he was directed to the seven Churches of Asia; opening his message with greetings of Cc grace and peace ” from the Eternal Father, the Spirit, and the Son. A doxology of praise bursts from his lips to Him “Who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and His Father.” The keynote of the Apocalyptic prophecy is sounded, “Behold He cometh with clouds,” indicating its character as the book of the Advent of Christ, and of the Kingdom of God. At the close is added the seal of Christ’s own name and authorship. “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto. you these things in the Churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.” “Surely I come quickly,” is the final word of the prophecy.

THE RECEPTION OF THE APOCALYPSE BY THE EARLY CHURCH

From the seven Churches of Asia Minor copies of the Apocalypse, multiplied by Christian hands,-rapidly spread in all the Churches throughout the Roman Empire. Its apostolical authorship was recognized from the first, and its sacred character admitted. Early added to the Canon of the New Testament, it became the closing book of the entire Word of God.

No book of the New Testament was accorded a more general reception. The chain of evidence on the subject is complete. Justin Martyr, a Christian philosopher, born about A. D. 103, six or seven years after John’s banishment to Patmos, in his dialogue with Trypho thus refers to the Apocalypse: A man from among us by name John, one of the apostles Christ, in the revelation made to him, has prophesied that the believers in our Christ shall live a thousand years in Jerusalem.– Justin Martyr suffered martyrdom for the Christian faith about A. D. 165. Irenaeus, Bishop of the Lyonnese Church, in his book on Heresies written between A. D. 180 and 190, speaks of the Apocalypse as the work of John the disciple of the Lord, that same John that leaned on His breast at the last supper. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, about A. D. 170, wrote a treatise on the Revelation of John. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, about 181, according to Eusebius, made use of quotations from John’s Apocalypse. So also did the martyr Apollonius, at the close of the second century, in an eloquent apology before the Roman Senate, in the reign of Commodus. Clement of Alexandria, who flourished about 194, frequently quoted the Apocalypse. Tertullian, the contemporary of Clement, one of the most learned of the Latin fathers, quotes or refers to the Apocalypse in more than seventy passages in his writings, and declared that “the succession of bishops traced to john I rested’ on John as its author” 1 Hippolytus, a greatly esteemed Christian Bishop, and martyr, who flourished about A. D. 220, in early life a disciple of Irenaeus, wrote an express commentary on the Apocalypse. Origen, the most critical and learned of the early fathers, received the Apocalypse into the Canon of Scripture. “What shall we say of John,” he asks, “who leaned on the breast of Jesus? He has left us a gospel:

. . . he wrote likewise the Revelation, though ordered to seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered : he left, too, one Epistle of very moderate length, and perhaps a second and a third, for of these last the genuineness is not by all admitted.” ² Cyprian, Bishop and martyr, the contemporary of Origen, held similar views. Victorinus wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse in the third century, which is still extant; Methodius, Arnobius, Lactantius, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine all received the Apocalypse, and regarded it as the inspired production of the last of the Apostles. In the centuries which followed the times of these Fathers, the acceptation of the Apocalypse by the Christian Church, both in the cast and in the west, was universal. In all the early and later translations of the Scriptures, the Apocalypse found a place; and the literature to which its exposition has proved by its exceptional magnitude the interest which the prophecy has awakened in almost every age of the Church’s history.

¹ “Adv. Marcion,” Book IV, Ch. 5.
² Quoted by Eusebius, H. E. V1, 25

AS the direct gift of the ascended and glorified Redeemer, His message from heaven, His last message through the last of His apostles, the Apocalypse possessed from the very first for the Christian Church a special and incomparable interest. Granted in the days of Domitian towards the close of the first century while the Church was suffering from the cruel persecutions of heathen Rome, this prophecy of the sufferings and triumphs of her saints and martyrs, struck a cord which strongly vibrated in every Christian heart. To the Martyr Church of the first three centuries, this book of martyrs was at once the mirror of her experiences, and the treasury of her hopes. It illuminated the darkness, and dreariness of her lot with rays of celestial brightness. It was recognized as the golden crown of Revelation; the highest stone of its structure; the most triumphant note of its lofty music. What wonder that every sentence of the mysterious prophecy should have been studied with earnest attention by the Church of primitive times? What wonder that its visions should have arrested the gaze of men eager to read the meaning of the present, and to pierce the secrets of futurity? What wonder that the hands of humble sufferers, of lonely exiles, of holy martyrs, should have transcribed its pages with loving care, and transmitted them to their beloved companions in “the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ”?

And that they did so study this closing prophecy of Scripture is evident from the fact that the entire Apocalypse can be reproduced from its quotations in the writings of the early Fathers which remain in our hands. 1 One complete commentary on the book has come down to us from the third century, that of the martyr Victorinus a brief and simple exposition, exhibiting the views of the Church of that period on its mysterious meaning.

And now, going back in thought to those early days of purer faith, and nobler heroism, let us endeavour to realize what *ere the first faint dawnings of the comprehension of this mysterious prophecy which penetrated the mind of the primitive Church; and mark the dawn light slowly increasing, as the course of history unfolded the meaning of the prophecy, and the secrets of Providence became revealed to every eye.

¹ See index to quotations from the Apocalypse in the writings of the early Fathers at the close of this chapter

I. Title and subject of the prophecy.

On opening the Apocalypse the early saints and martyrs saw plainly written upon its forefront its descriptive title,– The Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto Him to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass . . . for the time is at band.” Here then they beheld an authoritative definition of the subject of the prophecy. Not to some distant period in the future of the Church’s history, did this prophecy relate, but to events whose occurrence was even then, nineteen centuries ago, ” at hand.— This inspired declaration determined the primitive interpretation. Not a single trace is to be found in that interpretation of the “gap theory ” of modern futurism, the theory that the prophecy, overleaping the last nineteen centuries of Christian history, plunges at once into the remote future, and occupies itself with the events of a brief closing period, a mere stormy sunset hour, in the story of the world. To the Church of the first three centuries the fulfilment of the Apocalypse bad already begun, and was to continue without a break to the final consummation of all things.

II. Her study of the prophecy revealed to the primitive Church its Christian character.

It was evident that the Apocalypse was sent to Christian Churches ; that it was prefaced by letters addressed to these Churches; that its leading prophetic features had their parallels in these prefatory letters ; that the warnings and promises in the letters related to things set forth more fully in the visions of the prophecy ; that the saints of the prophetic portion of the book were those who kept “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,” 1 and that its martyrs were ‘I the martyrs of Jesus” 2 Hence a Christian meaning was attached by the early Church to the entire book. It was regarded as the prophetic story of the trials and triumphs of the Church of Christ.

¹ Rev. 12:12 ² Rev 17:6.

III. He early Church regarded the Apocalypse as the New Testament continuation of the prophecies of Daniel.

The history of the Gentile world from the period of the Jewish captivities presented then, as now, the succession of four great Gentile Kingdoms; those of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The last of these, the greatest of the four, was at that time in the fullness of its strength, and at the acme of its glory. Ptolemy of Alexandria, the great astronomer and chronologer of the second century, had traced and tabulated in his invaluable Canon, the order and succession of these four kingdoms; associating with a series of dates in the reigns of their kings the whole of his astronomical observations. To the early Church these four kingdoms of history were mirrored in the visions of prophecy. Daniel had doubly foretold their course in his vision of the quadripartite image, of gold, silver, brass and iron; and in his vision of the four beasts; the lion, bear, leopard, and ten-horned wild beast which trod down and crushed, with iron strength, the nations of the earth. The visions of the Apocalypse were recognized as the continuation of those of Daniel, as relating to the fourth of these Gentile kingdoms, and to that divine eternal kingdom which Daniel foretold, destined to destroy and replace the kingdoms of the world.

“The golden head of the image, and the lioness, denoted the Babylonians; the shoulder and arm of silver, and the bear, represented the Persians and Medes; the belly and thighs of brass, and the leopard, meant the Greeks, who held the sovereignty from Alexander’s time; the legs of iron, and the beast, dreadful and terrible, expressed the Romans, who hold the sovereignty at present; the toes of the feet, which were part of clay and part of iron, and the ten horns, were emblems of the kingdoms that are yet to rise; the other little horn that grows up among them meant the Antichrist in their midst; the stone that smites the earth and brings judgment upon the world was Christ. Speak with me, O blessed Daniel. Give me full assurance I beseech thee. Thou dost prophesy. concerning the lioness in Babylon, for thou, I wast a captive there. Thou hast tin folded the future regarding bear, for thou wast still in the world, and didst see the, things come to pass. Then thou speakest to me of whence canst thou know this, for thou art already gone to thy rest? Who instructed thee to announce these things, but He who formed thee in thy mother’s womb? That is God, thou sayest. Thou hast spoken indeed, and that not falsely. The leopard has arisen; the he-goat is come ; he bath smitten the Ram; he bath broken his horns in pieces; he bath stamped upon him with his feet. He has been exalted by his fall; (the) four horns have come up from under that one. Rejoice, blessed Daniel! thou hast not been in error! all these things have come to pass. After this again thou hast told us of the beast, dreadful and terrible. “It has iron teeth and claws of brass: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it.’ Already the iron rules; already it subdues and breaks all in pieces; already it brings all the unwilling into subjection; already we see these things ourselves. Now we glorify God, being instructed by thee.”

IV. The early Church interpreted the first vision, that of the crowned Rider seated upon a white horse, armed with a bow, going forth “conquering and to conquer,” as a representation of Christ going forth on His victorious mission.

Thus Victorinus in his commentary on the Apocalypse written in the third century says, “The first seal being opened he saw a white horse and a crowned horseman bearing a bow. For this ‘ was at first drawn by Himself. For after the Lord and opened all things, He sent the Holy Spirit, whose words the preachers sent forth as arrows, reaching to the human heart that they might overcome unbelief.

A comparison of this opening vision with that in the nineteenth chapter, of the rider on the while horse, whose name was “King of Kings and Lord of Lords,” justified in the view of the early Church the application of the first seal to Christ’s victorious mission.

The fact that Christ had founded a Kingdom whose power was greater even than that of Rome, became early apparent. The words of Origen in his answer to Celsus strikingly exhibit the conviction of the primitive Church, that its marvellous progress could only be explained by attributing it to the action of supernatural power. “Any one who examines the subject,” says Origen, “will see that Jesus attempted and successfully accomplished works beyond the reach of human power. For although from the very beginning, all things opposed the spread of His doctrine in the world,-both the princes of the time, and their chief captains and generals, and all, to speak generally, who were possessed of the smallest influence, and in addition to these the rulers of the different cities, and the soldiers, and the people,-yet it proved victorious, as being the Word of God ‘ the nature of which is such that it cannot be hindered ; and becoming more powerful than all such adversaries, it made itself master of the whole of Greece, and a considerable portion of barbarian lands, and converted a countless number of souls to his religion.” 1

“The outcry,” says Tertullian, “is that the State is filled with Christians; that they are in the fields, in the citadels, in the islands; they make lamentation as for some calamity, that both sexes, every age and condition, even high rank, are passing over to the profession of the Christian faith.”

The triumph of Christianity over Paganism described by the historian Gibbon is in striking harmony with the view of the early Church as to the destinies of Christ’s kingdom. ‘While the Roman world,” says Gibbon, “was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion quietly insinuated itself into the minds of men ; grew up in silence and obscurity ; derived new vigour from opposition; and finally erected the triumphal banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor was the influence of Christianity confined to the period, or to the limits of the Roman Empire. After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe, the most distinguished portion of humankind in arts and learning, as well as in arms. By the industry and zeal of the Europeans, it has been widely diffused to the most distant shores of Asia and Africa; and by the means of their colonies has been firmly established from Canada to Chili in a world unknown to the ancients.”

With the vision of Christ going forth on His world-conquering mission, the Apocalypse most naturally begins. At the outset of the drama, the glorious Conqueror goes forth to whose head at the close are transferred the “many crowns ” of universal dominion.

And in the vision thus interpreted is found a key to the entire prophecy; for this is the starting point of the whole. Seals, trumpets, and vials set forth a continuous course of history stretching to the consummation, having as its commencement the going forth of the Gospel of Christ to accomplish its world-subduing work. The inference is unavoidable that the Apocalypse presents a prophetic foreview of the entire course of Christian history, from the foundation of the Church to the end of the world. Nor was any other interpretation ever known in the Christian Church till the rise of modern futurism.

V. The red, black, and livid horses, and their riders, of the second, third, and fourth seals, were explained by primitive interpreters as signifying the wars) famines and pestilences which our Lord had predicted in the twenty fourth of Matthew, as salient events which would occur in the interval between His departure and His return. Thus in the commentary of Victorinus, who died as a martyr under the persecution of Diocletian, after the application of the going forth of the rider on the white horse of the first seal to the victorious Kingdom of Christ, he adds, “The other three horses very plainly signify the wars, famines, and pestilences announced by our Lord in the gospel.

“VI. The vision under the fifth seal of the souls of the martyrs beneath the altar, was interpreted by the Church of the first three centuries as representing the continuous persecutions and martyrdoms of Christ’s saints; while the sixth seal was regarded as a vision of the judgments attending the consummation, or close of the age. No other view of the meaning of the seals was possible to the early Church. Their scope seemed to reach to the consummation) and it was most natural that their mysterious symbols should be interpreted in the light of our Lord’s plain unmetaphorical predictions concerning the events whose occurrence should extend to His Second Advent. Both prophecies were by the same divine Revealer; and both seemed to predict the same course of events; wars, famines, pestilences, earth quakes, persecutions; a universal proclamation of the gospel, a great tribulation; and then the darkening of the sun and moon; the falling of the stars; the shaking of the powers of heaven; and the advent of the Son of Man in the power and glory of His kingdom.

Holding this view as regards the six first seals, the early Church, unable to anticipate the long course of history which lay concealed in the future, considered that in the remaining visions of the book the revealing Spirit retraced the steps leading up to the consummation, in order to fill in, the features omitted in the introductory sketch. Thus Victorinus says with reference to the trumpets and vials, which succeeded the seals, “we must not regard the order of what is said, because frequently the Holy Spirit, when He has traversed even to the end of the last times, returns again to the same times, and fills up what He had (before) failed to say.” To this interpreter the brief “silence” under the seventh seal was “the beginning of everlasting rest ” ; while the judgments of the trumpets represented events connected with the coming of Anti-Christ.

VII. According to Victorinus the mighty cloud-clothed angel of the covenant of Revelations 10, “is our Lord.” His position as standing on sea and land signifies that all things are placed under His feet.” The command to measure the temple,” he regarded as relating, not to the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple, but to the right ordering of the Christian Church. By the assembly of its bishops its faith was to be brought into agreement with the teachings of the Word of God. The slaughter of the witnesses he explains as representing the slaying of holy prophets by Antichrist in the last times. The 1,260 days of their prophesying he interprets literally, as the period of three years and six months, during which the witnesses should prophesy in their sackcloth clothed character, as despised and persecuted by the world. To have interpreted the 1,260 days as symbolically representing 1,260 years of a suffering and subjected condition of witnesses to gospel truth, was of course impossible at that early period of the Church’s history. The latter view only dawned upon the minds of Apocalyptic interpreters during the actual fulfilment of the prophecy in the middle ages.

VIII. The woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars, of Ch. 12, is, according to Victorinus, and all the early interpreters, “the ancient Church of fathers, and prophets, and saints, and apostles.— In his treatise on Christ and Antichrist, Hippolytus says, “ By the ‘woman clothed with the sun’ he meant most manifestly the Church, endued with the Father’s word, whose brightness is above the sun . . the words ‘upon her head a crown of twelve stars,’ refer to the twelve apostles by whom the Church was founded.” The “three and a half times” of her seclusion in the wilderness is the period of 1,260 days, or three and a half years, during which the Church “seeks concealment in the wilderness,” from the persecutions of Antichrist; finding no safety but in flight.

IX. The 144.000 sealed out of the twelve tribes of Israel, of Chs. 7 and 14, are interpreted by Tertullian as not Jews but Christians. ‘With the same anti-Judaic view he markedly speaks of the Apocalyptic New Jerusalem (though with the names of the twelve. tribes of Israel written on its gates) as Christian, not Jewish; the Jerusalem spoken of by St. Paul to the Galatians, as the Mother of all Christians.” 1

The same view was clearly and powerfully advocated by the celebrated Origen ; and was held by Methodius, and Lactantius ; in fact was a leading feature of primitive exposition.

X. On the important subject of Antichrist, “while there was a universal concurrence in the general idea of the prophecy, there was in respect of the details of application, a considerable measure of difference; these differences, arising mainly out of certain current notions of the coming of Antichrist as in some way Jewish as well as Roman, and the difficulty of combining and adjusting the two characteristics.” 2 The Roman view was derived from the Antichrist being represented in the prophecy as the eighth head of the Roman beast, arising after the healing of his deadly wound. 1 His Jewish character, where held, seems to have arisen from his being regarded as in some sense a false Christ, such as our Lord predicted in Matt. 24. Hence lrenaeus and Hippolytus imagined that the place of his manifestation would be the Jewish sanctuary, and that its time would synchronize with the last half week of the “seventy weeks” of Daniel 9. The whole subject was necessarily involved in great perplexity to these early expositors. No correct anticipation of the fulfilment of the predictions relating to Antichrist, viewed as a whole, was possible in the opening centuries of the Church’s history. Certain points, however, were clearly and correctly seen. Justin Martyr, one of the earliest of the Fathers, considered the Apocalyptic ten-horned beast, or rather its ruling head, to be identical with St. Paul’s Man of Sin, and St. John’s Antichrist: and Irenaeus directed his readers to look out for the division of the Roman Empire into ten kingdoms, as that which was immediately to be followed by Antichrist’s manifestation. He also remarkably explained the number of Antichrist’s name, 666, as symbolizing Latteinos, the Latin man, “seeing that they who thus held the world’s empire were Latins.” 2

XI. To the early Fathers the Babylon of the Apocalypse represented Rome.

This is an important point owing to the magnitude of the position occupied by “Babylon the Great” in Apocalyptic prophecy; and also to the fact that the angelic interpretation of the vision relating to Babylon makes it the key to the whole prophecy.

“Tell me, blessed John,” says Hippolytus, “thou apostle and disciple of the Lord, what thou hast heard and seen respecting Babylon: wake up, and speak; for it was she that exiled thee to Patmos.” “Babylon, in our own John,” says Tertullian, “is a figure of the city of Rome, as being equally great and proud of her sway, and triumphant over the saints.— On Revelations 17:9, Victorinus says, “The seven heads are the seven hills on which the woman sitteth -that is the city of Rome.” “On the Apocalyptic BabyIon’s meaning Rome, all agreed.”

XII. The continued existence of the Roman Empire was commonly regarded by the early Fathers as the “let” or hindrance to the manifestation of “the Man of Sin,” or Antichrist. In his magnificent apology addressed to the rulers of the Roman Empire, Tertullian says that the Christian Church prayed for the stability of the empire, because they knew “that a mighty shock impending over the whole earth-in fact the very end of all things, threatening dreadful woes-was only retarded by the continued existence of the Roman Empire. We have no desire to be overtaken by these dire events; and in praying that their coming may be delayed we are lending our aid to Rome’s duration.” As to the ‘I let ” or hindrance to the manifestation of the “Man of Sin,” “we have the consenting testimony of the early Fathers,” says Elliott, ” from Irenaeus, the disciple of the disciple of St. John, down to Chrysostom and Jerome, to the effect that it was understood to be the imperial power ruling and residing at Rome.”

XIII. The Martyr Church of the first three centuries interpreted the first resurrection foretold in the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse as a resurrection of the literal dead. Hence they believed in the pre-millennial Advent of Christ. On no point of interpretation was their agreement more remarkable. “On the millenary question, all primitive expositors except Origen, and the few who rejected the Apocalypse as unapostolical, were pre-millenarians; and construed the first resurrection of the saints literally.” 2 They looked for the appearance of Christ to destroy Anti-Christ. They believed that the Roman Empire would fall into ten kingdoms, then Antichrist would appear, and then Christ would come in the glory of His kingdom. Thus Lactantius held that after the destruction of Antichrist “the saints raised from the grave would reign with Christ through the world’s seventh Chiliad, a period to commence, Lactantius judged, in about two hundred years at furthest: the Lord alone being thenceforth worshipped in a renovated world; its still living inhabitants multiplying incalculably in a state of terrestrial felicity; and the resurrection saints, during this commencement of an eternal kingdom in a nature like the angelic, reigning over them.” 3

At the conclusion of his treatise on Christ and Antichrist, Hippolytus expresses himself as follows-,, Moreover, concerning the resurrection, and the kingdom of the saints, Daniel says, And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall arise, some to everlasting life.’ Esaias says, “The dead men shall arise, and they that are in their tombs shall awake; for the dew from thee is healing to them.” The Lord says, ‘ Many in that day shall hear’ the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.’ And the prophet says, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’ And John says, ‘Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death hath no power.’ Concerning the resurrection of the righteous, Paul also speaks thus in writing to the Thessalonians ‘ The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice and trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. These things then, I have set shortly before thee, O Theophilus, drawing them (from Scripture itself) in order that maintaining in faith what is written, and anticipating the things that are to be, thou mayest keep thyself void of offense both towards God and towards men, ” looking for that blessed hope and appearing of our God and Saviour,” when having raised the saints among us, He will rejoice with them, glorifying the Father. To Him be the glory unto the endless ages of the ages. Amen.’ ”

Such were the leading features of the interpretation of the Apocalypse by the Martyr Church of the first three centuries. In the Catacombs of Rome, there remains a profoundly interesting and touching reference to one of the opening and closing symbols of the Apocalypse in the oft recurring Monogram of the Name of Christ, in which the Greek letters Alpha and Omega., the first and the last of the Alphabet, are inserted on either side of the brief sign standing for Xpiorus or Christ; the whole being enclosed in a circle, the symbol of eternity.

The following are the passages in the Apocalypse forming the foundation of the monogram. ” I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”

” / am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, and what thou seest write in a book.” ” / am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last … I Jesus.” ” The two letters of Greece, the first and the last,” says Tertullian, ” the Lord assumes to Himself, as figures of the beginning and end which concur in Himself: so that, just as Alpha rolls on till it reaches Omega, and again Omega rolls back till it reaches Alpha, in the same way He might show that in Himself is both the downward course of the beginning on to the end, and the backward course of the end up to the beginning; so that every economy, ending in Him through whom it began,—through the Word of God, that is, who was made flesh,—may have an end corresponding to its beginning.” 1

Such was the faith that overcame the world !

The place and power of the Apocalyptic prophecy as sustaining in the Martyr Church, the hope of the speedy advent of Christ, and thus strengthening that Church for its warfare and victory over the persecuting pagan Empire of Rome, were of the highest practical importance. The historian Gibbon recognizes the immense influence of the hope of Christ’s speedy coming on the early Church. “The ancient Christians,” he says, ” were animated by a contempt for their present existence, and by a just confidence of immortality, of which the doubtful and imperfect faith of modern ages cannot give us any adequate notion. It was universally believed that the end of the world and the kingdom of heaven were at hand. The near approach of this wonderful event had been predicted by the apostles; ” a view ” productive of the most salutary effects on the faith and practice of Christians, who lived in the awful expectation of that moment when the globe itself, and all the various races of mankind, should tremble at the appearance of their divine Judge. The ancient and popular doctrine of the millennium was intimately connected with the Second Coming of Christ. As the works of creation had been finished in six days, their duration in their present state, according to a tradition which was attributed to the prophet Elijah, was fixed to six thousand years. By the same analogy it was inferred that this long period of labour and contention, which was now almost elapsed, would be succeeded by a joyful Sabbath of a thousand years; and that Christ, with the triumphant band of the saints and the elect who had escaped death, or who had been miraculously revived, would reign upon earth till the time appointed for the last and general resurrection.”

While correct in its historical principle and leading features, the interpretation of the Apocalypse by the early Church was necessarily deficient in scope. It foreshortened the prospect to a narrow margin. It knew nothing of the long centuries which were destined to elapse before the dispensation had run its course. It knew nothing of the great Apostasy which was to darken the earth by its long and terrible eclipse ; and nothing of the glorious reformation which was to follow, although all these were foretold in the far-seeing prophecy. Rome Pagan, in her declining dominion, and proximate doom, filled the scene on which the early Christians gazed. One bright star shone in their sky, burning with intense and pristine splendour, the hope of the speedy coming of Christ. For that great event they watched and waited. They believed that to suffer with Christ was the prelude to reigning with Him, and that His kingdom was at hand. And this conviction nerved them to endure the utmost torments which heathen Rome had power to inflict. In this conviction they lived and died, ” more than conquerors.”

THE great historic event which immediately succeeded the Diocletian era of persecution was the fall of Paganism, and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire.

In its internal character and far-reaching effects this revolution is one of the greatest and most remarkable that has ever taken place in the history of the world.

The ruin of Paganism, as Gibbon has pointed out, is perhaps ” the only example of the total extirpation of any ancient and popular superstition.” During the long period of a thousand years the dark shadow of Paganism had covered the city and empire of Rome. Its temples were innumerable and adorned with the utmost magnifi- cence. Its’ wealth, the accumulation of ages, was fabulously great. Its priesthood was established and endowed by government, the Roman Emperor himself occupying the position of the supreme pontiff of the hierarchy. In the fourth century this monstrous system was brought to ruin. Working upwards from the lowest strata of society, the belief in the unity of the Godhead, and the divinity of the Christian religion, a belief commended by the lives, and sealed by the blood of the martyrs, had gradually reached the highest classes in the community, and effected the conversion of the Roman Emperor. The conviction that “the idolatrous worship of fabulous deities, and real demons, is the most abominable crime against the Supreme Majesty of the Creator,” led to the subversion of the temples of the Roman world, and the total suppression of Paganism. Maxentius, the last persecuting Pagan Emperor, was overthrown by Constantine at the memorable battle of Milvian Bridge, and his legions drowned in the waters of the Tiber. The Christian religion, liberated from persecution, became the religion of the State. The suppression of Paganism gradually followed, and within less than a century its ” faint and minute vestiges were no longer visible.”

In this memorable event Apocalyptic prophecy was strikingly fulfilled, a fact clearly recognized and openly confessed by the leading Christian writers of the period, and even celebrated by Imperial Enactment.

The fall of Paganism shed a flood of light on the Apocalyptic vision in which the issue of the deadly conflict between the Christian Church and the Imperial Roman power is represented by the casting down of the seven-headed Satanically inspired dragon from his lofty position of rule and authority.

The conflict and its issue are thus symbolically described in Revelation 12: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place any more found in heaven, and the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the Kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death.”

Several points in this most remarkable prophecy should be especially noticed.

1. The dragon is the ten-horned wild beast power of the Apocalypse whose identity with the fourth or ten-horned wild beast of the prophecies of Daniel was recognized by the Church of the second, third, and fourth centuries. Of the fourth beast ” dreadful and terrible ” Hippolytus says “who are these but the Romans …the kingdom which is now established ? ” ” John in the Apocalypse,” says Irenaeus, “teaches us what the ten horns shall be which were seen by Daniel.”

2. This ruling power, under a sevenfold succession of heads, is represented as Satanically inspired. In a later vision 2 the sixth head is identified with the form of Roman rule which existed in St. John’s own time, that of the Pagan Roman Caesars.

3. The dragon is described as “great.” The power of heathen Rome was then the greatest in the world. It had conquered and crushed the nations.

4. As “red “; red with much bloodshed of war and persecution.

5. As wearing the “crowns” which symbolized its rule, not on the ten horns, which had not then arisen, but on its previous succession of ” heads.”

6. As first standing before the ” woman,” who represented as the Fathers clearly saw the Judeo-Christian Church, 3 to devour her child as soon as it was born, and then warring against her, and “her seed.”

7. The conflict is described as a fierce and obstinate ” war.”

8. The army of the just, under its Heavenly Leader, is victorious over the dragon.

9. The victory is celebrated by a song of praise in which the great event is regarded as a signal triumph of the Kingdom of God. “Now is come salvation and strength, and the Kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ.”

10. The victors are declared to have ” overcome by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony “: not by sword and spear, as in a mere carnal conflict, but by moral, spiritual, and Christian weapons.

11. The martyr character of the conquerors is touchingly described in the concluding sentence ” they loved not their lives-even unto the death.”

In connection with the application of this remarkable prophecy, it should be observed that the figure of the dragon was used as an ensign by the armies of heathen Rome. Ammianus Marcellinus thus describes this heathen Roman standard: “The dragon was covered with purple cloth, and fastened to the end of a pike gilt and adorned with precious stones. It opened its wide throat, and the wind blew through it; and it hissed as if in a rage, with its tail floating in several folds through the air.” It was first used as an ensign near the close of the second century of the Christian era. ” In the third century it had become almost as notorious among Roman ensigns as the eagle itself; and is in the fourth century used by Prudentius,

Vegetius, Chrysostom, Ammianus, etc, in the fifth by Claudian and others.” 1

Two stages in the casting down of Roman Paganism should be distinguished; first its primary dejection when headed by Maximin and Licinius; and secondly, its final overthrow as headed by the apostate Emperor Julian. The persecution under Diocletian was the most prolonged and severe of those endured by the early Church. Under Maximin this persecution reached its climax. ” Before the decisive battle,” says Milner, “Maximin vowed to Jupiter that, if victorious, he would abolish the Christian name. The contest between Jehovah and Jupiter was now at its height, and drawing to a crisis.” “The defeat and death of Maximin,” says Gibbon, “delivered the Church from the last and most implacable of her enemies.”

The effort of the apostate Emperor Julian thirty years later to restore Paganism throughout the Roman Empire was similarly defeated by the wonder working hand of God. It was “the design of Julian,” says Gibbon, “to deprive the Christians of the advantages of wealth, of knowledge and of power.” They were condemned to rebuild at enormous cost, the Pagan temples which had been des- troyed. By these rash edicts ” the whole empire, and particularly the East, was thrown into confusion.” The persecution which broke forth afresh against the Church was terminated by the tragic death of Julian on the field of battle, in A. D . 363.

Theodoret tells us that ” as soon as the death of Julian was known in Antioch (followed by the accession of the orthodox Jovian) public festivals were celebrated. And not in the churches and martyr chapels only, but even in the theatres the victory of the cross was extolled, and Julian’s oracles held up to ridicule. . . . They exclaimed as with one voice, ‘ Where are now thy predictions, O foolish Maximus ? God and His Christ have gotten the victory. ‘ ” 1

Bishop Gregory Nazianzen in a public discourse delivered on the occasion says, ” Hear this, all ye nations . all that are now, and all that shall be hereafter. Hear every power in heaven, even all ye angels, whose office was the destruction of the tyrant: not of Sihon, King of the Amorites, nor of Og, King of Bashan, rulers of little importance, and their afflicted Israel, a small people only of the habitable earth; but the destruction of the dragon, the apostate, the man of great mind, the common enemy and adversary of all; who madly did and threatened many things on the earth, and spoke and devised great wickedness against the height above. … Who shall worthily celebrate these things? Who shall declare the power of the Lord, and speak all His praise? Who shivered the armour, the sword and the battle, and broke the heads of the dragon in the water? . . . It is the Lord mighty and powerful; the Lord mighty in battle.”

Later on, alluding to the frustration of Julian’s attempt to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem, and to destroy the very name of Christians, he says:—” What will be the end of the heathen if they turn not to Christ now ? Would that they would consent to be ruled not with the rod of iron, but with that of the Good Shepherd.”

To commemorate the fall of Paganism, the Emperor Constantine caused medals to be struck representing that event under the semblance of a dragon precipitated into the abyss. ” As we see on the coins of Constantine,” says ‘ Ranke, ” the Labarum with the monogram of Christ above the conquered dragon, even so did the worship and name of Christ stand triumphant above prostrate heathenism.”

In his Epistle to Eusebius and other bishops concerning the re- edifying and repairing of churches, Constantine’ said that ” liberty being now restored, and ‘ that dragon’ being removed from the administration of public affairs by the providence of the Great God, and by my ministry, I esteem the great power of God to have been made manifest, even to all.” 1

The Emperor Constantine, says Eusebius, ” caused to be painted on a lofty tablet, and set up in the front of the portico of his palace, so as to be visible to all, a representation of the salutary sign placed above his head; and below it that hateful and savage adversary of mankind, who by means of the tyranny of the ungodly, had wasted the Church of God, falling headlong, under the form of a dragon, to the abyss of destruction. For the sacred oracles in the books of God’s prophets have described him as a dragon and a crooked serpent, and for this reason the Emperor there publicly displayed a painted resemblance of the dragon beneath his own and his children’s feet, stricken through with a dart, and cast headlong into the depths of the sea.”

This triumphant celebration of the victory of the early Church over Roman Paganism was anticipated in the words of the Apocalyptic prophecy, ” Now hath come the salvation, and the power, and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ . . . therefore rejoice ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.” ” The very word,” says Elliott, ” eufraivesthe, used in the Apocalyptic prophecy to wish the Christian professors joy, was the identical word addressed more than once to them in the Imperial Edict of Constantine.”

The exaltation of the Christian religion to the position of the religion of the State under Constantine, while productive of great advantages, especially in the cessation of persecution, led to serious declension, not only in the spiritual life of the Church, but also in her views as to the teachings of prophecy concerning her relations to the Roman Empire, and to the world. The divine weapon placed in the hand of the Church to preserve her from apostasy fell from her grasp. She lost the remembrance of her position as a pilgrim and a stranger on earth seeking a celestial city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. The transformation of the Martyr Church of the early centuries into the Christendom of the Middle Ages involved the change of Apocalyptic interpretation as to the reign of Christ and His saints in a post-advent kingdom, into a prediction of a Romanized Christianity ruling after the fashion of the Caesars, the peoples of the world.

“The great Constantine revolution,” says Elliott, “could hardly fail of exercising a considerable influence on Apocalyptic interpretation. A revolution by which Christianity should be established in the prophetically-denounced Roman Empire, was an event the contingency of which had never occurred apparently to the previous exponents of Christian prophecy; and suggested the idea of a time, mode, and scene, of the fulfilment of the promises of the latter-day blessedness that could scarcely have arisen before; viz.— that its scene might be the earth in its present state, not the renovated earth after Christ’s coming (and the conflagration) ; its time that of the present dispensation ; its mode by the earthly establishment of the earthly Church visible. For it does not seem to have occurred at the time that this might in fact be one of the preparations, through Satan’s craft, for the establishment, after a while, of the great predicted antichristian ecclesiastical empire, on the platform of the same Roman world, and in a professing but apostatized Church.” 1

This revolution of interpretation is strikingly visible in the case of Eusebius, who, though he seems in early life to have received the Apocalypse as inspired Scripture, and interpreted its seals in harmony with the method of Victorinus, was led, after the Constantine revolution, and the establishment of Christianity, to doubt the apostolic authorship of the prophecy. He continued, however, to apply the symbolic prefigurations of the Apocalypse to the changed events of the period; the casting down of the seven- headed dragon from its high and ruling position represented in the twelfth chapter seemed to him to agree in a marvelous manner with the dejection of Paganism, and of the Pagan Emperors, which had just taken place, from the supremacy which they had for ages exercised in the Roman world. The prophecies of Isaiah respecting the latter-day glory of the redeemed, and the Apocalyptic vision of the New Jerusalem, were applied by him to the Christian Church as newly established by Constantine. The millennial day of the glory and prosperity of the Church seemed to have dawned, and the language of the period was filled with the loftiest anticipations.

During the thousand years which followed, the Mediaeval period of history, the Church believed she was living in the millennium. The commencement of this millennium, or period during which Satan is bound, was variously dated; first with Augustine from Christ’s ministry, when the Redeemer beheld Satan fall as lightning from heaven; and later on, when the lapse of time had proved the error of this view, from the Constantine revolution; the binding of Satan being taken to represent the restriction of Satanic power at the fall of Paganism. This extraordinary view continued to prevail up to the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the Reformers supposing themselves to be living in the ” little season ” during which Satan was to be “loosed” at the close of the millennium. To carry out the view that the millennium had come, and that the Church, as Eusebius supposed, had reached the stage of existence represented by the latter-day glory predicted by Isaiah, and the new Jerusalem foretold by John, ” must soon have been felt most difficult: the Arian and other troubles which quickly supervened, powerfully contributing to that conviction. It resulted, perhaps not a little from this cause, that the Apocalypse itself became for a while much neglected;’ especially in the Eastern Empire, where the Imperial seat was now chiefly fixed.” 1

The sad effect of this neglect became evident in the dark apostasy which speedily followed. The Harlot Church denounced in the Apocalypse was magnified as the Bride of Christ, enriched with the privileges and adorned with the glories of the millennial state. The reign of Satan was mistaken for the reign of Christ. The solemn warnings of the Word of God intended to preserve the Church from the apostasy were forgotten; and the ” falling away ” foretold took place, carrying with it the whole of Christendom, with the exception of a small and feeble remnant of faithful witnesses to New Testament truths.

The growing perception of this apostasy led the prophetic interpreters of the fourth and fifth centuries to the view which had presented itself to the pre-Constantine Fathers, that the scene of the manifestation of Antichrist would prove to be the professing Christian Church. Thus Athanasius taught that the Antichrist of prophecy would prove to be a heretical ruler of the Roman Empire, making a Christian profession; and that Antichrist would come with the profession, ” I am Christ,” assuming Christ’s place and character, like Satan transformed into an angel of light. Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, in France, the contemporary and friend of Athanasius, asked when the flood of Arianism swept over the western part of the Roman Empire, ” Is it a doubtful thing that Antichrist will sit in Christian Churches? “He denounced the Emperor Constantine as a precursor of Antichrist; and speaks of Bishop Arius, and Bishop Auxentius as Antichrists. Cyril, of Jerusalem, says of Antichrist, ” This man will usurp the government of the Roman Empire, and will falsely call himself the Christ.” ” He will sit in the temple of God : not that which is in Jerusalem, but in the Churches everywhere.” 2 Jerome, in interpreting Paul’s Man of Sin, declares that he ” is to sit in the temple, that is in the Church.” He adds, ” It is only by assuming Christ’s name that the simpler ones of believers can be seduced to go to Antichrist; for thus they will go to Antichrist, while thinking to find Christ.

WITH the Gothic invasion and the break-up of the western Roman Empire into ten kingdoms, came the predicted rise of Antichrist. The incipient fulfilment of the foretold partition of the empire began to be recognized as early as the fourth century. “In our time,” said Jerome, ” the clay has become mixed with iron. Once nothing was stronger than the Roman Empire, now nothing weaker, mixed up as it is with, and needing the help of barbarous nations.” “He who withheld is removed, and we think not that Antichrist is at the door!” On the unthinking Church, blind to the meaning of the events occurring around her, came the predicted ” Man of Sin,” to take his foretold place and sit supreme for long disastrous centuries in the very Temple or Church of God.

THE RISE OF THE PAPACY TO UNIVERSAL DOMINION

“A mighty and majestic figure,” says Pennington, ” comes upon our view in the Middle Ages. Its feet rest upon the earth, while its head towers towards the stars. A triple tiara, rich with the most costly gems, glitters on its brow. It is clothed in the sacred robes of the priesthood, but bears in its hand the golden sceptre of temporal dominion. The nations of the earth crouch at its feet. Around it clouds of incense roll upwards from innumerable altars. The ground on which it stands is whitened with the bones of God’s saints. 1

The rise of this power was gradual. The removal of the Imperial Government from Rome to Constantinople, and the break-up of the empire by invading hordes of barbarians, liberated the Bishop of Rome from the bonds which had confined his activities, and hindered the attainment of the supremacy to which he aspired. Rome had in earlier times sat queen among the nations. Why should not the Bishop of Rome be accorded the proud position of Head of the Churches of Christendom? Why should he not become their spiritual dictator? Applications for assistance and advice came to him from every quarter. His letters, first mild and moderate in tone, gradually assumed the form of arbitrary mandates. Encroachments were made on the spiritual jurisdiction of other bishops. Appeals addressed to him by bishops or presbyters, and applications from monarchs to interfere in their quarrels, led to his asserting the right to decide by his own arbitrary will the disputes of individuals and the controversies of the Church. Additional powers were gradually obtained. The Bishop of Rome was the alleged successor of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, to whom Christ had committed the keys of the kingdom of heaven. In the fifth century the lineal descent of the Popes from St. Peter was an accredited article of Christianity. Claiming to have been bestowed as a divine gift, the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome over all other bishops was established by a law of the Roman Emperor. In the year 607 the Emperor Phocas, a blood-stained usurper, placed the crown of universal supremacy in the Christian Church on the brow of Boniface III. The temporal dominion of the Popes speedily followed. In the next century the usurper Pepin bestowed upon the Pope the city of Rome, and the exarchate of Ravenna, which he had wrested from the Lombards. Charlemagne, crowned by the Pope in the year 800 as Emperor of the Romans, enlarged the Pope’s dominions; and the Roman Empire, which had been overthrown by the barbarians, restored by Charlemagne, took officially the title of the Holy Roman Empire.

King and priest stood side by side at the summit of this empire. Which stood highest? That question which took centuries to settle, ended by the exaltation of the Papal power in 1268 to supremacy over the Imperial power. A large space in the history of the Middle Ages is filled by the struggle between the empire and the papacy. Its termination witnessed the subjection of the temporal to the spiritual dominion.

In the Donation of Constantine—a forged document on which Papal supremacy was largely built—the emperor transfers the diadem from his own head to the head of the Pope of Rome, and says ” in our reverence for the blessed Peter, we ourselves hold the reins of his horse, as holding the office of his stirrup-holder; and we ordain that all his successors shall wear the same mitre in their processions, in imitation of the empire y and that the Papal crown may never be lowered, but may be exalted above the crown of the earthly empire. Lo, we give and grant not only our palace, as aforesaid, but also the city of Rome, and all the provinces and palaces and cities of Italy, and of the western regions, to our aforesaid most blessed Pontiff and universal Pope.” The famous Decretal Epistles in the ninth century, now condemned as forgeries by the voice of Christendom, containing the ” alleged judgment of the Popes in former ages, in unbroken succession from St. Peter, supplied them with everything they could require to establish the sovereignty of the Popes over the monarchs of the earth, and their authority over the doctrines and practices of the Churches of Christendom.” In the exercise of his supremacy the Pope exalted or deposed monarchs, absolved subjects from their oaths of allegiance, declaring in the synod of 1080 “we desire to show the world that we can give, or take away at our will, kingdoms, duchies, earldoms, in a word, the possessions of all men, since we can bind and loose.” Gratian’s work, the Decretum, in the middle of the twelfth century, deciding questions relating to the Canon law of the Church of Rome, quoting as authority sixty-five of the forged Decretal Epistles, gave to the papacy a legal and long unquestioned standing. ” This work was always the authority for the Canon law of the Church of Rome, which was received into every nation before the Reformation. No book has ever exercised so much influence in the Church. In fact, this system of law constitutes the papacy.”

The subjection of the Bishops to Papal supremacy was followed by the destruction of the independence of Councils. ” The only business of Bishops at a Council was considered to be to inform the Pope of the condition of their dioceses, and to give him their advice in spiritual matters. The Pope in fact appropriated to himself all the rights and institutions of the Church. . . . National churches now found themselves subject to an irresistible despotism. Legates were appointed to represent the Majesty of the Pope in remote territories, who lived in splendour at the expense of the victims of their tyranny, deposing Bishops, holding Synods, promulgating Canons, and pronouncing sentences of Excommunication against those who dared to resist their arbitrary decrees.”

In the year 1268 the Popes “blotted out the name of the House of Hohenstaufen from under heaven.” The execution of Conradin, the grandson of Frederick II, the last heir of the House, leaving ” another stain of blood on the annals of the papacy, marked the termination of the struggle for two hundred years between the Emperors and the Popes for supremacy over the nations. The latter now reigned without a rival in Christendom.”

It only remained for the Popes to assume Divine honours. In the person of Boniface VIII, whose accession took place in 1294, the Pope sat “as God in the temple of God.” Human ambition could rise no higher. The Pope boldly laid claim to the attributes and prerogatives of Deity. He represented the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He claimed to rule in three worlds, Heaven, Earth, and Hell; and in token thereof was crowned with a triple crown. He paraded himself before the world as the infallible Teacher of faith and morals. Exalted above bishops, above councils, above kings, above conscience, from his decisions there was no appeal. He was the supreme Judge of mankind. Lifted up to sit on the high altar of St. Peter’s, the chiefest Church in Christendom, he was publicly adored, cardinals, the princes of the Church, kissing in turn his feet; bishops bending low before him in deepest reverence; and nations worshipping him as the visible representative of the Godhead, possessed of power to pardon sins on earth, to canonize saints in heaven, to loose souls from the pains of purgatory in the world be- neath; to judge, to govern, to bless, to save mankind; whose sentences, clothed with the authority of God, were inherently irreversible, irrevocable, final and everlasting.

And for what ends, and with what effects has the Godlike power of this great Usurper been employed?

Let history answer. Let the stake reply. Let the Inquisition speak. Let the Waldenses, the Wickliffites, the Lollards, the Hussites, the Huguenots sound forth the answer. Let Italy, let France, let Spain tell what they have witnessed. Let Roman Catholic lands in their notorious degradation, and Protestant lands deluged with blood by Papal wars and massacres, bear their testimony. The Bible prohibited; idolatry enforced; the gospel denied; Christianity caricatured; millions deluded; millions led to destruction; who can estimate the world-wide effects of this diabolical travesty of the religion of Jesus Christ? The cup of salvation changed into the cup of death; revealed religion, God’s greatest, highest gift to man, trans- formed into a snare, an instrument of delusion, tyranny, and eternal ruin to countless souls, and generations of mankind.

PARALLEL DEVELOPMENT OF PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION

Did the prophetic expositors of the Middle Ages, after the breaking up of the old Roman Empire, and the rise of the Papal power to supremacy over the Gothic kingdoms, recognize, on his appearance, the predicted ” Man of Sin,” or Antichrist?

Not at first. The comprehension of the character of Romanism and the papacy was a gradual growth. In its slow development the doctrinal errors of the Church of Rome were recognized as unscriptural long before the antichristian character of the papacy was perceived. Not until the papacy reached the monstrous height of self- exaltation and depravity which it attained in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was it seen to fulfill the predictions relating to the ” Man of Sin,” or Antichrist.

From the middle of the seventh century the Paulikians in Eastern Christendom, ” bore a continuous and unvarying protest against the grosser superstitions of saint mediatorship, image worship, and other kinds of idolatry, as well as against the established system of priestcraft which supported them.” 1 In Western Europe, Claude, Bishop of Turin, ” was a true, fearless, enlightened, and spiritual witness for Christ’s truth and honour, and against the superstition and wickedness of the age,” 1 and earned the title of ” the Protestant of the ninth century.” “When sorely against my will, I undertook at the command of Louis the Pious the burden of a Bishoprick,” says Claude, ” and when contrary to the order of truth I found all the Churches of Turin stuffed full of vile and accursed images, I alone began to destroy what all were sottishly worshipping. Therefore it was that all opened their mouths to revile me. And forsooth, had not the Lord helped me, they would have swallowed me up quick.” 32 From the works of Claude, and the treatises written against him, it appears that he protested against the ” worship of saints, relics, and the wooden cross, as well as of images; against pilgrimages, and all the prevailing Judaic or formal and ceremonial system of religion; against masses for the dead; against what was afterwards called transubstantiation in the Eucharist; against the supremacy of the Pope of Rome; and the authority of tradition in doctrines of religion. The written Word was made by him the one standard of truth.” 3

Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, from A . D . 810 to 841, was a determined enemy of all superstition. With reference to the invocation of saints, he held that ” there is no other Mediator to be sought for but He that is the God-Man.” “He combats the idea of merit in human works with as much zeal and force,” says Leger, ” as Calvin him- self.” 4 Gottschalc, a monk of the abbey of Fulda, left his monastery with missionary purposes, and after preaching the gospel agreeably with Augustine’s views of it, in Dalmatia, Pannonia, Lombardy, and Piedmont, was condemned as a heretic, degraded from the priesthood, beaten with rods, and cast into prison, where he lingered refusing retractation till his death in 868. 5 Treatises from the Lyonnese Church of this period exhibit “the same decided adhesion to the doctrines of Augustine.” A reference occurs in the letters of Atto, Bishop of Vercelli near Turin, A.D. 945, to “certain false teachers, known among the common people by the name of prophets, under whose teaching certain persons in his diocese had been induced to forsake their priests, and their Holy Mother the Church.” 6 In 1028 the archbishop of Milan discovered on a visitation a sect of so-called heretics whose central point and refuge was “the castle of Montfort, in the near neighbourhood of Turin, its chief teacher there being one Gerard.” When taken and imprisoned at Milan these heretics ” spoke of their High Priest in contradistinction to the Roman High Priest.” “In vain offers of life were made to them on condition of recantation. Gerardus especially, with happy countenance, seemed eager for suffering. The most continued steadfast; and so were burned, on the Piazza of the Cathedral.” 1

At the Council of Arras, heretics from the confines of Italy, who had been summoned before their Bishop in 1025, admitted their rejection of ” the whole doctrines, discipline, and authority of the Romish Church.” Berenger, in the year 1045, Principal of the Public School at Tours, and afterwards Archdeacon of Angers, combated the received doctrine of transubstantiation. His teaching was “condemned in Councils held at Rome, Vercelli, and Paris, in the year 1050, and he was deprived of the temporalities of his benefice.”

Peter de Bruys, originally a presbyter of the Church, ” became a missionary and protestor against what he denounced as the superstitions of the day in the French provinces of Dauphiny, Province and Languedoc. His success was great, and a sect formed of his followers,, vulgarly called after him Petrobrussians, but who called themselves Apostolicah. At length in the year 1126, after nearly twenty years of missionary labour, he was seized by his enemies, and burned to death in the town of St. Giles, near Thoulouse.”

The so-called heresies of Peter de Bruys ” were propagated after his death by a monk named Henry.” Beginning from Lausanne, in 1116, he preached in Paris and Languedoc “with eloquence such as to melt ‘all hearts, and a character for both sanctity and benevolence such as to win all admiration. He was the Whitfield of the age and country, and with success that to a Catholic eye was fearful.”- He was seized in the year 1147, convicted and imprisoned. ” Soon after he died, whether by a natural death or by the flames, is a point disputed.” In the same year heretics were discovered and burned at Cologne. Maintaining their doctrines in opposition to the Church of Rome ” from the Words of Christ and His apostles,” they suffered martyrdom, ” and what is most wonderful,” says Evervinus, ” they entered to the stake, and bore the torment of the fire, not only with patience, but with joy and gladness.”

The Henricians, or followers of Henry of Italy (called also Boni Homines) who were examined and condemned at the Council of Lombers, in 1165, rejected the characteristic doctrines of the Church of Rome, basing their beliefs on the Word of God alone.

Peter Waldo, or Valdes, a man eminent among Mediaeval witnesses to the gospel of Christ, sold all he had in the year 1170, distributed to the poor, and became the leader to “certain missionary bands known thenceforth under the name of Waldenses, as well as “Poor Men of Lyons.” Before the close of the next -century they were “well known as sectaries that had an intimate local connection with the Alpine valleys of Piedmont and Dauphiny.” Perpetuated from the time of Claude of Turin, the separatists in Piedmont appear to have commingled later on with the sectaries of Lyonnese origin under the common name of Waldenses. Driven by persecution from the plain of Lombardy the Waldenses took refuge in the valleys of the neighbouring Alps, where for many centuries they maintained, in opposition to the Church of Rome, their witness to New Testament teachings. An ancient manuscript copy of their treatise, “The Noble Lesson” exists in the library of Geneva, and another in the library at Cambridge. The date of this famous composition is A . D ., 1100.

The record of the date of “The Noble Lesson ” is preserved in the opening lines of the composition:

” O Frayres entende une noble Leycon
Souvent deven veglar e star en oreson
Car nos veen aquest mont esser pres del chavon.
Mot curios deorian esser de bonas obras far
Car nos veen aquest mont de la fin apropiar.
Benha mil et cent an compli entierement
Que fo scripta lara, que sen alderier temp.”

Leger’s translation of this ancient Waldensian confession is given as follows in the antiquated French of 230 years ago.

” O Freres ecoutes une noble Lecon,
Souvent devons veiller et etre en oraison.
Car nous voyons ce monde etre pres de sa fin.
Bien soignens devrions etre a faire bonnes ceuvres,
Car nous voyons ce monde de sa fin approcher :
Ily a mil et cent ans accomplis tout a fait
Que fut ecrite l’heure qu’estions es derniers terns.”‘

In this remarkable composition ” the following doctrines are drawn out with much simplicity and beauty:—the origin of sin in the fall of Adam, and its transmission to all men; the offered redemption through the death of Jesus Christ, who ” underwent agonies, such that the soul separated from the body, to save sinners;” the union and cooperation of the three Persons of the blessed Trinity in man’s salvation ; the obligation and spirituality of the moral law under the gospel; the duties of prayer, watchfulness, self-denial, unworldliness, humility, love, as ” the way of Jesus Christ” ; their enforcement by the prospect of death and judgment, and the world’s near ending; by the narrowness too of the way of life, and the fewness of those that find it; as also by the hope of the coming glory at the judgment and revelation of Jesus Christ. Besides which, we find in it a protest against the Romish system generally, as one of soul-destroying idolatry; against masses for the dead, the doctrine of purgatory, the confessional, priestly absolution, and priestly mercenariness; and “the suspicion is half hinted, and apparently half formed, that, though a personal Antichrist might perhaps be expected, yet popery itself, with its followers was probably one form of Antichrist.” 1 The astounding development of papal ambition in Innocent III, and the papal war of extermination which followed against the Albigenses and Waldenses, led the latter, early in the thirteenth century, to accept as an article of their creed the doctrine “That the papacy and Church of Rome were to be regarded as the Apocalyptic Harlot Babylon, and by consequence Antichrist,” a doctrine to which they held unalterably ever afterwards.” 2 This doctrine they embodied in their Treatise on Antichrist, and other works. The idea of Antichrist as a person or power professedly Christian in character is seen slowly dawning on the mind in the Apocalyptic commentaries of the Middle Ages. Primasius, Bishop of the Carthaginian province, whose name appears in a Council held at Constantinople in 553,- in his “Com- mentary on the Apocalypse” (discovered with his other works in the monastery of St. Theuderic, near Lyons, in the sixteenth century) lays stress on Antichrist’s affected impersonation of, or substitution of himself for Christ; and blasphemous appropriation to himself of Christ’s proper dignity. He seems to view the second two-horned beast of Revelation 13, as ecclesiastical rulers, “hypocritically feigning likeness to the Lamb, in order the better to war against him: and by the mask of a Christian profession, under which mask the devil puts himself before men, acting out the Mediator.”

The venerable Bede, whose death in a, Northumbrian monastery took place A . D . 735, similarly interprets in his ” Commentary on the Apocalypse,” the lamb-like beast of Revelation 13, as meaning ” Antichrist’s pseudo-Christian false prophets.” ” He shews the horns of a lamb, that he may secretly introduce the person of the dragon. For by the false assumption of sanctity, which the Lord truly had in Himself, he pretends that a matchless life and wisdom are his. Of this beast the Lord says, ‘Beware of false prophets’ which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.”

Ambrose Anspert, a Latin expositor whose era was A. D. 760 or 770, and dedicated his Apocalyptic commentary to Pope Stephen, interpreted the second beast of Revelation 13 as “signifying the preachers and ministers of Antichrist; feigning the lamb, in order to carry out their hostility against the Lamb; just as Antichrist too, the first beast’s head wounded to death, would, he says, exhibit himself pro Christo, in Christ’s place.”

Andreas, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, an expositor in the Greek Church during the latter part of the fifth century, explains after Irenaeus the two-horned beast as Antichrist’s false prophet, ” exhibiting a show of piety, and with pretense of being a lamb when in fact a wolf.” “With regard to the harlot seated on the beast in Revelation 17, he observes that Rome had been judged by certain earlier writers to be the city intended, because of its being built on seven hills; but he objects its having then for some time lost its imperial majesty: unless indeed, he adds, very remarkably, this should in some way be restored to her, “a supposition involving the fact of a previous overthrow of the city now ruling,” ie., Constantinople.

Berengaud, a Latin expositor of the Apocalypse, towards the close of the ninth century, explains the beast-riding harlot of Revelation 17 as Rome, and her predicted burning and spoiling by the ten kings, as the destruction of ancient Rome by the Gothic barbarians, with reference, however, as Rome was professedly Christian at that time, to the reprobate in her. 4

Before the conclusion of the eleventh century, the papacy under Gregory VII ” had risen to such a height of power as well as of pretension, and abused it to the enforcement of such unchristian dogmas, albeit in the professed character of Christ’s vicar, as to force on the minds of the more discerning, surmising about the Popes and Papal Rome, and their possible prefiguration in Apocalyptic prophecy, scarce dreamed of before. Already, just before the year 1,000, Gherbert of Rheims had spoken in solemn council of the Pope upon his lofty throne, radiant in gold and purple; and how that if destitute of charity, he was Antichrist sitting in the temple of God. And Berenger, in the eleventh century, as if apocalyptically instructed, and with special reference to the Pope’s enforcement of the antichristian dogma of transubstantiation, declared the Roman See to be not the apostolic seat, but the seat of Satan.” 1 Joachim Abbas, elected abbot of the monastery of Curacio in Calabria, about the year 1180, who had a greater repute as an expounder of prophecy than any other in the Middle Ages, taught in his valuable ” Commentary on the Apocalypse,” that as Christ is both King and Priest, Satan would ” put forth the first beast of Revelation 13, to usurp His Kingship, and the second to usurp His Priestly dignity: the latter having at its head some mighty prelate, some universal pontiff, as it were, over the whole world, who may be the very Antichrist of whom St. Paul speaks as being extolled above all that is called God, and worshipped ; sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God.”

Thus gradually the idea of the professedly Christian character of the predicted Antichrist penetrated the minds of leading expositors in the Middle Ages, and the view that the professing Christian Church would be the sphere of his manifestation. The notion that the foretold break up of the Roman Empire had not taken place, because the Greek Byzantine ruler was still, after the Gothic catastrophe, called the Roman Emperor, and that therefore the rise of Antichrist should still be regarded as a future event, long hindered the application of the prophecies concerning Antichrist to the papacy: as also the supposition entertained in the Middle Ages that the period in which they lived was part of the Apocalyptic millennium precursive to the three-and-a-half-years’ season of Satan’s loosing, and the mani- festation of Antichrist. ” The passing away of the millennial year 1,000 without any such awful mundane catastrophe, loosing of Satan, and manifestation of Antichrist, as had been popularly expected, tended to make men earnestly reason and question both on the long received millennial theory, and on that of the Antichrist intended in prophecy, more than before. Moreover, the incoming of the twelfth century from Christ, promised (should the world, last through it) to open to expositors the first possible opportunity of some way applying the year-day principle (which had never been recognized) not to the smaller three-and-a-half-days’ prophetic period only, but also to the great prophetic period of the 1,260 days, without abandonment of the expectation, 3ver intended, of Christ’s second advent being near.”

I. The Identification of Babylon and Antichrist.

IN the three centuries which preceded the Reformation the papacy was seen by men in a new light, and with growing clearness. The development of the “Man of Sin “reached its culmination, and the veil of professed sanctity which had concealed his real character fell from his shoulders. The papacy stood self-revealed.

Victorious over the imperial power in the middle of the thirteenth century, the popes of Rome “displayed far more ambition, arrogance, cruelty, and rapacity, than the kingdoms of this world with which they had struggled for the mastery.””Self-constituted vicegerents of the Almighty, the popes now sat ‘ as God in the temple of God,’ and compelled the nations of the earth to crouch in vassalage before them. They had enslaved alike the souls and bodies of their fellow creatures.”1 Boniface VIII who ascended the pontifical throne in 1294 “surpassed even Innocent III in the arrogance of his pretensions, launching his spiritual thunderbolts against states and empires, summoning princes to his tribunal that he might as an infallible judge settle their controversies, and laying claim to supreme dominion over the monarchs of the earth.”2 During the period of seventy years which began in 1305, a fierce struggle for the papacy was carried on between rival factions. A set of popes and anti-popes, in Rome and Avignon, fought for the tiara; pope hurled against pope the thunderbolts of anathemas and excommunications. The wealth of the papacy was enormous; the extortion and appropriation of benefices, the sale of bishoprics, of sacraments, of indulgences, yielded a golden tide of riches, “swelling the pomp, and augmenting the retinue of the pretended successors of the fisherman of Galilee.”3 All efforts to reform the Church proved abortive. “The vices, flagrant sins, and public crimes of the popes of the last half of the fifteenth century, and the early part of the sixteenth, gave them a conspicuous place in the annals of infamy. Paul II (1464—1471) was a great drunkard, put up all offices to sale, and spent all his days in weighing money and precious stones. He also directed an infamous war against the Hussites; oppressed his subjects, tortured the members of a literary institution because he affected to discover in it a dangerous conspiracy against the Pope, and died in the possession of a large treasure Sixtus IV was not only guilty of conspiracy, and of kindling the flames of war, but he was also dissolute, avaricious, intemperate, ferocious and bloodthirsty. Innocent VIII established a bank at Rome for the sale of pardons. Each sin had its price which might be paid at the convenience of the criminal. Alexander VI, and his son Caesar, were literally monsters in human shape. In early life, after he had become a cardinal, he was publicly censured for his gross debauchery. Afterwards he had five acknowledged children by a Roman matron, named Vanozia. After the death of Innocent in 1492, he succeeded by the grossest bribery in securing for himself the triple crown.

He had become rich through his preferment, and through inheritance from his uncle Cahxtus III. Of twenty-five cardinals, only five did not sell their votes. He is known to have sent four mules laden with silver to one, and to have given to another a sum of five thousand gold crowns. After his elevation he plunged without scruple and remorse into the practice of every vice, and the perpetration of every crime. His bastards were now brought forward and acknowledged as his children. The papal palace became the scene of Bacchanalian orgies. Licentious songs swelled by a chorus of revellers, echoed through its banqueting hall. Indecent play*s were acted in the presence of the pontiff. He himself quaffed large draughts of wine from the foaming goblet. He indulged in licentiousness of the grossest description. . . . Venality prevailed in the papal court. The highest dignities in the Church were conferred without shame upon the best bidders. He committed the greatest crimes for the advancement of his children. One of them, Caesar Borgia, was a fiend incarnate. The assassin’s dagger, and the poison bowl were the constant instruments of his vengeance. Almost every night some assassination which he had ordered took place in the streets of Rome. The inhabitants were in constant terror of their lives. He caused the murder of his brother, of whom he was jealous, because he was preferred by a mistress with whom they were both intimate. These deeds were possible only in the spot where the highest temporal and spiritual authority were united in the same person. The palace of the popes was, in fact, a pandemonium. At length the reign of Alexander came to a sudden termination. He perished by a poisoned draught which Caesar had prepared for one of the cardinals whose wealth excited the cupidity of the Borgias. Multitudes which gazed on that livid corpse as it lay in state in St. Peter’s Church, breathed a fervent thanksgiving to Almighty God for deliverance from the tyranny of an execrable monster, whose crimes had polluted the land, disgraced human nature, and placed him on a level with the very beasts that perish.”The crimes, impurities, cruelties and tyrannies of these and other popes of the period opened the eyes of the nations, while the contemporaneous intervention of printing, and revival of learning, poured a blaze of light on these deeds of darkness. “The world stood aghast with horror at the contemplation of deeds as bad as those perpetrated in the darkest period of pagan antiquity.”1 A distinguished Roman Catholic historian, whose testimony on this subject is not likely to be questioned, acknowledges the corrupt state of the Church of Rome before the Reformation in emphatic terms: “For some years,” says Bellarmine, ”before the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies were published, there was not (as contemporary authors testify) any severity in ecclesiastical judicatories, any discipline with regard to morals, any knowledge of sacred literature, any reverence for Divine things, there was not almost any religion remaining.”2

RECOGNITION OF THE FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECIES RELATING TO THE “MAN OF SIN,”OR ANTICHRIST

History had interpreted prophecy, and justified the predictions in the Word of God. Men’s eyes were opened. This then was what apostles and prophets had foretold. The thing predicted, the thing unexpected, the incredible thing, had come to pass. Antichrist was come. The “Man of Sin “was there, clothed in scarlet and purple, adorned with gold, and precious stones, and pearls; crowned with the priestly mitre, and the proud diadem of the tiara; the VICECHRIST ; an enemy of the gospel; a persecutor of the saints; a monster of iniquity; he was there, lifted up at his coronation to sit on the high altar of St. Peter’s; worshipped by cardinals; adored by superstitious multitudes; a usurper of the place and prerogatives of God; a false idol; covetous, cruel, blood-stained, “drunken with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus.”He was there in the seven- hilled city; he was there in the temple of God. Yes, this was he. Such were the convictions and confessions of God’s faithful saints and servants of those days.

In examining their testimony one cannot but be impressed by the spirit which animated the Mediaeval witnesses to gospel truth; for such they were, their whole contention against the system of Rome being on the ground of its antagonism to “the truth as it is in Jesus “; “the faith once delivered to the saints.”The seriousness of their spirit, their whole-hearted earnestness, their depth of conviction, the simplicity and singleness of their aim, the unflinching courage, the boldness of their attitude and tone, recall the confessors of Apostolic days, “the men who had been with Jesus.”In the presence of this long line of “witnesses,”one seems to hear a voice as from heaven saying, “Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”As the eyes of the mind are opened, we come to see that the spirit which animated and upheld these noble men and women, was none other than the Spirit of Jesus; that He Himself was in them, and that that was the profound secret of their utter unworldliness, their bold antagonism to error and superstition, their deep humility, their sanctity and strength. In these His servants and followers Jesus Christ walked on earth during those long dark centuries. Risen from the dead, He repeated in them the testimony He had borne to the truths of “the Everlasting Gospel”in the days of His earthly life.

And the three and a half years of His own sackcloth clothed testimony had their parallel in the three and a half’-‘- times “of their sackcloth clothed “witnessing; the twelve hundred and sixty literal days of the one answering to the twelve hundred and sixty years of the other; whilst His death and resurrection “on the third day,”were paralleled by their death and subsequent resurrection after that three years’ interval during which their enemies pronounced their testimony extinct. Thus did the Lord of Glory pass twice through analogous terrestrial experiences; first, in His own person, and next in the persons of His saints and followers, the members of His body, His flesh and His bones; first in the briefer period, and then in the longer; the one period answering to the other, on the prophetic scale of “a day for a year.”Here is one of the principal keys to the times and visions of the Apocalypse. Here is the key to the story of the Church of the Middle Ages, and it is furnished by the word of prophecy as compared with the facts of history.

When with our understanding thus opened to the meaning of this long central period of the history of the Christian Church, intervening between the fall of Paganism in the fourth century, and the Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we examine the records relating to the Paulicians, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Wyclifites, the Lollards, and the Hussites, who in Eastern and Western Europe, in Armenia, in Bulgaria, in the South of * France, in the Alps of Piedmont, in Lombardy, in England, and Bohemia, kept the lamp of gospel testimony burning all through the Middle Ages, unextinguished by the superstitions, apostasies, and persecutions of those dismal times, and handed it on to the firm grasp of the Reformers, to be lifted up and set on a candlestick in the midst of Europe, and in the eyes of the nations, to shine as the great luminary of modern days, we recognize the unbroken continuity of the testimony of the true and living Church of Christ, and the fulfilment of His promise that against the Church He founded eighteen hundred years ago upon a Rock, the gates of hell should never prevail; that the living Church should continue, and its witness continue, un-conquered and unchanged, from age to age; the very gospel sounded forth by His lips, and by those of His apostles, sounding still as an undying testimony, from century to century, in the utterances of His faithful saints, until triumphant over all opposition, it should fill the world as the voice of many waters and mighty thunders, and as the music of harpers harping with their harps.

And so we turn, though it be but for a brief and superficial examination, to the records of those days before the Reformation, and open the histories of the Albigenses, Waldenses, Lollards, and Hussites; the story of Constantine, of Sylvanus the Paulician, of Sergius; of Claude of Turin, of the Publicani in England; of the ancient Leonists, of the French Vallenses, and Peter Waldo; of Wycliffe and Huss, and Jerome of Prague.

The memorable story is told in such works as Sismondi’s history of the crusade against the Albigenses; in Allix on the Churches of the Albigenses; in Faber’s valuable book on the history and theology of the ancient Vallenses and Albigenses; in “Jean Leger’s folio on the history of the Vaudois; in the “authentic details of the Valdenses “by Bresse; in Gilly’s “Waldensian Researches”; in Dr. Alexis Mutton’s “Israel of the Alps”; in the “Historical defence of the Waldenses “by Jeane Rodolphe Pegran ; in the valuable volume on “The Churches of Piedmont,”by Moreland, Cromwell’s commissioner; in the illustrated book on the Protestant Valleys of Piedmont, Dauphiny, and the Ban de la Roche by Dr. Beattie ; in Foxe’s “Acts and Monuments of the Martyrs”; in the writings of Wycliffe; in the voluminous works of John Huss; in the history of “The Reformation and Anti-reformation in Bohemia”; in McCree’s history of the progress and suppression of the Reformation in Italy, and in Spain; in Limborch’s massive work on the history of the Inquisition; in Llorente’s history of the Inquisition in Spain from its establishment to the reign of Ferdinand VII, an author who had been “Secretary of the Inquisition “; and in Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae on “The Witnesses “of the Middle Ages; works which cast a flood of light on the history of the long line of Christian confessors in pre-Reformation times, and the noble army of martyrs of those never to be forgotten days.

And in the forefront of these testimonies we boldly place Bossuet’s scornful work on the “Variations of the Protestant Churches”in which he pours forth the vials of contempt and obliquy on those despicable heretics the Waldenses, and Albigenses, and their predecessors the Paulicians of Armenia, and Bulgaria, the poor men of Lyons, the Bohemian Brethren, the impious and pernicious English arch-heretic Wycliffe, the Taborites, the Calix-tines, and others “of whom the world was not worthy. “As we turn over the pages of the eloquent Bishop of Meaux, the friend of Louis XIV, and persecutor of Madame Guyon and the Huguenots, we realize the truth of the Apocalyptic description of the Mediaeval “witnesses “to the gospel, which depicts them as “sackcloth clothed”for there in the pages of Bossuet’s work these men of God stand dressed in the sackcloth of opprobrium. They are accused of ignorance, of error, of Manicheism, of schism, of hypocrisy, of presumption, of vain pretensions; they are treated as the scum of the earth, and “the oftscouring of all things.”The learned and noble Leger, “one of the Vaudois Barbes (or pastors) and their most celebrated historian”is stigmatized “as unquestionably the most bold and ignorant of all mankind ! “Wycliffe, the blessed translator of the Bible into the English tongue, “subverted all order in the Church and State, and filled both with tumult and sedition.”The poor men of Lyons were ” obstinate heretics.”Though St. Bernard testified of the “Thoulousian heretics “that “their manners are irreproachable, they oppress none, they injure no man; their countenances are mortified and wan with fasting; they eat not their bread like sluggards, but labour to gain a livelihood,”yet “their piety is but disguise. Inspect the foundation, it was pride, it was hatred against the clergy, it was rancour against the Church; this made them drink in the whole poison of an abominable heresy.”

These heretics “never ceased inveighing against human inventions, and citing the Holy Scriptures, whence they always had a text on hand on all occasions.”This was their crime, and it was the crime which later on produced the Reformation, and gave birth to the temporal and spiritual liberties of the modern world.

We pursue Bossuet no further. Faber has answered him in his learned work on the true history and doctrines of the ancient Vallenses and Albigenses; and in “The Variations of Popery”Edgar has turned the tables on the Bishop of Meaux, and has shewn that it is the Church of Rome that has swerved from the teachings of the Apostles, not the Waldenses, Wycliffites, Hussites and Reformers, and that in all her leading and characteristic doctrines Rome has declined and departed from the faith of Apostolic times.

And now we reach the question, as to how this long line of Mediaeval witnesses to gospel truth interpreted the predictions in the Apocalypse, and kindred prophecies, with reference to the Antichrist, or “Man of Sin.”Did they recognize the fulfilment of these prophecies in the papacy? Rome stood before them, revealed in her thousand superstitions, her proud pretensions, her persecuting actions, The head of that Apostate Church stood forth before their eyes crowned with the glittering tiara of a triple sovereignty, in heaven, earth, and hell, claiming to be the Vicar of Christ, and a Vice-God on earth. Did they recognize his portrait in the Word of God? Did they write his name beneath that portrait, and leave their testimony for the enlightenment of later years? They did. And having written it, they sealed the testimony with their blood. Two hundred and fifty years before Wycliffe stood forth as the champion of Protestant truth; three hundred years before Huss and Jerome confronted the Council of Constance; four hundred years before Luther published his ninety-five theses in Wittemberg, the Waldenses wrote their treatise on Antichrist, a copy of which is contained in Leger’s folio volume, dated A . D . 1120. That treatise whose doctrine is the same as their catechism dated A . D . 1100, and was the doctrine they faithfully maintained century after century, thus begins—”Antichrist es falseta de damnation teterna cuberta de specie de la Verita . . . ap-pella Antichrist, O Babylonia, O quarta Bestia, O Meretrix, O home de pecca, filli de perdition.”The treatise is given in full, with a French translation in Leger’s work, pp. 71-83. In it is taught”that the Papal or Romish system was that of Antichrist, which from infancy in Apostolic times had grown gradually, by the increase of its constituent parts, to the stature of a full-grown man: that its prominent characteristics were to defraud God of the worship due to Him, rendering it to creatures, whether departed saints, relics, images, or Antichrist, ie: the antichristian body itself;—to defraud Christ, by attributing justification and forgiveness to Antichrist’s authority and words, to saints’ intercessions, to the merit of men’s own performances, and to the fire of purgatory ; to defraud the Holy Spirit, by Attributing regeneration and sanctification to the opus operatum of the two sacraments;—that the origin of this antichristian religion was the covetousness of the priesthood ; its tendency to lead men away from Christ; its essence a vain ceremonial; its foundations the false notions of grace and truth.”

“Antichrist,”says this treatise,”is covered with the appearance of truth and righteousness,”is “outwardly adorned with Christ’s name, offices, scriptures, and sacraments,”but though “covered and adorned with the semblance of Christ, His Church, and faithful members, opposes himself to the salvation wrought by Christ.”He “perverts unto himself”the worship “properly due to God alone,””he robs and deprives Christ of His merits, with the whole sufficiency of grace, righteousness, regeneration, remission of sins, sanctification, confirmation, and spiritual nourishment; and imputes and attributes them to his own authority, to his own doings, or to the saints and their intercession, or to the fire of purgatory. Thus he separates the people from Christ, and leads them away to the things already mentioned.”1 “He attributes the regeneration by the Holy Spirit to a dead outward faith”: “on which same faith he ministers orders and the other sacraments”: “he rests the whole religion and sanctity of the people upon his Mass”: “he does everything to be seen, and to glut his insatiable avarice.””He allows manifest sins without, ecclesiastical censure and excommunication”; “he defends his unity not by the Holy Spirit, but by secular power”; “he hates, persecutes, and makes inquisition after, and robs and puts to death the members of Christ.””These are the principal works of Antichrist.”And this “sys- tem”of iniquity “taken together is called Antichrist, or Babylon, or the fourth beast, or the Harlot, or the ‘Man of Sin,’ the son of perdition.”

Such also, was the belief of the Albigenses. “All agreed,”says Sismondi, “in regarding the Church of Rome as having absolutely perverted Christianity, and in maintaining that it was she who was designated in the Apocalypse by the name of the whore of Babylon.”

Even in the Romish Church the same view began to make its appearance towards the close of the twelfth century. The celebrated Joachim Abbas in his “Commentary on the Apocalypse,”written in 1183 declared that the harlot city reigning over the kings of the earth undoubtedly meant Rome, and that the false prophet foretold in the Apocalypse would probably issue out of the bosom of the Church; and that Antichrist might even then be in the world though the hour of his revelation had not yet come. Joachim was an abbot of the Roman Catholic Church in Calabria, learned in the Holy Scriptures, a deep student of the prophetic word. A few years later Almeric and his disciples taught that Rome was Babylon, and the Roman Pope Antichrist. Jean Pierre D”Olive, “another professed follower of Joachim, and leader in Languedoc of the austerer and more spiritual section of the recently formed Franciscan body, in a work entitled ” Pastils on the Apocalypse,’ affirmed that’ the Church of Rome was the whore of Babylon, the mother of harlots, the same that St. John beheld sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns,’ and the chief and proper Antichrist a pseudo-Pope; also very remarkably, that some reformation, with fuller effusion of Gospel light might be expected prior to Rome’s final predicted destruction, in order that, through its rejection of that light, God’s destruction of it might be the rather justified before the world.”

In the following century, Robert Grosthead, Bishop of Lincoln ( A . D . 1235-1253), boldly proclaimed the Pope to be Antichrist. “Christ came into the world to save and win souls,”said he, “therefore he that feareth not to destroy souls, may he not worthily be called Antichrist?”He foretold on his death-bed, with tokens of the deepest emotion that “the Church should not be delivered from her Egyptian servitude but by violence^ force, and the bloody sword.”1

In the same century the immortal Dante ( A . D . 1265— 1321) denounced the Church of Rome as the Babylon of the Apocalypse, painting the papacy in his poem on Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, in vivid colours, as the world beheld it then.

“Woe to thee, Simon Magus. Woe to you
His wretched followers, who the things of God
Which should be wedded unto goodness, them
Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute
For gold and silver.

Your avarice
O’ercasts the world with mourning, underfoot
Treading the good, and raising bad men up.
Of shepherds like to you the evangelist
Was ware, when her, who sits upon the waves,
With kings in filthy whoredom he beheld;
She who with seven heads towered at her birth,
And from ten horns her proof of glory drew,
Long as her spouse in virtue took delight.
Of gold and silver ye have made your God,
Differing wherein from the idolater,
But that he worships one, a hundred ye?
Ah, Constantine, to how much ill gave birth
Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower
Which the first wealthy Father gained from thee.”

In his poem on Paradise he says:-

“My place he who usurps on earth hath made
A common sewer of puddle and of blood.
No purpose was of ours that the keys
Which were vouchsafed me should for ensigns serve
Unto the banners which do levy war
On the baptized: nor I for vigil mark
Set upon sold and lying privileges,
Which makes me oft to bicker, and turn red.
In shepherd’s clothing, greedy wolves below
Range wide o’er all the pastures. Arm of God Why longer sleepest thou?”

At the end of his poem on Paradise, he refers to the Apostle John as:-

“The seer
That e’er he died, saw all the grievous times
Of the fair bride, who with the lance and nails
Was won.”

Dante died in 1321. Petrarch, who was crowned with the laurel of poetry by the Roman Senate in 1341, drew in eloquent words the same picture of the papacy.

Three years after Dante’s death, or about the year 1324, Wycliffe was born, the Morning Star of the Reformation. Grand and solitary witness, he stood forth, Bible in hand, 150 years before the days of Luther, a light shining in the darkness of the Middle Ages; like some mountain-top, while all the rest of the world lies in darkness, illuminated with the glory of the unrisen sun. He wrote a library of learned and powerful disquisitions, but his great work was the translation of the Bible into the English language. “The Scripture only is true”was his golden maxim, and he circulated as well as translated the priceless Word of God.

Roused to concern about his soul in his twenty-third year, at the time of the fearful pestilence which cut off so large a proportion of the population of the world in 1345, he reached spiritual conviction which was deep and abiding. “The pestilence subsided in England in 1348. The earliest of the works attributed to Wycliffe bears the date 1356, eight years later. This piece is entitled “Last age of the Church.”The end of the world seemed to be approaching, and the coming of Antichrist at hand. In support of this view Wycliffe cites among others the Abbot Joachim, whose work on the Apocalypse he had read.

Later on Wycliffe came to regard the Pope of Rome seated in his blood-stained garments on the high altar in the Central Church of Christendom as the “Man of Sin,”sitting in the temple of God, the true Antichrist of prophecy. Opening his English Bible, whose facsimile in black letter print, lies before us, we turn with interest to the “secounde pistel to tessalonicentes,”and read the words bearing on the papacy as he wrote them in 1380, “that no man deceyve you in any maner for no but departynge aweye schal come firste: and the man of synne schal be schewide, the sone of perdicionne … so that he sitte in the temple of God : shewynge hymself as he be God . . . the mysterie (or pry vete) of wickednesse worchith nowe.”

In his translation of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse, he writes concerning Babylon the great: “I siye a womman sittynge on a reed beast ful of names of blasfemye : havynge sevene hedis, and ten horns .’ . . a womman drunken of the blood of seyntis and of the blood of martiris of Jhu. (Jesus), and when I siye hire I wondride with greet wondrynge”

Yes, Wycliffe beheld her, as did John the blessed disciple of our Lord; the one in the visions of prophecy, the other in the facts of history. Seeing Rome in her true character, Wycliffe wrote his treatise “Speculum de Anti-christo “(Mirror of Antichrist) in which he unveils “the deceits of Antichrist, and his clerkes.”It is said openly, he ob- serves, “that there is nothing lawful among Christian men without leave of the Bishop of Rome though he be Antichrist, full of simony and heresy. For commonly of all priests he is most contrary to Christ, both in life and teaching, and he maintaineth more sin by privileges, excommunications, and long pleas, and he is most proud against Christ’s meekness, and most covetous of worldly goods and worships.”To subject the Church to such a sovereignty, he says, must assuredly be to subject her to the power of Antichrist.

Sedulous to maintain the preaching of God’s pure Gospel, in his tract entitled, “Of good preaching priests,”he says:- “The first general point of poor priests that preach in England is this—that the law of God be well known, taught, maintained, magnified. The second is— that great open sin that reigneth in divers states be destroyed, and also the heresy and hypocrisy of Antichrist and his followers.”He calls the ravening prelates and their officers “the clerks of Antichrist,”and argues “that Christian men of the realm should not be robbed by simony of the first-fruits, to go to the Bishop of Rome . . . that Christian men should give more heed to Christ’s gospel and His life than to any rules from the sinful bishops of the world; or else they forsake Christ, and take Antichrist and Satan for their chief governor. 1

“Worldly clerks show themselves traitors to God, and to their liege lord the king, whose law and regalia they destroy by their treason in favour of the Pope, whom they nourish in the works, of Antichrist, that they may have their worldly state, and opulence, and lusts maintained by him.”2 “Antichrist and his clerks travail to destroy Holy Writ,”teaching ” that the Church is of more authority and more credence than any gospel.” Writing on Indulgences, Wycliffe says, “This doctrine is a manifold blasphemy against Christ, inasmuch as the Pope is extolled above his humanity and deity, and so above all that is called God— pretensions which according to the declaration of the apostle agree with the character of Antichrist.”2

“The same may be said concerning the fiction of the keys of Antichrist … as might be expected from Antichrist, he sets forth new laws, and insists under pain of the heaviest censure, that the whole Church militant shall believe in them, so that anything determined therein shall stand as though it were a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“. . . Arise,”he cries, “O soldiers of Christ. Be wise and fling away these things, along with the other fictions of the prince of darkness, and put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and confide undoubtedly in your own weapons, and sever from the Church such frauds of Antichrist, and teach the people that in Christ alone, and in His law, and in His members, they should trust; that in so doing they may be saved through His goodness, and learn above all things honestly to detect the devices of Antichrist”3

Summoned to appear before his judges at Oxford, WyclifFe stood alone and unfriended. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of Lincoln, Norwich, Hereford, Worcester, Salisbury, and London were there, sitting in judgment, together with the Chancellor of the University, and many of the inferior clergy. Forty years had passed since Oxford had first become the home of the Reformer. He was now gray with age and toil, but full of mental activity and divine illumination. Like another Elijah, he stood alone amid the generation of his countrymen, witnessing in clear, uncompromising terms to the eternal truths of God’s Holy Word. Banished from Oxford he continued to write in defense of the gospel to the end of his days. His closing years were passed in full expectation of imprisonment and martyrdom. Seized with paralysis in December, 1384, on the last day of the month and of the year, his noble spirit passed into the world of rest, and everlasting reward.

Wycliffe’s doctrines spread, not only over England, but to the continent, where they were the means of the enlightenment of John Huss. They were branded with condemnation by the Council of Constance, and the remains of the Reformer, by the command of the Pope, taken up and burned. His ashes were cast into the brook of Lutterworth, whence they were conveyed to the Avon, the Severn, and the sea; fit emblems of his doctrine now dispersed over the world.

A notable work entitled “The Ploughman’s Complaint”written by an unknown author about the time of Wycliffe, and subsequently reprinted by Tyndale and Foxe, the mar-tyrologist, after declaring that none is more against Christ than he that “maketh himselfe Christe’s Vicar in earth,”terminates with the prayer, “Lord, gene our king and his lords hart to defenden Thy true shepheardes and Thy sheepe from out of the wolves’ mouthes, and grace to know Thee that Thou art the true Christ, the Son of the heavenly Father, from the Antichrist that is the source of pride. And, Lord, gene us Thy poore sheepe patience and strength to suffer for Thy law, the cruelness of the mischievous wolves. And, Lord, as Thou hast promised, shorten these days. Lord, we axen this now, for more need was there never.”1

The followers of Wycliffe took the same ground. Boldly they tore away the mask from the pretended vicar of Christ. Among them Walter Brute occupies a place of prominence as a faithful witness to the truth, whose testimony is “detailed to us by the venerable Foxe from original documents.”

Brought up in the University of Oxford, Walter Brute, then a graduate, was accused of declaring that “the Pope is Antichrist, and a seducer of the people, and utterly against the law and life of Christ.”In speaking thus he had blasphemed against the High Priest of Christendom. He had blasphemed Christ in the person of His sole representative. What had he to say? Walter Brute stands there solitary, defenseless, but courageous. He dares to speak the truth before these scarlet-cloaked doctors of the Church. Familiar with Wycliffe’s New Testament, a student of the Word of God, he grounds his defense on the inspired words of prophecy. Did not the Pope answer to the Man of Sin prophesied by St. Paul? Was he not the chief of the false Christs, prophesied by Christ, who were to come in His name? Was not Rome the Babylon of the Apocalypse? Let it be admitted that this had been a mystery long hidden. “But if so, and only recently revealed, it would not be unaccordant with God’s dealings and revelations. ‘Make the heart of the people fat, that seeing they may not see,’ was said by Isaiah of long-permitted judicial blindness in the Jews; and again by Daniel it was written, ‘ seal up the vision till the time of the end.’ Now had come the time when the veil of mystery should be removed.”2

“Very vain,”he says, “had been the usual and long received ideas about Antichrist: ideas as of one that was to be born in Babylon of the tribe of Dan, to give himself out as the Messiah come for the Jews’ salvation, and preach three and a half years where Christ preached; to kill Enoch and Elijah, and be himself finally slain by lightning.”The times of Daniel and the Apocalypse, he argues, connected with the Antichrist, were symbolical of larger periods; and should be interpreted as the “seventy weeks ” extending to the past advent of Messiah on the year-day scale. As the seventy “weeks “after which Christ was slain meant weeks of years, not days, so the 1,290 days of prophecy meant 1,290 years; a period which he noticed extended from the placing of the desolating idol by Hadrian in the Holy Place, to the “revealing, or in other words the exposure of Antichrist,”in these latter days. As to that woman seated on the persecuting wild beast in Revelation 1 7, expounded by the angel to mean the city on seven hills, reigning over the kings of the earth, whose power was to continue forty-two months, or 1,260 days, this was Rome, whose duration was 1,260 years. Did not the ten days of Smyrna’s suffering signify the ten years of Diocletian’s persecution? Thus then, the 1,260 days represented 1,260 years. As to the Popes, “with their assumed kingly and priestly power, speaking like a dragon, and allowing none to sell their spiritual pardons but such as bore their mark, his name, identical with his number, 666, was Dux Cleri. “My counsel is,”says Walter Brute, “let the buyer be aware of those marks of the beast. For after the fall of Babylon, “If any man hath worshipped the beast and his image, and hath received his mark on his forehead, or on his hand, he shall drink of the wine of God’s wrath, and be tormented with fire and brimstone in the sight of the holy angels, and of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torments shall ascend evermore.”

“John Huss and “Jerome of Prague were contemporaries of Walter Brute, and bore the same testimony, for which they were burned at the stake by the Council of Constance in May, 1416. In a letter to Lord John de Clum, Huss declares that the Church of Rome is the Harlot Babylon “whereof mention is made in the Apocalypse.” Writing to the people of Prague, he warns them to be “the more circumspect,”because “Antichrist being stirred up against them deviseth divers persecutions.”

When cast into prison for the Word of God, he wrote thus to his friends and followers:- “Master John Huss, in hope, the servant of God, to all the faithful who love Him and His statutes, wisheth the truth and grace of God. . Surely even at this day is the malice, the abomination, and filthiness of Antichrist marked in the Pope and others of this Council. . . . Oh, how acceptable a thing should it be, if time would suffer me to disclose their wicked acts, which are now apparent; that the faithful servants of God might know them. I trust in God that He will send after me those that shall be more valiant; and there are also at this day that shall make more manifest the malice of Antichrist, and shall give their lives to the death for the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall give, both to you and me, the joys of life everlasting.”

This epistle was “written upon St. John Baptist’s Day, in prison and in cold irons. I having this meditation with myself that John was beheaded in his prison and bonds for the word of God.”1

The year following that of the martyrdom of Huss and Jerome, witnessed the burning of Lord Cobham, at Smithfield. When brought before King Henry V and admonished to submit himself to the Pope as an obedient child, this was his answer:—”As touching the Pope, and his spirituality, I owe them neither suit nor service, forasmuch as I know him by the Scriptures to be the great Antichrist, the son of perdition, the adversary of God, and an abomination standing in the Holy Place.”

For this testimony Lord Cobham was drawn on a hurdle to St. Giles’ Fields, and “hanged there by the middle in chains of iron and so consumed alive in the fire, praising the name of God as long as life lasted.”

II. The Pre-Refbrmation War Against the Protestant Witnesses.

Not in a merely metaphorical sense was the persecution waged against the Albigenses, the Waldenses, and the Hussites, a “war”but in stern reality. It commenced by a crusade against the Albigenses in A . D . 1208. In his history of the period Sismondi tells us that ” Innocent III, impelled by hatred, had offered to those who should take up the cross against the Provincials the utmost extent of indulgence which his predecessors had ever granted to those who laboured for the deliverance of the Holy Land. As soon as these new Crusaders had assumed the sacred sign of the Cross, which to distinguish themselves from those of the East, they wore on the breast instead of the shoulders, they were instantly placed under the protection of the Holy See, freed from the payment of the interest of their debts, and exempted from the jurisdiction of all the tribunals; whilst the war which they were invited to carry on at their doors, almost without danger or expense, was to expiate all the vices and crimes of a whole life. . . . Never, therefore, had the Cross been taken up with a more unanimous consent.”

The first to engage through the commands of their pastors in this war which was denominated sacred were Eudes III, Duke of Burgundy, Simon de Montfort, Count of Leicester; the Counts of Nevers, of St. Paul, of Auxerre, of Geneve, and of Forez.

The Abbot of Citeaux with the Bernardines appropriated the preaching of the Crusade as their special province. “In the name of the Pope, and of the Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, they promised to all who should perish in this holy expedition plenary absolution of all sins committed from the day of their birth to the day of their death.”St. Dominic and his followers were sent by Innocent III to travel on foot, two by two, through the villages, to obtain full information about the so-called heretics, and to stir up persecution against them. Thus began the mission of the Dominicans, in subsequent times the terrible agents of the papacy in the work of the Inquisition. Descending the valley of the Rhone, by Lyons and Avignon, the principal army of the Crusaders began their dreadful work in Languedoc. “Men and women were all precipitated into the flames amidst the acclamations of the ferocious conquerors.”The cities of Beziers and Carcassonne had been armed by Raymond Roger against the advancing papal army, but were unable to resist the attack. When asked how the Catholics were to be distinguished from the heretics in the slaughter which followed, Amalric, Abbot of Citeaux answered, “Kill them all; the Lord will well know those who are His.”1 This command was carried out.

Vainly did the persecuted inhabitants of Beziers take refuge in the churches. In the great Cathedral of Saint Nicaise all were slaughtered; in the Church of the Magdalen seven thousand dead bodies were counted. The city was then fired, and reduced to a grand funeral pile. “Not a house remained standing, not a human being alive.”This dreadful crusade was continued until the greater part of the Albigenses had perished. “During the six hundred years which followed these events, invariably as far as occasions have served, the Church of Rome has avowed the same principles, and perpetrated or stimulated the same deeds. As soon as the war against the Albigenses was terminated the Inquisition was brought into full and constant action, encouraged and supported by the Romish Church to the utmost of its power.”2

We turn from the Albigenses and the South of France to the Vaudois in Piedmont. From the top of the famous Cathedral of Milan there is a magnificent view of the Alps of Piedmont. East and west they are seen to stretch as far as the eye can reach. The sun at noon falls full upon their crowded peaks. Dark forests mantling their lower slopes, they stand in silent sublimity, their summits crowned with glaciers and eternal snows. To the west among these, beyond the city of Turin rises the vast white cone of Monte Viso. Among the mountains at its base lie the Waldensian valleys. Five in number, they run up into narrow elevated gorges, winding among fir-clad steeps, and climbing to the region of the clouds which hover around the Alpine peaks. These valleys were the refuge and home of the “Israel of the Alps.” Protestants before the Reformation, they constituted a faithful remnant of the Church who had never bowed the knee to Baal. The first combined measures taken by the secular authority at the instigation of Rome for the destruction of the Vaudois do not appear to date before 1209, during the period of the Pontificate of Innocent III, when the Archbishop of Turin was empowered to destroy them by force of arms. At the commencement of the fourteenth century, (about 1308), the Inquisitors re-newed their murderous warfare. In 1487, Innocent VIII fulminated against the Vaudois a bull of extermination. “Thousands of volunteers—vagabond adventurers, ambitious fanatics, reckless pillagers, merciless assassins—assembled from all parts of Italy to execute the behests of the pseudo- successor of St. Peter. This horde of brigands, suitable supporters of a profligate pontiff, marched against the valleys in the train of another army of 18,000 regular troops, contributed in common by the king of France and the sovereign of Piedmont.”The Vaudois fled to the heights of the Alps, and sought to protect themselves against their foes. At the moment of their greatest danger they were sheltered by a thick fog; their enemies falling over the humid rocks into the fatal abyss below. The following year their assailants were more successful. The Vaudois had retired to the rugged slopes of Mont Pelvoux, 6,000 feet above the level of the valley. Here they had taken refuge in a huge cavern. Led by La Pelud, Cataneo’s ferocious fanatics climbing above the cavern, descended on the Vaudois, and piling up wood at its entrance set fire to it; “those who attempted to issue forth were either destroyed by the flames, or by the sword of the enemy, while those who remained within were stifled by the smoke. When the cavern was afterwards examined, there were found in it four hundred infants suffocated in their cradles, and the arms of their dead mothers. Altogether there perished in this cavern more than 3,000 Vaudois—including the entire population of Val Louise.”

We pause in the history of the Vaudois persecution to glance at the contemporaneous war waged against the Hussites in Bohemia. After the martyrdom of Huss and Jerome, their followers were subjected to the most cruel persecutions. “In the year 1421 the miseries of the Bohemians greatly increased. Besides the executions by drowning, by fire, and by the sword, several thousands of the followers of Huss, especially the Taborites, of all ranks, and both sexes, were thrown down the old ruins and pits of Kuttemburg. In one pit were thrown 1,700, in another 1,308, and in a third 1,321 persons.”1 A monument still marks the place. This warfare against the Hussites continued until their, testimony was silenced, and their name almost erased from the earth.

In his histories of the progress and suppression of the Reformation in Spain and Italy, McCrie has traced the propagation of the gospel in these lands by the instrumentality of the Albigenses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. “Province and Languedoc were at that time more Arragonese than French.””In consequence of the connection between the two countries some of the Vaudois had crossed the Pyrenees, and established themselves in Spain as early as the middle of the twelfth century.”From 1412 to 1425 a great number of persons who entertained the sentiments of the Vaudois were committed to the flames by the Inquisitors of Valencia, Rousillon, and Majorca. “In Italy many of the Vaudois and Albigenses established themselves in the year 1180. In 1231 Gregory IX published a furious bull against them, ordaining that they should be sought out and delivered to the secular arm to be punished. In 1370 the Vaudois from the valleys of Pragela emigrated to Calabria, and for a while flourished in peace. The colony received accessions to its numbers by the arrival of their brethren who fled from the persecutions raised against them in Piedmont and France; it continued to flourish when the Reformation dawned on Italy; and after subsisting for nearly two centuries, it was basely and barbarously exterminated.”2

The chief instrument in the suppression of the Reformation in these lands was the infamous Inquisition, whose infernal cruelties have made its name a horror to this day. That Satanic tribunal! What shall we say of it? Before us lie the two quarto volumes of Limborch’s history of the Inquisition; together with Llorente’s detailed and dispas- sionate account; also Rule’s book, in two volumes, and other works on the Inquisition in English and Spanish. When the Cjuemadero was opened at Madrid in 1870, and the ashes of the martyrs who had been burned by the Inquisition brought to light, we were present, and saw that thick bank of human remains, and stood breast deep in the ashes. We have seen in Mexico skeletons of victims of the Inquisition who had been buried alive; have visited the Inquisition in Rome; have seen its prisons, and conversed with its Inquisitors. Cold blooded tribunal! Ne plus ultra of tyranny! Its history, written in tears and blood, fills next to the story of the Crucifixion of Christ, the darkest page in the records of humanity. Llorente, who was secretary of the Inquisition in Madrid from 1789 to 1791, and in whose hands its archives were placed at the date of its suppression in 1811, has lifted the veil of secrecy which hid its diabolical character; has described its processes, and confirmed the copious witness of its victims to the almost incredible account of its cruelties. By his aid we see its all- powerful judges sitting in secret, during long centuries, under a succession of forty-four Inquisitor-generals, who in denial of every principle of justice, never permitted the accused to know the accusations laid to his charge, to face his accusers, or “to know more of his own cause than he could learn of it by the interrogations and accusations to which he was compelled to reply; “who extracted the confessions they sought by the infliction of the most ingenious, the most prolonged and the most exquisite tortures the mind of man has ever invented; putting into operation “water, weights, fire, pulleys, screws,—all the apparatus by which the sinews could be strained without cracking, the bones bruised without breaking, and the body racked exquisitely without giving up the ghost: “renewing those tortures from day to day; alternating the dungeon and the rack; until pain and anguish had done their work on the wreck of body and mind which remained in their hands, and then committing the victim to the flames, to burn like a fagot in the fire, until nothing; remained but his ashes encumbering the chain which hung around the blackened stake. The Holy Inquisition! The Holy Office! Foe of truth and justice; minister of Satan; thy name has yet to be invented, for no one word employed by human lips can adequately describe thee. Miscalled preserver of the faith, thou hast been the nurse of hypocrisy, the parent of fear, of falsehood, of slavery; mental and moral degradation and national ruin have followed in thy wake. Monster of mediaeval cruelty, thy black shadow flees from the light of modern days, pursued by the abhorrence and execration of the world.

The following is a numerical summary of victims who suffered during, the years 1481 to 1498, under the Inquisition in Spain:

1481. Burned alive in Seville, 2,000; burned in effigy 2,000; penitents, 17,000.

1482. Burned alive, 88; burned in effigy, 44; penitents, 625.

1483. About the same as in preceding year in Seville, and in Cordova; in Jaen and Toledo, burned alive, 688; burned in effigy, 644; penitents 5,725.

1484. About the same in Seville; and in the other places, burned alive, 220; burned in effigy, 110; penitents, 1,561.

1485. Seville, Cordova, as the year preceding. In Estra-madeira, Valladolid, Calaborra, Murcia, Cuenza, Zaragoza, and Valencia, there were burned alive 1 620; burned in effigy, 510; and penitents, 13,471

1486. In Seville and Cordova as the year before. In other places burned alive, 528; burned in effigy, 264; penitents, 3,745.

1487. About the same as the year before, and in Barcelona and Majorca many more, making in all, burned alive, 928; burned in effigy, 664; and penitents, 7,145.

1488. In the thirteen Inquisitions, burned alive, 616; burned in effigy, 308; and penitents 4,379.

1489. About the same as the preceding year.

1490. Burned alive, 324; burned in effigy, 112;and penitents, 4,369.

1491 to 1498. At about the same rate.

“Torquemada, Inquisitor-General of Spain, during the eighteen years of his inquisitorial ministry, caused 10,220 victims to perish in the flames ; burned the effigies of 6,860 who died in the Inquisition, or fled under fear of persecution; and 97,321 were punished with infamy, confiscation of goods, perpetual imprisonment, or disqualification for office, under colour of penance; so that no fewer than 114,401 families must have been irrecoverably ruined. 1 And the most moderate calculation gathered from the records of the Inquisition by the laborious Secretary, Llorente, up to the year 1523, when the fourth Inquisitor died, exhibits the fearful aggregate of 18,320 burned alive, 9,660 in effigy, 206,526 penitents. Total number of sufferers, 234,506, under the first four inquisitors-general.”

THE WITNESSES SILENCED

The Inquisition continued its career of persecution under its forty-four inquisitors-general till 1820, when it was finally suppressed. But as early as the Lateran Council in 1514. the whole of the pre- reformation witnesses to the gospel in PVance, Spain, Piedmont, Italy and Bohemia, by means of the sword, the rack, and the stake, had been crushed and silenced. In England the Lollards were extinct. None remained to witness to New Testament truth. The orator of the session, ascending the pulpit, addressed to the assembled members of the Lateran Council, the memorable exclamation of triumph :—” There is an end of resistance to the Papal rule and religion; opposers there exist no more.”

“After three days I will rise again.”—Matt. 27:63.

IT was on the 5th day of May, 1514, at the ninth session of the Lateran Council that the Papal Orator “pronounced his pasan of triumph over the extinction of heretics and schismatics.”

“Jam nemo reclamat, nutlus obsistit.”

“There is an end of resistance to the papal rule and religion: opposers there exist no more.”

Three years and a half later on, to a day, on October Jist, 1517, Luther posted up his Theses at Wittemberg. “The voice of an obscure monk rang through Europe, like the mighty thunder peal; awakening men from the slumber of ages, and shaking to its foundation the usurped dominion of Romanism.”1 In Luther and the Reformers the slaughtered witnesses to the truth of the gospel, risen from the dead, stood once more upon their feet before Rome and the world.

This was what the martyr Huss, a hundred years before, had foretold. “I am no vain dreamer,”he said, “but hold for certain that the image of Christ shall never be effaced. They wish to destroy it: but it shall be painted afresh in the hearts of gospel-preachers better than myself. And I, awaking as it were from the dead, and rising from the grave, shall rejoice with exceeding great joy.”

Jerome of Prague, his fellow martyr, named the interval one hundred years, “after which their memory would be vindicated, their cause triumphant.”

This double prophecy was fulfilled.

Pope Adrian, Leo X’s successor, in a brief addressed to the diet of Nuremberg in 1523, wrote thus: “The heretics Huss and “Jerome seem now to be alive again in the person of Luther.””Not in the compass of the whole ecclesiastical history of Christendom, save and except in the death and resurrection of Christ Himself, is there any such example of the sudden, mighty, and triumphant resuscitation of His cause and Church from a state of deep de- pression.”2 Their lofty and animated descriptions of this divine revival are clothed by the writers of the period in metaphors borrowed from the pages of the Apocalypse. Thus Milton wrote:-

“When I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the Church; how the bright and blissful Reformation, by divine power, struck through the black and settled night of ignorance and anti-christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy musf needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears; and the sweet odour of the returning Gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it j the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities now trooping apace to the new-erected banner of salvation; the martyrs with the unresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon.”

A new era had dawned upon the world: an era of Light, Liberty, Life, Progress; the Age of the Book. Then was the Bible translated into the vernacular languages of Europe, and later on into all the leading languages of the world, its sacred pages opened in the eyes of the nations, its truths expounded in their ears, its records placed in their hands, yea, its teachings written in the hearts, and reflected in the lives of millions emancipated from the prison house of papal bondage.

Then, to use the language of the historian, Gibbon, “the lofty fabric of superstition, from the abuse of indulgences to the intercession of the Virgin, was levelled with the ground. Myriads of both sexes of the monastic profession were restored to the liberty and labours of social life. An hierarchy of saints and angels, of imperfect and subordinate deities, were stripped of their temporal power . . . their images and relics banished from the Church; and the credulity of the people no longer nourished with the daily repetition of miracles and visions. The imitation of paganism was supplanted by a pure and spiritual worship of prayer and thanksgiving . . . The chain of authority was broken . . . the popes, fathers, and councils, were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world; and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the Scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience.”

ADVANCE IN PROPHETIC INTERPRETATION

The advent of the Reformation shed a broad beam of light upon the very centre and heart of Apocalyptic prophecy. It illuminated the visions in the tenth and eleventh chapters, removing the obscurity which had hitherto hung upon their meaning; and caused the trumpet call to God’s people in the eighteenth chapter, to come out of Babylon, to sound forth as never before.

Now was the mighty cloud-clothed, rainbow crowned angel of the vision in the tenth chapter seen as it were to descend from heaven holding in his hand a little book open • and setting his feet on land and sea, he was heard to cry aloud as when a lion roareth. Then were heard the seven thunders of Rome’s anathemas, pealing forth their defiant reply. Then did the Reformers take from the hands of the angel the “little book”of the newly-opened Word of God, and eating it themselves, as Ezekiel had done before them, renew their prophecy, “before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.”1 Then did the Reformers “rise and measure the temple of God”as commanded, “and the altar and them that worship therein,” leaving out, or casting out, as bidden, “the outer court”as given to the Gentiles to remain unreformed, and continue trodden under foot. Then too, was “the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt”denounced as such; 2 and the prophesying of Christ’s sackcloth clothed witnesses, like that of the Jewish prophets in the days of the Baalitical and Babylonian apostasies, clearly recognized: the “olive trees”or anointed ones, like the faithful reformers in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, after the return of Judah from the ancient typical Babylon seen to be “candlesticks”or light bearers, “standing before the God of the earth.”

Now was the mystery cleared up; now was the meaning of these wondrous visions revealed, and the testimony of prophecy confirmed the faith, and justified the position of the Reformers. What Ezra and Nehemiah, Joshua and Zerubabbel had been in the great work of the restoration of Judah from Babylonish captivity, of the rebuilding of the altar, and temple of God, and of the ruined walls of Jerusalem, such were the modern Reformers in the still more glorious work of the Reformation of the Church After her long captivity in the anti-typical “Babylon the Great”; and the visions of the Apocalypse based as to their symbolism, upon the history of Judah’s restoration, stood forth explained by the events of modern history; a brilliant lamp lighting the Reformers.’ feet; a miracle of divine prescience ; a seal of approbation upon the Reformation movement; a warrant for its work, a pledge of its success.

A TWOFOLD DISCOVERY

The Reformation was born of a twofold discovery; the discovery of Christ, and the discovery of Antichrist. This discovery was first developed in the mind of Luther; and from his mind it passed into the mind of Western Europe; from whence it has since gone forth throughout the world. It arose from Luther’s finding a Bible. To the awakened monk God revealed through His word the glorious gospel of salvation. Profoundly convinced of sin, Luther embraced “the righteousness of God”revealed in the Scriptures, and justification by faith in contrast with justification by works became the thrilling theme of his testimony.

There followed the posting up in October, 1517, of Luther’s ninety-five theses against indulgences, which he affixed to the door of the chief church at Wittemberg, boldly offering to maintain them against all impugners. “The truths most prominently asserted in them were the Pope’s utter insufficiency to confer forgiveness of sin, or salvation,—Christ’s all-sufficiency,—and the true spiritual penitent’s participation, by God’s free gift, independently altogether of papal indulgence or absolution, not merely in the blessing of forgiveness, but in all the riches of Christ. There were added other declarations also, very notable as to the gospel of the glory and grace of God, not the merits of saints, “being the true and precious treasure of the Church “,—a denunciation of the avarice and soul deceivings of the priestly traffickers in indulgences;—and a closing exhortation to Christians to follow Christ as their Chief, even through crosses and tribulation, thereby at length to attain to His heavenly kingdom. Bold indeed were the words thus published; and the effect such that the evening of their publication 1 has been remembered ever afterwards, and is ever memorable, as the Epoch of the Reformation.” 2

Following Luther’s discovery of Christ came his discovery of Antichrist. In the month of June, 1520, the Pope hurled a thunderbolt at Luther, condemning his doctrines in a bull, and ordering that ” unless within sixty days he retracted his errors, he was to be seized and sent as a prisoner to Rome.”

On December 20th, 1520, “a pile of wood was erected at the east gate of Wittemberg. One of the oldest members of the university lighted it. As the flames arose, Luther advanced arrayed in his frock and cowl, and amid bursts of approbation from the doctors, professors and students, hurled into the fire the Canon Law, the Decretals, and the Papal Bull.””The defiance of Wittemberg was followed by the emancipation of half the nations of Europe from their spiritual and temporal bondage.”1

Hidden from his persecutors in a lonely castle in the Wartburg forest, Luther now translated the New Testament into vernacular German. He prefixed to the Apocalypse, in his great edition of the German Bible, in 1534, an outline of his views as to the meaning of the prophecy. He considered it contained a prefiguration of the chief events in the history of the Christian Church. The woman clothed with the sun, and crowned with twelve stars, who flees to the wilderness from her persecutors, represents in his view, the true Church; and the two witnesses a succession of faithful witnesses for Christ. Of the opposing wild beast powers, the first beast represents the papal secular revived Roman Empire; and the second beast the Pope’s ecclesiastical or spiritual empire. The number of the beast, 666, signifies according to Luther, the number of years that the beast may be destined to endure, measured, he says in his Table Talk, from Gregory, or perhaps Phocas. The Antichrist is, in his view, an ecclesiastical person. In his “De Antichristo,”he says, “The Turk cannot be Antichrist, because he is not in the Church of God.” “Whoever so came in Christ’s name,”he exclaims, “as did the Pope?”

As the Reformation advanced, the true meaning of the predictions in the tenth and eleventh chapters of the Apocalypse more and more forced itself upon men’s minds. Bullinger, at Zurich, in his expository discourses on the Apocalypse, published in 1557, boldly explains the angel vision in Apocalypse 10, as representing Christ’s intervention through the Reformers. The “little open book “in the hand of the angel he interprets as the gospel, opened to men by the Reformers, and given to the world with the aid of the newly invented art of printing. He says the oath in the tenth chapter alludes to the three and a half “times “of Daniel 12, and surmises that the redemption of the Church at Christ’s coming, to raise the dead and transform the living was even then drawing nigh. As to the witnesses, the number two indicated that they were to be few, yet sufficient. The great city of their slaughter is the empire of Papal Rome. The falling of the tenth of the city represented the mighty defections already begun from the Papal Church and Empire. On the seventh trumpet he says, “It must come soon, therefore our redemption draweth nigh.”He explains the second beast as the Papal Antichrist, rising under Gregory I, and his successor Boniface, to the position of Universal Bishop. “On the name and number of the beast he adopts Irenaeus’ solution, dwelling on the Latinism of the Papacy, much like Dr. More afterwards.”

Bale, Bishop of Ossory under Edward VI, published an Apocalyptic Commentary entitled “Image of Both Churches,”ie: the true and the false. He explains the vision of Apocalypse like Bullinger, as representing the Reformation; the book opened being the Scriptures- then newly translated into the vernacular languages, and expounded by gospel-preachers. The measuring rod in Reve- lation II he explains as God’s Word, “now graciously sent as out of Zion,”the temple as God’s congregation or Church, distinguished by His Word from the synagogue of Satan; the witnesses as faithful protestors for Christ that continue with God’s people all through the time of the Church’s oppression by her so-called “Gentile “foes. The fall of the tenth part of the city, represents the diminution of the Papal Church. We have here, says Bale, “what is done already, and what is to come under this sixth trumpet, whereunder we are now; which all belongeth to the second woe.”

In David Chytrceus’ Explicatio Apocalypsis, published at Wittemberg, in 1571, the 1,260 days of the Gentiles treading down the holy city are explained as 1,260 years, to be calculated either from Alaric’s taking of Rome in A . D ., 412, or from Pbocas’ decree, A.D., 606; and thus to end in A . D ., 1672, or in A . D ., 1866. The resurrection of the witnesses he explains of their speedy revival “on each individual occasion of their temporary suppression by Antichrist.”

Augustin Marlorafs exposition of the Revelation of St. John, published in 1574, under Queen Elizabeth, “is professedly collected out of divers notable writers of the Protestant Churches, viz:— Bullinger, Calvin, Caspar Meyander, Justus Jonas, Lambertus, Musculus, JEcolampadius, Pellicanus, Meyer, Firet.”On Apocalypse 10 he sets forth “the clear decisive explanation of its Angel-vision usual among the Reformers, as figuring the opening of the Scriptures and revived gospel preaching at the Reformation: also the exclusion of the outer court in Apocalypse 11, as signifying the exclusion of Papists.”

Thus similarly the venerable martyrologist John Foxe in his exposition of the Apocalypse written in the year 1586, —a work interrupted by his death,—applies the magnificent vision of Christ in Apocalypse 10 to the restoration of gospel preaching, the book in the angel’s hand representing God’s Word. The temple of Apocalypse he takes to be the Church; its inner court the true worshippers; its outer the false; the measuring of the temple its separation and reformation “as in our day,”implying a previous corruption under Antichrist. All this had been done under the sixth, or Turkish trumpet, whose end he considered to be near. Under the seventh trumpet which would follow, the Church would have its time of blessedness accomplished, in Christ’s coming, and the saints’ resurrection.

Brigbtman’s “Commentary on the Apocalypse “dedicated to ” the holy reformed churches of Brittany, Germany and France,”was published in A . D . 1600 or 1601, before the death of Queen Elizabeth. In this remarkable work which was deservedly popular with the Protestant Churches of the time, Brightman rightly identifies the locust woe of the fifth trumpet with the Saracen invasion, and the Euphratean woe of the sixth trumpet with the Turkish. The casting down of the dragon in Apocalypse 12, and his restoration in a new form under the beast of Apocalypse 13, he applies to the casting down of the rule of heathen Rome under Constantine, and the subsequent revival of Roman rule under the Popes ; the head of the empire being wounded J:o death by the Gothic invasions, and healed by Justinian and Pbocas in the exaltation of the papacy in the restored empire.

Considering the Apocalyptic interpretation of the sixteenth century as a whole we recognize not only a considerable advance in the understanding of the prophecy, but a practical application and use of its leading predictions of the highest importance. The glorious work of the Reformation was built upon doctrinal, practical, and prophetic grounds. Apocalyptic prophecy was accorded a prominent position among the stately pillars of its foundation. To the reformers the Church of Rome was “Babylon the great”of the Apocalypse, clad in purple and scarlet, adorned with “gold, and precious stones, and pearls,”a faithless harlot seated on a wild beast power, intoxicating the nations with the cup of her idolatries and superstitions, and drunken with “the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus.”The duty of separation from the Church of Rome was boldly proclaimed on the ground of the divine command in Revelation 18, “Come out of her my people that ye be not partaker of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”The duty to reform the Church was urged on the authority of the command in Revelation n, “Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.”While Rome excommunicated the Reformers, the Reformers excomm- unicated Rome in obedience to the command in Revelation 11, “The court which is without the temple, leave out (or rather ‘cast out’) and measure it not.”The Pope of Rome was resisted and condemned as “the Man of Sin,””the Antichrist,”the “standard-bearer”as Calvin calls him, “of an abominable apostasy.”The long line of pre- reformation martyrs, and the reformers and martyrs of the Reformation, were regarded as the sackcloth clothed and faithful witnesses of the Apocalypse, God’s anointed “prophets,”like Elijah and Elisha in the days of the Baalitical apostasy of Israel, and Ezra and Nehemiah in the time of the restoration of Jerusalem, and rebuilding of the temple, who, warred against and overcome by the wild beast power, had been figuratively raised from the dead, and exalted in full view of their amazed antagonists. To the Reformers of the sixteenth century the era of the seventh trumpet was at hand, when “The kingdoms of this world”would become “the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.”And they awaited the predicted and proximate hour when “like a great millstone “”that great city Babylon”should be “thrown down and found no more at all,”and the “great voice of much people in heaven “should lift up the rejoicing utterance, with thrice repeated hallelujahs, “salvation, and glory, and honour, and power unto the Lord our God, for true and righteous are His judgments: for He hath judged the great whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of His servants at her hand.”The prominence of Apocalyptic interpretation in the voluminous writings of the Reformers is one of their most marked features. They wielded the word of prophecy as the sharp two-edged sword of the Spirit, “piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.”And while God sealed their testimony with lasting spiritual success, they, on their part, sealed their witness with their blood. They inaugurated an era of light and liberty such as the world had never seen before, which remains as the colossal confirmation of their testimony, as interpreters and teachers of “the Word of God which endureth forever.”

IN tracing the development of the interpretation of the Apocalypse as ceaselessly following the unveiling of the plan of Providence by the events of history-, we direct our attention at this stage to the fresh page of history which lay before the eyes of prophetic interpreters in the seventeenth century.

I. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was succeeded by the great Papal Reaction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; a movement which included the founding of the Order of the Jesuits, the Marian persecutions, the wars in France against the Huguenots; the Auto-da-fes of the Inquisition in Spain; the decrees and anathe- mas of the Council of Trent; the diabolical attempt of the Duke of Alva to exterminate the Protestants in the Netherlands, of whom 18,000 were slaughtered in six years; the fearful massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572; the invasion of the Spanish Armada in 1588 ; the Jesuit attempts on the life of Queen Elizabeth; the Gunpowder plot in 1605; the sanguinary thirty years’ war beginning 1618; the massacre of 20,000 Protestants in Magdeburg in 1631; the diabolical barbarities of Count Tilly in Saxony; the massacre of 40,000 Protestants in Ireland in 1641; and wholesale slaughter of the Waldenses in 1655; together with other wars, massacres, and persecutions too numerous to be mentioned. By these dreadful acts the papacy was revealed as the persecuting Antichrist, in colours so glaring and terrible as to compel universal recognition. It is note- worthy that while the Church of England in her Thirty-nine Articles drawn up at an earlier date, in 1562—articles strongly Anti-Romish in character—refrains from identifying the Pope with the predicted ” Man of Sin,”the Confession of the Westminster Assembly of Divines in 1647 (a confession ratified and established by Act of Parliament in 1649), does so identify him; as witness the following article,—”There is no other Head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that Man of Sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God.”Thus also the Articles of the Church of Ireland, drawn up in 1615, declare “The Bishop of Rome is so far from being the Supreme Head of the Uni- versal Church, that his works and his doctrines do plainly discover him to be that “Man of Sin “foretold in the Holy Scriptures, whom the Lord shall consume with the Spirit of His mouth, and abolish with the brightness of His coming.”With these solemn affirmations of the Protestant Churches of the seventeenth century the voices of all the leading prophetic interpreters of the period agree. Their works are before us as we write. We have carefully examined their teachings, from those of Lord Napier’s “Commentary on the Apocalypse” 1 published in 1593, to Vitringa’s, a century later, including Cressener’s “demonstrations”of the principles of Apocalyptic interpretation in 1690; the works of Dent (1607), Taffin (1614), Forbes (1614), Brightman (1615), Bernard (1617), Cowper (1619), Taylor (1633), Goodwin (1639,) Mede (1643), Pareus (1643), Cotton (1645 and 1655), Roberts (1649), Holland (1650), Homes (1654), Tillinghast (1654), Stephens (1656), Guild (1656), Durham (1680), More (1680), Jurieu (1687), Marckius (1689), Cressener (1690), Vitringa (1695), Cradock (1697),and others. All these seventeenth century writers are agreed as to the historical principle of interpretation, and as to the general outline of events fulfilling Apocalyptic prophecy. Their views on the thirteenth chapter of Revelation are especially important in their clear recognition of the papacy as heading the second, or revived stage of the wild beast power; and its persecution of the saints during the forty-two prophetic “months,”or 1,260 years, of its domination. Cressener’s works may be especially mentioned as containing a powerful demonstration of this view.

II. Turning now to events in eastern Christendom we note that the capture of Constantinople, and overthrow of the Eastern Roman Empire by the Turks in 1453was too near in point of time to the opening of the sixteenth century to be properly judged of by the Reformers. The event was one of such enormous magnitude as to require a more distant standpoint for its correct appreciation. But in the course of the sixteenth century its full character and effects be- came plainly visible. The Saracenic and Turkish conquests in the time of Solomon the Magnificent, and the Amaraths and Achmets of the age were seen in their true colours. The House of Othman was ” lord of the ascendant, and numerous and fair provinces had been torn from the Christians, and heaped together to increase its already ample dominions.”The fulfilment of the locust and Euphratean woes of the fifth and sixth trumpets, in the conquests of the Saracens and Turks was now clearly recognized. In 1615 Brightman explained the 150 days ravages of the Locust horsemen as the 150 years of Saracenic conquests reckoned from their first ravages of Syria about A . D . 630. The year, month and day of Turkish conquests he reckons as 396 years (365 + 30+1)5 measuring it from the revival of the Othmans A . D . 1300, to the then future date of 1696. It is remarkable that the peace of Carlowitz in 1699, terminating seventeen years of war with Turkey, marked a closing crisis of Turkish power. “From that time forth,”says Sir Edward Creasy, “all serious dread of the military power of Turkey ceased in Europe.”The prophetic period may be reckoned as 391 years (360+30 + 1), 1 and as extending from the reign of Alp Arslan (1063-1072 according to Gibbon) to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Under Alp Arslan the Turks crossed the Euphrates, and invaded Europe. “The myriads of Turkish horse”says Gibbon, “overspread a frontier of 600 miles from Tauris to Erzeroum, and the blood of 130,000 Christians was a grateful sacrifice to the Arabian prophet.”The story of the Turks in Eastern Europe is that of a succession of dreadful massacres without a parallel in the history of the world. With the capture of Constantinople, when Constantine XIV, the last Christian Emperor of the East fell and was “buried under a mountain of the slain,”Gibbon terminates his history of “the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

Goodwin (1639), expounds the fallen star of the fifth trumpet as Mahomet, fallen from the profession of”Christianity; and the smoke issuing from the pit as the false religion of the prophet. Of the sixth trumpet, or Euphratean woe, he says, “No prophecy doth or can more punctually describe any nation or event than this doth the Turks, and their irruption upon the Eastern Empire, who when they came first out of their native country, about the year 1040 after Christ, did seat themselves first by the River Euphrates, and were divided into four several governments or kingdoms,”etc., and completed their conquest of the Roman Empire “in the year 1453, which is 186 years since, who possess that whole Eastern Empire unto this day.”Mede (1643), reckons the Turkish woe from 1057 to 1453; and More (1680), does the same. There is perhaps no point on which historical interpreters of the Apocalypse from Mede and Goodwin onwards are more agreed than in the application of the fifth and sixth trumpets to the overthrow of the corrupt and apostate Eastern Empire by the Saracens and Turks.

III. The recognition of the fall of the Western and Eastern Empires, under the six first trumpets, led Mede, to the view that the Apocalypse contains two principal prophecies; first the prophecy relating to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West, and in the East, figured under the seals, and six first trumpets; and secondly, the prophecy concerning the fortunes of the Christian Church, beginning with the vision of the descent of the angel in Chapter X, holding in his hand “a little book open.”An analogous twofold feature certainly characterizes the prophecies of Daniel, which consist of an earlier series relating to the Thrones, or governments of the world, and a later series relating to the Temple, and people of God, and the approaching Advent of Messiah. Throne prophecies followed by Temple prophecies,—such is the twofold order both in the book of Daniel and in the Apocalypse.

IV. From the fourth and fifth centuries up to the time of the Reformation the binding of Satan introducing the millennium was regarded as a past event. The Church of the Middle Ages imagined itself to be living in the millennium, and the Reformers considered that the outbreak of Papal persecution at the close of the Middle Ages was the fulfilment of the loosing of Satan for “a little season,” prior to the Great Day of Judgment.

By the middle of the seventeenth century the imagined “little season “of Satan’s loosing had so lengthened out as to prove the error of this interpretation. Mede was the first to appreciate the fact. His demonstration of the futurity of the millennium was an immense advance, and created an era in Apocalyptic interpretation. Elliott truly describes it as “a mighty step of change from the long continued ex- planation of the symbol as meant of Satan’s 1,000 years’ binding from Christ’s time, or Constantine’s.”The futurity of the millennium has held its ground as a Canon of interpretation from Mede’s time to the present day.

V. In harmony with this view, Mede, like the oldest Patristic Expositors, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, etc., interpreted the first resurrection as a literal resurrection of the Saints to be accomplished at the time of Antichrist’s destruction, at the commencement of the Millennial Age. In this Mede was followed by an imposing array of Puritan Expositors. This was a return to primitive doctrine resulting from the abandonment of the false millennium of the Middle Ages. Dr. Twisse, then prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, in an admirable and appreciative preface to Mede’s “Commentary on the Apocalypse,”gives a summary outline of the Apocalyptic interpretation of this learned Puritan, and says of him “many interpreters have done excellently, but he sur-mounteth them all.”

VI. Mede’s Synchronisms form the leading feature of his “Key to the Apocalypse.”He laid down the principle that in order to the correct understanding of this mysterious prophecy, it is necessary in the first place to fix the order of its principal visions, apart altogether from the question of their interpretation. In doing this he gives central prominence to the five times recurring period of 1,260 days, forty-two months, or three and a half “Times “; and locates the chief visions of the prophecy by their relation to this period, as preceding it, cotemporizing with it, or succeeding it. 1

The first synchronism established by Mede is that of what he calls “a noble quaternion of prophecies,”remarkable by reason of the equality of their times : —

1. The woman remaining in the wilderness three and one-half “Times,”or 1,260 “days.”

2. The revived Beast ruling forty-two “months.”

3. The outer court trodden down forty-two “months.”

4. The witnesses prophesying in sackcloth 1,260 ” days.”

These periods, Mede shows, are not only equal, but begin at the same time, and end together ; and therefore, synchronize throughout. As the various Apocalytic visions are connected with this central period, as introducing it, cotemporizing with it, or succeeding it, their place in the Apocalyptic drama is clearly indicated.

THE 1,260 YEARS OF PROPHECY

VII. The lapse of time now led to a further important development of the historic interpretation. Sixteen and a half centuries had rolled by since the commencement of the Christian era; thirteen and a half centuries from the fall of Paganism in the days of Constantine; and twelve and a half centuries since the invasion of the Roman Empire by Alaric, the initial act of its Gothic overthrow.

The principle of the “year day interpretation”of the prophetic times was already recognized, and the fulfilment of the great prophetic period of 1,260 years now forced itself on general attention, —a period occurring in different forms no less than seven times in Daniel and the Apocalypse.

Room at last existed in Christian history for the location of this great prophetic period, and from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards it was accorded a prominent place in the historical interpretation of prophecy.

Naturally, with the lapse of time, and the progressive fulfilment of the predictions relating to the Papal downfall, the location of the period was shifted forward from earlier to later dates. The fall of the Papacy has been gradual, like its rise ; and the period in question was found to measure with remarkable accuracy the intervals which extended from the principal dates connected with its commencement, to corresponding dates in its decline and overthrow.

Lord Napier in his “Commentary on the Apocalypse,”published in 1593, places the first commencement of the 1,260 years “between the year of Christ 300 and 316,”and its corresponding end “about the year 1560,”at which date “the tenth part of the Papistical Empire was reformed.”He indicates a second possible fulfilment of the period in the interval extending from the accession of Justinian—a notable date in the rise of the Papacy—to the then future year 1786 ; which was a remarkable anticipation for the time, of the date of the French Revolution. Had Lord Napier dated the 1,260 years from the decree of Justinian in 533, constituting the Bishop of Rome “head of all the holy Churches and of all the holy priests of God,”he would have correctly anticipated its primary termination in the central year of the French Revolution, 1793,—the year of the execution of Louis XVI, and of the reign of terror, in which the Papal Church and State were overthrown as if by the explosion of a volcano.

Mede in 1642, placed the commencement of the 1,260 years at Alaric’s irruption, in 395; the date according to his view of the sounding of the first of the four trumpets connected with the overthrow of the Western Empire. Reckoning it thus, the termination fell in the then future year 1655, the year of the great massacre of the Protestant witnesses in Piedmont of which Milton wrote his memo- rable sonnet.

“Avenge O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.”

This location of the 1,260 years is prominent in Mede’s Chart of the Visions in the Apocalypse.

Pareus, whose valuable “Commentary on the Apocalypse ” was published in 1643, shortly after Mede’s, places the beginning of 1,260 years in A . D . 606, when Boniface III was exalted by a decree of the Emperor Phocas to “the chaire of universal pestilence.””From the yeare of Christ therefore 606, until this time the holy citie hath been trodden under foot by the Romane Gentiles, which is the space of 1,073 yeers, and is yet to be trodden down 223 yeers more, to wit, until the yeere of Christ 1866.”We have lived to see the correctness of this remarkable anticipation.

In the year 1866 the overthrow of Papal Austria by Protestant Prussia took place, and the Papal invitation to all Catholic bishops to “celebrate the eighteenth century of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul”was sent forth: 599 bishops were present at the Allocution delivered by the Pope in 1867. The Pope’s encyclical letter summoning the Vatican Council was issued in 1868, and the decree of Papal infallibility coinciding with the outbreak of the Franco- German war, together with the fall of the French Empire and the Papal Temporal Power took place in 1870. In the four years 1866— 1870 Papal power was overthrown in Austria, Spain, France, and Italy; and since 1870 the Pope has ceased to possess even a shadow of political sovereignty.

Pareus was not the first to point out 1866 as the termination of the 1,260 years. David Chytrceus in A . D . 1571 indicated Alaric A . D . 412, and the decree of Phocas, A . D . 606, as possible starting-points of the period. But the anticipation of Pareus was more definite in character; and he takes a leading place in the list of prophetic interpreters who during the last two hundred years have fixed on A . D. 606 and 1866 as the chief termini of the 1,260 years period of Papal rule.

It is a noteworthy fact that the historic interpretation of prophecy, constantly developing century by century with the unveilings of Providence, assumed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as to its leading outlines, a definite form from which it has never since departed. One has but to compare Mede’s diagram of the historical fulfilment of the Apocalyptic visions (1641), and that of Whiston (1706), with that of Elliott (1844-1862), to be convinced of the fact.

HERE we reach the beginning of the last act of the Papal tragedy. Louis XIV sat on the throne of France at Versailles. At his side was Madame de Maintenon. Behind her stood the Jesuit Confessor Pere la Chaise. Behind him again the Pope, and his inspirer the Prince of Darkness.

In Piedmont the trembling remnant of Protestants left by the great massacre of 1655 still clung to their native rocks, and Alpine fastnesses.

In England James II was struggling to restore Papal supremacy, and enslave the children of the Puritans who had bought their liberties at so great a price.

Behind the scene historically lay ages of darkness; before it ages of light.

O thou who wouldst draw near to behold this sight—the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed, take thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place on which thou standest is holy ground.

Clear away the mists of ignorance which hide the great tragedy from thine eyes. Thou art the heir of freedom purchased by the sufferings and sacrifices of these martyr days. Gaze then upon the sublime and touching spectacle, and let it fix itself in thy memory forever.

Fear not to enter this gloomy region for light shall spring from the sepulchral darkness; life from the ashes of the dead.

Hark! a wail bursts forth from the lips of thousands of Protestant parents robbed of their children. That wail is the prelude of the last great Papal persecution of the Huguenots; a persecution which was followed by the French Revolution, inaugurating the modern era of civil and religious liberty.

“A terrible law strikes dismay into the hearts of fathers and mothers—a law that will bring us to the determination to go and cast ourselves at the feet of the king; begging him to grant us either death, or freedom of conscience for us and for our children; or permission, leaving behind us our property, to forsake the nation, and drag out a languishing existence, scattered in every country of the globe.”It is Pierre Jurieu who utters this bitter cry in his “Last Efforts of Afflicted Innocence,”relating to the effects of the statute of Louis XIV, of June, 1681.

And what was this law? It was a law which struck at the existence of the family; which authorized the wholesale compulsory conversion of all the children of the Protestants throughout France to the Roman Catholic Church. It authorized children of the tender age of seven years to renounce the religion of their Protestant parents, and gave freedom to the Romish priests and population to ensnare them into an enforced confession of the Romish faith; a mere sentence, a word expressing admission of some popish doctrine sufficing; forbidding the poor innocent to take back its words; and thus tearing the child from its parents and its home, and hurrying it, in spite of frantic protests from the father and the mother, into some nunnery or other place, to be there immured until “conversion “was complete.

A refinement of cruelty this, unmatched even in the persecutions of old heathen Rome.

Institutions spring up at once all over France, Nouveaux Catholiques for boys; Nouvelles Catholiques for girls; they are quickly crowded. Bereaved Protestant parents sit in their desolated homes, weeping over the children who have been torn away from them. “All the torments that have heretofore been inflicted upon us are as nothing,”say they, “in comparison with this.”It is, however, but the beginning of the tragedy. The parents are not yet converted. Unreasonable parents! The elder brothers and sisters still remain Protestants. They dare to hold prayer-meetings in their desolated homes. They bow down on their knees, and hide their weeping faces in their hands. They cry to the Father in heaven. What infamy! A stop must be put to this.

But how? Had Satan ingenuity equal to the occasion? How were the parents and elder sons and daughters to be compelled to come wholesale into the Catholic fold? By a new method. By Dragonnades. The army of Louis XIV was vast and powerful; his soldiers unscrupulous, ungodly, superstitious, lustful, intolerant, ready instruments for arty abomination. Quarter the soldiers in the homes of the Protestants. Commission these “booted evangelists ” to convert them; give them leave to do as they will in these homes with the women, as well as the men; with the mothers and the daughters. Set them to work. Let them stable their horses in the parlours; break the furniture; devour the provisions; tie the fathers hand and foot, and violate in their presence the wives and daughters. Let them prevent the wretched Huguenots from closing their eyes in sleep until they have renounced their Protestantism.

Keep the heretics awake; beat them; drag them about. Shout at them, walk them up and down the rooms all night long, Keep up this fiendish treatment day and night till they submit. Cursed heretics, what right have they to resist the will of Louis XIV, and the almighty Pope of Rome?

And these horrors were done; done throughout all France. The soldiers quartered on the Protestants “pinched them, prodded them, hung them up by ropes, tormented them in a hundred other ways, until their unhappy victims scarcely knew what they were doing.”” They spat in the faces of women, made them lie down on burning coals, made them put their heads into ovens whose hot flames stifled them.”The new mission went forward rapidly, Louis XIV directing. “From Guyenne and Upper Languedoc the Dragonnades extended to Saintonage, Aunis, and Poitou on the west, and to Vivarais on the East. Next came the turn of the province of Lyonnaise, of the Cevennes, of Lower Languedoc, of Province, of Gex. Later still the rest of the kingdom became a prey to the hideous work of the ” booted mission “as it was called—Normandy, Burgundy, and the central provinces, even to far-off Brittany, and to Paris itself.” “The horrors the dragoons inspired, the crimes they perpetrated, the sufferings the wretched victims endured,”who shall describe? But this was only the beginning of the tragedy.

A statute still remained—the Edict of Nantes—protecting the lives and liberties of the Huguenots. By one fell stroke this last, protection was swept away. The Edict was revoked. The floodgates were opened, and persecution in its worst, form rolled over the Protestant population of France.

The fatal day of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the I7th of October, 1685.

The first article of the new law recalled all legislation favourable to the Huguenots.

The second forbade all gatherings of Protestants for the services of their religion.

The three following had reference to Protestant ministers. All these were commanded to leave France within fifteen days from the publication of the Edict, on pain of the galleys.

The seventh article abolished all private schools for the instruction of Protestant children.

The eighth prescribed that all children hereafter born of Protestant parents should be baptized by the parish priests, and brought up in the Roman Catholic religion. Recalcitrant parents incurred a fine of five hundred livres or more.

In the tenth article the king issued “very express and repeated prohibitions to all his Protestant subjects against leaving his kingdom, or allowing their wives or children to leave it, and against exporting their goods and chattels. The penalty was the galleys for men, and confiscation of body and goods for women.”

All the Protestant churches throughout France were shut or pulled down. Nothing but ruins remained. The pastors were exiled, and the flocks forbidden to follow them. An entire people, the best and noblest of the land, lay crushed under the cruel heel, the iron hoof, of the relentless Papal persecutor.

Then followed the great Exodus. Nothing could arrest it. Thousands on thousands of Huguenots fled from France.

The frontiers were guarded in vain. Disguised in all manner of ways, their faces disfigured, their garments rent, in the darkness of night, by sequestered paths, through forests, across mountains, and over the seas in open boats, they fled, and still fled, until half a million had escaped. They fled to Switzerland, to Holland, to England, and other countries. Four hundred thousand perished in the effort to escape. The prisons were crowded. The homes of the Protestants emptied, their houses left tenantless.

Thousands of Protestants had broken down under the strain, and professed submission to their Roman Catholic persecutors; but the great mass of the Huguenots had remained faithful. No power could conquer their convictions, or compel them to deny their Lord. Chained to the oars in the horrible galleys, and brutally beaten and bastinadoed by their captors, they remained faithful. Crammed into filthy jails, left to rot in dungeons, they remained faithful. Broken on the wheel they remained faithful. Aged pastors lay bound by their limbs to that cruel instrument, while through a long agony, protracted sometimes for hours, every bone in their body was broken. Stroke followed stroke while life remained. Groans went up from the galleys, from the prisons, from the lands of exile. In The Tower of Constance Huguenot women were immured without hope of release. The walls were nearly ninety feet high, and eighteen feet in thickness. It contained two great circular vaulted chambers one above the other. High and narrow loopholes admitted a feeble light. By that ray one of the noble women imprisoned there wrote on the wall.”Rhistez .” Yes, they “resisted unto blood”in that awful strife. Who were the victors in that struggle? Louis XIV and the Pope and priests of Rome, or the suffering Huguenots? Was not the Crucified the Conqueror? Is not the martyr the Victor? So they overcame. “When young Chamier underwent his horrible torture, for the scene of which, by a refinement of cruelty, the street in front of his paternal home had been selected, it was his mother that chiefly urged him to fortitude in suffering for the faith. “I have yet,”said she, “three children whom I shall cheerfully give up, if they be called to die for religion’s sake.”

Like the noble martyrs of primitive times “they loved not their lives unto the death.”They overcame; for greater is He who was in them, than he who was in the opposing world. Rome believed and boasted that she had triumphed. She rang her joybells. She struck Commemoration Medals. On one of them the crowned monarch stands on. the steps of the altar, and extends to France, represented by a kneeling suppliant the sceptre of his mercy, while around are inscribed the words Sacra Romana Restituta.—”The Roman religion restored.”

The Queen of Sweden received and sheltered some of the refugees. “I pray with all my heart,”said she, “that the false joy and triumph of the Church may not some day cost her tears and sorrows.”What it did cost France history has since related. In the Vaudois valleys at this same period the wave of persecution had reached its highest altitude. “In thy book,”cried Milton,

“record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infants down the rocks. Their groans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven.”

The Vaudois Protestants were cut up alive, roasted over fires, impaled on stakes, disembowelled, torn limb from limb, tortured in ways too horrible to describe. Leger’s volume contains pictures of all these horrors, and gives the names and numbers of the sufferers.

In 1686 Louis XIV sent 14,000 men under the Marquis de Catinat to join the Piedmontese army, to enforce the submission of the Vaudois. Following his victory over the Protestants of the Valleys the Duke condemned 14,000 of them to the prisons of Turin: of these 11,000 perished by heat, cold, hunger, and thirst in their imprisonment. The remaining three thousand on emancipation from prison fled over the mountains to Switzerland and Brandenburg. The republic of Geneva extended to the exiles a touching welcome.

In England James II had opened negotiations with the Pope. Papists were in full patronage and Jeffreys was holding his “bloody assizes.”In the army Protestant officers were replaced by Romanists; the Papal Nuncio was received at Windsor, and the seven Bishops sent to the Tower, the people venting their feelings in tears and prayers.

A storm was brewing, and a dark cloud hung over the land.

This closing crisis of Papal persecution had long been expected. Students of prophecy in the days of the Reformation and of the Puritan Revolution had forecast its advent and sought to calculate the period of its occurrence. They knew that the Protestant religion would be suppressed in some unprecedented way before the final judgments of God were poured forth on their persecutors.

They believed that the Protestant “witnesses “were yet to be slain; that they were to lie unburied for three and a half years, and then to be raised from death, and exalted to power and supremacy.

Peter Jurieu, one of the exiled Huguenot ministers wrote a book in 1687, a copy of which lies before us, entitled, “The accomplishment of the Scripture prophecies on the approaching deliverance of the Church, proving that the present persecution may end in three years and a half; after which the destruction of the Antichrist shall begin, which shall be finished in the beginning of the next age, and then the Kingdom of Christ shall come upon earth.”

It is a volume of six hundred pages, and remarkable for the clearness and force of its argument.

Was Jurieu mistaken?

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes took place on the 17th of October, 1685.

The English Revolution followed in 1688, and the coronation of William of Orange and Queen Mary took place on the nth of April, 1689.

From October, 1685, to April, 1689, the interval is three and a half years.

The English Revolution marked the end of Papal supremacy in England, and Papal persecution on any widely extended scale in the world. It was the first stage in the inauguration of a new era.

In 1688, James II, the last Popish King of England, abandoned his throne, and fled. The victories of William of Orange in Ireland and on the continent followed; including those of Marlborough over the armies of Louis XIV, in the nine years’ war with France from May, 1689, to January 1697.

The almost unexampled series of English victories of this war was succeeded by the Treaty of Ryswtck in September, 1697, and the full establishment of civil and religious liberty.

Encouraged by the English Revolution in 1689, the Vaudois refugees in Switzerland resolved to attempt to return to their country. Embarking at Nyon on the 16th of August, 1689, they crossed the Lake of Geneva, ascended the opposite heights, crossed the bridge of Marni, passed the towns of Cluse and Sallenches; crossed Mount Haute Luce, Mount Bon Hornme, and the River Isere; crossed Mount Tisserand and Mount Cenis, Mount Tourliers, the Valley of Jaillon, by Chamont above Suza, Mount Sei, and descended into the Valley of Pragela, the most northern of the Vaudois valleys. In this long and perilous journey across the Alps, they were led by Henry Arnaud. Though opposed by 10,000 French and 12,000 Piedmontese, they cut their way through, losing only thirty of their number in their numerous encounters with their enemies.

Climbing the precipitous Alps, crossing the snows, sleeping on the bare ground: subsisting only on bread and herbs, they escaped or put to flight their foes, preserved as by a miracle from all the perils of the way. Their return to their native valleys celebrated as “La Rentree Gloruuse “was effected three and half years after their total dissipation.

We have said that Jurieu published a work on the “Approaching deliverance of the Church,”in 1687, in which he anticipated that the Restoration of Protestantism would follow three and a half years after its overthrow at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

Another work on the Apocalypse written in 1685 by an exiled French minister contains the same anticipation. Copies of both of these works are lying before us. The latter contains the following reference to its authorship on the title-page, — “written by a French minister in the year 1685, and finish t but two days before the Dragoons plundered him of all except this Treatise.”

It is a small volume of about 300 pages. Fallen to pieces with age, with broken binding, and separated leaves, my copy is tied together with string to preserve it from destruction; an eloquent witness to the last great Papal persecution, and the anticipation based on the sure word of prophecy, of the speedy restoration of Protestant liberties. The author tells us that he was unacquainted with Jurieu’s view when he wrote. “There were divers of the refugees,”says he, “who had the sight of this discourse when they were in France. For the author had finished it near the end of August, 1685, about two days before the arrival of the new missionaries, the Dragoons, who plundered him of all he had. So that this was the whole that he was able to save out of that doleful shipwreck; which since his arrival at a place of security he hath reviewed and corrected, in several places. And having met with “the Accomplishment of Prophecies,”written by the famous Monsieur Jurieu, the author was exceedingly pleased to find that he had explained the eleventh chapter (of Revelation) as promissory of the reestablishment of the Reformed in France, according as that great man hath done.”

Not in France, however, but chiefly in England whither great numbers of the refugees had come, and in the Waldensiun Valleys, was the restoration of Protestantism to be effected. It came at the expected time. A darker experience awaited France, the execution of terrible judgments in retribution for her cruel and long continued persecution of the Huguenots. Regarded in its widest aspects, the English Revolution under William of Orange marked the commencement of the modern era of full Protestant liberties, and the political ascendancy of Protestant power in Europe, and throughout the world.

Next: History Unveiling Prophecy by H. Grattan Guinness – Part II

Jeremiah J. Crowley

Jeremiah J. Crowley (Ireland, Nov. 20, 1861 — Chicago, Aug. 10, 1927) was an American Catholic priest who left the Catholic Church and exposed Vatican influence in the American government. Crowley was accepted into the Chicago diocese by archbishop of Chicago Patrick Feehan in 1896, but fell out with him and opposed his successor, archbishop James Edward Quigley. He also wrote, “The Pope – Chief of White Slavers, High Priest of Intrigue”

This book is slightly condensed. I did not include all the pictures in the original, nor the paragraphs that refer to the pictures.

My favorite chapter is chapter 5, Archbishop Quigley Cowed by a Fearless Woman.. Quigley is the same guy who boasted in the Chicago Tribune that the Roman Catholic Church would someday rule the world through its agent, the USA!

Next to Charles Chiniquy, I consider Jeremiah Crowley is be a Martin Luther of America. Unfortunately Jesuit influence was already so strong in America that he is largely forgotton today. I sure didn’t hear of him until just a couple weeks before this post! I’m hoping to make Jeremiah J. Crowley’s name more familiar so that Christians may know his message to America and the world.

Jeremiah J Crowley

By JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY
A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST FOR TWENTY-ONE YEARS
Author of
” The Pope Chief of White Slavers, High Priest of Intrigue

COPYRIGHT
ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,
IN THE YEAR 1912, (Now in public domain)
BY JEREMIAH J. CROWLET,
IN THE OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS AT WASHINGTON.

Challenge to Rome

I retired voluntarily, gladly, from the priesthood of Rome, after a vain attempt, in combination with other priests, to secure a reform of Humanistic abuses from within (see “Romanism A Menace to the Nation”). This failing, no other course was open but to quit the accursed System forever.

I will give TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to any person who can prove that I was EXCOMMUNICATED and that the STATEMENTS and CHARGES against priests, prelates, and popes, in my books, “THE POPE-CHIEF OF WHITE SLAVERS, HIGH PRIEST OF INTRIGUE,” and “ROMANISM A MENACE TO THE NATION,” are untrue; and, furthermore, I will agree to hand over the plates of these books and stop their publication forever.

Will Rome accept this Challenge? If not, Why not?

JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY,
A ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST FOR TWENTY-ONE YEARS,
AUTHOR, LECTURER, AND PUBLICIST.

The obstinate refusal of Rome, for several years, to accept my challenge, is proof, positive and irrefutable, that its cowardly, wine-soaked, Venus-worshipping, and grafting prelates, priests and editors have no other reply for adversary, but vituperation and assassination.

PREFACE TO THIS VOLUME

Seven years ago I published my work entitled “The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation,” which now forms Part II. of this volume.

Four years later, in 1908, I voluntarily withdrew from the priesthood and the Roman Catholic Church. This step enabled me to say things which I could not say with propriety during my priesthood and while acting as a mere reformer within the Church.

The contents of Part I., which is a large addition of new matter, will be read eagerly by all who are familiar with my first work; because it is the key and explanation of what I had already said, and throws upon it the light necessary for its full and complete understanding and appreciation.

Part I. will give a clearer and more complete view and be a more graphic and exhaustive exposure of the intrigues and the corrupt practices of the Vatican system, both at Rome and throughout the world, than it was possible for me to state when I first undertook, together with other priests and prelates, to contribute what little I could to bring about a reform in the Roman Catholic priesthood.

“They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think.”

To every one who loves humanity it must be a thing of profoundest import to learn whether or not the laws and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church are so framed as, of very necessity, to work injustice, to encourage vice, to punish the innocent, and to protect the guilty.

The questions raised in various forms in the ensuing volume concern the very perpetuity of free institutions. They are all questions which no liberty-loving soul can ignore.

That it should be possible in this enlightened age that such questions should be seriously raised is the wonder and the shame of it all.

It is in darkness, that evil men love rather than the light, that such things flourish.

I give this volume to the light of day to enlighten and aid the people, whose supreme right and duty it is to defend their liberties.

In the words of the Messenger in Antigone, I can say, in part, “I saw,” and in whole :

“I will speak and hold back
No syllable of truth. Why should we soothe
Your ears with stories, only to appear
Liars thereafter? Truth is always right.”
JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY.
CINCINNATI, O., June, 1912.

I was born and reared in the Roman Catholic Church; trained in her doctrines and polity; and ordained a priest in 1886. I was a priest in good standing up to 1907 (twenty-one years), when I retired voluntarily from the priesthood. For six years previous to my retirement I waged a crusade against the evils of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, and while thus engaged challenged publicly, in speech and print, this Hierarchy to disprove the charges in Part II. of this volume, and also to prove that I was not, during that time, a priest in good standing. A copy of the challenge appears at the very beginning of Part II. That challenge was never accepted.

I now reiterate the challenge made in former editions of Part II. and elsewhere, as to the truth of the facts there stated. If the additional facts stated in Part I. are also true, the Roman Catholic Hierarchy is doubly condemned and will be so judged and denounced by all right-minded men. If any of my alleged facts are proven false, I am ready to abide the consequences.

The Vatican method “the conspiracy of silence” should not be permitted to shield any one affected by the charges made in this book. Silence may sometimes be golden, but in this instance it indicates guilt.

I want my readers to understand that I am not assailing the plain Roman Catholic people. They are the victims of a religious system, foisted upon them by the accident of birth. They are living up to the light they have. God grant that the sunlight of truth may soon flood their pathway! I sympathize with them, I admire them, and I love them.

When I wrote Part II. I was a loyal son of the Roman Catholic Church. At that time I would gladly have died for her. I wrote it to save, if I could, the Roman Catholic Church and to protect the Public School. My facts were carefully weighed and my arguments were prayerfully presented. The protestations of fidelity to the Roman Catholic Church which are contained in Part II. and in my other writings were made in good faith. I now unreservedly withdraw them.

I wrote Part II. with the further object of inaugurating a crusade for the emancipation of the Roman Catholic people by purifying the Roman Catholic priesthood. I have reason to believe that my book has emancipated thousands of Roman Catholics. I know that it has emancipated me I am no longer a Roman Catholic. For its preparation I was compelled to study thoroughly the history of the Roman Catholic Church, a subject which is purposely neglected in Roman Catholic schools. An extensive reading of secular history naturally followed. The age-long story of papal, prelatical and priestly corruption astounded and confounded me. I began to see the papacy in a new light. The question of Dr. John Lord haunted me, “Was there ever such a mystery, so occult are its arts, so subtle its policy, so plausible its pretensions, so certain its shafts?” (Beacon Lights of History, Vol. V., p. 99.) I gradually awakened to the fact that I was believing in unscriptural doctrines and championing a religious system which was anything but the holy and true church of Jesus Christ.

THE PAPAL MEDAL.

THE PAPAL MEDAL.

This is a facsimile of both sides of the medal struck by Gregory XIII. in commemoration of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. On the obverse is the head of the Pope, with the Latin inscription reading, “Gregory XIII., Pontifex Maximus, the First Year.” On the reverse is a representation of the killing of heretics by an angel who holds in one hand a sword and in the other a crucifix. The Latin inscription reads, “The Slaughter of the Huguenots, 1572.”

Rome claims that she did not approve of the massacre of the seventy thousand Huguenots. Why, then, did the bells of the papal churches in Rome peal out joyfully when the news of the slaughter was received by Pope Gregory XIII.? Why did he have the above medal struck to commemorate the event, and why did he order Te Deums to be sung in the churches instead of Misereres or de Profundis? Why did not the Cardinal of Lorraine, who was at Catherine’s court, raise a voice of protest against the crime? No, Rome can not exculpate herself from this, one of the greatest crimes that ever stained the records of sinful humanity.

Fear not that the tyrants shall rule forever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith ;
They stand on the brink of the mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death :
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,
And their swords and their scepters I floating see,
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity. Shelley.

The gruesome history of the Roman Catholic Church in general, and of the archdiocese of Chicago in particular, “the conspiracy of silence,” the threats of excommunication issued against Revs. Cashman, Hodnett and myself, threats and attempts to murder me, the continued neglect of the pope to answer my letter to him as set forth in the preface to Part II. (in which letter I asked for an opportunity to give names of clerical offenders and the proof of their misconduct), the refusal of the pope to pay any attention to the petitions and charges which had been sent to Rome by myself and a score of the prominent priests of the archdiocese of Chicago, touching the immoralities of the clergy all these combined to undermine my loyalty to the papacy, and were large factors in causing my ultimate utter loss of confidence in the integrity of the pope and his cabinet. It was only a step from loss of faith in the authorities of the Church to loss of faith in her unscriptural doctrines.

In the summer of 1907 I found myself in such a state of mind regarding the Vatican system, and so out of sympathy with the unscriptural doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, that there was nothing for me to do but to withdraw from my crusade and await the end of the revolution which was going on in my soul. Shortly thereafter I closed my office in Chicago and went to the Pacific Coast, where I engaged in business. In a few months my mind was at rest. Romanism had sloughed from me just as completely as it had from the Very Rev. Father Slattery and from the Caldwell sisters, founders of the Roman Catholic University, Washington, D. C.

During the past two years I have been urged to republish Part II. of this volume in the interests of patriotism and enlightenment. I now feel that the time is ripe to yield to this demand. I realize as never before the danger to which civil and religious liberties are exposed from Vatican machinations. That danger is not chimerical; it is actual and pressing. Among other things, the Hierarchy is determined to move aggressively to secure public money for the support of Roman Catholic schools. According to the press reports, the Rev. Thomas F. Coakley, secretary to Bishop Canevin, of Pittsburg, Pa., addressing two thousand delegates at the convention of the American Federation of Roman Catholic Societies, in August, 1910, demanded that the Roman Catholic Church be granted by the State the sum of thirty-six million dollars a year for the education of Roman Catholics.

Since I have abjured Romanism, it may seem to some that Part II. should be revised. But I deem it better to let it remain as it is, because in this shape the public will have the benefit of the work as it was written by a Roman Catholic priest in good standing, which I was at that time, and, indeed, up to the time of my voluntary retirement from the priesthood. And further, this present volume containing Parts I. and II. will give the public some conception of the successive stages of that mysterious, tumultuous and painful experience by which I have been led by Providence from Romanism to Christianity, from the prayer-book to the Bible, from the pope to Christ.

In the good providence of God I read very carefully the Gospels, and pondered prayerfully the words and the deeds of our Lord. I also studied that wonderful book of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles. I found that it contains the history of the first thirty years of the Christian church, that it is the only inspired church history which Christians have, and that the first Christians knew nothing of the sacrifice of the mass, the confessional, prayers to the Virgin and to the saints, purgatory, indulgences, priestly celibacy, or the primacy of St. Peter. Indeed, I learned in the Sacred Scriptures that whatever power and authority was given by our Lord to Peter was given equally to the other eleven Apostles, that Peter himself had a wife (Matthew viii. 14), and that even Paul asked if he had not the right to have a wife as did the other missionaries of the cross (I. Corinthians ix. 5) ; also that a bishop should have only one wife (I. Timothy iii. 2).

While I was engaged in the crusade against the corrupt Hierarchy alluded to in the opening paragraph, my friend, the Very Rev. John R. Slattery, President of St. Joseph’s Seminary for Colored Missions, Baltimore, Md., U. S. A., who had been chosen by Cardinal Satolli to edit his volume of sermons and addresses, and who had been most highly spoken of by Cardinal Gibbons, renounced his priesthood. He wrote an article entitled “How My Priesthood Dropped from Me,” which appeared in The Independent (a weekly magazine published in New York City) of September 6, 1906, p. 565. In it he said:

“In almost every case of a contested point between Catholics and Protestants, the latter are right and the former wrong.”

This article deeply affected me. Later, I had a number of interviews with Father Slattery in which I received corroborative evidence of the corruptions of the Hierarchy. I also received a number of important letters from him, one of which appears at the end of this volume. I became acquainted with the late Baroness von Zedtwitz, who, with her sister, the late Marquise des Monstiers- Meronville, had founded the Roman Catholic University at Washington, D. C. These ladies were born in the State of Kentucky. Their maiden name was Caldwell. They renounced Romanism during my crusade. On page 694 of this volume the reader will find a full account of the renunciation of the Roman Catholic faith by the Marquise. The Baroness published in 1906 a booklet entitled “The Double Doctrine of the Church of Rome.” In it she states:

“It is generally admitted that an ecclesiastical student when he leaves Rome [graduates at Rome], carries away with him little else than the papal banner, and has laid his primitive moral code at the feet of the infallible successor of St. Peter.”

This lady has been an honored visitor at the Vatican itself; and her words greatly impressed me. I had the honor qf meeting her in New York, and she astounded me with circumstantial accounts of prelatical duplicity and depravity which had come under her observation in the high places in the Hierarchy in Rome itself. From the Marquise I received the following withering letter concerning no less a personage than the Most Rev. John Lancaster Spalding, then Bishop of Peoria, 111., U. S. A., and now Titular Archbishop of Scitopolis, in partibus infidelium [in infidel parts], a warm friend of ex-President Roosevelt and President Taft, a Roman Catholic dignitary of international fame and an ecclesiastic for whom I had entertained profound respect when I first published Part II. :

“HOTEL SUISSE, ROME, “April 11, 1907.

“DEAR FATHER CROWLEY: I have just received your book [Part II.] and pamphlets, for which I thank you. I had seen and read the book last year in New York, and I shall have much pleasure in reading the brochures this summer. May Heaven reward you for your noble work in showing up the awful depravity of the Roman Church.

“If you ever have the opportunity to undeceive the world about that Svhited sepulchre,’ Spalding, of Peoria, I beg that you will do so in the sacred cause of truth. No greater liar and hypocrite walks the earth to-day. He is a very atheist and infidel, and I, who used to know him intimately, ASSERT IT. If today my sister and I are in open revolt against the Roman Church, it is chiefly due to the depravity of Bishop Spalding. Would that you could let his priests know that his asceticism is all bombast! A more sensual hypocrite never trod the earth. “A letter to this address will always reach me. “Yours sincerely, “[Signed] THE MARQUISE DES MONSTIERS.”

In the spring of 1907 the Baroness von Zedtwitz sent the following cablegram from Europe to Bishop Spalding:

“Bisaor SPALDING, “PEORIA, ILLINOIS, U. S. A. “Am aware of your efforts to shield yourself from exposure. When Catholics know the history of your hidden vices, as I do, you must flee Peoria. This I shall accomplish. “[Signed] BARONESS VON ZEDTWITZ.”

Rome, fearing exposure from the letters and charges of the Caldwell sisters, prevailed upon Bishop Spalding to resign the bishopric of Peoria, which he did in September, 1908. Rome, pursuing her usual policy in such cases, immediately promoted him to a nominal archbishopric which gives him the honor of the title without any subjects ; so that in case of exposure it could not be alleged that he is in actual charge of a diocese. However, he is still in politics, entertaining President Taft and ex-President Roosevelt at his home in Peoria, and belittling Governor Woodrow Wilson as a “schoolmaster” and therefore unfit to be President of the United States.

The abjuration of Roman Catholicism by these eminent women, and their charges against Archbishop Spalding, who had been their professed friend and trusted adviser, in whom they placed unbounded confidence, aroused my deepest horror and indignation. I kept saying to myself, “If such a prelate, the idol of American Catholicism and of liberal Protestantism, is an ‘atheist and infidel, a liar and sensual hypocrite/ is not the Vatican clerical system rotten, root and branch ?’

My reading, observation, meditation and experience gradually forced me to doubt the possibility of purifying the Roman Catholic priesthood, and ultimately led me to agree with the words written me by the Baroness von Zedtwitz :

“There is not, and never can be, modern Catholicism, and should ever the political necessity arise for purifying all religion, Catholicity would then and there be wiped off the face of the earth.”

During the crusade above mentioned, many priests of the Roman Catholic Church talked with me about the futility of ray efforts, saying in substance :

“Father Crowley, you are wasting your time and money in trying to purify the priesthood. The system stands for power and pelf. It can not be changed. Christ Himself, if there is a Christ, could not purify it.”

Rev. Thomas F. Cashman, the prominent pastor of St. Jarlath’s parish, Chicago, the bosom friend and confidential agent of Archbishop Ireland, said to me repeatedly:

“The more I see and read of monks, nuns, priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes the less am I a priest, and indeed the less am I a Roman Catholic.”

He also made this statement:

“While I believe the Roman Catholic Church will live forever, I believe the devil has his knee on its neck in this propaganda. I am prepared to prove all that I state, and if I can not prove it my proper home is the penitentiary.”

He frequently exclaimed :

“Oh, if the Roman Catholic Church would only uncover her scandals !”

Early in our crusade, in the first week of January, 1901, Revs. Cashman and Hodnett, representing a score or more of the prominent priests of Chicago, went to Washington, D. C., and personally filed charges of priestly corruption and crime against brother priests, including Rev. Peter J. Muldoon, with Papal Delegate Martinelli. Copies of charges had already been sent by registered mail to the Vatican. Rev. Cashman called to the attention of the Delegate several grave charges of clerical immorality. The pope’s representative shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and said: “The Vatican pays no attention whatever to such charges.” Rev. Hodnett staggered back in blank amazement, and, making the sign of the cross, said: “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, protect us! Mother of God, save the church!” Rev. Cashman then asked: “Should not the standard for a Christian bishop be at least the equal of that for Caesar’s wife, above suspicion?” His Excellency Martinelli replied, with a cynical shrug: “Not necessarily; by no means.” Rev. Hodnett then fairly screamed : “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, protect us! Mother of Purity, save the church! Tom [Rev. Cashman], get your hat, let us get out of here! They are going to burst the Catholic Church in America!”

The last word of Revs. Cashman and Hodnett to Monsignor Martinelli was this: “If Muldoon is foisted upon the archdiocese of Chicago, look out for scandal!” Monsignor Martinelli replied: “That is a threat.” Rev. Cashman responded: “It is simply telling you what is going to happen.” Monsignor Martinelli then asked: “Will you stand by the written charges?” Revs. Cashman and Hodnett answered in one voice: “Quod scripsi, scripsi.” [What I have written, I have written.]

Notwithstanding these charges, Cardinal Martinelli came to Chicago to consecrate Rev. Muldoon, and in an interview which appeared in The Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1901, he said in part as follows :

“Officially I have heard absolutely nothing of this opposition [to Rev. Muldoon]. I am told that the newspapers are much concerned about the matter. Am I right?’ And the Italian laughed softly and allowed his eyes to twinkle with subdued merriment.”

The charges were unheeded, and the candidate, Rev. Muldoon, was duly elevated and consecrated, the Papal Delegate, Cardinal Martinelli himself, acting as consecrator.

What induced the pope to override the protests? What caused Cardinal Martinelli to “laugh softly?” Was it “the cash in his fob?”

The death of Archbishop Feehan of Chicago, July 12, 1902, created an enviable vacancy controlling some fifty million dollars. During the latter years of Feehan’s reign, the Muldoonites had control of the archdiocese and its funds, owing to the disability of the Archbishop, which was caused by excessive drink. Instead of taking steps to keep the Archbishop in a normal state, his close “friends” among the Muldoonites actually encouraged him in his unfortunate weakness. Hence on his death they found themselves practically masters of the situation. Caucuses were held by day and night ; representatives were sent to Rome with unlimited funds some for the pope as “Peter’s pence,” and some for the cardinals as “honorariums” for masses for the living and the dead, not forgetting a special memento that the Holy Ghost might direct them in their selection of a successor to Archbishop Feehan. The pope and cardinals, in accordance with their usual custom, kept this profitable archdiocese vacant for several months in order to give other aspiring candidates a chance to “come and see them” also.

The only obstacle to the complete fulfillment of the sinister designs of the Muldoonites was the publicity given at home and abroad to the charges made and filed by some twenty pastors and myself against Muldoon and his clerical supporters, including Papal Delegate Martinelli, Cardinal Gibbons, and other members of the Sacred College of Cardinals. At this very time our charges were being aired in the public press. Typewritten copies of Cashman’s “poems” were freely circulated and mailed to the pope and his cabinet, the Sacred College of Cardinals, including “Slippery Jim” and “the Dago.” Rome knew full well that Cashman received his inspiration from Archbishop Ireland and his “gang” of ecclesiastics, who hoped to see Archbishop Ireland landed Archbishop of Chicago as the preliminary step to a “red hat.” She feared further exposures, and even a schism, of which, indeed, Archbishop Katzer, of Milwaukee, warned Leo XIII. if he dared promote Muldoon to the archbishopric of Chicago.

Under the circumstances, the pope and his cabinet, notwithstanding the liberal “honorariums” which they had received, did not dare to hand over a graft of some fifty million dollars to Muldoon and his supporters.

This is the story in brief on which the following “poems” of Revs. Cashman and O’Brien were based, and is the principal reason why Archbishop Ireland was not among the recent “American” cardinals. ‘

Rev. Hugh P. Smyth, Permanent Rector of St. Mary’s parish, Evanston, Illinois, and one of the treasurers of our crusade fund, wrote me, in part, as follows :

“Our great trouble in Chicago is that our archdiocese, the greatest in the world, is governed, not by an Archbishop, or Bishop, but by one [“Rev. No. 14, Celibacy Inexpedient”] who would like to be one or the other, or both ; one who has too many irons in th.e fire ; one who controls both Church and State ; one who suspends priests to-day and policemen tomorrow; one who alternately distributes parishes to aspiring pastors and boodle to hungry politicians ; one who can give Chicago a mayor or a bishop, and secures uniformity of action by holding both under his thumb. This is our Pooh-Bah, our factotum, our power behind the throne. No wonder, then, that City Hall methods dominate our ecclesiastical administration. In Chicago we have not one City Hall, but two, both adopting the same standard of morality, both applying the same system of rewarding friends and punishing enemies, and both holding in like contempt every principle of morality and justice.”

The suspension of policemen has particular reference to the summary dismissal of Officer Neilan from the Chicago police force, because he stated that he had frequently found priests in houses of prostitution, and that of the many he found there, “Rev. No. 14, Celibacy Inexpedient,” and his boon clerical companion, Rev. Flannigan, were the worst offenders. Concerning them Neilan exclaimed, “I know that they are a pair of pimps, and Father Crowley is telling the truth,” was not the only Catholic policeman who had honestly and openly expressed himself concerning the immorality of the priests, but an example must be made of some one, and he w6 the victim. The lecherous ecclesiastics of Chicago were compelled to have recourse to this summary method of punishment in order to warn and silence a large body of men, who, in the discharge of their duties, frequently found priests in brothels, and sometimes in such a state of drunkenness that they had to lock them up over night or send them home in carriages. Why were they not booked, tried and punished like other American citizens guilty of similar misconduct?

Some days after his dismissal Neilan was found dead with a gun beside him. He was supposed to have committed suicide brooding over his dismissal, and the priests declared it was a “visitation of Divine Providence” for his having dared to expose “Ambassadors of Christ.” Did he commit suicide, or was that fearless and outspoken officer of the peace murdered in order to seal his lips ? Officer Neilan is not the only person who met with sudden and mysterious death during the crusade.

A woman of Cashman’s parish was supposed to have poisoned herself. She had supplied Cashman with important information concerning the proposals made to her in the confessional. Rev. Cashman named the person by whom he said “her mysterious death could be explained;” and Bishop Muldoon in a recent interview named to me the person “to be blamed for her death.”

The Very Rev. Daniel M. J. Dowling, Vicar General of the archdiocese of Chicago, died suddenly and mysteriously June 26, 1900, a few hours after a reunion dinner with brother clergymen. His sudden but timely removal was strikingly in accordance with the murderous methods of Pope Alexander VI. [Rodrigo Borgia], and other “Vicars of Christ.” Dowling’s death removed a serious obstacle to the promotion of certain Chicago Borgias. The press said he “quietly passed away from heart disease.” Bishop Muldoon, in my interview with him, last referred to above, told me that Dowling died from diphtheria. Was he poisoned at that reunion dinner at the Holy Name Cathedral?

Why was there not a thorough post-mortem investigation of these sudden and mysterious deaths? Rome does not believe in ante or post mortem investigations.

Other deaths have been unaccounted for in the archdiocese of Chicago, and the history of the Catholic Church there is a blot on civilization and Christianity. Still Archbishop Quigley endeavors to placate the Catholic people of Chicago by declaring that the priests and prelates of New York are fifty per cent, worse than those of Chicago ! ! ! This high standard of priestly corruption and crime in the archdiocese of New York may explain Archbishop Farley’s recent promotion to the Cardinalate, ranking him with Princes and Kings, and consequently placing him above plebeian Prime Ministers and Presidents ! ! !

Among the many affidavits filed at Washington and Rome against Bishop Peter J. Muldoon and other members of the Hierarchy, was one by Rev. Daniel Croke, then Rector of St. Mary’s parish, Freeport, Illinois, and since promoted to St. Cecilia’s parish, Chicago, charging Bishop Muldoon with gross immorality. This affidavit was placed in the hands of the Right Rev. James Ryan, Bishop of Alton, Illinois, and mailed by him to the Vatican. The Vatican ignored it because moral delinquencies are no bar to ecclesiastical preferment in the Roman Catholic Church ; indeed, they are a necessity and an advantage.

During the crusade we also filed with the proper ecclesiastical authorities an expose consisting of 198 pages of printed matter, including Court Records and charges against Archbishop Feehan, Bishop Muldoon. and other Catholic Church dignitaries. This was but one installment of what was filed by the protesting priests. It was edited by Revs. Cashman, Hodnett, Galligan and Smyth, prominent pastors of the archdiocese of Chicago, and myself, and its cost was met by my Roman Catholic clerical supporters. Among those who cooperated are the following priests :

SOME OF MY ECCLESIASTICAL CO-OPERATORS IN THE CRUSADE,

Very Rev. Hugh P. Smyth, permanent rector, St. Mary’s parish, Evanston, Illinois.
Very Rev. Hugh McGuire, permanent rector, St. James’ parish, Chicago, and Consultor of the Archdiocese.
Very Rev. Michael O’Sullivan, permanent rector, St. Bridget’s parish, Chicago.
Very Rev. Thomas F. Galligan, permanent rector, St. Patrick’s parish, Chicago.
Rev. Thomas F. Cashman, rector, St. Jarlath’s parish, Chicago.
Rev. Thomas P. Hodnett, rector, Immaculate Conception parish, Chicago.
Rev. Michael Bonfield, rector, St. Agatha’s parish, Chicago.
Rev. Michael O’Brien, rector, St. Sylvester’s parish, Chicago.
Rev. William S. Hennessy, rector, St. Ailbe’s parish, Chicago.
Rev. John H. Crowe, rector, St. Ita’s parish, Chicago.
Rev. Andrew Croke, rector, St. Andrew’s parish, Chicago.
Rev. Daniel Croke, rector, St. Mary’s parish, Freeport, Illinois.
Rev. Michael Foley, rector, St. Patrick’s parish, Dixon, Illinois.
Rev. William J. McNamee, rector, St. Patrick’s parish, Joliet, Illinois.

One of the charges in the above-mentioned expose is as follows :

“Is Your Eminence aware that within the past few months [July 8-12, 1901], in this archdiocese [Chicago], there was held what in this country is denominated a spiritual Retreat, being an occasion especially set apart for the assembling of the priests of the Diocese for holy meditation, religious lectures, and acts of devotion; that these exercises were held in St. Viateur’s College (the only diocesan seminary), located at Bourbonnais’ Grove, Kankakee, Illinois, under the personal supervision of the Archbishop’s Vicar General and in the presence of Bishop-Elect Muldoon ; that all throughout the period of retreat, which lasted four days and nights, in the college building where the exercises were held, there were kept for sale, and sold, day and night, to the priests present, barrels of beer and whiskey, which in open and notorious fashion, to the scandal of all devout men, were served out in the same manner as I am told is common in ordinary bar-rooms, by the religious brothers of the college, some of whom were in training for the holy priesthood ; that shameful scenes of intemperance resulted, even to the point of intoxication among a number of those who were actually participating in the holy services. To such outrageous lengths did this unseemly conduct prevail that the temperate and devout were actually kept in fear of bodily injury and compelled to secure themselves at night behind bolted doors. Is the scandal thus wrought against God’s Church chargeable to him who exposes it or to those who, having the power and being charged with the duty of correcting it, nevertheless encourage and wink at the iniquity and make their choice of associates among the evil-doers? The like scenes have occurred repeatedly in previous years during the presence and supervision of the Archbishop himself. Is it conceivable, Your Eminence, that such things shall be permitted in silence and no voice raised in protest?

REV. WILLIAM J. McNAMEE.

REV. WILLIAM J. McNAMEE.

Rev. McNamee, during our crusade, labored day and night procuring affidavits against lecherous priests and prelates and photographs of them when they were not saying their prayers. The picture of a prominent Chicago priest, “Rev. No. 13, A Ballad Singer,” with one of his best girls, on page 451, was obtained by McNamee. Among other incriminating documents procured by this clerical “Sherlock Holmes” were most shocking affidavits made by respectable Catholic women against Rev. C. P. Foster, “Rev. No. 23, A Debauchee.” These affidavits, together with others, were filed with the pope and Cardinals Martinelli and Gibbons. Rev. McNamee placed certified copies of same in the hands of Archbishop Quigley, soon after the latter’s promotion to the archbishopric of Chicago, with the result that the debauchee priest was promoted by Cardinal “in petto” Quigley.

Archbishop Quigley when recently promoting this Rev. “Sherlock Holmes,” says in his papal organ, The New World, of October 15, 1911 :

“We heartily congratulate Rev. Father McNamee on his appointment as memorable [ ?] rector of St. Patrick’s Church in this city [Chicago]. The magnificent farewell reception and presentation of a purse tendered to Father McNamee by the parishioners of St. Mary’s Church and the citizens of Joliet evidence the high esteem in which Father McNamee is held by the people of Joliet.”

Was this promotion of Rev. McNamee the price of his good (?) will and silence? Bishop Muldoon calls him the “sleuth of the Crowley crusade.”

Since their conversion to Muldoonism, Rev. McNamee and his ehum, Rev. Hugh P. Smyth, have been qualifying for mitres under the areful supervision !’ Archbishop Quigley.

“Since when, Your Eminence, has it become a crime against the Church to expose men who are violating her sanctuary ? By what authority has it been proclaimed an offense for a priest, a pastor of Christ’s flock, to employ all the strength that God has given him to protect that flock from ravening wolves ? Shall I see the priest’s gown cloak a lecherous drunkard and not seek to tear away that sacred garb, late, my ecclesiastical superior, charged with even graver responsibilities in that behalf than an humble priest, halts in duty, shall I shelter myself behind such excuse and hesitate to do my part in the cleansing work? When has the Church of the living God, the God of truth and justice and purity, ever suffered when her sons have spoken truth, wrought justice and denounced impurity? The blood of John the Baptist was surely shed in vain if a priest of God must keep silence when lust and intrigue find favor in high places, and when to the drunkard’s hands are left the ministrations of the Holy of Holies.”

A score or more of the prominent priests of the archdiocese of Chicago jointly and severally filed at Washington and Rome at least one hundred documents containing grave charges against many of the leading members of the Chicago Hierarchy. Some of these documents were sworn to, but the Vatican paid no attention to them. We filed grave charges our opponents filed great checks I mean bank checks.

This explains why Rome remained silent and why we felt constrained to gain publicity for our cause through the press; but in this we were sadly disappointed for the time being, as the press was muzzled on Saturday, July 20, 1901. We realized then that some extreme measure must be adopted in order to unmuzzle the press, and consequently we had recourse to the following fearless and open method, which proved quite effective in removing the papal muzzle.

In a few hours we had printed several thousand large placards on which appeared in large type the following words :

“The blasphemy of the twentieth century will be hurled in the face of God Almighty and the Catholic people of the archdiocese of Chicago when Muldoon is made bishop on next Thursday.

“Read Father J. J. Crowley’s letter of resignation and his exposure of Archbishop Feehan and his demoralized clergy.”

Professional bill posters rode around in open carriages putting up these placards on the outside walls of nearly every Catholic Church in the city of Chicago between the hours of three and six o’clock Sunday morning, July 21, 1901.

On the same morning a leaflet hurriedly set up, consisting of four printed pages, making specific charges, with names, against eighteen of the leading members of the Hierarchy of the archdiocese of Chicago, were scattered among the Catholic people, already stunned by the posters, as they were leaving their churches. Some of those who were not fortunate enough to secure a copy offered as high as five dollars for same. On Monday, July 22, 1901, the press of Chicago and of the country told the story in brief.

These posters and leaflets, while they appeared over my name, were prepared and dictated to me in Cashman’s home by Revs. Cashman and Hodnett in behalf of the score of priests. The expense of printing and posting was met by Rev. Cashman, who became one of the treasurers of the crusade fund.

Notwithstanding the political power of Rome over politicians and press, the latter is and will be insuppressible and ever ready to do its duty, if the people will only do theirs. But as long as the people remain indifferent and allow themselves to be muzzled by Rome, they should not expect the press to fight their battle.

Let the non-Catholic people awake and do their duty in defense of liberty, enlightenment and progress, and the press will be ready and willing to join in the battle against the common foe Romanism.

Rev. Thomas P. Hodnett said repeatedly:

“The charges we filed at the office of the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, and at the Vatican, I am prepared to swear, on my bended knees before the Blessed Sacrament, are true, and if our request for a canonical investigation is granted, we will prove them up to the hilt.”

I quote a few lines from a letter written me April 8, 1904, by a prominent Roman Catholic lawyer of New York City, a graduate of Georgetown (Jesuit) “University” at Washington, D. C. :

“Mv DEAR FATHER CROWLEY :

“Father Unan, of the Paulists, told me plainly you were not a bit out about the condition of the Archdiocese of Chicago; he says every one knows its condition. I fear you are much misinformed as to the attitude of a great many people towards you. You have more friends and believers in your cause than you imagine. The condition in the Church in your city [Chicago] is beyond description, more than one has told me.”

A prominent nun of the Convent of the Good (?) Shepherd, Chi’cago, said to a Roman Catholic lady :

“We have reason to know that Father Crowley is right. Many of the fallen women and wayward girls in this institution were led into sin and shame by priests.”

In passing, let me state that the Convents or Houses of the Good (?) Shepherd, numerous in non-Catholic countries, are Roman Catholic prisons, maintained partially by public tax, but without Federal or State supervision, where the Roman Catholic Hierarchy may confine their victims or other unfortunates, and where cruel punishments can be inflicted upon the inmates generally with impunity. In all so-called Religious Houses, male and female, there is no accounting for the sufferings of the inmates, their illness or their death. If not requested, no coroner’s inquest is held. The inmates are utterly shut out from light and life, and generally from the protection of the law. The masses of the people do not know that these things are taking place. If they did, there would be an awakening of indignation and action which would speedily put an end to such horrors.

Archbishop Quigley, of Chicago, said to me, in one of my interviews with him, substantially the following:

“Father Crowley, the Roman Catholic Church would never permit an investigation of its priests and bishops ; an honest investigation would burst the Church. The priesthood is so rotten we would knock the bottom out of the Church if we made the least effort to discipline the priests as you demand. I must admit that there are bad priests in Chicago, .but I can assure you that the priests in New York are fifty per cent, worse.”

Archbishop Quigley made similar admissions to Roman Catholic people who appealed to him for protection from bad priests and bishops; and yet with full knowledge of their villainy he has promoted many of. these wicked ecclesiastics, and, in order to do so with impunity, declared he would muzzle the secular press and intimidate the non-Catholic press.

During our crusade a strong Roman Catholic Laymen’s Association was established in Chicago for the protection of women from licentious priests ; but the Vatican refused pointblank to take any notice of their charges and appeals. (See pp. 390-394.) The Chicago Hierarchy also refused to heed a petition signed by fifteen hundred Roman Catholic women, praying for protection from drunken and lecherous priests. The following is a copy of their petition :

“CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, “JUNE, 1903. “THE MOST REV’D JAMES E. QUIGLEY, “Archbishop of Chicago.

“Most Rev’d Sir: We, the undersigned Catholic women, members of different parishes in this Archdiocese, respectfully call your attention to conditions prevailing in many of the parishes of which some of us are members, conditions so notorious that they have been the subject of newspaper comment and are still the subject of comment and criticism, both among Catholic and non-Catholic people. On your advent to your present high office in early March of this year the fervent hope was frequently expressed in public and private that you would rectify the flagrant abuses which are a scandal to our beloved Church.

“As one of our daily papers editorially expressed it : ‘It is idle to mince the matter, for, as every Catholic layman knows, the great trouble in the Chicago church has been caused by the clergy.’ [Quotation from an editorial in the Chicago Daily Journal, March u, 1903, the day after Archbishop Quigley assumed charge of the archdiocese of Chicago.]

“If this were known to Catholic laymen, surely the women of our Church could not be in ignorance.

“The priests who are evidently referred to in the above paragraph are still serving at our altars and performing all the sacred offices of our religion, unrebuked and undisciplined, so far as we know.

“We humbly and respectfully look to you for protection and redress. “Obediently yours.”

Archbishop Quigley has neither rebuked nor disciplined his priests, but, on the contrary, he has followed the policy of popes, cardinals and bishops in promoting some of the very worst among them: for examples, Revs. No. 9, 10, n, 12, 14, 17, 22, 23 and 24. Though affidavits and abundant proofs were placed in his hands, charging “Rev. Xo. 12, A Wolf in Priest’s Clothing,” with an unmentionable criminal assault on a thirteen- year-old motherless girl at the very time she was receiving instructions for First Confession and Holy Communion, yet he (Quigley) forthwith promoted, and has lately repromoted, this clerical monster. By thus condoning the crimes and sacrileges of his conscienceless clergy Archbishop Quigley may become the next American Cardinal.

The latest information is that the pope has created another cardinal “in pectorc” or “in petto;” that is. in secret. I would not be surprised if it were the Czar of the Middle West, Archbishop Quigley, who, by condoning the crimes and sacrileges of his conscienceless clergy, is fully qualified to become a “Prince of the Church.” a “member of the Roman Curia, the official family of the pope.”

The Continent, a leading Presbyterian paper published in Chicago, in its issue of August 24, 1911, corroborates my statements as to Quigley’s qualifications :

“American Catholics are saying that the longwaited second American cardinal will be Archbishop Quigley, of Chicago. If Quigley is really the selection of the Vatican for the honor, the choice throws another deep shadow on the religious honesty of the cardinals at Rome. If their zeal was in the least for spiritual religion, Quigley is about the last American that they would desire to have as their associate in what they are pleased to call the ‘Sacred College.’ How religious the Archbishop of Chicago may be in his private life, The Continent would by no means presume to judge. But the whole tone of his public activity is the tone of political bossism and ecclesiastical tyranny. His administration of his archdiocese has exhibited a minimum of care for either public or private righteousness, and a maximum of determination to grip his own power and the power of his satellites on the life of Chicago and its environs. The appointment of Quigley as a cardinal means what has long been suspected, that the Vatican does not want an American cardinal not even as moderate an one as Archbishop Ireland but wants simply a Roman cardinal in America. That Quigley will be to the finish.”

The political power of the Roman Catholic Church in America was proclaimed to the non-Catholic politicians, in a speech delivered by Archbishop Quigley, May 4th, 1903, at the Holy Name Roman Catholic school, Chicago, and which appeared in part in The Chicago Tribune, May 5th, 1903 :

“In fifty years Chicago will be exclusively Catholic. The same may be said of Greater New York, and the chain of big cities stretching across the continent to San Francisco. . . . Nothing can stand against the Church. I’d like to see the politician who would try to rule against the Church in Chicago. His reign would be short indeed.”

CARDINAL FALCONIO

CARDINAL FALCONIO THE COMING “AMERICAN” POPE.

Cardinal Falconio, an Italian, Rome’s late chief secret service agent in the United States, has been recalled and rewarded for “signal service.” He is now Chief of the Secret Service Bureau at the Vatican, Dean of the “American” cardinals, and quasi American Ambassador to the Vatican. This Italian Franciscan monk claims American citizenship; and consequently Jesuitical expediency and hypocrisy not the Holy Ghost will inspire the Sacred College of Cardinals to elect Falconio the next pope an “American” pope ! ! ! This is a part of the plot and plan to capture America, and through America, to regain Temporal Power, not only in Italy, but throughout the world.

It is easy to see that we have a hard fight before us, and we should remember the advice : “The other fellow [the pope] is only a man, just as you are. Don’t let his spectacular displays and theatrical performances frighten you,”

This proclamation of Spiritual and Temporal Power by Archbishop Quigley, and his threat of political assassination, created a sensation throughout the country. The more Jesuitical members of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, considering his announcement premature, set telephone and telegraph wires in action to hush up the scare, fearing it might arouse and enlighten the sleeping non-Catholics.

Subjoined are photographs of Archbishop Quigley’s palace, conservatory and stable, the stable alone costing the archdiocese $80,000, according to Revs. Cashman, Smyth and Hodnett. It is rather more elaborate than the stable of Bethlehem in which the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was born.

Cardinal Martinelli, ex-papal delegate to the Roman Catholic Church in America, in 1902 said to me in substance, at the Apostolic Delegation Office, Washington, D. C. :

“We know there are many immoral priests and bishops, but still the laity have no right to interfere with the clergy; if the laity understand they have any rights, they will do in America as they once did in France during the Revolution, they will murder the clergy. In this independent country it would not be wise to let the laity understand they have any right to interfere in church matters ; and one of the principal things we have against you, Father Crowley, is that you are enlightening the Catholic laity of this country as to their rights ; the laity have no right to expose their clergy, no matter how immoral they may be ; the laity must be ignored; they must be crushed!”

Cardinal Falconio, late papal delegate, in 1903 said to me in the home of Archbishop Katzer at Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

“Father Crowley, the Roman Catholic Church is divine, notwithstanding the fact that there are bad priests, bishops, and popes, and I beseech you, for the sake of our Holy Mother Church, to sign that apology drawn up by Archbishop Quigley, whitewashing those whom you have exposed.”

Is it any wonder that I withdrew from Romanism?

Why this rank, rampant immorality among the Roman Catholic Hierarchy? Priestly Celibacy and Auricular Confession, I assert, are chiefly responsible. Priestly celibacy and auricular confession ever have been, and are now, prolific sources of crime and licentiousness. Pope Gregory VII., in the eleventh century, imposed the unnatural law of priestly celibacy, notwithstanding the vehement protests of the priests, the vast majority of whom had wives and legitimate children. This decree, making priestly marriage a wrong and priestly celibacy a virtue, has honeycombed the Roman Catholic Church with corruption. The advantage to the Vatican system of having all ecclesiastics wholly separated from all legitimate connections with their native soil and natural interests, and the fixture in every kingdom of large bodies of men wholly devoted to the objects of the papacy, overpowered the voices alike of nature and of God.

Pope Gregory VII., and his infallible successors, in imposing priestly celibacy, were actuated by political rather than virtuous motives. This was generally admitted. Pope Pius II., himself the father of several children (see pp. 315, 316), once wrote these words: “Marriage has been forbidden to priests for good reasons, but there are better ones for permitting it to them.” Pope Leo XIII. was the father of several children, one of them being the eminent Cardinal Satolli, a man of conspicuous immorality. Bishop O’Connell, of Richmond, Virginia, is considered a reliable authority on the pontifical paternity of Cardinal Satolli.

In 1907 three thousand French priests signed and sent a petition to Pope Pius X., praying for the abolition of priestly celibacy. All of these priests were past the marrying age themselves, but were speaking from the weight of responsibility thrust upon them by confessions. This appeal was consigned to the papal wastebasket.

Dr. Robert E. Speer, the noted secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, recently wrote:

“The celibacy of the priesthood had seemed to me a monstrous and wicked theory, but I had believed that men who took that vow were true to it, and that, while the Church lost by it irreparably and infinitely more than she gained, she did gain, nevertheless, a pure and devoted, even if a narrow and impoverished, service. But the deadly evidence spread out all over South America, confronting one in every district to which he goes; evidence legally convincing, morally sickening, proves to him that, whatever may be the case in other lands, in South America the stream of the Church is polluted at its fountains.”

Rome is ever and everywhere the same. She prefers priestly celibacy with concubinage to priestly marriage. However, the day is near when the enlightenment of the people through the Public School and the advancement of womanhood, will sound the death-knell of priestly celibacy and auricular confession. Papal intriguing and Hierarchical plotting against the Public School and Woman’s Suffrage are not riddles to those who understand the power of liberal education and emancipated womanhood.

Auricular confession as an absolute essential for eternal salvation is inculcated in the minds of the pupils of the Roman Catholic schools. This doctrine actually increases crime and debauchery by freeing the mind of remorse and by substituting absolution for repentance. It was established, as a portion of the acknowledged system of Rome, scarcely before the thirteenth century; and history attests the fact that it originated in the licentiousness of the Roman clergy in the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries, and assumed the form of canon law at the Fourth Council of Lateran under Pope Innocent III., A. D. 1215, being confirmed by the Council of Trent, Session XIV.

Moral Theology of the Roman Catholic Church, printed in Latin, a dead language, containing instructions for auricular confession, is so viciously obscene that it could not be transmitted through the mails were it printed in a living language; neither would priests and bishops dare to propound said obscene matter in the form of questions to female penitents if their fathers, husbands and brothers were cognizant of the Satanic evils lurking therein; in fact, they would cause the suppression of auricular confession by penal enactments.

The Supreme Court of Leipzig, Germany, has recently condemned as immoral the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church regarding auricular confession as taught in the writings of St. Alphonsus De Liguori; and the civil authorities of the city of Sienna, Italy, lately forbade within its jurisdiction the sale of his vile writings on the same subject.

The governments of the most Catholic countries are compelled to curb that license which the Court of Rome allows, and to put down those atrocities which have received the patronage and blessing of the most celebrated Pontiffs.

Why, then, do the governments of non-Catholic countries permit the wholesale transmission through the mails of the immoral theology of St. Liguori, Dens, Kenrick, and others, to be retailed by bachelor priests and prelates in live languages to young girls and women in lecherous whispers in the Confessional? By so doing these governments co-operate in the moral assassination of females from the time they prepare to make their first confession (which, according to a recent decree of Pope Pius X., “is about the seventh year, more or less”) till they enter the gates of Purgatory that inexhaustible Klondike of the Roman Catholic clergy.

Confessors search the secrets of the home, and so are worshiped there, and feared for what they know.

If it is the purpose of a state or government to prevent crime and eradicate its causes, the whole of this diabolical system called the Confessional, which is known to worm out the secrets of families, the weaknesses of public men, and thereby get them under control to either silence them or make them active agents in the Roman Catholic cause above all, the debauching of maids and matrons by means of vile interrogatories prescribed by Liguori, and sanctioned by the Church should be abrogated by a national law in every civilized country on the globe.

At the request of a score of prominent priests, associated with me in the crusade, I presented the facts and proofs against a prominent Muldoonite, “Rev. No. 12, A Wolf in Priest’s Clothing,” to the State’s Attorney of Illinois. He looked into some law-books and stated that said crime was a capital offense in the Carolinas, and in other States it was punishable by several years’ imprisonment. He spoke of the great political influence of the Catholic Church, and refused to prosecute, fearing, I presume, that the influence of the Jesuitical Hierarchy would interfere with his political prospects. Soon thereafter he became Governor of his State. Though this Jesuitical influence in politics protects thousands of guilty priests and prelates in America and other non-Catholic countries, yet some of them, through fear of bodily harm, are compelled to flee their dioceses, and resume elsewhere their “sacred labors,” or travel incognito on pension from the pope. Among those who have been compelled to flee to escape chastisement, or perhaps death, from outraged husbands, fathers, brothers, or lynching by the community at large, are:

The Most Rev. Bertram Orth, lately Archbishop of Victoria, British Columbia.
The Right Rev. Thomas F. Brennan, formerly Bishop of Dallas, Texas.
The Right Rev. Timothy O’Mahony, late Auxiliary Bishop of Toronto, Canada, formerly of Australia,
and Cork, Ireland.
The Right Rev. Monsignor Capel, formerly of England.
The Right Rev. Monsignor Fowler, formerly of Sioux City, Iowa, and Philippine Islands.
Rev. W. R. Thompson, formerly of Portland, Oregon.
Rev. Lawrence Erhardt, formerly of Chicago.
Rev. F. J. Knipper, formerly of Troy, Ohio.
Rev. Levis T. McGinn, formerly of Brooklyn, New York.

Some of these were guilty of the crime of sodomy a crime, alas! to which monks, priests, prelates, and even popes, the “Vicars of Christ,” are not strangers.

The number of similar offenders is legion, and no wonder! The vast majority of priests, prelates and other members of the Hierarchy are driven into immorality by priestly celibacy and auricular confession. This wholesale demoralization was one of the principal motives for instituting celibacy and auricular confession. The result accomplished is just what the Vatican machine wanted. This demoralization compels wicked priests, prelates and other members of the Hierarchy, of both sexes, to stand by each other and for the Vatican system, their axiom being “Standum est pro auctoritate per fas out nefas” (Stand by authority, right or wrong). It is the same principle as is found among corrupt politicians, who, for their own protection, are compelled to stand by each other and for their political machine.

Rome, thoroughly aware of its diabolical crimes, for its own protection promotes the shrewdest of her demoralized ecclesiastics to the very highest offices, as will be seen in Part II. She appoints them as members of her Boards of Education, and makes them Superintendents, Principals, Assistant Principals and Teachers of her schools. The nun teachers in the Roman Catholic schools are grossly incompetent, to say the least.

An honest, patriotic editor of a prominent Roman Catholic weekly paper in this country, recently exclaimed:

“Oh, for another Luther, another Savonarola! The time was never so ripe as the present for such an one. If only the true condition of affairs were known, he would not be long in coming to the front. The Roman Catholic school is a curse to the nation, and it is pitiable to think that the education of so many thousands of our boys and girls is in the hands of ignorant, bigoted, superstitious monks and nuns, the vast majority of whom are foreigners many of them driven from their own countries.”

Is it any wonder that Romanism is a menace to the nation?

Since the spirituous Retreat, above referred to, St Viateur’s College was destroyed by fire, and for its rebuilding $800,000 must be collected from Catholics and non-Catholics, particularly the latter, if they are in business or politics. Mr. Andrew Carnegie was “held up” for $32,000 toward the resuscitation of this noted spirituous seat of learning, which institution evidently is not in favor of Prohibition. As a rule, the Faculty of Roman Catholic schools, colleges and universities worships at the shrines of Plutus, Bacchus and Venus. Popes, prelates, priests and monks may preach temperance along with “poverty, chastity and obedience,” but rarely ever practice it.

Many distinguished priests and prelates have been and are directly or indirectly interested in the liquor traffic. The Rev. Francis E. Craig, S. T. B. (Bachelor of Sacred Theology), the bosom friend of Jesuits, Papal Delegates, and Cardinal Gibbons, Treasurer of St. John’s Ecclesiasical Seminary, Boston, Mass., before his ordination, was an active partner in the firm of Ray & Craig. They were engaged in retailing groceries, and they also held a wholesale liquor license, and their place of business was situated at the northeast corner of M and Potomac Streets, Georgetown, D. C. The first floor was used as a grocery store; on the second floor was a “speak-easy,” whose location and existence was known to the initiated. A “speak-easy” is a place where intoxicating liquors are sold in violation of law. The third floor served for a gambling-den. Craig boasted that his share of the profits was more than $50,000 a year. Owing to certain legal proceedings, business drooped and was running stale when Craig saw a new opening. There were certain relations between Craig and the Jesuits at Washington, D. C, which warranted a closer intimacy. To make a long story short, he entered St. Mary’s Ecclesiastical Seminary, Baltimore, Md., and studied for the priesthood. At this time he was about forty years of age. About ten years ago he was ordained a priest of the archdiocese of Baltimore, and officiated under Cardinal Gibbons. His financial capacity was justly appreciated by the Cardinal, who loaned him to St. John’s Seminary, Boston, Mass., to act as its Treasurer. He is now a member of the Faculty and Bachelor of Sacred Theology, which title imports that he is profoundly versed in Church History and Sacred Theology with the necessary accompanying accomplishments. He is on the high road to yet loftier promotion, and it is quite within the range of probability that he will succeed his friend and patron, Cardinal Gibbons. He will certainly reach this post if he lives and if the Papal Czar of New England, Cardinal O’Connell, lends his powerful influence with the pope.

Archbishop Quigley, of Chicago, a corporation sole, controls some fifty millions worth of property, some of which is used for questionable purposes. In one of his buildings, which covers 99.2×100 feet, in the heart of Chicago, there are three saloons. This is a five-story building; the upper four stories being used as a bunk-house, I5c, 2oc and 25 c a night. This property was leased by Archbishop Quigley for 99 years and 9 months, commencing August i, 1910; rental for the first nine months, $4,500; next 10 years at $17,000 per year; next 14 years at $22,000 per year; next 26 years at $24,000 per year, and balance of term at $26,000 per year.

To the knowledge of the Archbishop of Chicago these saloons were in existence under the old lease which expired August i, 1910, yet this great advocate of Total Abstinence and Roman Catholic Education re-leased the property at an increased rental varying from 300 per cent, to 433 1-3 per cent, on the rental under the old lease. Why this exorbitant increase in rent? Is it on account of the desirability of the location, for just such saloons and their upstairs adjuncts, together with the immunity which the building enjoys from any municipal, state or federal interference, through the political pull of its ecclesiastical landlord?

This building, which is located in the First Ward, through its pro tern, occupants, plays an important part in the famous First Ward elections of Chicago, and also in state and federal elections.

I have it on indisputable authority that this house had a most disreputable name until recently. At present the ground floor is used for a combination saloon and restaurant. As to the second floor the reader will have to inquire of the priests and prelates of Chicago.

This building is leased by the Archbishop of Chicago for fifteen years, commencing May i, 1901, at $210 per month for the first 5 years, $250 per month for the next 5 years, and $271 per month for balance of term, leasehold assigned for value received to Pabst Brewing Co., 354 North Desplaines Street, Chicago.

These buildings, located in the heart of Chicago, are in the Paulist Fathers’ parish, and convenient to the exquisite offices of the Roman Catholic Church Extension Society of America, whose motto is, “We come not to conquer, but to win. Our purpose is to make America dominantly Catholic.” While not engaged in running church fairs with their usual attachments of gambling, lottery, prize-fighting, fortune-telling, etc., the Paulist Fathers devote the remnant of their energies to giving missions to non-Catholics. The conversion of heretics non-Catholics is their specialty, and in 1908 at the “American Catholic Missionary Congress,” held at Chicago, they boasted 25,055 “converts.” Their church is located in the tenderloin or white-slave district of the South Side, Chicago. Gamblers, saloon-keepers and white-slave-keepers have been generous toward it, and particularly so as a result of the work of the Vice Commission recently held in that city. I have it on the very best authority authority that can not be disputed that this Commission was manipulated and controlled by the Roman priests. It serves to furnish them with most valuable information which they could not obtain through the Confessional or otherwise. Such information in the hands of the Roman Hierarchy affords a new and rich species of graft Vice Commission Graft. The Vatican system thrives on ignorance, vice and crime. No wonder the priests and prelates hope to establish similar Vice Commissions in the large cities throughout the country.

Why did the Post office Department hold up the report of that Commission for several weeks? Was it inspired by the Roman Hierarchy in order to establish a precedent for holding up and destroying “matter offensive to the Church?”

Attorney C. C. Copeland, of the archdiocese of Chicago, a prominent, wealthy “convert” to Romanism, protested against priestly crime and corruption in an appeal which he wrote and sent to The New World, the papal organ, for publication. This appeal was refused insertion and ignored.

“LlBERTYVJLLE, ILLINOIS,
“Oct. 19, ’01.
“REV. J. J. CROWLEY,

“DEAR SIR:
“Enclosed I send you that paper to read and be returned to me. If you may want to use it, I may revise it some, as I have thought of doing, and then let you have it. I could add a good supplement under head of “After Two Years,” or something of the kind. My intention is to revise it and put it in some unique shape and scatter it through the Hierarchy. I have some notes already on a revision.
“Yours very respectfully,
“[Signed] C. C. COPELAND.”

The following is the original confession:

“Rev. Dr. Dunne [now Bishop Dunne, of Peoria, Illinois], in closing his discourse on the life and character of Very Rev. Thomas Burke, which was no overdrawn picture of that great priest, as every one can testify who knew him well, said: ‘Learn, then, to respect the dignity of the priest, and to appreciate the good that he is called upon to perform in the exercise of his ministry. Allow no man or woman to wantonly assail his character in your presence, for, believe me, in proportion as his reputation is lessened in the eyes of the community, his influence for good is weakened. Respect the priest as the Ambassador of your Divine Redeemer. Honor him as the minister of God. Love him as a friend, as a brother, as a father, who has nothing so much at heart as your eternal welfare.’

All this will every good Catholic do, and love to do and more, to a priest who himself respects the dignity of the position he occupies among men and the obligation which he incurred when he accepted the sacred mission to ‘Go forth and teach all nations,’ and who appreciates himself the good he is called upon to perform and the life he ought to lead in the exercise of that mission; so that the estimation in which he is held, the amount of good he may do, the freedom from assault in which he may live, the influence for good he may exercise, the respect and honor he will receive, as the Ambassador of our Divine Redeemer, and the minister of God, the love and obedience that will go out to him as a friend, as a brother, as a father, who has nothing so much at heart as our eternal welfare, depend upon himself.

A Kempis says: ‘Great is the dignity of priests to whom that is given which is not granted to angels.’ ‘The priest indeed is the minister of God.’ ‘Take heed to thyself and see what kind of ministry has been delivered to thee by the imposition of the bishop’s hands.’ ‘Thou hast not lightened thy burdens, but art now bound with a stricter band of discipline, and art obliged to a greater perfection of sanctity.’ ‘A priest ought to be adorned with all virtues and to give example of a good life to others. His conversation should not be with the vulgar and common ways of men.’

Now, if, instead of being this kind of a man, or of attempting to lead this kind of a life, or of fulfilling this kind of a mission, one who accepts the office of priest is a miser, and puts forth all his energies and improves every opportunity to enrich himself and hoard money, or is a drunkard, or gives his life to the enjoyment of sensual, worldly things, or is otherwise decidedly self-indulgent, unpriestly, or grossly neglects the duties which that mission imposes upon him, and disregards that sacred office, can and ought a good Catholic to respect him or defend his character? He certainly can not respect him. Unworthy priests weaken the influence, to a greater or less extent, of the whole priesthood; dishearten zealous bishops, priests and laymen and drive large numbers of their fellow-Catholics into doubt and infidelity. It is largely to them we may attribute the loss of two or three times as many members of the Church as we claim to have now, and in a great measure because of them that the Church is being rapidly depleted at this time, and unless their baneful influence is removed, is there not reason to fear that it has reached its zenith in this country? It looks this way to any one who travels much and is very observing and deeply interested.

But are there many unworthy, self-indulgent, bad priests in the United States? Too many, far too many, everywhere. The harvest is just now full and ripe in this land which is ours by discovery and settlement, and by the libation of the blood of martyrs, but too many of the reapers are blind, or perverse, and are not only going about destroying the golden grain, but are preventing the good, zealous reapers from gathering it in.

Has the Church no discipline left? Can it not remove these scandals, this hindrance to the working of the Spirit of Truth; prevent further depletion, and bring back the lost sheep to the true fold?

Could not ( i ) more care be taken in sending young men to Seminaries, (2) in ordaining priests, (3) and in weeding out those who have been ordained and tried, and are found unworthy?

A mission once a year is far better than sending a disedifying, disorderly, scandalous priest to take charge of a parish. Is there not too much of the spirit of the world in some of our young men, who are being ordained and put in charge of parishes these days? Many of them seem to want a parish ‘for what there is in it for themselves.’ The people to whom they are sent are intelligent, observing, and becoming more enlightened, and when they see this lack of spirituality in the life of the priest, his influence for good is lost. It is the intelligent, well-to-do members who are leaving us. They cannot endure that they themselves or their families shall be led and directed by a man whose sensibility has been blunted and whose passions have been aroused by intoxicants, or who demeans himself in an unpriestly manner, more like a loafer, or a sport, or a dude, or a miser, than like a gentleman. They demand that their priest shall be priestly, and unless the Hierarchy in the United States manages to meet this demand, can it be expected that the Church will grow in numbers and improve in the character of its members? Can one born in the Church well imagine the shock an intelligent convert receives when he first meets a drunken priest, or sees one drinking in a saloon, or sitting on a beer-keg at its door, or sees one at the altar celebrating mass after a night’s carouse, or learns that the result of years of earnest appeals from the pulpit for the orphans and the hospitals and the schools and the Pope has been the accumulation of a large fortune by the pastor, or sees a priest smitten of a woman and running after her, to the amusement of Protestants and humiliation of Catholics, or sees him in the company of women of not known unblemished reputation in unseemly places, or learns of the drinking, carousing and gambling of priests at their places of rendezvous, and of other still more unpriestly conduct, all of which he may but too often see and know of a truth in this land consecrated to the One who was ‘full of grace?’ Will it suffice to say that there was one Judas among the twelve, or that the majority of the clergy are self-sacrificing, zealous men and rest there? If there is even one such, should he be let to remain to disgrace the whole order? If a Catholic travels much and observes closely, he will be disposed to shun priests whom he does not know to be priestly, rather than seek them out as most agreeable, proper, profitable company. This is the case with not only some converts, but some who were reared Catholics. Laymen want protection for themselves and their families.

An exemplary convert, who was cashier in a bank in one of our large cities, told the writer with an aching heart how mortified he had often been at seeing priests coming there under the influence of liquor where he was the only Catholic, and having the clerks looking sneeringly at him, and how many have told him of similar and much worse experiences. When fathers know those conditions exist, how can they urge their children, who know them also, to go to their religious duties? ‘When the man is gone, what becomes of the priest?’

And is this the condition and this the conduct and this the character of many of the priests in our country? Of far too many, and the proportion of such is not diminishing. Have not Catholics been told too often and too long to hide these things out of charity? Was it ever the proper use of charity to overlook or hide such conduct in a priest? Simply for the man, and were he only concerned and affected, it might do for awhile, a Kempis says: ‘Admonish thy neighbor twice or thrice.’ Here is a mature man, ordained of God, who, by the simple fact of ordination, is supposed to be intelligent, and to understand the duties of his sacred office, scandalizing whole communities. It is not the man we are considering, but the communities and the effects of his life on them and on the work the Church is trying to accomplish. Has not the mantle of charity for this purpose been stretched till it is all in shreds and hides no one? Under circumstances where some have said that a priest was sick or had fits, would it not be better not to tell a lie and to say that he was drunk? Is not the truth always best? Does not hiding such depravity only nourish and encourage it? If some of our priests are of a low, depraved order of men, which is a fact, would it not be wiser to expose them and silence them? Is not such recklessness and depravity contagious? and if not treated heroically and in season, will it not spread like blood poisoning from a scratch and direful consequences follow? Can there be too much vigilance and severity in discipline in this matter, since the abuse has gone so far already?

Should any priest who is worthy of that highest title which any man can bear on this earth a priest of the Catholic Church blame you, Mr. Editor, for publishing this letter, or me for writing it? Ought not he to thank us rather? It is in defense of the most holy priesthood and for the purpose of protecting it against its very worst enemies that it is written.

Observing, thinking laymen from the Atlantic to the Pacific are aroused at the number and increase of these burning, depleting scandals, and unless something is done soon to stop them, these laymen will make themselves heard at Rome. The Church was instituted for the people, and the bishops and priests are sent forth to instruct and elevate the people, and the people have a right to demand that they do it faithfully, and Rome will see to it that justice is done to the people.

Our grand ceremonies and towering cathedrals are well enough, but will they supply the needs and make converts and save souls in parishes that are much worse off than without a priest? If the outlook for the future of the Church in the United States in this respect were not so saddening, so heartbreaking, so discouraging, one might enjoy those ceremonies and grand churches, and such like things, more. Statistics have been taken in many parishes in the West of Catholics who do and those who do not attend Mass, and the figures are appalling. As are the priests who are sent out, so will be the greater number of the people. ‘By their fruits shall they be known.’ They are wonder-workers for good or wonder-workers for evil. The writer of this letter, who thought when he became a Catholic that all priests must be intelligent, good, self-sacrificing, humble, pious men, will die before he will be able to understand how they can be otherwise. Oh, how his heart has ached when he found any of them otherwise! And, oh! how discouraging and almost hopeless the effort to try to do good has been through all these long years when he will realize that just one unfit, unworthy priest was doing more harm than a hundred or more zealous, well-directed laymen could do good. Is it not better to seek the truth, to find the truth, to proclaim the truth, to stand by the truth, to trust in the truth? Is it not said that ‘The truth shall make us free?’

To save Christianity to the people of the United States of America, and save them for Christianity, and to build up a civilization worthy of the name, is the work of the Catholic Church through its priests. If they are indifferent, incompetent, self-indulgent, worldly men, the work will not be done. Where rests the responsibility right now for the present and for the future? May God have mercy on us; may the Blessed Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Saints pray for us; may the bishops and priests of the Church work for us!”

I expect Mr. Copeland’s revision and supplement of “After Two Years,” plus eleven years which have elapsed since the writing of his letter, would make a good-sized volume. Rome’s silent contempt for the appeals and charges made by the Laymen’s Association of the archdiocese of Chicago against the Hierarchy, no doubt enlightened Mr. Copeland as to Rome’s real attitude toward clerical crime and corruption, and he is now, I believe, a sadder but wiser man.

Of late years, Mr. Copeland has been devoting his time and means in an effort to convert priests and prelates by scattering broadcast among them copies of the “Imitation of Christ,” by a Kempis.

I wonder if he has succeeded in converting “Rev. No. 9. A Gospel Pitcher,” who was his pastor and spiritual director for several years.

James Edward Quigley

On the 1 5th of June, 1903, Archbishop Quigley, of Chicago, had an interview with a lady by appointment to hear her complaints about certain bad priests. He met her, holding in his hand a bundle of papers which included an affidavit she had made against “Rev. No. 23, A Debauchee” Rev. C. P. Foster, Rector, Sacred Heart parish, Joliet, Illinois. He looked savagely at her, seated himself at the table, laid the papers to one side and commenced to pound the table with his fists.

“Don’t you know,” he cried, “that it is excommunication for a lay person to make affidavit against a priest?”

“Why, no,” she said, “I do not.”

“Well,” he said, “I tell you it is,” and His Grace kept pounding the table.

The lady, not at all terrified, drew her chair up to the table, and began to beat time with her hands upon it, saying: “Archbishop, I did not come here to be bullied; I came by appointment to tell you certain things about your bad priests, and I am going to tell them to you! If you persist in pounding the table and yelling, I will pound the table too and scream! You shall listen to me, and you had better be a gentleman!”

The Archbishop subsided gracefully, and the good woman told him her tale of truth, made up of experiences with the Catholic priesthood of the Archdiocese of Chicago running through a period of thirty years.

She said: “Don’t think, Your Grace, that the Catholic people are to be scared by threats of excommunication; we have become too wise for that; the so-called excommunication of Father Crowley opened our eyes.”

He said, “Did Father Crowley get you to make this affidavit ?”

She said: “He did not; but so far as Father Crowley is concerned, I say, God bless Father Crowley! he is a credit to our Church, and the Catholic people are proud of him! he is not like a great many others of your clergy here; for instance, he is not like Leyden!” [See “Rev. No. 22, A Seductionist.”]

“O my God,” said the Archbishop, throwing up his hands, “don’t mention his name; I’ve Leyden on the brain!”

“Very well, then, Your Grace, I will put some more of them on your brain!” and the brave woman called the attention of her Archbishop to certain sinning priests by name.

The Archbishop said, “Oh, that is ancient history! give me something modern!”

She said: “Is it ancient history when priests are getting drunk in this city every day, misconducting themselves in every shape and form and going under assumed names dressed as laymen?”

“Well,” he said, “you may think things are bad here, but they are worse elsewhere; they are worse in Buffalo and many times worse in New York.”

She said: “If that is so, that is no justification for our putting up with bad priests in Chicago; we Catholic women have actually built the Catholic churches here, and we are entitled to protection.”

He said: “It is the bounden duty of good Catholics to cover up the guilt of their clergy, just as it is their duty to hide the guilt of their parents!”

She said: “What? do you tell me that if my parents got drunk every day and were dragged out of disreputable places, having their faces battered and heads broken so they needed surgical care, and taken to police stations and kept there several days and every one knowing it, it would be my duty to try to make people believe that my parents were saints?”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “You can’t make me believe that,” she answered. She said: “Don’t you know, Archbishop, that there are bad priests here?”

“Well, yes,” he said, counting upon his fingers, “there are five six seven bad priests!”

She said: “You have been here but three months and you have found out seven; when you have been here six months you will probably find out that there are seventy-seven, and more.”

She then asked him how he could reconcile his unkind and unjust treatment of Father Crowley with his treatment of those seven bad priests, leaving them in the enjoyment of their rich parishes with full power to offer up the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to hear confessions, and to have the care of souls.

He said: “Well, we must all admit that Father Crowley is a good priest, morally and otherwise, but he has given scandal by exposing the guilt of his brother priests.”

She said: “I am positive he has not, because we knew all about those priests before ever Father Crowley came here; to my knowledge a few of the good priests, for many years back, tried to stop priestly misconduct in this archdiocese, but they failed, and nothing was done until Father Crowley joined them in their efforts.”

He said: “Well, I personally have nothing against Father Crowley! I am ready and willing to give him the very best parish in the archdiocese; his case is now in the hands of the Papal Delegate [Archbishop Falconio], and if the Papal Delegate writes me to appoint Father Crowley to the Holy Name Cathedral, I will do it with as little hesitation as if he were my own brother!”

He then complimented her upon her courage, saying, “You are the nerviest woman I have ever met in my life!”

She said: “I am speaking for at least one thousand Roman Catholic women, and when I come here again I will be speaking for at least five thousand.”

The Archbishop, with great gallantry, opened the door for her, and he bade her good-day with a cordial clasp of the hand. This lady was one of the best workers in the Catholic Church in Chicago, having labored day and night in its interests, spending her strength and her means without limit. She has especially endeared herself to the poor and to the suffering.

The papal organ of the archdiocese of Chicago, The Nezv World, in its issue of March 9, 1912, over the signature of the Archbishop of Milwaukee, makes a two-column statement to the Catholic public, under the heading “The Catholic Colonization Society.” I give a few excerpts:

“The Catholic Colonization Society, U. S. A., is a properly chartered corporation under the laws of the State of Illinois, having been incorporated in July, 1911. It has succeeded to and taken the place of a former Illinois corporation of exactly the same name, which, having surrendered its charter, has no longer any legal existence. The present C. C. S. is truly national, inasmuch as its operations are not confined to any one section of the United States, and its membership comprises men representative of different races or nationalities: Belgian, Bohemian, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, though all American citizens. Among its members and directors it counts archbishops, bishops, priests and laymen. Being a Catholic organization established for the protection and promotion of Catholic interests through Catholic colonization, our society is naturally subject to the rules and laws of the Catholic Church, and will in all its dealings and undertakings seek the advice of the prelates of the hierarchy interested or concerned in the work of Catholic colonization.

“A special feature of the C. C. S. that we desire to develop on safe and expedient lines is the affiliation with it of other Catholic colonization societies. In view of the continuous influx of different races from the old country, the C. C. S. strongly encourages the formation of racial colonization societies, which may become affiliated with it and work under its guidance and with its assistance. This will facilitate the establishing of racial colonies for Bohemians, Italians, Polish, Slavs, etc. However much we may desire the quick and full amalgamation and merging of such races in the American nation, it can not possibly be denied that for a time racial settlement and colonies are necessary, if these newcomers to our shores are to keep the Catholic faith themselves and help to build up a glorious future of the Church in America. Where diocesan or state colonization societies are formed, these may also become affiliated with our society and thus profit by its larger experience and greater influence. Other Catholic colonization societies, although not affiliated with us, may yet work hand in hand with the C. C. S., where they will always find cordial and serious consideration. In this way the C. C. S. will become a great central bureau or agency where the work of Catholic colonization all over the United States can be concentrated and systematized so as to render it more successful and to offer the colonist more safety and security. Catholic colonization will then command the attention of all American citizens and do away with the old reproach that so much of this so-called Catholic colonization business is simply a fool’s play, if not downright swindle….

“The C. C. S. may be called another Church Extension Society which furnishes not money, altar and vestments, but the people, the priest and the church….

“It will arrange with the land company for the reservation of such tracts of land or such.a number of acres or farms as will be necessary to locate and develop thereon a well-sized colony; then it will settle and fix the most favorable prices and terms for which the land will be sold to Catholic settlers. Here it may be stated at once that our society does not look for the cheapest land. The cheapest is never the best. We look more for good and productive land at reasonable, although somewhat higher, prices. Besides all this the C. C. S. will arrange with the land company for the building of an appropriate church and school and parsonage to be erected within a certain time or as soon as a given number of Catholic families shall have settled there. The land company must, moreover, guarantee the salary of a priest for a certain time to be agreed upon. None of these arrangements will be made without the previous consent of the Bishop of the diocese in which the colony is located….

“In view of the great field lying before us with all its magnificent opportunities for a most useful, widely beneficial and, in fact, positively necessary Catholic colonization movement, it is to be hoped that the C. C. S. will find on the part of American Catholics all the support and help it deserves and a cordial co-operation all along the line. It is the only American national colonization society that enjoys the great honor of having received the hearty recommendation and encouragement of the Archbishops of America, assembled at their annual meeting. Friends of Catholic colonization can greatly help the C. C. S. by bringing its work to the attention of prospective Catholic colonists of their neighborhood or acquaintance, by sending useful and reliable information concerning large tracts of land available for farming settlements and obtainable at moderate prices, by warning us of fraudulent or suspicious colonization schemes, and in many other ways. Yet all this valuable help will not accomplish much without financial backing. In an undertaking of this kind it is money that counts. The future usefulness of the C. C. S. must depend largely on the financial support that it will get. Rich Catholics of noble hearts find here another splendid opportunity of showing their love for Holy Church and their brethren of the Faith. For Catholic colonization, as we propose it, is but another manifestation of the great missionary spirit that has, in our days, been wonderfully awakened in the Catholic Church of the United States.

“In conclusion I may say that the C. C. S. is controlled by a board of twelve directors, its operations are managed by an executive committee of five members, and its actual work is carried on by the following officers: Director general, Most Reverend Archbishop Glennon, St. Louis; president, Rev. J. De Vos, Chicago; vice president, Right Rev. Mgr. McMahon, New York; secretary, Very Rev. E. Vattmann, Wilmette, 111.; treasurer, Rev. A. Spetz, C. R., Chicago. The office of the C. C. S. is located in The Temple, Chicago, 111. S. G. MESSMER,
“Archbishop.
“MILWAUKEE, Wis., Feb. 26, 1912.”

It is evident that The Catholic Colonization Society is not advantageous to the general public, but detrimental to the public welfare.

Land owners, non-Catholic merchants, labor organizations and all other citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, whose interests and rights are endangered by this Society, ought to wake up before it is too late. Congress of the United States ought to be called upon to investigate The Catholic Colonization Society, as well as the many Roman Catholic boycotting organizations, monopolies and trusts, which have been established in this country chiefly in the interests of a foreign potentate the pope of Rome.

PAPAL LIFE INSURANCE.

Another of Rome’s latest get-rich-quick schemes is the establishment of “The New World Life Insurance Co.” According to its prospectus, it is strictly a Roman Catholic organization, and its papal organizers have their eye on the “$78,000,000 of Catholic money in the shape of premium on policies, which is being paid annually to American life insurance companies.”

The prospectus of this Roman company explains why the “American life insurance companies” ought not to be patronized by Roman Catholics, and indirectly suggests a boycott of them. In the no distant future priests, prelates and lay leaders of the “American Federation of Catholic Societies” will find sufficient grounds for issuing a most severe boycott against “American life insurance companies” and thus corral the $78,000,000 or more annually.

This papal insurance company will afford a fruitful source of graft to the Roman Hierarchy and its lay agents. On the maturing of policies or on the death of policy holders, a large percentage of the moneys due will be expected for masses for the relief of the suffering souls of the deceased policy holders, as well as other large sums to “make America dominantly Catholic.”

The banking, colonization, loans and. insurance schemes of the Church of Rome in America and elsewhere, which are carried on under the guise of religion, have not been a “fool’s play,” but “downright swindle.” The papal land swindle in Minnesota is fresh in our memory. The many papal swindles in loans and insurance companies within recent years are not forgotten. The swindle in Archbishop Purcell’s bank in Cincinnati, which deprived several thousand people of their hard earnings, and other such swindles too numerous to mention, ought to be a warning not only to the Roman Catholic people, but also to tolerant, gullible non-Catholics.

One of the saddest scenes which I ever witnessed was while I was a member of the Roman Hierarchy that of an old maiden lady in Manchester, N. H., who died in 1886, cursing Archbishop Purcell and the pope of Rome for having swindled her out of her hard earnings-

Why are not these Roman clerical bankers, colonizers, etc., prosecuted and punished according to law?

American citizens, we are facing a crisis: Wholesale papal swindles, boycotts and persecutions are rapidly increasing a twentieth century papal inquisition will be the reward of our apathy, our cowardice.

It would require a large volume to contain even part of the evidence manifested, both by declarations and by acts, of Rome’s persistent policy to suppress all knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures. In the early centuries, and long before printing was invented, all manuscripts containing any translation into the vernacular from the original tongues was prohibited under the severest penalties. As. early as 860 A. D. Pope Nicholas I. put Bible reading under the ban. Gregory VII., known in history as Hildebrand, in 1073 continued the ban, and Innocent III., in 1198, issued a decree that all who read the Bible should be put to death. In 1229 the great Council of Toulouse passed a decree forbidding either the possession or the reading of the Bible; and the famous Council of Trent, 1545-63, did the same. In England, in the fourteenth century, any one who was found with Wycliffe’s Bible, that “organ of the devil,” incurred the penalty of death. In the reign of the “Bloody Mary” tons of Bibles were used as fuel to burn the martyrs, and it was said that “no burnt offerings could be more pleasing to Almighty God.” Pius VII. in 1816 denounced Bibles as “pestilences;” and Leo XII. in 1825 as “traps and pitfalls.” Pius VIII. in 1830 declared printingpresses from which Bibles were struck as “centers of pestiferous infection;” Gregory XVI. in 1844 condemned Bible Societies, and ordered the priests to tear up all they could lay their hands on. Pius IX. surpassed all his predecessors in the employment of abusive language to vilify Bible Societies, and under his authority many were banished from Tuscany for reading the Bible. It was also during his pontificate that Francesco Madai and his wife were imprisoned for ten months and then sent to the galleys for reading the Bible.

Coming down to our own generation, Leo XIII., an astute politician, having to play the game in England and America, Italy being lost, was well aware that he could not afford to defy Protestant opinion openly and publicly. And so he issued an encyclical which seemed to reverse the policy of his predecessors by permitting the laity to read the Bible. But every one knew, who had the necessary means of information, that this encyclical was insincere and hypocritical. For immediately on its issue secret instructions were given to all the priests to do all in their power to prevent the sale and distribution of the Bible. And so all other decrees, edicts, statements and permissions to the same -effect which have been issued since have been equally treacherous and insincere. To sum it all up in one word, I may give the statement of a distinguished priest who said: “The day in which the priests and Catholic believers give themselves to the reading and study of the Bible, that day will be the last for the Roman Church, for the priests, for the monsignors and for the papacy.”

The Paulist Fathers is an Order well known in the United States. Its special mission is to convert Protestants to Romanism and they boast that they are making more than 35,000 converts a year.

The following letter will show who are the managers and directors of this Order; what are its aims and purposes; what it has already accomplished, and the final goal which the Order proposes as the object of its endeavors; namely, to “make America dominantly Catholic.” The letter reads as follows and certainly requires no comment. It speaks for itself; and speaks loudly and alarmingly. Here is the letter. Read it and ponder it:

DIRECTORS OF THE CATHOLIC MISSIONARY UNION.
MOST REV. J. M. FARLEY, D D., VERY REV. E. R. DYER, S. S.,
Archbishop of New York, President St. Mary’s Seminary,
[Cardinal] PRESIDENT. Baltimore.
MOST REV. JOHN IRELAND, REV. MATTHEW A. TAYLOR.
Archbishop of St. Paul.
RT. REV. MATTHEW HARKINS, REV. WALTER ELLIOTT,
Bishop of Providence, R. 1. of the Paulist Fathers.
VERY REV. A. P. DOYLE,
Secretary-Treasurer.
Represented by:^THE CATHOLIC= Under Its Auspices The
The Missionary MISSIONARY UNION Apostolic Mission House
Incorporated under the laws of the State of New York.

“WASHINGTON, BROOKLAND STATION, D. C, “Feb. 6, 1912.

“My DEAR FRIEND: How near at hand do you think is the time when America will be dominantly Catholic? Things move on with rapid strides these days, and the recent creation of three American Cardinals has brought the Church once more to the forefront. The dominant note in the address of the Holy Father as well as in the replies of the Cardinals is the hope of wonderful progress among English speaking peoples. They have all spoken of the ‘era of convert making.’ All this indicates a marvelous advance along the lines whereon the Missionaries of the Apostolic Mission House have been working these twenty years.

“If all the Priests and laity would turn their faces to this one goal, what a tremendous impetus the movement would get! One of our great leaders recently said: and there is a burning truth in it ‘We must labor to gain the confidence, love and respect of the American people. This once gained, the Catholic Church in Her way to claim the American heart, may carry a thousand dogmas on her back.’

“Last year our Missionaries gave hundreds of Missions, and the record of convert-making is now away beyond the Thirty-five Thousand mark each year. Just think what this means! This estimate says nothing of the thousands of fallen-away Catholics that have been brought back to a good life.

“Come with us and share the glories of this work!
Sincerely yours in Xto.,
“CATHOLIC MISSIONARY UNION.
“A. P. Doyle, Treasurer.”

Let us follow up these Paulist Fathers a little closer and see some of the other things which they have been doing.

It was a trifling matter that these Paulist Fathers had prize-fights in the Paulist Church, Chicago, as one of their Church Fair attractions. It is not of much importance to mention that Rev. Peter J. O’Callaghan, head of the Paulist Fathers in the Middle West, President of the Total Abstinence Association of America, delegate appointed by President Taft to the Anti-Alcohol Congress at The Hague in 1911, and Commander of the Boy Scouts, was arrested on a charge of running gambling machines in his Church in Chicago for commercial purposes.

Of vastly more importance and of deeper and far wider reaching significance is what was done by the Romish priests across the seas. In last January (1912) a letter was received by a distinguished American lady from a friend in Italy, which stated that in the Fall of 1911, in the town of Forano, in Sabina, forty miles from Rome, the Romish priests collected all the Bibles they could lay their hands upon, carried them to the Public Square, piled them in a heap, saturated them with coal oil, set fire to the pile and reduced the Bibles to ashes.

It may be mentioned here that while the Romish priests were burning Bibles in Forano, and converting and baptizing 35,000 Protestants a year in the United States, Roman Catholic priests in South America were baptizing dogs at forty cents a head.

To give a further idea of the attitude of priests and prelates toward the Bible, as well as their influence over our Government and its officials, even in the Philippine Islands, I quote from Circular No. 32, S. 1908, issued by the Bureau of Education, Manilla, March n, 1908, addressed to the Division Superintendents of Schools, under the heading “Religious Teaching Forbidden”:

“It is not for the teachers in public school in this Catholic country, either to encourage the study of the Bible especially of the Protestant Bible among their pupils, or to say to those pupils anything upon the subject…. In view of the intimate personal relation of a teacher to his pupils, no religious instruction of any nature should be given by him at any time, even outside the schoolroom.”…

At the close of this circular, David P. Barrows, Director of Bureau of Education, Manilla, P. I., says:

“It is not believed that anything further can be added to make more clear the attitude of the department and of the administration on this point.”

Why did not the President recall this order as he did that of Mr. Robert G. Valentine, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, forbidding Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns, employed in Government schools for Indian children, to wear their religious garb and insignia of their faith while engaged in their duties within the schoolroom and in the grounds of such institutions?

I would like to ask the Paulist Fathers why their distinguished Episcopalian convert, Rev. Dr. Lloyd, once Bishop elect for Oregon, and his wife, returned to Protestantism not long after their much heralded conversion to Romanism? Is it not a fact that when the Paulist Fathers realized that Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd were about to withdraw from Romanism, being thoroughly disgusted with it, he (Lloyd) was Jesuitically placed in the Detention Hospital in Chicago, pending an order from the court for his removal to the insane asylum at Elgin, 111. He would be there to-day were it not for the exposure threatened by his noble wife, who, like him, had been scandalously shocked by the actions of priests and prelates of the Roman Catholic Church. The story as told by Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd would startle the world and convince the public that Rome is ever and everywhere the same.

I would also like to ask the Paulist Fathers how many of their alleged thirty-five thousand converts a year return to their original faith as did Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd; how many Paulist Fathers and Seminarians leave their Religious (?) Congregation each year; also how many nuns, monks and priests, including the Jesuits, leave the Roman Catholic Hierarchy; and how many of the Catholic laity leave the Roman Catholic Church each year.

Nothing more startling has ever been put before the public than Rome’s recent resolutions of boycott of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Watson’s Magazine, the Protestant Magazine, the Menace, etc., and her attitude as Censor of the United States Mails. At the annual convention of the American Federation of Catholic Societies, held at New Orleans, November 13-16, 1910, resolutions were passed calling for the passage of Federal laws to prevent the transmission by the United States mails of matter offensive to the Roman Catholic Church. In these resolutions postoffice employes were boklly called upon to destroy, without any warrant of law, any such mail in transit. The leading ecclesiastic at this convention was Archbishop Falconio, Papal Delegate to the Roman Catholic Church in America.

Archbishop Falconio had good reasons for tendering his sincerest congratulations to the American Federation of Catholic Societies at its convention held at Columbus, Ohio, August 20-24, 1911, for its “rapid progress” and “the effective good work accomplished” by it. He was fully aware, I presume, of the destruction of much printed “matter offensive to the Church” in the postoffices of the United States of America since their last reunion at New Orleans.

I know that several large parcels of printed matter mailed at the General Postoffice in Chicago during the months of December, 1910, and January and February, 1911, never reached their destination. This destruction commenced immediately after their New Orleans convention. On receipt of numerous complaints from subscribers the sender called on the post-office authorities for an explanation, but received no satisfaction whatever. This party’s mail continued to be held up, and, surmising the cause, the sender threatened public exposure of such unlawful action on the part of the Postoffice Department. This threat of exposure scared Rome and her Jesuitical agents, and since then the mail of said party has been unmolested. Ah, Rome fears publicity!

Meanwhile, to divert attention from their own criminal acts, they are loudly inveighing against the circulation of obscene matter through the mails; and by obscene matter they mean all matter inimical to the Church of Rome. Non- Catholics think they mean indecent and licentious matter.

The inconsistency of the private lives of popes, cardinals, prelates, priests and monks as compared with the deference exacted by them in public from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is, to say the least, ridiculous: for example, decollete gowns and peek-a-boo waists are out of order at formal receptions for male members of the Hierarchy. Any one who knows the kind of pictures and indecent realities that most delight the eyes of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy will not be faked by any pretended shock that they may profess to experience on contemplation of the nude in art, much less decollete gowns at formal functions.

As a satisfactory evidence of this fact it may be stated that the telephone companies in different cities have threatened to take away the phones from the residences of some priests because their conversation was at times so vile that the female operators refused to receive their messages and threatened to resign if required to do so.

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy should be indicted for illegally using the mails to operate confidence games, chainless letters, etc., in the alleged behalf of ”the poor homeless children,” “the poor orphans,” and “the poor suffering souls in purgatory.” No more shameless and outrageous system of fraud was ever perpetrated by men.

The American Federation of Catholic Societies, which embraces the numberless Associations, Societies, Clubs, Church Confraternities, etc., as well as their widespread military organizations, is a menace to our freedom and an injury to the Catholic people whom it pretends to serve. It is a mighty power for evil in the hands of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy.

At the Columbus convention, among other boycotts, a boycott was declared against the Encyclopedia Britannica, which boycott was soon after printed and circulated broadcast throughout the English-speaking world. The following additional proclamation of the same boycott was issued and circulated with the endorsement of the New York County Federation of Catholic Societies, of which Cardinal Farley is the principal under the pope.

“No Catholic should purchase the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. No purchaser of it is bound to keep or pay for a work which falls so far short of the representation of the editors and publishers. It should be debarred from our public libraries, schools and other institutions. It should be denounced everywhere, in season and out of season, as a shameful attempt to perpetuate ignorance, bigotry and fanaticism in matters of religion.”

Mr. Samuel Byrne, editor of the Pittsburgh Observer (Roman Catholic), addressing the Catholic editors at the Columbus convention, said in part:

“I have come here for the purpose of very briefly suggesting one thing. It is, this: That the Catholic editors of the country, concertedly and persistently, urge their readers to notify the proprietors and managers of the daily papers that unless they use instead of the European dispatches of the Associated Press, those furnished by the newly established Catholic International United Telegraph Agency, they will withdraw their patronage from them, either as readers or as advertisers, and will, moreover, boycott both the offending newspapers and those who advertise in them.”

The boycott is the most powerful weapon and one in constant use by the Roman Hierarchy. By intimidation, threats and terror, they are able to suppress literature and destroy private business, and they do it most effectually. Few and far between are the newspapers who will dare to print anything which would fall under the adverse criticism of a priest.

The owners of newspapers, and especially of the great dailies which circulate in the large cities where there are many Catholics, are notified that there will be a sudden drop in their advertising patronage if they publish or refuse to publish certain matter condemned or approved by the Censor Bureau of the Roman Catholic Church, which has its representatives in numerous and extensive Catholic societies. Non-Catholics, too, who receive from some source or other information that the Roman Catholics are boycotting a particular paper, withdraw their advertisements to gratify and retain Catholic customers. The mere circulation of a city daily does not pay for the paper on which it is printed; the whole revenue is derived from their advertisements thus the press is at the mercy of the secret Roman boycott.

But the boycott is by no means confined to the press. It reaches out and extends universally in all directions. Business men and professional men of all kinds are at the mercy of the boycott. From some mysterious cause, which they can not comprehend, their patronage falls off, their receipts diminish, and if they do not make terms when informed of the cause of the falling off of business, bankruptcy stares them in the face. In many instances where the Roman Catholic Church possesses the influence, teachers, clerks, agents, and the ten thousand individuals of humbler rank, are absolutely at their disposal to be discharged from their places and turned out upon the world without means of support. These boycotts are rarely published as such. Sometimes, it is true, on special occasions when big interests are involved, they do not hesitate to have the boycott printed and circulated, but in the vast majority of instances the Roman boycott gets in its deadly work in the dark. And did anybody ever hear of an injunction being issued against a Roman boycotter, or any one of these said boycotters ever being put in contempt of court? So far does the influence of Rome extend that even the courts themselves, which are supposed to be the citadels of impartiality and justice, are prostituted to serve the interests of the Roman Hierarchy. The non-Catholic people should engrave it on their memories and keep it forever fresh in their minds that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Why prosecute and punish non-Catholic clergymen and other citizens, while Roman Catholic priests and prelates foes of the nation commit similar crimes, and worse, with impunity?

Why waste time and money in sham efforts to curb the trusts, and at the same time permit, and even assist, that trust of trusts the Vatican system to continue the even tenor of its way?

If the governments of the United States and of the British Empire had done their duty toward Catholics and non- Catholics alike, whose interests have been injured, and sometimes wholly destroyed by Romanism, the majority of priests and prelates who are “operating” under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, and the Union Jack, would be behind the bars not a few of them would have been rewarded with the hempen tie or electric chair.

Furthermore, if the Government of the United States had done its plain duty in protecting my rights and interests as an American citizen during the past ten years, Cardinals Martinelli and Falconio, Archbishop Quigley, Bishop Muldoon, and many other Roman ecclesiastics, would now be wearing stripes in penitentiaries as the guests of Uncle Sam, instead of purple and gold in luxurious palaces as “Ambassadors of Christ.”

ONE ATTACK UPON MY LIFE.

I will give one illustration of an attempt upon my life. People who are powerful by position and means, but guilty of crimes and about to be exposed, have no conscience to bother them with scruples if they turn to violence to get out of the way the object of their fear. The murder of Dr. Cronin in Chicago a few years ago will illustrate vividly the truthfulness of this statement.

During the time which has elapsed since I entered into this crusade for purity, truth and justice, attempts have been made upon my life. I have frequently told my friends who have expressed concern for my life that nothing better for my cause could happen than my violent taking off; that it would be the supreme emphasis upon my side of this controversy and would be the final circumstance to overwhelmingly convict the unholy priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. I put my life in the especial keeping of God at the beginning of this struggle. I have made my daily work the subject of daily prayer, and whatever happens to me I must take as God’s way of bringing to pass that for which I am devoting my time and for which I am willing to lay down my life. The Rev. Thomas F. Cashman, of St. Jarlath’s parish, Chicago, found out a plot to kill me, for which murderous work’ six men had been selected. Henchmen who were ready to take life for pay were constantly on my track.

Soon after I was served with Cardinal Martinelli’s threat of excommunication, I went on Sunday afternoon. October the 20th, 1901, to see Rev. Thomas P. Hodnett. I visited with him in his parochial residence until about six o’clock in the evening, and then left his home to take the Northwestern Elevated Railway car. When I left Father Hodnett’s door I noticed that I was being followed by a man who weighed over two hundred pounds, about five feet eight inches in height, a bullet-shaped head, clean shaven face which was very red. He was a typical thug. He was the same man who followed me to Evanston the night before when I went to confer with the Very Rev. Hugh P. Smyth. I made a pretense of getting aboard the elevated when it came, stepping on and then off. This man stepped on and then off. I then stepped back again, and he followed me. I stood on the car platform and this man stood near me. He gave me several jabs in the side with his elbow, trying to provoke retaliation on my part so he could have an excuse for assaulting me. I suspected at once what the design of the fellow was. I saw that he hoped to embroil me into an encounter and then he could stab or shoot me and plead self-defense in the event of prosecution for murder or assault to kill. I determined to go the limit of endurance to avoid getting into a struggle with him, as I saw that even if I came out of such an encounter without physical damage my enemies would have me heralded throughout the country as a common brawler. I made no reply to these rude attacks. As soon as I reached Clark and Lake Streets I darted from the car and rushed down the steps, my hotel being near. Just then a westbound Lake Street trolley-car came by and I boarded it to elude him. He followed me. The car was crowded and we both were on the foot-board, he in front and I behind. Suddenly I jumped off. He followed me. I hurried to my hotel (Sherman House) and he followed me. I stayed in my room about an hour and then went downstairs.

In the elevator I met a gentleman about fifty-five years of age. He saluted me. He wanted to know my name and I told him. Said he: “Are you the priest that is after these bad Chicago priests?” I said: “Yes.” When we left the elevator he drew me to one side and said, “Father, I am a Catholic,” and he gave me his name and address; “the Catholic people of the country are with you; they know you are right; they want this thing stopped; I have been in the railroad service for thirty-five years and the toughest class I meet is the Catholic clergy.” I then noticed the thug with two other suspicious-looking characters edging up towards us, and I said to the gentleman: “You had better be careful! you had better not be seen with me! Those three men are bent on dirty business from what I know of the conduct of one of them within the past twenty- four hours.” He said: “What do you mean, Father?” I replied: “I believe those men are hired to provoke a quarrel with me so they can have an excuse for taking my life.” He put his hand to his hip pocket and said: “I’m from Kentucky; I have a gun; I’ll blow their brains out.” I said: “For goodness’ sake, mister, don’t make any move; that is just what they want.” Just then a friend of this gentleman approached. We were introduced, and I then said “Good evening” and left the hotel. After walking a few yards I saw this thug on my trail. I turned back to the hotel, thinking I could enter and leave by some other door and thus throw him off the scent. I left by another door, but his accomplices evidently told him where I had gone and he at once appeared dogging me. I returned to the hotel forthwith and met the two gentlemen with whom I had been conversing, and they said: “Father, you had better look out; your life is in danger.” I left the hotel again and walked south on Clark to Washington Street to take a car. I was closely followed by the thug. My two friends followed me to see if I would need help. His accomplices went as far as the corner of Clark and Randolph Streets. I got onto a street-car and stood on the rear platform. This thug got onto the car and stood close to me and jabbed me in the side with his elbow. When we reached Van Buren Street I sprang onto a west-bound Van Buren Street car. He rushed after me, but missed the car, and I would have eluded him if the car had not stopped at the Rock Island Railway station. At this place he overtook the car, and, standing close to me on the rear platform, said, “I came very near losing you.” I replied, “Who is paying you for this blackguardism ?” He replied: “It is none of your damn business.” I said: “I should say it is my business to protect myself from violence.” He said: “I am earning my living, and it is none of your business how I earn it.” I said: “You remind me of the Irishman who came to this country and put up at a cheap hotel in New York City. In the morning his landlord asked him how he liked the place. He replied that the food was good enough, but the sleeping was bad; there was something the matter with his bed; he burned a box of matches to find out, but could not. The landlord told him that the cause of his sleeplessness was bugs. The Irishman had never heard of them. The landlord assured him that he would not mind them after awhile, that he would get accustomed to them, that they had to make their living the same as everybody else. The Irishman replied: ‘I don’t object to their making a living, but it is the d – way they make it that I object to.’ ” I continued: “This may apply to you.” He burst into a loud laugh. He then said: “Father, I won’t hurt you, though I expected to have your block off before night. There is something about you, Father, that has convinced me that you are O. K. and the Muldoon gang are stiffs.” I said: “What were your instructions ?” He said: “To follow you up and get you into a fight and shoot your head off.” I said: “If you had done that, you would hang.” He said: “They said that nothing would happen to me; they would employ the best lawyers and I would get off on a plea of self-defense.” I asked: “Who is paying you?” “Well,” he said, “the gang that you are after is putting up the stuff.” He finally said: “Father, I won’t do you any harm. I am going to throw up this job.”

I afterwards learned from the two gentlemen whom I had left at the hotel, that they followed me when I left the hotel as far as the street corner, and the two accomplices to whom I have referred turned upon them: “What are you doing here? You are interfering in business you have no right to; get off the sidewalk!” A policeman was called and he took the names of these toughs, who then were allowed to go. Soon after this occurrence this railroad man attended High Mass at the Holy Name Cathedral, Chicago, and as he was entering the church he saw these identical toughs standing in the vestibule.

How fortunate I am that I live in the twentieth century and not in the fifteenth. If this were that dreary time of clerical supremacy, no doubt my body would be burned and its ashes cast into the Chicago River as Savonarola’s body was burned and its ashes thrown into the Arno River, but that river ran to the sea, and so it came to pass that his ashes were carried to every shore; and now, wherever liberty is loved, Savonarola has a shrine.

The Roman Catholic Church has been, and is, the mightiest and most dangerous trust in the world. In fact, she is the mother of trusts, and influences many creeds and cults. In them her Jesuitical agents are high in council: for example, Eugene A. Philbin, ex-District Attorney of New York City, Papal Knight and Attorney for Cardinal Farley, is an active Director and Endowment Trustee of The Federation of [Protestant] Churches and [Protestant] Christian Organisations in New York City, and as such exercises an influence, to say the least, favorable to Rome. This I know from personal experience. Papal Knight Attorney Philbin, though an active Director and Endoivment Trustee of The Federation of [Protestant] Churches and Christian Organizations in New York City is at the same time a leading light in the New York County Federation of [Roman] Catholic Societies, and the American Federation of Catholic Societies. Rome could not expediently recognize this quasi religious Federation of [Protestant] Churches, and [Protestant] Christian Organisations by publicly placing a “Prince of the Church,” John Maria Farley alias John Murphy Farley, or any other New York “alter Christus,” in a position so dangerous to “faith and morals,” as that assigned to heresy-and-immorality-proof Philbin. And, again, it would give grave scandal to “the faithful” if, forsooth, a cardinal, archbishop, bishop, priest or monk united publicly in a quasi religious work with heretics, clerical or lay, who are “illegitimate” by birth and living in “concubinage” if married by a Protestant minister.

Did any one ever hear of a Protestant being a Director or Endowment Trustee of the New York County Federation of [Roman] Catholic Societies or the American Federation of Catholic Societies?

Rome frequently and secretly places some of her ablest Jesuitical agents, of either sex, even in menial positions in non-Catholic homes and offices, both in church and state, in order to find out domestic, church or state secrets. A few years ago a prominent Jesuit in disguise took a position as valet in the home of the Marquis of Salisbury, Premier of England, and through his Jesuitical cunning so ingratiated himself with the Premier that he gained access to state papers, thus learning state secrets for his Church, which is ever on the alert to plot and plan as it deems expedient. Suspecting that his identity would become known through a lady guest who recognized him as the prominent Jesuit in Rome, who had once obtained for her a private audience with the pope, he disappeared during the night.

Through politics and the political appointment of Public School Boards, Superintendents, Principals and Teachers, the Roman Catholic Church has a powerful influence in controlling the Public Schools of the United States and Canada. A ruse well understood by priests and politicians is to use the public press to denounce alleged abuses and incompetencies in the Public School system for the purpose of bringing the system into general contempt. A notable instance of this is the systematic use of a large part of the press by prelates, priests and politicians to undermine the Public Schools under the false pretext of a kindly regard for their welfare.

The Public School is the basis and bulwark of our free Institutions. An enemy of these schools who would seek to destroy them, or even to impair their usefulness, is a public enemy, for he strikes at the very foundation of our system of republican government, which supposes intelligence as well as integrity in its citizens. Anarchists are not to be counted in it in comparison with the Roman Hierarchy, which is unceasingly working to subvert our Public Schools.

Rome’s Jesuitical emissaries, agents and missionaries are everywhere. They have no conscience but the pope’s dictation. They are allowed to assume whatever dress they please; for their better disguise, any occupations in church or state; they are in the highest and the lowest conditions, and have been known to appear as active and zealous members in non- Catholic associations and churches sometimes filling prominent Protestant pulpits. They are on the Public School Boards of Education; some of them are Superintendents, Principals and Teachers in the Public Schools; they occupy prominent positions in different societies and organizations. Their object is to engender strife, to influence party spirit, to produce faction, to counsel rebellion, to plot and plan assassinations : for examples, Bruno, Savonarola, Burke, Lord Cavendish, Dr. Cronin, Ferrer, Parnell, Ireland’s uncrowned king, and others. They avail themselves of every facility, right or wrong, to gain for the papacy, position and power. I need but instance Ireland, where Rome’s Jesuitical authority has borne its fruits in rebellions, and the sad, the continued degradation of the people. Is England at war with other nations? the pope’s aid may be solicited by them to create distractions in Ireland. There is a sore that is never allowed to heal: it has paralyzed, and still paralyzes, the power of England. Hence it has been the arena of political warfare.

History shows that the woes of Ireland and the cares of England began when Pope Adrian IV. sold Ireland to King Henry II. for a penny a household, “Peter’s pence,” and ever since then Rome has Jesuitically instigated ceaseless strife between Ireland and England, and she has an object in prolonging the agony. The honest and fearless Michael Davitt declared that in Ireland’s darkest hour Rome was her worst enemy. The fact is, Rome is really opposed to Home Rule or anything else that might benefit the Irish people and establish peace between Ireland and England. She knows that Home Rule would remove the bone of contention between these countries.

I have heard many prominent members of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, both in Ireland and America, declare that the pope, supported by bishops, priests and monks, would avail of every opportunity to thwart the ambitions of the Irish people and would fight to the last ditch to prevent Home Rule for Ireland. We can not forget how they planned the fall and brought about the sad death of that illustrious leader, Charles Stuart Parnell. Before his death, and afterward, prelates, priests and monks have been secretly enkindling strife, not only between Ireland and England, but between Catholics and non-Catholics, and even between the various factions which make up the Irish Party in order to prevent Home Rule, and thus retain the balance of power in the British Parliament for the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, which practically controls the said so-called Irish Parliamentary Party. The pope, bishops, priests and monks know that Home Rule would kill Rome rule in Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales; and, indeed, cripple the Vatican’s political power in non- Catholic countries, where she, for selfish motives, unites the so-called Irish Catholics into organizations, spiritual (?) and military, such as are to be found in the “American” Federation of Catholic Societies, which Rome uses as a balance of power in American and Canadian politics. The establishment of an Irish Parliament would necessarily give rise to at least two political parties inside of the Roman Catholic Church, where at present all are united in a solid phalanx against England, thus placing the balance of power in the hands of the heretics the non-Catholics. Furthermore, a powerful support of the Roman Catholic Church in England would be withdrawn by the retirement of the Irish Parliamentary Party, the present balance of power in the English Parliament.

What led Pope Leo XIII. to fall in line with Pope Adrian IV. and Pope Pius VII. in an effort to help England at the expense of Ireland, and thus keep up strife between both countries? Why did he issue Papal Rescripts against the Parnell Testimonial and the Plan of Campaign? Irishmen, let me ask you one question: Why has the Holy See never issued any documents denouncing the terrible persecution of the Irish people? I confidently expect that all honest Catholics, without regard to race, will sympathize with me in my effort to enlighten them on papal intrigue and priestly corruption. Naturally I turn to the Irish people for their unstinted sympathy and support. I am one of them. Ireland was my cradle, and her sacred soil shelters the dust of my ancestors. I feel that the sad treatment to which Ireland has been subjected by Popes Adrian IV., Pius VII., Leo XIII., and other popes, should open the eyes of the Irish people, and spur them to combat all forms of ecclesiastical tyranny and corruption. The Irish people alone have it in their power to overthrow the Vatican system, and emancipate not only their race, but humanity.

Consider the tremendous words of an eminent Roman Catholic representative of a Roman Catholic power, spoken directly to the Hon. Andrew D. White, former Ambassador to Germany, and the head of the American Delegation to the first Peace Congress at The Hague. The following is an extract from Ambassador White’s diary, August 5, 1899, giving the Catholic representative’s statement in opposition to the claim of the pope in a message to the representative of the Netherlands and read by him at the close of the Peace Congress, in which the pope claimed that he was a peacemaker on earth:

“This eminent diplomatist from one of the strongest Catholic countries, and himself a Catholic, spoke in substance as follows:

“‘The Vatican has always been, and is to-day, a storm-center. The pope and his advisers have never hesitated to urge on war, no matter how bloody, when the slightest of their ordinary worldly purposes could be served by it. The great religious wars of Europe were entirely stirred up and egged on by them; and, as everybody knows, the pope did everything to prevent the signing of the treaty of Munster, which put an end to the dreadful Thirty Years’ War, even going so far as to declare the oaths taken by the plenipotentiaries at that congress of no effect.

“‘All through the Middle Ages and at the Renaissance period the popes kept Italy in turmoil and bloodshed for their own family and territorial advantages, and they kept all Europe in turmoil, for two centuries after the Reformation, in fact, just as long as they could, in the wars of religion. They did everything they could to stir up a war between Austria and Prussia in 1866, thinking that Austria, a Catholic power, was sure to win; and then everything possible to stir up the war of France against Prussia in 1870 in order to accomplish the same purpose of checking German Protestantism; and now they are doing all they can to arouse hatred, even to deluge Italy in blood, in the vain attempt to recover the temporal power, though they must know they could not hold it for any length of time, even if they should obtain it.

“‘They pretend to be anxious to “save souls,” and especially to love Poland and Ireland; but they have for years used those countries as mere pawns in their game with Russia and Great Britain, and would sell every Catholic soul they contain to the Greek and English Churches if they should thereby secure the active aid of these two governments against Italy. They have obliged the Italian youth to choose between patriotism and Christianity, and the result is that the best of these have become atheists. Their whole policy is based on stirring up hatred and promoting conflicts from which they hope to draw worldly advantage.

“‘In view of all this, one stands amazed at the cool statement of the Vatican letter.'”: Pp. 350-351, Vol. II., Autobiography of Andrew D. White.

General Lafayette, reared and educated a Roman Catholic, uttered this prophecy:

“It is my opinion that if the liberties of this country the United States of America are destroyed, it will be by the subtlety of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priests, for they are the most crafty, dangerous enemies to civil and religious liberty. They have instigated most of the wars of Europe.”

Did not Rome instigate the present conspiracies and insurrections in Mexico and in Portugal; did she not inspire the Turko-Italian War- and all for furthering her own cause power and pelf? Her policies and practices are quite evident to any one who closely studies her crafty, cunning Jesuitical methods.

In relation to the Mexican Rebellion, The Neiv York Times, through information received from its special correspondent, in its issue of May 23, 1911, says:

“MEXICAN CATHOLICS PLAN TO RULE NATION.

“FORMIDABLE PARTY ORGANIZED TO CARRY ELECTION AND OVERTURN DIAZ’S ANTI-CHURCH POLICY.

“MEXICO CITY, MAY 22.

“CATHOLICS WORKING FOR CONTROL.

“The organization of the Catholic Party, of which Gen. Diaz always said he was afraid, is proceeding, and it is extending its ramifications to the most distant sections of the country. Gabriel Somellera, a wealthy capitalist, is the organizer of record and the nominal leader of the party. Directly behind him, however, are the prelates of the Church and the landed aristocracy in so far as they have not gone abroad and they have an immense following of willing or unwilling peons, who are under the influence of the bread-giver and the parish priest. Another fact is that the Catholic Church in Mexico has a capital of at least $200,000,000 a larger sum than the capitalization of all the Government banks which escaped confiscation in the days of Benito Juarez or has since been amassed. This, of course, would give the Church party a very strong position either in business or politics.

“While the Maderistas or Progressives, as their self-effacing leader would have the party called are not resting on their laurels, their campaign organization is still rudimentary as compared with that of the Catholics. Many keen observers of this new trend of affairs to-day expressed the opinion to me that any election held in the next few months under the broader franchise and the Australian ballot, would, if fair, result in the defeat of Madero and the justification of the judgment of Diaz, who always excused delay in the extension of the suffrage by saying that he could not hand the country over to the Church party which he had fought so long.

“CATHOLICS WORKING QUIETLY.

“An element in the campaign which the newspapers have already begun to discuss openly, working more quietly, but not a whit less ambitiously than any claimant for the throne of Diaz, is the Catholic Church. The only step in the open that it has been necessary to take has been accomplished in the formation of the Catholic party and the publication of a platform providing for the closer union of Church and State. Mexico offers a great field for such a party.”

The New York Herald says:

“Those who gibly talk of intervention in Mexico are requested to stop long enough to consider that intervention would mean–

“War with Mexico.

“Unification of all Mexicans against the United States.

“Employment of an American army of 200,000 men, mostly volunteers, to invade Mexico.

“Long and arduous campaigns in tropical climate.

“Suspension of $150,000,000 of annual trade.

“Jeopardizing lives and investments of Americans now in Mexico.

“Incalculable expenditure of life and treasure.

“Antagonizing of Mexico’s sister Latin-American States.”

All of this Rome has planned and hopes to accomplish in order to serve her worldly purposes. Her political success on this Continent depends largely on the international complications which she is ceaselessly striving to bring about, notwithstanding the pope’s claim as a “peacemaker on earth.”

It may be important to state here that Archbishop Ireland, of St. Paul, Minnesota, arrived at his political headquarters, which are located one block from the White House, on the very day that President Taft summarily ordered the United States troops to the Mexican border. As usual, he called on the President. The White House is one of the sights which priests, prelates and “Princes of the Church” never want to miss. President Taft’s Mexican War Map, which is brought up to date every day, has a great attraction for them at present.

Relative to the recent troubles in Portugal, The New York Herald says:

“BISHOPS TO FIGHT LISBON CABINET.

“EPISCOPATE EXPECTED TO ADVOCATE OPPOSITION TO GOVERNMENT ON ACCOUNT OF SEPARATION LAW.

“LISBON, WEDNESDAY. The bishops of Portugal will hold a meeting next week to protest against the law of separation of Church and State. It is reported that they will refuse to recognize the Government’s authority in ecclesiastical matters and instruct the lesser clergy of the provinces to decline to accept the stipends offered to them and make propaganda against the Government at the forthcoming elections.”

The New York Times, in its issue of Dec. 23, 1911, says:

“TO PROSECUTE PRELATE.

“PORTUGAL WILL CHARGE LISBON PATRIARCH WITH CONSPIRACY AGAINST REPUBLIC.

“LISBON, DEC. 22. The Government has decided to prosecute Mgr. Anthony Mendes Bello, Patriarch of Lisbon, on a charge of conspiring against the republic. It is considered certain that the prelate will be sentenced to the maximum of six years’ imprisonment and ten years’ deportation to Africa.”…

The public press of Jan. 5, 1912, says.

“As a sequel to the punishment of the Patriarch of Lisbon, Mgr. Anthony Mendes Bello, who was ordered into exile for two years by the Portuguese Government on Dec. 28, all the Portuguese bishops to-day proclaimed their independence from the Government.

“The minister of justice, in reply to a communication from them, notifying him of their decision, declared that if they persisted in their refusal to recognize the civil authority they would all be expelled from Portugal. At the same time he will hold them responsible for any disturbances.”

If the governments of non-Catholic countries would only administer such medicine to priests, prelates and “Princes of the Church,” their political and supposed religious power would rapidly disappear and the liberties of the people would be secure.

Relative to the present war between Italy and Turkey, The New York Times, in its issue of Sept. 29, 1911, says:

“POPE FAVORS THE STEP,

“BUT HOPES THAT BLOODSHED WILL BE AVOIDED. “POPE FAVORS ITALY’S PLANS.

“The Pope is showing great interest in the preparations for the expedition, and has ordered a propaganda for the purpose of instructing the missionaries to use their influence in favor of the Italian plans, considering these plans as offering advantages for the spread of Catholicism in North Africa, but he hopes that success will be attained by Italy without the shedding of blood.”…

Since the beginning of the Turko-Italian War, bloodshed and butchery, even of women and children, have been of frequent occurrence, and, notwithstanding the hypocritical hope expressed by the pope, is, no doubt, a source of great joy to that “storm-center” the Vatican, which is now eagerly awaiting similar slaughter between Americans and Mexicans.

Popes and their Jesuitical agents have been and are the instigators of wars, and while the world is having real pain, Rome is having champagne.

“For ways that are dark the heathen Chinee”
Is not in it with the Roman clergy.

THE NAVIGATOR, THE CHURCH AND THE KNIGHTS.

The Knights of Columbus is one of the strongest, if not the very strongest, of all the numerous organizations embraced within the American Federation of Catholic Societies.

One of the aims of this organization is to secure the recognition of Columbus Day for a national holiday, upon which day the Roman Church, with all the pomp, trappings and circumstances, with cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and monks, together with all Catholic societies, congregations, confraternities and Roman Catholic military organizations, may parade the streets in all the gaudy robes and vestments and other insignia of the Roman Church in order to impress Americans with the sense of their power.

Among the methods which the Roman Catholic prelates, priests and politicians are using to “make America dominantly Catholic” is that of extolling those supposed to be of their own faith who were active in the discovery, colonization and settlement of America: and among these by far the most important stands Christopher Columbus.

Columbus was not a knight, though he lived near the close of the days of chivalry and was considerable of an errant on the seas, making four voyages to the land he thought to be India, besides others according to his own account, with which the reading world is less familiar.

As one of the discoverers of the New World leading to its settlement and colonization, he may deserve some praise, but the effort to make him a saint and advance agent of the “Holy Roman Catholic Church” on this continent, has no substantial basis in fact, since the latest investigations tend to support the view that he was a Jew at heart, as he certainly was half-Jewish in lineage, and that his representations to the Spanish sovereigns as to religion and even as to his birthplace, were made merely with a view of concealing his real origin and sentiments.

This is supported by such facts and considerations as the following:

1. The assertion of his illegitimate son and first biographer, Fernando, that his father did not desire his origin and fatherland to become known.

2. The answer of the same Fernando to the contemporary historian, Bishop Augustin Giustiniani, that the fatherland of his father was a “secret;” this circumstance at the same time reminding us that the writing of history in Spain as regards the New World, was restricted by law to the priestly orders.

3. The testimony of Pedro de Arana, brother of Beatriz Enriquez, the mother of Fernando and intimate friend of the Admiral, that “he had heard Columbus say he was a Genoese, but did not know where he was born.”

4. In a suit as to right of entail, the masculine line of the Admiral having become extinct in 1578, no Genoese Columbo appeared to claim the right; and of the two Italian Columbos who presented themselves, one from Cuccaro and the other from Cugureo, neither proved relationship.

5. Columbus never mentioned father or mother, and never used the Italian language. Of the ninety-seven distinct pieces of writing by his hand, which either exist or are known to have existed (sixty-four being preserved in their entirety), all, except a few monographs in Latin, werfe written in Spanish. Is it reasonable that a young man leaving his native land at the age of fifteen, should forget his own language? Or that a poor young man should be able to speak and write a foreign language fluently? In the preamble to his diary, speaking of the title “Khan,” he says: “Which title in our Romance tongue means King of kings.”

6. The name Columbus signed to his contract with the Spanish sovereigns was Cristoval Colon, which is not the Italian correlative of Columbus, as many suppose, but a distinct Spanish family name; though Columbo is more extensively Italian, by which name the Admiral called himself to suit his own purposes, afterwards going back to the name Colon. Thus as the Spanish writer and critic Fernando de Anton del Olmet says: “We have four periods in the life of Christopher Columbus: a Spaniard in Spain before going to Genoa, an Italian in Italy on finding out the advantage of being one, a Spaniard in Spain on returning thither and believing it more practical to be such, and an Italian in Spain on being convinced of the advantage that it would bring to him.”

7. Columbus said he was “from Genoa and was born there,” but when Oviedo wrote, not many years after the death of Columbus, it was regarded as so very doubtful where the great navigator was born, that Oviedo mentions five or six Italian towns claiming the honor of his birth; and beginning with Savona, we find each of the following Italian towns claiming the honor of having given Christopher Columbus to the world: Plaisance, Cuccaro, Cogleto, Pradello, Nervi, Albissoli, Bogliasco, Cosseria, Finale, Oneglia, Quinto, Novare, Chiavari, Milan and Modena.

These claims arose largely from the lack of definite data among Columbo families in Genoa, and lines of his ancestry existing there, and the further fact that families of the name Columbo existed in each of these several towns. Speaking of these claims, Justin Winsor, the historian, says: “The pretensions of some of them were so urgent that in 1812 the Academy of History at Genoa thought it worth while to present the proofs as regards their city to the world. The claims of Cuccaro were used in support of a suit by Balthazar Columbo, to obtain possession of the Admiral’s legal rights. The claim of Cogoleto seems to have been mixed up with the supposed birth of the corsairs, Columbos, in that town, who for a long time were confounded with the Admiral. There is left in favor of any of them, after their claims are critically examined, nothing but local pride and ambition.”

8. A later claimant for this honor was the town of Calvi, in Corsica, and their cause was particularly embraced by the French. As late as 1882, President Grevy, of the French Republic, undertook to give a national sanction to these claims by approving the erection there of a statue of Columbus. The assumption is based upon a tradition that the great discoverer was a native of the place. “The principal elucidator of that claim, the Abbe Martin Cassanova de Pioggiola,” says Justin Winsor, “seems to have a comfortable notion that tradition is the strongest kind of historical proof, though it is not certain that he would think so with respect to the twenty and more other places on the Italian coast where similar traditions exist or are said to be current.”

“Finally, in order to determine the value of the evidence serving as basis to the claim made by Genoa to be the birthplace of the renowned Admiral,” says del Olmet, “it suffices to know that four cities have dedicated four marble monuments to their son, Christopher Columbus; two possess the register of his baptism, and eight or ten which present divers title-deeds to consider themselves his cradle, and opinions are not wanting which attribute to him a Greek nationality.”

9. The explanation why Columbus made contradictory statements as to the date of his birth, his birthplace, and concealed his real sentiments on other questions, has only recently been made clear through the discovery of sixteen notarial documents ranging from 1428 to 1528, by a local historian of Potevedra in Galicia, Spain, Mr. Garcia de la Riga, these documents relating to the Colon and Fonterossa families, who also found other evidences that Christopher Columbus, whose natal name was Cristoval Colon, was born and passed his childhood in that city, his parents having been Domingo de Colon and Susana Fonterossa, a Jewess. And though they probably emigrated to Genoa about 1450, when the boy Cristoval was about fifteen, availing themselves of commercial relations which existed between the two ports, there is no reasonable doubt remaining that Cristoval Colon was obliged to conceal his maternal origin, rather than incur the dangers of the Inquisition and the prejudices of his time; since, had his birthplace and family connections been known, the fact that his mother was a Jewess would have been not merely an insuperable obstacle to his receiving the attention of Ferdinand and Isabella, but a cause for his execution, or at least expulsion from the land of his birth. For as he states in his journal, the Jews were expelled from the domains of both Ferdinand and Isabella in the very same month in which he was appointed Admiral.

10. That Columbus was quite capable of such subterfuge is revealed in his own accounts of himself and otherwise. He relates how, in an early expedition as captain of a vessel under King Reinier, he deceived his own frightened crew by secretly altering the point of the compass so as to get the vessel within the Cape of Carthagena. He employed a similar artifice, it will be remembered, in his alteration of the log-book on his first voyage to America, thus deceiving his crew as to the distance they had sailed from Palos.

His early voyages referred to by himself, and supported by new-found documents, show him quite capable of deceiving even their Catholic Majesties. “Of the early career of Columbus,” says Justin Winsor, “it is very certain that something may be gained at Simancas, for when Bergenroth, sent by the English Government, made search there to illustrate the relations of Spain with England, and published his results, with the assistance of Gayangos, in 1862-18/9, as a Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers relating to negotiations between England and Spain, one of the earliest entries of his first printed volume, under 1485, was a complaint of Ferdinand and Isabella against a Columbus some have supposed it our Columbus for his participancy in the piratical service of the French.”

11. But, it may be asked, how does the nativity of Columbus at Pontevedra comport with his sending his title-deeds, despatches and documents to Genoa by Nicholas Oderigo, Ambassador from that city to the Court of the Catholic sovereigns? This is very reasonably answered by the discovery in the archives of Pontevedra of a document as follows:

“Order of the Archbishop of Santiago, Sire of Pontevedra, ordering the Council, on March 15, 1413, to pay to Mr. Nicholas de Oderigo de Janua, 15,000 maravedis old coin, in three sums of money.”

The parents of Columbus being members of the Colon and Fonterossa families residing in Pontevedra, who emigrated later on to Italy, it may be accepted that they availed themselves of some recommendation from or of, direct or indirect relation with the Oderigos. At all events, that the Ambassador Oderigo knew the true natal place of the Admiral, and knew how to keep the secret, may be deduced from the silence that he kept relative to the fatherland and origin of his friend, from the fact of having retained the copies entrusted to him, and which were not delivered to the authorities of Genoa until about two centuries later by Lorenzo Oderigo.

12. Cristoval Colon, known as Christopher Columbus, had a younger brother, Bartholomew, also a navigator, whom Columbus made Adelantado, or Governor General of the Indies, a man of importance. Two Genoese historians, Antonio Gallo, a native of Genoa, who knew the Colon family, and Bishop Giustiniani, also a contemporary of Columbus, each speaking of Bartholomew, say: “A minor, born in Lusitania ;” and Lusitania, in that time of the world, comprised Portugal and Gallicia, in which Pontevedra is located. So the probability of Cristoval’s having been born in the same country and of the same Hebrew parentage as his brother is rendered well-nigh certain.

13. Various historians, including Oviedo, state that the flag-ship of Columbus, the Santa Maria, and vulgarly known as the Gallician, was built at Pontevedra; and Mr. La Riega unearths a notarial contract executed at Pontevedra, July 5, 1487, freighting the vessel called Santa Maria, or La Gallega applying both names indiscriminately.

14. A plot of land appraised to the Colon family, half a kilometre from Pontevedra, was bounded by other lands in the cove of Portosanto in the parish of San Salvador, while a triangular space existed near the home of the elder Colon, adjacent to the Gate and Tower of Galea. In his first voyage Columbus named the first island discovered, San Salvador, and the fourth Portosanto; and in his third voyage, he gave the name Trinidad to the first land he saw, and called the first promitory, the Cape of la Galea.

15. The wily Hebrew character of Columbus is shown in the way he overcame the objection advanced by the sovereigns and the Church authorities, that his theory of the earth’s rotundity contradicts the Scriptures.

Cardinal Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza, Archbishop of Toledo, finally conceded that the theory was worthy of a trial, but the great body of churchmen stood firmly by the opinions of Lactantius and St. Augustine. Says the former, ridiculing the globular theory of the earth: “Is there any one so foolish as to believe that there are antipodes \vith their feet opposite to ours people who walk with their heels upward and their heads hanging down?” And St. Augustine declared it impossible that races on the opposite side of the earth could have descended from Adam and Eve, since there was no land passage, “and it was impossible for them to have passed the intervening ocean.”

Columbus contended merely that the plan was worthy of the experiment, while if successful the wealth of the Indies would reward the effort. “Gold,” he says in one of his letters, “is the most precious of all commodities; gold constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it has all he needs in this world, as also the means of rescuing souls from purgatory, and restoring them to the enjoyment of paradise.” This last clause must have been peculiarly touching to the sovereigns who are credited with establishing the Holy Inquisition, and who expelled seventy thousand families of Jews, not allowing them to carry away their gold or silver. During their administrations between nine and ten thousand Jews were buried alive, seven thousand in effigy, while about one hundred thousand were persecuted in other ways.

16. The fact that the funds defraying the expenses of the first voyage, as referred to in a speech in Congress by the Hon. Julius Kahn, in December, 1911, were supplied by Luis de Santangel, the king’s chancellor and a converted Jew, is significant. “In his original account books, extending from 1491 to 1493, preserved in the Archive de Indias in Seville, Santangel is credited with an item of 1,140,000 maravedis, which were given by him to the Bishop of Avila, who subsequently became the Bishop of Granada, for Columbus’ expedition.”

Just how many Jews there were in the fleet of Columbus is not known. One was Luis de Torres, a Marano, or converted Jew, learned in the languages, who acted as Columbus’ interpreter; others of Jewish extraction were Msestre Bernal, the ship’s physician, and Marco, the surgeon, the latter of whom had undergone penance for his faith in October, 1490, ai Valencia, at the same time that Adret and Isabel his wife were burned to death for not adopting Catholicism.

The interest of Columbus in Jews was finally shown by his legacy to “the Hebrew who dwelt at the gate of the Jewry,” and whom he did not otherwise name in his will, and whom certain historians believe to have been a maternal relative.

17. It has been repeatedly noted by historians that the writing of Columbus was tinctured with the style of the Old Testament. Some of his disquisitions and apostrophes would not be out of place in that revered volume, such for illustration as his “Vanquishing the Waterspout,” and his “Vision of the River of Bethlehem,” inserted in a letter addressed to the sovereigns.

The regaining of the ancient land of Judea seems to have been a fixed idea with Columbus, a project he urged upon the sovereigns, and even the pope, and concerning which he wrote in his own “Prophecies:” “The conquest of the Holy Sepulchre is the more urgent when everything foretells, according to the very exact calculations of Cardinal d’Ailly, the speedy conversion of all the sects, the arrival of Antichrist, and the destruction of the world.”

If one will study the writings of the fifteenth century, Christian and Jewish, as related to Antichrist, a new light may dawn upon him in regard to the character and real sentiments of Columbus; as there were many who regarded the papacy in its hideous perversions of morality as the real Antichrist. It was an era of dissimulation, when deceit seems to have been frequently necessary to the preservation of one’s life; and Columbus seems to have been an adept in the art of dissembling.

“The person who may suspect the fervor of Columbus was one of his tactics,” says del Olmet, “being acquainted with the prevailing ideas of his country, can not be charged with being suspicious. Columbus proposes to the Catholic sovereigns the discovery of a world, in order to conquer the Holy Land with its riches. He fortifies his project with the religious spirit of that kingdom, in which a standing was given to the Tribunal of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews decreed. If the Admiral of the Indies, in lieu of this, had publicly declared himself a Jew, it is not venturesome to state that his project, opposed to a great part of the scientific ideas of his time, being examined by a board of theologians, would rapidly have led the renowned alleged Genoese to those autos in which the faith, turned to fanaticism, changed into sanguinary persecution the pious indulgence of Christ.”

18. The reticence of Columbus as to his ancestry and birthplace, his vacillation as to his name, and his duplicity on many occasions and involving various questions, are seen to be all clearly explained when we find that he was not only of Hebrew lineage, but possessed of strong Jewish proclivities, thus explaining his great anxiety to regain the land of Palestine, his fervid literary style akin to the Hebrew prophets, and withal, his love of gold and avaricious spirit which led him even to acts of cruelty, as in sending a shipload of the natives from Cuba to Spain to be sold into slavery.

And this explanation is being accepted by all who take the time and trouble to examine it along with all the collateral facts discovered by Mr. La Riega. Not only has a favorable criticism on this conclusion been published in “La Espana Moderna,” Madrid, by Fernando de Anton del Olmet, but the Spanish Encyclopedic Dictionary accepts this view in the Columbus biography. Eva Canel, in Buenos Ayres, has written articles sustaining it, as has Martin Hume in London; and it appeals so strongly to rational minds that it may be safely used to illustrate the ancient adage that truth is mighty and will prevail!

The Roman Catholic Church seems to be unfortunate in her claims as to distinguished personages, it being conclusively shown that St. Peter, upheld by the Church as “the first pope and bishop of Rome,” was never in that city; St. Patrick, claimed as “the Apostle and Patron Saint of Ireland,” has been quite positively identified as a Protestant; and Christopher Columbus, the uncanonized saint of the Roman Church on this continent, and the Exemplar of the Knights of Columbus, is now demonstrated to have been a Spanish Jew! And according to the writings of reputable scholars, among them Mr. Justin Winsor, librarian of Harvard University, and Professor Charles Kendall Adams, LL.D., president of the University of Wisconsin, Christopher Columbus was little better than a pirate, a betrayer of innocent girlhood, a wife deserter, a kidnapper, a slave trader, a tyrant, and man of boundless cupidity.

The Knights of Columbus, founded at New Haven, Connecticut, February 2, 1882, by Rev. M. J. McGivney, curate of St. Mary’s Church, and including as incorporators, M. C. O’Connor, M.D., James T. Mullen, John T. Kerrigan, Wm. M. Geary and C. T. Driscoll, had on January i, 1905, a total membership of 127,206 persons, 43,537 of whom were insured and 83,669 were associate members. They are now said to be over 300,000 strong.

The total net assets of the Knights on the above date were $1,290,196.31, of which $1,239,137.89 was deposited as a mortuary reserve fund, for protecting outstanding insurance contracts. It will thus be seen to be a fraternal and benevolent order. But an adroit feature of this organization, to which Roman Catholics only are eligible, is the initiative service of four degrees, calculated to impress upon candidates their sacred obligations to uphold the Church on this western continent discovered by the great Columbus.

The relations of the Knights and the Church are supposed to be mutual and reciprocal, the Church using the order to further its ends of capturing America, and the Knights using the Church to exalt the glory of Columbus, and more particularly for their own political preferment. But some of the far-seeing leaders of the Hierarchy think there has been a mistake made in permitting such a young and vigorous order to participate in Church affairs, and to take root within the very pale and under the fostering care of the Church.

Some few years ago, Bishop Janssen, of the diocese of Belleville, Illinois, forbade the establishment of a Council of Knights in his diocese. The late Bishop of Hartford, Connecticut, also opposed the policy of the Church in organizing and supporting the Knights in any way, on the ground that sooner or later they would operate after the manner of a cancer in the human body and prove stronger than the Church itself. Various other dignitaries, bishops and archbishops, even ostensibly ardent members of the organization, were so impressed with similar ideas that secret appeals were made to the Vatican, to withdraw its sanction from the organization.

But the Vatican, in view of the pecuniary grants made by the Knights in support of “the faith,” and the hope they have aroused as an aid to capturing America, has tnus far taken no action against them. The late Cardinal Satolli in his extraordinary visit to the United States in 1904, ostensibly to perform the marriage ceremony for the daughter of Martin Maloney, a Marquis of the Roman Catholic Church, and for which, incidentally, he received a fee of several thousand dollars, was instructed to investigate the ground of these appeals against the Knights filed at the Vatican. For reasons which need not be stated, his advice to the American branch of the Roman Hierarchy was that, in view of the strength of the organization numerically, financially and intellectually, it would be unwise to oppose them for the present at least. In that year the organization presented the Catholic University at Washington, D. C., the sum of $50,000 to establish a chair in History in that institution.

The Knights themselves, it may be truthfully said, are not in the organization entirely for the sake of their own health, or even for the glory of the Church, inasmuch as there are many ambitious men among their leaders, and some that have little or no use for the Church. However, they work in collusion with the Hierarchy, and are heart and soul in politics. This fact is well known to political machines and non- Catholic politicians, whose candidates must receive the approval of Rome and the Knights before they dare nominate them for either dog pound or presidency.

Knights of Columbus have assured me that their organization, with the Church of Rome, controls the Municipal, State and Federal Government, and also influences the business interests throughout the country. They have also assured me within the past few years that it is almost impossible for a man to secure a position or promotion in any business house or corporation, if a Knight of Columbus be a competitor.

Notwithstanding these facts, the innocent Knights, like their Jesuitical spiritual advisers, publicly declare that they are not in politics, as the rules of their organization forbid their being in such unholy environment it being considered dangerous to their “faith and morals;” and in order to wholly disabuse the minds of the guileless non-Catholics of any such suspicion they frequently protest against the union of Church and State.

In the first session of the Sixty-second Congress, Hoa, Ben Johnson, of the Fourth Kentucky District, himself a member of the Knights, denounced (?) Dr. Emil Scharf, a brother Knight, for having promised to deliver the “Catholic vote” in his (Johnson’s) district, as well as in other congressional districts. Why this stage-play to the public through the Press Gallery in the Capitol at Washington, D. C.? If the gallant and honorable member from Kentucky was sincere in his denunciation of Dr. Scharf, why has he not denounced Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Ireland, et al., for similar conduct, and worse? For the purpose of hoodwinking the non-Catholics this stage-play was continued, Dr. Scharf was “tried” and “expelled” from this politico-religious organization. If the Knights of Columbus were sincere, why have they not expelled their spiritual leaders, brother Knights, whose principal business is politics, aye, Jesuitical politics, which has been the curse of Catholic countries, and is to-day a menace to non-Catholic countries?

The Knights of Columbus, together with the Church of Rome, have succeeded in making October 12, Columbus Day, a holiday in many States of the Union, and have caused to be placed in Congress a bill to create it a national holiday, as shown in accompanying illustration. A similar bill will undoubtedly be passed in the near future.

The Church and the Knights have been instrumental in setting up various busts and statues of Columbus in public places, and even in the White House and the end is not yet! A majestic statue of this remarkable personage, Columbus, is being erected on the Plaza in front of the Union Station at Washington, D. C., in full view of the approaches from Capitol and city. The plan for erecting this statue was started by the Church and the Knights, who secured an appropriation of $100,000 from Congress. The President of the United States, at the suggestion of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and the Knights of Columbus, has fixed the date for this politico-religious celebration, as will be seen from the following item which appeared in The Catholic Telegraph, published in Cincinnati, Ohio:

“PRESIDENT FIXES DATE.
“President Taft has set Saturday, June 8, as the time for the unveiling and dedication of the Columbus memorial on Union Station Plaza, in Washington, D. C. The date was fixed following a conference on February 17, with James A. Flaherty, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus; Edward L. Hearn, commissioner on the part of the Supreme Council of the order, and Colonel K. Spencer Cusby, of the War Department. Preparations are being made in Washington to accommodate fifty thousand visitors.”

Messrs. Flaherty and Hearn, before attending this conference, received instructions from their spiritual “bosses” Gibbons, Farley and O’Connell the “American” Princes of the Church, who will control the ceremony and be the principal attraction on the above date, Taft and other prominent plebeian non-Catholic politicians being permitted within the show-ring to assist.

I would respectfully suggest that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and Knights of Columbus place upon the proposed monument the following inscription proposed by Dr. Henry Brown, of Spokane, Washington, for a similar monument at Walla Walla in that State:

Dr. Brown, in proposing this inscription, writes:

“I do not forget that very many people, through lack of information, may be tempted to look upon the wording as slanderous and inappropriate. But, for the benefit of all such, I will simply say that these (quotations) are the exact words used by Professor Justin Winsor, Harvard librarian, in his great work on Christopher Columbus, page 312, fifth line from the top and first line on page 282.”

If any religious sect is to control the ceremony, which should be entirely national, and in which all classes without regard to creed should participate, it would seem more appropriate and more in accord with the truth of history that this ceremony be controlled by the Jews.

The foregoing sketch of the life of Columbus, obtained from the most trustworthy historians, was contributed by Mr. Hyland C. Kirk, Washington, D. C.

Cardinal Martinelli in 1902, at the Apostolic Delegation Office, Washington, D. C., made a most interesting statement to me. I said to him, “Your Eminence, if the Catholics in this country numbered about seventy million and if the Protestants numbered about ten million, what would you do to the Protestants?” His reply was this, “Oh, Christ, I’d crush ’em!” “To crush ’em” is the spirit and design of Romanism in all its attitudes toward “heretics.”

No wonder Rome boasts that she is ever and everywhere the same. Her real attitude toward non-Catholics is the same to-day everywhere as it was in the days of the Inquisition, and yet some people say “the Roman Catholic Church is not as it was fifty years ago it is more liberal.” Is it?

Few have any idea of the crafty efforts which Catholic ecclesiastics make to hoodwink non-Catholics. Priests, bishops and cardinals cultivate a spirit of seeming liberality on purpose to win the esteem of the very people whom they hate, so that these people will be made unwilling to countenance any opposition to the movements of Romanism. The greatest victory which has been won by the Roman Hierarchy in the British Empire and in the United States lies in the fact that it has succeeded in making it unpopular for any one to impugn its utterances or policies.

“What is the smooth game in all this that is going on between the Vatican and England? Simply this: England is the stronghold of obstinate heresy the citadel of Protestantism. Therefore the Church of Rome is using every means at her command caresses, cajolery, threats, flatteries to bring proud England back into subjection to her yoke. Listen to Rome’s own confession from the mouth of Cardinal Manning: ‘Surely, a soldier’s eye and a soldier’s heart would choose by intuition this field of England for the warfare of Faith…. It is the head of Protestantism, the center of its movements, and the stronghold of its powers. Weakened in England, it is paralyzed everywhere; conquered in England, it is conquered throughout the world. Once overthrown here, all is but a war of detail.’ ” The Heretic, Berkeley, California.

The keen eye of the Vatican has, for years, been turned toward the British Empire and the United States. She is working the same wiles and witcheries, playing the same smooth, oily, ball-bearing, noiseless game with both countries. Through one of her organs (The Tablet, London) she complains as follows:

“Prussia, not a Roman Catholic country, has an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary; Russia, a minister Resident; England and the United States alone -among Great Powers remain without an accredited representative to the Holy See.”

Mark the word accredited. England always has a backstairs representative; for example, Sir George Errington filled that office at the Holy See, to the detriment of Ireland and the Irish race during the Parnell Movement; and for aught we know, the United States of America has a backstairs representative at the Vatican to-day. Her late secret clerical agent there is at present a prominent bishop in America. Rome’s secret representative at the Capitol at Washington, D. C., is none other than the Papal Delegate, who has been recently promoted to the Cardinalate, as due reward for his “signal services” to his Lord the Pope, King of Heaven, of Earth, and of Hell. Her chief Jesuitical agent at Ottawa, Canada, is the Papal Delegate to the Catholic Church in that country.

I know and assert without fear of successful contradiction that the Vatican system the Roman Catholic Hierarchy has a grip upon all the departments of our Government, from the President to Department Clerks, including Legislative, Judiciary and Executive Departments, both Federal and State and the accommodating politicians, Catholic and non-Catholic, particularly the latter, are to blame for it all.

Every trap is being laid to ensnare Germany, the British Empire, the United States, and other non-Catholic countries, in papal schemes. In fact, the plans of Pope Leo XIII. and, therefore, of the Papacy, with reference to America, were thus tersely expressed in a letter from the Vatican (see New York Sun, July n, 1892):

“What the Church has done in the past for others she will now do for the United States.”

In a recent pamphlet issued by the Roman Catholic University of America at Washington, D. C, under the title “The Roman Catholic Mission Movement in America,” they say: “Our motto is, We come not to conquer, but to win. Our purpose is to make America dominantly Catholic.”

The Very Rev. Francis C. Kelley, D.D., LL.D., President of the Roman Catholic Church Extension Society of America, uttered the following in a recent address on “Church Extension and Convert-making:”

“Without a doubt, if American Protestantism were blotted off the religious map of the world, the work of the so-called Reformers of the fifteenth [sixteenth?] century, within fifty years, might well be called dead. Protestantism in the United States is a great source of missionary activity in foreign countries. The different Protestant organizations in the United States spend seven millions of dollars per annum in foreign missions, or almost half the spendings of all the rest of the non-Catholic world. Protestantism, then, really may be said to stand or fall on American effort.

“From a strategic point of view, America the United States of America is our best missionary field.

“Again, how many are fond of calling this a Protestant country! Is it? We deny!

“We who hope for a Catholic America have as yet come only to the end of the desert…. Only has it been given to some among us to enter the land of Canaan and gather souls, grapes so sweet and beautiful as to fill us with hunger for other fruits that await the coming of our successors. They will go, Joshuas, to the Jordan, to Jericho, to Hai, and to Jerusalem, and then only will the details of the work become clear. The little chapels the Church Extension movement will build shall be their fortified camps, and the men whom you [Paulist] Fathers of the Apostolate will send shall be advance-guards to point the way to the new and fertile fields that abound in the Promised Land.”

The Very Rev. Kelley and his missionary gangs, including General Secretary, Field Secretary, and retinue, travel throughout the western, middle west, and southern States in two private Chapel Cars, which are carried at the expense of the stockholders of the roads over which they are hauled. A vast majority of these stockholders are non- Catholics, and they are defraying the transportation expenses of a propaganda which would blot American Protestantism off the religious map of the world.

The patriotic (?) Archbishop Ireland, in presence of Cardinal Gibbons and a large number of prelates, priests, monks and nuns at Baltimore, Md., said in part as follows:

“The Catholic Church is the sole living and enduring Christian authority. She has the power to speak; she has an organization by which her laws may be enforced…. Our work is to make America Catholic. Our cry shall be, ‘Gods wills it,’ and our hearts shall leap with crusader enthusiasm.”

To secure the good will of non-Catholic politicians, Democratic and Republican, in the ignoble work of making America Catholic, that noted American conjurer, Cardinal Gibbons, surpassed himself in a recent interview given at Philadelphia, while attending the Pallium celebration of Archbishop Prendergast, the champion poker player of Pennsylvania. A summary of the interview appears in The New York Evening Sun in its issue of Feb. 12, 1912:

“GIBBONS ON TAFT.

“CARDINAL BELIEVES THE PRESIDENT WILL BE RENOMINATED.

“PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 2. That President Taft probably will be renominated by the Republicans is the belief of Cardinal Gibbons, who made a statement to this effect this afternoon prior to leaving this city for Baltimore. The Cardinal characterized Theodore Roosevelt as the ‘most popular man in the country to-day,’ but said that Mr. Taft, ‘being in the saddle,’ would undoubtedly win the nomination.

“In a short interview his Eminence declared that Mr. Taft deserves recognition for what he termed his honest, sincere efforts to serve the country. He said that in considering the election the Democrats must be considered, as they have lots of available Presidential timber.”

I fancy I hear Cardinal Gibbons saying, “American citizens, find the P! Heads I win, tails you lose.”

Though every milestone along the historical pathway of the Roman Catholic Church has been marked by its curse to humanity, yet there are, unfortunately, some non-Catholic bishops, ministers, editors and others who, on the plea of toleration, Christian unity, or for business or political reasons, do not like to hear the Roman Catholic politico-religious abomination criticized. In fact, they publicly commend Romanism and its Hierarchy, while priests, prelates and popes condemn them and theirs as “heretics” doomed to eternal damnation. Rome regards non-Catholics as “heretics;” she teaches, both in her churches and schools, that they are destined for Hell.

Here is Rome’s doctrine of fraternity, of toleration, of Christian unity! In The Western Watchman, organ of the pope and Archbishop Glennon, published at St. Louis, Missouri, we find Rome’s real attitude toward Protestantism in the following expression of fiendish hatred:

“Protestantism We would draw and quarter it. We would impale it and hang it up for crows’ meat. We would tear it with pincers, and fire it with hot irons. We would fill it with molten lead, and sink it in a hundred fathoms of hell-fire.”

In another issue of the same paper, December 24, 1908, we find the following editorial by its Editor-in-chief, Rev. David S. Phelan, LL.D., Rector of Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish, St. Louis, Missouri, and designated by Cardinal Satolli, “the dean and senior of the Roman Catholic journalists of the United States:”

“Protestants were persecuted in France and Spain with the full approval of the Church authorities. The Church has persecuted. Only a tyro in church history will deny that…. We have always defended the persecution of the Huguenots, and the Spanish Inquisition…. When she thinks it good to use physical force, she will use it…. But will the Catholic Church give bond that she will not persecute at all? Will she guarantee absolute freedom and equality of all churches and all faiths? The Catholic Church gives no bonds for her good behavior.”

The same papal organ, The Western Watchman, in its issue of September 28, 1911, contains the following:

“Protestantism is simply ruffianism organized into a religion. The first Reformer, Martin Luther, was the vilest blackguard of all time, in comparison with whom the Greek Thersites was a polished gentleman. All his associates in the sacrilege of sanctuaries and sacking of religious houses, were almost to a man men of the lowest character and beastliest morals. But who cares for their private lives? It is their public acts and utterances that concern us. These are public property, and they brand their authors as blackguards of the first water.”

And in an editorial in its issue of October 12, 1911, The Western Watchman confirms the declaration made lately in Cardinal Farley’s Cathedral by that international “lady-turner,” Jesuit Vaughan, of England, that Protestantism is dead:

“Protestantism in the United States has fallen to pieces; but what is more astounding, the ministers look complacently out upon the ruins…. All the money in the world will not bring back the spirit that is fled…. Even hatred of Catholicity is dead, and nothing now remains but the sombre duty of burying the dead.”

While Rome everlastingly hates non-Catholics, she constantly seeks their financial aid, both private donations and public moneys, to be used for her sectarian institutions. With unblushing coolness The Western Watchman, in its issue of December 16, 1909, declares:

“We do not think the Church in this country is overburdening herself with charities. She is winning her way to the hearts of the American people by her Christ-like beneficence; and the way from the heart to the pocketbook is very short, compared with the long road from the lip to the seat of pity. More Protestant money is finding its way into our charitable institutions than ever before. The duty of supporting our asylums and refuges will soon be borne in great part by people who have no affiliation with the Catholic Church.”

Here let me state that these moneys are, as a rule, unaccounted for and misused, as is the case in Roman Catholic institutions of Greater New York, where the diversion of large sums of public money paid to said institutions by the city for the support of its charges, is now being investigated by the City Comptroller in spite of the objections raised by the Catholic Church authorities and their reluctance to permit the accounts of these institutions to be audited. Cardinal Farley, who controls $60,000,000 worth of property between the Battery and the Bronx alone, through his attorneys, among them Eugene A. Philbin, has even declared that these Roman Catholic institutions would decline to receive any more children and would turn out those already placed there by the city rather than submit to an accounting for the public funds received by them. How beneficent! How Christ-like!

Let me throw a little light on Rome’s real attitude toward marriage.

Popular opinion in the British Empire is just now being greatly stirred by the agitation caused by the “Ne Temere” decree of Pope Pius X., which is producing such havoc in homes where Protestants marry Roman Catholics. One of the unfortunate victims of this infamous decree, a heartbroken wife and mother, has made the following fruitless appeal to the Earl of Aberdeen, the Lord Lieutenant and Governor General of Ireland:

“MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY:
“I pray your Excellency’s assistance under the following circumstances: I am the daughter of a small farmer in County Antrim, and a Presbyterian. I was married in May, 1908, in a Presbyterian church by my own clergyman, to my husband, who was and is a Roman Catholic. Before our marriage he arranged with me that I should continue to attend my own place of worship and he his. After our marriage we lived together for some months at my mother’s house in County Antrim, but work called my husband to the west of Ireland, where I joined him, and we lived for some months there. Afterwards we came to Belfast; there my first child, a boy, was born in June, 1909. During all this time there never was any difference between us about religious matters, and our boy was baptized by my own clergyman. My husband, on Sundays, would take care of the baby when I was out at church. A short time before our second baby, a girl, was born in August last, my husband spoke to me about changing my faith; in consequence, he told me of the way the Roman Catholic priest was rating him, and I was visited on several occasions by this priest, who told me I was not married at all, but that I was living in open sin, and that my children were illegitimate, and he pressed me to come to chapel and be married properly. I told him I was legally married to my husband and that I would not do what he wished, and on one occasion my husband and I besought him to leave us alone that we had lived peaceably and agreeably before his interference, and would still continue to do so if he let us alone. He threatened me, if I would not comply with his request, that there would be no peace in the house, that my husband could not live with me, and that, if he did, his co-religionists would cease to speak to him or recognize him. When he found he could not persuade me he left in an angry and threatening mood.

“From this time on my husband’s attitude to me changed, and he made no secret to me of the way he was being influenced. Our second baby was taken out of the house by my husband without my leave and taken to chapel and there baptized. My husband also began to ill-treat me, and told me I was not his wife, and I was nothing to him but a common woman. I bore it all hoping that his old love for me would show him his error. But the power of the priests was supreme, and on returning to my home some weeks ago, after being out for a time, I found that both of my dear babies had been removed, and my husband refused to tell me where they were, beyond that they were in safe-keeping. I did everything a mother could think of to get at least to see my babies, but my husband told me he dared not give me any information, and that unless I changed my faith I could not get them. A day or two after this, on pretense of taking me to see my babies, he got me out of the house for about two hours, and on my return I found that everything had been taken out of the house, including my own wearing apparel and underclothing, and I was left homeless and without any means of clothing beyond what I was wearing. My husband left me and I could not find out where he went. I subsequently saw him at the place where he was working. He was very cross with me, refused to tell me where the children were or to do anything, and told me to go to the priest, in whose hands he stated the whole matter was; and also said that unless I was remarried in chapel I would never see the children. I subsequently saw the priest, who said he could give me no information, and treated me with scant courtesy. I have tried to find my husband, but have failed, and can not now get any information of his whereabouts, or of that of my babies, and I do not even know if they are alive. My heart is breaking. I am told the police can do nothing in the matter; although, if it were only a shilling that was stolen, they would be on the search for the thief; but my babies are worth more to me than one shilling. In my despair I am driven to apply to you, as the head of all authority in this country, for help. I am without money, and, but for the charity of kind friends, I would be starving. I want to get my children and to know if they are alive; and I have been told, kind sir, that if you directed your law officers to make inquiries, they could soon get me my rights. Will you please do so, and help a poor, heart-broken woman who will continue to pray for the Almighty’s blessing upon you and yours?
“MRS. McCANN.”

This is only one specimen of the havoc wrought by the “Ne Temere” decree of the present “Vicar of Christ.”

In order to give the reader an idea of what is taking place across the border in Western Canada, I quote from press reports of recent date as follows:

From the Pioneer, Vancouver, B. C., December 23, 1911:

“WINNIPEG, December 23. Rev. Father Comeau, resident priest of St. Mary’s Church here, has made the following statement to an evening paper in regard to the recent ‘Ne Temere’ case at St. Boniface, when he refused to permit a Catholic woman to see her Protestant husband unless they were remarried by the Church:

“‘Suppose a Roman Catholic and a Protestant wish to get married we will imagine the husband to be a Catholic. The parties are married by a Protestant minister. The moment the marriage is contracted the husband has forsaken the Catholic doctrine and can be no longer recognized as a true Catholic. The only way he can come back into the fold is by getting his legal wife to be married to him by a Catholic priest, according to the conditions of the Catholic Church; that is, that she will not interfere with the practice of the doctrine, and the children shall be brought up in the Catholic faith. ”

‘If the wife refuses and he insists on coming back to the Church, the husband must take a vow never to live with her ” again.’

‘If, when reinstated as a Catholic, the man wishes to marry another woman, the ceremony to be performed by a Catholic priest,’ asked the reporter, ‘may he do it?’

‘Well,’ was the reply, ‘we try and get the man to seek a divorce from the State first, because in the eyes of the law he is still married, and while the Church does not recognize it, we do not want to lay ourselves open to persecution. There is a way out and that is by having a secret marriage.’

” ‘Take this as an instance: I am sent away to a mission, a long way up in the country. When I arrive a man comes to me and says, “Father, I have committed a sin for which I am truly repentant. Three years ago I was married to a Protestant woman by a Protestant minister. Later we separated. We did not get a divorce, and now I am living with another woman. Will you marry us?”

‘I might say, “I will run the risk and marry you in the eyes of God.” I then get two witnesses whom I can trust never to reveal what has taken place, and I marry the parties in secret. After this they can never part, as there is no such thing as a divorce in the Roman Catholic Church. Then they are married in the eyes of God and the Church, although perhaps not according to the law of the State. If the former wife should get to know of the second marriage, I might be persecuted. One never knows.'”

The following editorial from the Weekly People, published in Western Canada, January 13, 1912, may help to enlighten the reader about the promotion of bigamy by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy:

“A CATHOLIC PRIEST PROMOTING BIGAMY.

“A cog must have slipped from the brains and the tongue of Father Comeau, the resident priest of Winnipeg, an interview with whom appears in the Vancouver Pioneer of last December 23. The interview is a ‘dead give-away.’

“Father Comeau’s explicit answer to the reporter for the Pioneer concerning the case of a Catholic who married a Protestant woman, and who, seeing his wife refuses to submit to the conditions of the Catholic Church, leaves her, and insists upon returning to his Church, and wishes to be married to another woman by a priest, Father Comeau’s explicit answer to the hypothetical case was that he would ‘get two witnesses, whom I can trust never to reveal what has taken place, and I marry the parties in secret,’ adding that he knew that if the former wife should get to know of the second marriage he ‘might be persecuted.’ Prosecution under the law the Father calls ‘persecution.’

“It is of no consequence to the issue whether the law is wise or not that defines bigamy, and enters the act in the criminal code. The only thing that concerns the issue is that a man, married under the law, and not legally, divorced, is, under the law, a bigamist and punishable as such if he marry again during his first wife’s life. Such is the law of the land in Winnipeg. All this notwithstanding. Father Comeau stands forth not only as a condoner, but as a promoter, of bigamy; and, not only that, he stands forth as an encourager of others to steep themselves in crime as witnesses who are to keep the secret.

“Again and again the Daily People has maintained, and proved the claim with facts, that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy is not the priesthood of a religion, but the agency of politics ambushed behind religion….

“Again and again the Daily People has pointed out that, differently from other political parties, all of whom, whatever the new policies that they may advocate, submit to the existing policies until overthrown, the Roman Catholic political party starts by disregarding the existing policies and violating them,”

In Eastern Canada, where very many of the French Canadians are driven like dumb cattle by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, this infamous and ungodly decree is enforced, and happy homes are broken up by priests and prelates, Archbishop Eruschesi, of Montreal, the coming “Canadian” Cardinal, being the principal home and marriage breaker.

Let no one suppose that this “Ne Teinere” decree of Pope Pius X. is a dead letter in the United States the land of the free and the home of the brave; or that I have to confine myself to the British Empire for examples of its having been put into actual practice.

Archbishop Glennon, of St. Louis, Mo., U. S. A., the warm friend of President William H. Taft and ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, annulled the marriage of Mr. John A. Howland and Mrs. Helen O’Brien Howland because they were married by a Baptist minister, and he compelled Mrs. Howland to sign the following un-American and un-Christ-like apology, which was read in the churches and published in the press of America and other non-Catholic countries:

“St. Louis, MISSOURI,
“October 29, 1910.
“To THE REVEREND PETER J. O’RouRKE,
“Pastor of St. Mark’s Church,
“Page and Academy Avenues.

“Dear Father: In submission to the obligation laid on me by His Grace, the Reverend Archbishop, of publicly repairing the scandal I have given, as a requisite for absolution, I confess to the world as a Catholic I was married by a Baptist minister on August 26, 1910. I ask the pardon of God for my sin- and- the prayers of the -faithful for the grace of – ; sincere repentance: Sincerely, “HELEN O’BRIEN.”

Think of the awful crime of being married by a Protestant minister!

In the Metropolitan Province of New York, presided over by Cardinal Farley, the story of the following case in the diocese of Trenton, N. J., directly ruled by Bishop McFaul, a Krupp gun of the Hierarchy, should arouse the millions of people who were born outside the pale of Rome, and, consequently, “illegitimate,” according to her decrees and teaching, as’ well as those who are living in “concubinage” because they have been married by non-Catholic clergymen, Justices of the Peace, or Judges of the Superior Courts. The King and Queen of the British Empire, the Emperor and Empress of Germany, President and Mrs. William H. Taft, ex-President and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Hon. Mr. and Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, Governor and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Morgan, Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Schiff, and their children, are among the millions who have been declared by the “Vicars of Christ” to be “illegitimate,” “heretics,” etc., whom the cardinals, old and new, have solemnly sworn “to combat with every effort.”

I can understand how sincere non-Catholic people treat with silent contempt the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that “outside of Rome there is no salvation,” but I can not understand how they can complacently suffer the insult from the pope of Rome, who, with the quintessence of audacity, decrees and teaches that all those who are born of marriages contracted outside the Roman Catholic Church the “One True Church” are “illegitimate,” and that all parties A MENACE TO THE NATION. 179 having contracted marriage as above stated are living in “concubinage.”

The case set forth in the following letter will serve as another example of Rome’s real attitude toward non-Catholic marriages:

“PERTH AMBOY, NEW JERSEY,
“February 3, 1912.
“MR. JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY, New York City.

“Gentleman: I respectfully ask for your advice in a very important matter. “Stephen Dagonya, a Roman Catholic Hungarian, married a Hungarian girl, a member of my parish. The ceremony was performed by me in our church. When a child was born from this wedlock it was taken to Rev. Francis Gross, priest of the local Hungarian Church, who said to the party that a marriage performed by a Protestant minister or Judge is entirely null; the father and mother have to remarry before him in order to get a lawful marriage. However, he baptized the child and he issued a certificate of baptism, in which he declared that the child was ‘illegitimate.’ He added also that ‘the parents are living in concubinage.’ He affixed to it his signature and the seal of the Church. The certificate with two other similar ones is now with Mr. Charles M. Snow, editor of ‘Liberty/ who wants to make photos of them.

“As the father of the child is very desperate on account of the behavior of his priest, will you kindly advise him what to do under these circumstances. Has any priest any right in this country to declare that a marriage, which is lawful in the eyes of the country and according to the conscience of the party, was concubinage and the fruit of such marriage was illegitimate?

“Thanking you in advance for your valuable information in this matter, I am
“Very truly yours,
“[Signed] L. NANASSY,
“Pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church.”

My reply to the above letter was as follows:

“CINCINNATI, OHIO,
“March 29, 1912.
“REV. L. NANASSY,
“Pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church,
“Perth Amboy, N. J.
“Rev. and Dear Sir: Your letter of Feb. 3, 1912, addressed to my late residence in New York City, has just reached me, and I hasten to reply.

“While in Washington, D. C, some weeks ago, I saw and read the certificates to which you refer in your letter; and now that you have asked me personally to advise the ‘desperate’ husband and father, Stephen Dagonya, as to what he should do under the circumstances, I would suggest that the Rev. Francis Gross be prosecuted for criminal libel, and that this be made a test case in the interests of humanity. However, knowing the powerful and iniquitous influence of Rome over the Civil Courts, particularly when the plaintiffs or defendants possess slender means, I would suggest that a public appeal be made for adequate funds to thoroughly prosecute the case, to the millions who have been and are now indirectly charged by Rome with living in ‘concubinage’ or with being ‘illegitimate.’

“In case of an adverse decision in the lower Courts, through the influence of Rome, the case should be appealed, and, if needs be, carried to the Supreme Court of the United States, over which Chief Justice White, a Jesuitical Roman Catholic, presides by the favor of President Taft. And in case of an adverse decision by that august body, through the influence of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, I would suggest that the case be brought before Congress without delay, and if necessary before the bar of public opinion, as Rome, through her Jesuitical decrees, policies and practices, is undermining the inviolability of the home and the peace of nations.

“Rome hopes to gain complete political control of our beloved country through the cunning political influence of her four ‘American’ Cardinals at the corning Presidential election. Therefore, immediate exposure must be made of her in the Civil Courts and otherwise, if the liberties of this country are to be preserved.

“I shall be able to take the matter up with you personally in the near future. Believe me, “Very sincerely yours,
“[Signed] JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY.”

Listen to the following story of what occurred quite recently in Washington, D. C.:

A young man of that city, a Protestant by birth and education, age, twenty-eight years, had been paying his honorable attentions to a young lady, age, twenty-two years. His courtship was successful and the pair agreed to be married. The young lady was a Roman Catholic. Her faith in that Church and its priests had been weakened by a number of circumstances, and especially by the fact that upon one occasion when she went to confession she was met in the Confessional box by her then pastor, who smelled very strongly of intoxicating drink. She went home and told her mother about it, adding that “his breath smelled perfectly awful.” However, she continued a member of the Church up to the time of her marriage to the young gentleman above referred to.

The marriage was performed in Washington, D. C., September 16, 1911, in a Protestant church and by a Baptist minister. Within a week, September 22, 1911, the young bride received a telephone message from her sister, asking her to come over to her parents’ home. She went, and her sister told ‘her that she had received a letter from her mother, who was- then at Colonial Beach, in which her mother expressed the desire that she go to see her late pastor, Rev. P. J. O’Connell, St. Vincent’s Church, South Capitol and N Streets, Washington, D. C. The young bride said that she had no desire to see Rev. O’Connell, but that she would call on him “to please mama.” Accordingly, she immediately went to see the priest.

After some preliminary and formal conversation about indifferent matters, the priest asked her:

“Have you yet had your vacation?”

“Yes,” replied the lady, “and during my vacation I was married.”

“Married! Married! And who married you?” asked the priest.

“A Baptist minister,” replied the lady.

“You are not married! Why did you not come and consult me about getting married?”

She said, “I did not care to.”

The priest then asked her, “Did you not hear the rules about marriage read from the altar about two years ago?”

She said, “I do not know whether I did or not.”

He said, “Why did you not come to me and find out?”

She replied, “I did not care to know.”

The priest then angrily exclaimed: “You are not married! You are the same as a woman who walks the streets,” and added, “You are the same as a woman that a man would take to a room in a hotel and live with; you are the same as a woman in the ‘Division.'” (The Division in Washington, D. C, means the same as is understood by the Red Light section in other cities.)

Here the lady burst into tears, and the priest, thinking he had her “going,” added in great anger and terrific tones, “You are not married, and if you should die to-morrow morning your body would not be allowed to be brought inside of a Catholic Church.”

The lady had now quite recovered herself, and replied defiantly, “I know that, and I do not care.”

The priest now opened another view of the subject. He remarked, “You could leave that man to-morrow morning and marry some one else, because you are not a married woman.”

The lady answered, “I will not leave my husband, and if I did I would have to go to the law for a divorce and not come to you.”

The priest, finding himself baffled in all his efforts, continued, exclaiming, “You are not married! You are not married! The idea of such a thing! You are not married!”

The young lady now told the priest that she was well aware that she was not married according to the rules of the Roman Catholic Church, but that she was legally married and that was sufficient for her, and defied the priest to deny that her marriage was lawful.

Thereupon the priest left the room in a rage and the young lady went to her home.

She was at first reluctant to relate this interview to her husband, because she did not want him to know that her late pastor would presume to talk to her in such a manner. A few days afterwards, however, she did tell him. Upon hearing the story, her husband said that if he had been present one of the two would have been taken to the hospital, adding, “He had not better meet me on the street.”

Let no one suppose for a moment that the views here expressed are only those of an individual priest acting on his own responsibility. This is not the case. Such views are not private views. The “Ne Temcre” decree declares that marriages under the law of the land are invalid and that a Catholic going through this ceremony has not contracted matrimony and may be married again. Under the law of the land such a second marriage, without a decree of divorce, is the crime of bigamy, and Catholic priests and prelates are justified and authorized by the Church not only to pronounce such marriages invalid and to inform any subject of the Church of his or her right to contract a new marriage, but the priest is further authorized to become a party to the crime of bigamy by performing the second marriage ceremony himself.

The thoughtful reader will lay it to heart that the event which the foregoing story records took place in the city of Washington the capital of this nation; where President Taft presides and who has declared that there is a perfect consistency between earnest devotion to the Church and perfect obedience to the laws of the land; and further, that the event occurred in the archdiocese of Cardinal Gibbons, who poses par excellence as the great defender of “law and order,” and as which he has been eulogized by Theodore Roosevelt.

The annulling of marriages by Rome is not a rare occurrence. While she sternly denounces divorce as one of the greatest evils of the age, she frequently annuls marriages for the graft that is in it, or to show her disregard for the civil laws and marriage ceremonies performed by non-Catholic clergymen.

Priests and prelates have wrecked many homes and families. We even find them co-respondents in divorce suits; yet they continue to minister at the altar and in the confessional. Baroness von Zedtwitz declared shortly before her mysterious death that she would expose some of the crimes of popes, prelates and priests, were it not for the fact that such exposure would most assuredly break up many prominent homes, both in America and Europe.

In order to avoid scandal, protect the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of both sexes, and show contempt for the civil law, Pope Pius X. issued a Bull, “Motu Proprio,” which excommunicates any person, lay or cleric, man or woman, who shall without the permission of ecclesiastical authorities, summon any Roman Catholic ecclesiastic before a lay tribunal, either in a civil or criminal case. The main part of this Bull reads as follows:

“In these evil days, when ecclesiastical immunities receive no consideration, and not only priests and clerics, but even bishops and cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, are cited before lay tribunals, this condition of things absolutely demands of us to restrain by severe penalty those who can not be otherwise deterred from the commission of so heinous a crime against the religious character. Therefore, by this Motu Proprio we determine and ordain that whatever private person, lay or cleric, man or woman, shall, without having obtained permission of ecclesiastical authorities, cite to a lay tribunal and compel to appear there publicly any ecclesiastical person, either in a criminal or civil case, will incur excommunication, ‘lat<z sententice,' specially reserved to the Roman Pontiff. This by these letters is decided, and we wish it to stand ratified, everything to the contrary notwithstanding. "Given at St. Peter's, the ninth day of October, 1911, the ninth year of Our Pontificate.
“Pius PP. X.”

This recent decree of Pope Pius X. is a gigantic bluff to intimidate not only his “Catholic subjects,” but also the rulers and governments of non-Catholic countries and their subjects.

To many it would seem incredible that such things could happen in the twentieth century and under constitutional governments.

Why do not the rulers and governments of all non-Catholic countries step in to protect the rights of the people from such dangerous and infamous invasion by the pope of Rome, as did the Government of Russia which recently prosecuted Bishop Casimir Ruszkiewiez, suffragan bishop to the Archbishop of Warsaw, and Father Cisplinski on the charge of declaring a legal marriage null, and thus infringing civil authority? The result was a sentence of sixteen months’ imprisonment for both priest and bishop. The term is to be passed in a fortress and the bishop is to be deposed from his diocese.

Russia knows Rome and therefore nips her in the bud in order to prevent her gaining supremacy over civil authority. If the other non-Catholic countries had only done likewise, or would even do it now, Romanism would not wield the powerful, iniquitous influence which it does.

Why do not the Governments of the British Empire and the United States prosecute and punish according to law priests and prelates guilty of similar, and far worse, crimes?

I have no sort of controversy, personal or otherwise, with President William H. Taft, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, or any other politician, but in the interest of humanity I feel constrained to warn the people everywhere of the intrigues going on between the Roman Hierarchy and politicians. Having been a member of that Hierarchy for twenty-one years, I know whereof I speak.

Up to the present time Mr. Roosevelt has made no answer to the protest from millions of American citizens, whom he denounced as possessed and influenced by an “unwarranted bigotry” because of their earnest and conscientious protest in behalf of constitutional liberty against the unwarranted claims of the papal power.

The official attendance of President Taft and other high non-Catholic government officials at Solemn High Mass on Thanksgiving Day for the last three years in St. Patrick’s Church, Washington, D. C., has established a deplorable precedent for future presidents, as well as for non-Catholic people throughout the country, for whom he has set the example. The President of the United States and other high non-Catholic officials should not permit themselves, through selfish motives, to be used by the Roman Catholic Church for advertising purposes.

Mr. Taft, addressing the Knights of Columbus, a strong politico-religious organization, at Portland, Oregon, October 12, 1911, said in part as follows:

“Instead of being a reason why you can not be patriotic, loyal sons of the United States, willing to yield up your lives if occasion calls, the fact that you are members of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States is an assurance that you are such patriotic, loyal citizens.”

Can any one believe that President Taft is sincere when he makes this declaration? He surely knows the position of the Roman Catholic Church and its claim of the supremacy of the papal over the civil power. Here is what a great American papal organ, The Catholic World, says upon this subject, which statements are neither new nor original. The Catholic World says:

“The Roman Catholic is to wield his vote for the purpose of securing Catholic ascendency in this country. All legislation must be governed by the will of God unerringly indicated by the pope. Education must be controlled by the Catholic authorities, and under education the opinions of the individuals and the utterances of the press are included. Many opinions are to be forbidden by the secular arm, under the authority of the Church, even to war and bloodshed.”

Does not this savor of the Inquisition?

Who inspired Indian Commissioner Valentine’s order forbidding teachers to wear their religious garb (mask) in the Indian Schools, and why was it immediately revoked by President Taft pending future political developments? Was it a politico-religious “frame-up” favoring Romanism, with the understanding that the much sold “Catholic vote” would be given to him?

Priests and prelates realize that politicians who are reaching after office will do anything and everything to help Rome “make America dominantly Catholic,” in order to secure the “Catholic vote” for themselves and their party. Therefore, this presidential year is considered most opportune to force the issue and compel the Federal Administration to establish far-reaching precedents in favor of Romanism.

Another link in the chain between Washington and Rome is supplied by the following item which appeared in The Catholic Telegraph, Cincinnati, Ohio, in its issue of April 4, 1912:

“ROOSEVELT’S MISTAKE

“CAREFULLY AVOIDED BY MAJOR ARCHIBALD BUTT.

“ROME, March 30. It has become known that Major Archibald Butt, President Taft’s personal aide, besides bringing an autograph letter from the American Chief Executive to the Pope, brought credentials in the shape of three letters, addressed to Cardinal Merry del Val, the P&pal Secretary of State; Cardinal Rampolla, his predecessor in. that office, and an American prelate. All three were asked to arrange the audience with the Pope.

“The negotiations for the audience were conducted through ecclesiastical channels without the intervention of the American Embassy, lest the mistake which was committed when Colonel Roosevelt came to Rome on his return from Africa be repeated. Major Butt did not communicate with the Quirinal and did not see King Victor Emmanuel.

“The Pope was greatly pleased with the visit of Major Butt, which he subsequently contrasted with the failure of Colonel Roosevelt’s projected call. The letter which the Pope has sent to President Taft in care of Major Butt is merely complimentary.”

While it may be complimentary to President Taft, it is by no means complimentary or agreeable to patriotic American citizens that such a mission should be even thought of, let alone executed.

The press has informed the public that it was for the purpose of thanking the pope for the bestowal of three cardinals’ hats upon “Americans,” and asking information as to the proper rank of the various cardinals at great state functions.

Why should the President of this so-called free country thank the pope for having conferred papal titles on his agents, which titles, according to the regulations of the Church of Rome, give them precedence over the President himself? Why be SO solicitous of the “proper rank” of “Americans” who have sworn allegiance to a foreign potentate the pope?

This confidential and unpatriotic mission has already cost our country the life of one of its chivalrous sons.

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” said Washington, “the jealousy of a free people ought ever to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

We might inquire if this autograph letter and visit, preceding the presidential election, was for religious or political purposes. I wonder if the present political crisis led President Taft and Major Butt to that haven, or did they come under the spell of Jesuit Vaughan of England, who has recently been “performing” in Canada and the United States, and to whom credit is given for “turning” President Taft’s sisterin- law to the Roman Catholic Church.

Vaughan and his manager, the pope, feeling that he “knocked out” Protestantism in Canada and the United States during his short evangelistic mission in 1910, on his present extended tour is concentrating his Jesuitical energies on the demolition of Socialism, the abolition of divorce, and the “turning” of wealthy non-Catholic women.

Let us hope that Jesuit Vaughan will not follow in the footsteps of that eloquent libertine, the Right Rev. Monsignor Capel, also an Englishman, whom the pope sent to America some years ago to convert non-Catholic women of rank, wealth and fashion, but as generally happens, while “turning” them be fell from grace, and for several years lived in a luxuriously furnished home in California, devoting the latter years of an ill-spent life to the guardianship of another man’s wife.and her ranch. However, he, like the vast majority of priests and prelates, being thoroughly posted in Canon Law and Sacred Theology, took care not to violate the “Ne Tcmere” decree, and consequently when he died recently, the public was informed that he passed away in the odor of sanctity and was buried with high honors from the Roman Catholic Church.

The Right Rev. Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, English priest and author, son of the late Episcopal Archbishop of Canterbury and a “distinguished convert” to the Catholic faith, is now in this country. Speaking of the outlook for religion in England, he says:

“I think we shall have all the religion that there will be in fifty or sixty years’ time, but there will be an enormous amount of infidelity and agnosticism. The other forms of Christianity are tumbling downstairs as fast as they can go.”

Messrs. Benson, Vaughan and other “Ambassadors of Christ” should remember what a Kempis says in the “Imitation of Christ” “Those who travel much abroad seldom become holy.”

Many distinguished Jesuit stars, while engaged in similar missions, have fallen by the wayside, among them that “eminent convert,” Rev. Thomas Ewing Sherman, son of the late General Sherman, who lately attempted suicide and had to be confined in an asylum. Priests and prelates ought to follow St. Paul’s example and take care lest while preaching to others they themselves may become castaways.

Here it may not be out of place to give a brief description of the Jesuits, commonly called the “Society of Jesus.” This Order is under the absolute control of its General, the “Black Pope.” They have been expelled by many European governments, and Pope Clement XIII. was even compelled by public opinion to promise their suppression, but was murdered before the fulfillment of this promise. His successor, Pope Clement XIV., was compelled by like opinion to suppress them, but was poisoned soon thereafter. Pope Pius VII., for political reasons, restored them to power, and ever since the Jesuits are the power behind the papal throne. To-day they are stronger in the United States than they ever were in any of the countries of Europe which expelled them as a menace to.the government

Harper’s Weekly of May 21, 1870, says of the Jesuits:

“The operations of this powerful Society embrace every part of the world, and are carried on by means of the most intricate machinery ever contrived by man. The Society is divided in five classes: ist. Professed Members (Professi); 2nd. Spiritual Coadjutors; 3rd. Lay Coadjutors; 4. Approved Pupils; 5th. The Novices.

“From his residence in Rome the General directs the movements of the Society in every part of the world by means of a system in which the art of ‘espionage’ is brought to perfection. Every month or every quarter he receives reports from the heads of all the subordinate departments; and every third year the catalogues of every province, with detailed reports on the capacity and conduct of every member, are laid before him. Besides this, the most active correspondence is maintained with all parts of the world, in order to supply the offices of the Society with the information they require. In the central house at Rome are kept voluminous registers, in which are inscribed the names of all Jesuits, of their adherents, and of all the considerable persons, whether friends or enemies, with whom they have any connection. In these registers, we are told, ‘are reported without alteration, without* hatred, without passion, the facts relating to the life of each individual. It is the most gigantic biographical collection that has ever been formed. The frailties of a woman, the secret errors of a statesman, are chronicled in these books with the same cold impartiality. Drawn up for the purpose of being useful, these biographies are necessarily exact. When the Jesuits wish to influence an individual, they have but to turn to these volumes to know immediately his life, his character, his faults, his family, his friends, his most secret ties.’ By the use of such machinery the Order has attained its high position and widespread influence.”

The General is at the head of this black and mute militia, which thinks, wills, acts, obeys the passive instrument of his designs. Their whole life must have but one aim the advancement of the Order to which they are attached.

From the preceding paragraphs, we can. understand how Jesuitism or Romanism gets control of and “converts” women of rank, wealth and fashion; and also how politicians who are not saints, fearing exposure, are compelled to do Rome’s bidding, no matter how unpatriotic. The private lives of politicians are closely watched and recorded. Sometimes they are entrapped in order to get them in the power of Rome.

The present complications of the political factions, in both Democratic and Republican parties, have been brought about by Jesuitism in order to ccnfuse the public and compel the aspiring candidates or their supporters to “come and see” the ecclesiastical bosses, who are supposed to control the “Catholic vote.” The more dissensions in the parties, the more helpless the candidates are in the hands of Rome, and the more she will demand in lieu of her alleged support for nomination and, eventually, election. Rome has played both parties “to a frazzle” in the present campaign, 1912.

During the first “American Mission” to the Vatican in 1902, Extraordinary Ambassador Taft made a deal with the pope involving several million dollars for the Friars’ lands in the Philippine Islands. And as a quid pro quo the pope of Rome granted to the Chief Executive at Washington the power of veto of bishops and archbishops in the Philippine Islands, a right which he will hardly ever dare exercise.

How long shall the Roman Catholic Hierarchy play the people for fools?

Shall the government be of the people, for the people, and by the people, or by the pope?

Let’s not let the pope of Rome name our President for us.

Lovers of your country, beware of Jesuitical intrigues, the political power of Romanism, and the honeyed words of politicians reaching after the presidency!

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy has taken advantage of the press agency age in which we live. The trans-Atlantic cable has lately been kept busy flashing the most trivial details concerning the so-called honors done America, “the youngest but richest daughter of the Church,” in elevating to the rank of princes and kings three of her wiliest Jesuitical emissaries, who claim to be American citizens. They can not be loyal American citizens and at the same time loyal “Princes of the Church.” Their very oath of allegiance to the pope, a foreign potentate, whose spiritual and temporal power they have solemnly sworn to promote and defend, “even to the shedding of blood,” precludes this possibility. The despotic dogmas of the Church of Rome are diametrically opposed to the Constitutions of all countries, and, therefore, cardinals, arch-;- bishops, bishops, monsignors, priests and monks, having sworrt allegiance to a foreign potentate, have so far renounced their allegiance to their lawful sovereigns or governments, and, consequently, should be considered as aliens with respect to citizenship.

If any one has the least doubt in the world that the cardinals’ first allegiance is due to the pope of Rome, and only their secondary allegiance, when not in conflict with their obedience due the pope, is given to their respective countries, let such an one read the oath taken by a cardinal when he enters upon his office, and all possible doubts will be dispelled.

The following is the oath which these three “American” cardinals, as well as all other cardinals, must take on becoming ‘Princes of the Church.” This translation of the oath was printed in the Daily Telegraph (London), Dec. i, 1911, and accepted as genuine by Monsignor Canon Moyes in a letter published in the Tablet of London (Roman Catholic), Dec. 16, 1911:

“I,,…. of the Holy Roman Church, cardinal of……., promise and swear, from this hour forward, as long as I shall live, to be faithful and obedient to the blessed Peter and the Holy Roman Apostolic Church, and our Most Holy Lord Pius X., and his canonically elected successor;

“To give no counsel nor to concur in anything nor aid in any way against the pontifical majesty or person;

“Never to disclose affairs entrusted to me by them personally, by their nuncios, or by letters, willingly or knowingly, to their detriment or dishonor;

“To be ever ready to aid them to retain, defend and recover their rights against all, to fight with all zeal, and all my forces, for their honor and dignity;

“To direct and defend honorably and kindly legates and nuncios of the apostolic see in all places under my jurisdiction, to provide for their safe journey, and treat them honorably going, during their stay, and during their return, and to resist even to the shedding of blood whosoever would attempt anything against them;

“To try in every way to assert, uphold, preserve, increase and promote the rights, even temporal, especially those of the civil principality, the liberty, the honor, privileges and authority of the Holy Roman Church, of our lord the Pope, and the aforesaid successors;

“When it shall come to my knowledge that some machination, prejudicial to those rights, which I can not prevent, is taking place, immediately to make it known to the Pope, his successor, or to some one qualified to convey the knowledge to them;

“To observe and fulfill, and see that others observe and fulfill the regulations, the decrees and the ordinances, the dispensations and preservation of provisions and apostolic mandates, the constitutions of Pope Sixtus V., of happy memory, concerning visits ‘Ad limina Apostolorum’ at the prescribed times, according to the tenor of said constitution;

“To combat with every effort heretics, schismatics, and those rebelling against our lord the Pope and his successors;

“When summoned for any reason whatsoever by the Holy Father or his successor, to come to them, or when detained by a just cause to send one to present my excuses, and to show them due reverence and obedience;

“Never to sell or to give away, mortgage, or alienate without consent of the Roman Pontiff, even though the consent of said chapters or convents or churches or monasteries or their benefices be had, the possessions belonging to the ‘mensa’ of the church, monasteries, or other benefices committed to me;

“Likewise to observe inviolably the constitution of the Supreme Pontiff Pius X., which begins Vacante Sede Apostolica, given at Rome the twenty-fifth day of December, in the year 1904, concerning the vacancy of the Holy See and the election of the Roman Pontiff ; and to lend no help nor countenance to any intervention of the civil power in the election of the Pope; likewise,

“To observe minutely each and all of the decrees, especially those which have emanated from the sacred – congregation of the ceremonies, or those to come from it, relative to the sublime dignity of the cardinalate, nor to do anything which would be repugnant to the honor and dignity of it, and to pay the rights of the cardinal’s ring conceded by Gregory XV. to the Sancta Congrcgatio de Propaganda Fide.

“So help me God and these holy gospels.”

Many of the same obligations are imposed in the oath administered to archbishops and bishops, including that part referring to action against heretics and schismatics (Protestants).

It is simply impossible for a cardinal, or any member of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, to be a loyal son of the Church and at the same time a loyal citizen of the United States, or of any country, no matter what Taft, Roosevelt and others, for political purposes, may allege to the contrary.

The Duke of Norfolk (Roman Catholic), Premier Duke of England, writing to Lord Beaumont (Roman Catholic), Nov. 28, 1850, says in part:

“I should think that many must feel as we do, that ultramontane [papal] opinions are totally incompatible with the allegiance to our Sovereign and with our Constitution.”

In passing, I may state that the appointment of a bishop or archbishop to a wealthy diocese in the United States costs the aspiring candidates and their supporters, clerical and lay, several million dollars. To the uninitiated this amount may appear extravagant, but when we consider the fifty million dollars’ worth of property, more or less, which comes directly under the control of the successful candidate appointed by the pope and his cabinet inspired, of course, by the Holy Ghost the sum total of the bribes to the Vatican is by no means excessive. Catholic and non-Catholic friends of aspiring candidates for papal honors are permitted and encouraged to “chip in” and use their political influence with the pope. And as for the price paid for “red hats,” the amount is inconceivable, and the intrigues connected therewith are sometimes international: for example, the Bellamy Storer-Roosevelt-Ireland episode.

The press has recently given us Rome and “red hats” usque ad nauseam, telling us of the pope’s admiration and love for America, Americans, their wealth and generosity.

Papal blessings and honors are frequently cabled* but we may well bear in mind the story of the great wooden horse of Troy and the enemy concealed within it remembering the motto: “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentcs.” [I fear the Greeks even bearing gifts.] Wake up, non-Catholics!

I am convinced that the non-Catholic people are blind to their vital interests. On every side they are saying: “Oh, the Roman Catholic Church is not as it was fifty years ago; it is more liberal.” But the Roman Catholic Church is ever and everywhere the same. As she was fifty years ago so she is to-day, except that she is playing politics more astutely now than she was then.

I know by varied and bitter experiences the spirit of bigotry, bribery, hypocrisy, superstition, intrigue, persecution, treason and murder which actuates the Roman Catholic Hierarchy ; and I feel that an imperative duty calls me to resume my efforts to enlighten the Roman Catholic people everywhere as to the abominable priestcraft which is being practised upon them. For them I have only the deepest sympathy. Born, reared and trained in their faith, I know how naturally they are held in bondage and how easily they are deluded, degraded and despoiled in the sacred name of religion. And I also feel that it is my duty to awaken the non- Catholic people of all nations to a realization of the imminent dangers which confront them.

It is the verdict of history, says Mr. Mangasarian, that

“Where the priests are free, the people are slaves!
Where the priests are rich, the people are poor!.
Where the priests teach, the people are ignorant!
Where the priests prosper, progress is paralyzed!
Where the priests lead, they lead into misery,
bondage, poverty, superstition, persecution ruin!”

Lord Macaulay truthfully described the Vatican system when he said:

“It is impossible to deny that the polity of the Church of Rome is the very masterpiece of human wisdom. In truth, nothing but such a polity could, against such assaults, have borne up such doctrines. The experience of twelve hundred eventful years, the ingenuity and patient care of forty generations of statesmen, have improved the polity to such perfection that, among the contrivances that have been devised for deceiving and oppressing mankind, it occupies the highest place.”

There was affixed to a column at the corner of the Orsini Palace in Rome at the beginning of the sixteenth century the following comparison between Christ and the pope:

“Christ said: My kingdom is not of this world.
The pope conquers cities by force.

Christ had a crown of thorns.
The pope wears a triple diadem.

Christ washed the feet of His disciples.
The pope has his kissed by Kings.

Christ paid tribute.
The pope takes it.

Christ fed the sheep.
The pope shears them for his own profit.

Christ was poor.
The pope wishes to be master of the world.

Christ carried on his shoulders the cross.
The pope is carried on the shoulders of his servants in liveries of gold.

Christ despised riches.
The pope has no other passion than for gold.

Christ drove out the merchants from the temple.
The pope welcomes them.

Christ preached peace.
The pope is the torch of war.

Christ was meekness.
The pope is pride personified.

Christ promulgated the laws that the pope tramples underfoot.”

Notwithstanding the wealth, political power, and the extraordinary increase claimed by the Roman Catholic Church, investigation will prove that she is losing ground everywhere as a religion: in fact, Romanism is not a religion: Romanism is first and last political. According to the most trustworthy statistics, eighty million followers have left the Roman Catholic Church during the past seventy-five years. The Roman Catholic Hierarchy has been exposed and dethroned by the despoiled Catholic people in Italy, France and Portugal. It is being exposed and dethroned by the Catholic people in Spain, Austria, Belgium, Poland, Ireland and other so-called Catholic countries, where it is trembling, tottering, falling.

Strange as it may seem to the casual observer, it is true, nevertheless, that in many Catholic countries the papal policy of power and pelf has been repudiated as a curse by the Catholic people and their representatives, while in non-Catholic countries the papal policy is embraced for the graft that is in it, by non-Catholic politicians elected to office by the credulous non-Catholic people; and this is especially true in the English speaking countries England, Canada and the United States. These unscrupulous politicians, high and low, are only too willing to serve the pope in his ungodly efforts to regain temporal power.

The political influence of the papacy is making rapid progress in non-Catholic countries, owing solely to the apathy of the people and the traitorous conduct of non-Catholic politicians, including Presidents and Prime Ministers, who, as a rule, are pledged to Rome by their corrupt political machines, in order to secure the supposed “Catholic vote,” which the pope pretends to control, but which he does not.

Non-Catholics are possessed by the false impression that the Catholic laity vote as a unit as they are directed by the Hierarchy. This is not true. There is a division in the Catholic laity upon political matters, and an independence of action of which non-Catholics have no conception. For the purpose of inducing non-Catholics to court the support of the Roman Catholic clergy and accede to their demands, they are made to believe by the representations of crafty, cunning priests and prelates that the pope controls the “Catholic vote.” Previous to political elections, priests, prelates and “Princes of the Church” promise the supposed “Catholic vote” to both political parties, Republican and Democratic of course, they could not conscientiously and consistently promise it to either the Prohibition or Socialist party. At the close of an election the pope is represented by his clerical, as well as lay, agents at the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic parties, and even in the very homes of the candidates. They are there to congratulate the victor and assure him that his election is due to the “Catholic vote,” and also to remind him that the pope and his representatives are entitled to the greater share of the appointments to be made by him. This papal political trick “heads I win, tails you lose” is successfully played at elections in all non-Catholic countries.

ARCHBISHOP GIOVANNI BONZANO PAPAL NUNCIO

ARCHBISHOP GIOVANNI BONZANO PAPAL NUNCIO.

The new head of the Papal Secret Service Bureau in the U. S. A., being asked, on his arrival in New York harbor, if he had any formal message for the people of this country, replied:

“I am very glad and feel greatly honored to have been sent to represent the ancient Church before the great American people, and where, in spite of your busy life and ways, you have so much time for religion and doing good work.”

Notwithstanding this declaration, Archbishop Bonzano knows or ought to know that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy is responsible for the alliance between crooked politics and crooked business, which has been responsible for nine-tenths of the corruption in American politics.

The Roman Catholic Hierarchy is the breeder of anarchy. In its efforts to prostitute the people’s schools to politics, it is an enemy of the most dangerous character and is more to be condemned than the anarchist.

Bonzano is the plenopotentiary representative of the pope of Rome, who, with the quintessence of audacity, claims to be “Our Lord God the Pope, Vicar of Jesus Christ, King of Heaven, of Earth, and of Hell, and servant of the servants of God.” Was there ever such a contradiction?

The mass of the Catholic vote can not be corralled for the support of any man. If non-Catholics would only take a bold stand in defense of civil and religious liberty against Rome, they would find thousands yea, hundreds of thousands of nominal Catholics rallying to their camp. But these independent- thinking Catholics, seeing the obsequiousness and servility of non-Catholics in their obedience to the suggestions of the Roman Hierarchy, naturally decline to take the initiative in the defense of civil and religious liberty.

Yea, more than this. If the game of every man for himself was to be played in earnest, why should independent Catholics give up advantages and benefits which they might receive themselves through Roman influence in American and English politics for the use and behoof of non-Catholics who are cringing before Rome for the sake of business success and political preferment expected to be derived from her favoring influence?

Why, then, do the liberty-loving people of non-Catholic countries permit themselves to be deceived and enslaved by that debauched, liberty-destroying Hierarchy?

Those who are indifferent on this subject should note Lord Beaconsfield’s words of warning:

“We are sinking beneath a power before which the proudest conquerors have grown pale, and by which the nations most devoted to freedom have become enslaved the power of a foreign priesthood.”

There is urgent need of a wide publicity of the truth concerning Romanism! In the words of William Ewart Gladstone, uttered against the Vatican system, I would warn the lovers of liberty everywhere “against the velvet paw and smooth exterior of a system which is dangerous to the foundation of civil order…. Never was there invented a greater conspiracy against the liberty, virtue and happiness of the people, than that represented by Romanism.” And with the illustrious Gladstone, I say:

“I am confident that if a system so radically bad is to be made or kept innocuous, the first condition for attaining such a result is that its movements should be carefully watched, and above all that the basis on which they work should be faithfully and unflinchingly exposed.”

Protestantism is asleep! Romanism, the sleepless and tireless foe of liberty, enlightenment and progress, is awake! Shall we permit it to enslave us, or shall we follow the wise and patriotic example of Italy, France and Portugal?

TO THE PUBLIC

I am a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and I am in good standing. I am also a citizen of the United States of America.

I am engaged in the threefold work of (i) purifying my beloved Church from existing evils, (2) protecting the public school from Catholic clerical machinations, and (3) promoting a sympathetic understanding between Catholics and non-Catholics. I am prosecuting my threefold work by publishing, lecturing and preaching.

Priests and Prelates accuse me covertly of making false accusations in my book entitled ”The Parochial School, a Curse to the Church, a Menace to the Nation”: I now state that if my opponents can disprove the charges in my book, I will hand over to them all the plates of my book, and I will agree to stop its publication forever. Since these accusations were published, nearly two years have elapsed, and the Church officials have not arraigned me, nor taken any step looking to the disproof of my charges.

I will give Five Thousand Dollars ($5,000.00) to any one who can prove that I am not in possession of the “faculties” of a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
JEREMIAH J. CROWLEY.
Chicago, November, 1906.

ENDORSEMENT BY A GREAT CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP

I am convinced that Almighty God brought Father Crowley to America to save the Catholic Church, and that the present scandal in Chicago the most terrible that has ever occurred in America was permitted by Providence to bring to a climax the reign of rottenness, that it might be unearthed, exposed and wiped out.
THE MOST REV, FRANCIS XAVIER KATZER, D. D.,
Late Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee.

COMMENDATION OF PROMINENT CLERGYMEN

To ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
In view of the fact that the Rev. Jeremiah J. Crowley, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and an American citizen, feels that he has been providentially called into what he terms the threefold work of (i) purifying his Church from existing evils, (2) protecting the public school from Catholic clerical machinations, and (3) promoting a sympathetic understanding between Catholics and non-Catholics,

We, the undersigned, being personally acquainted with Father Crowley, hereby certify to our firm confidence in him as a Christian gentleman, to o-ur conviction as to the wisdom of his methods, and to our belief in the great importance and the pressing necessity of his work.

We bid him Godspeed in his preaching, lecturing and publishing. We feel that pulpits and pJatforms everywhere should be open to him, and that his book entitled ”The Parochial School, A Curse to the Church, A Menace to the Nation,” should be read by every thoughtful person, regardless of race or creed.

COMMENDATION OF PROMINENT CLERGYMEN

We most cordially commend him to all the people of America, earnestly bespeaking for him their hearty sympathy and generous support.

REV. J. WILBUR CHAPMAN, D, D.,
The Evangelistic Leader of the Presbyterian Church.

REV. WILBERT W. WHITE, D. D.,
President, Bible Teachers Training School, New York City.

REV. HUNTER CORBETT, D. D.,
Moderator, Presbyterian Church, U. S. A.

REV. S. PARKES CADMAN, D. D.,
Pastor of the Central Congregational Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.

REV. CORNELIUS WOELFKIN, D. D.,
Professor in the Baptist Theological Seminary, Rochester, N. Y.

REV. JNO. J. TIGERT, D. D.,
Bishop, Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

REV. CHARLES C. McCABE, D. D.,
Bishop, Methodist Episcopal Church.

REV. O. P. GIFFORD, D. D.,
Pastor of the Delaware Ave. Baptist Church, Buffalo, N. Y.

REV. HENRY C. MABIE, D. D.,
Boston, Mass.

REV. C. H. WOOLSTON, D. D.,
Pastor of the East Baptist Church, Philadelphia, Pa.

REV. IRA LANDRITH, D. D.,
President of the Belmont College, Nashville, Tenn.

REV. J. D. MOFFAT, D. D.,
President of Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, Pa.

On February 20th for some reason or another after using a utility to clean up this website from junk code, each and every page and post was deleted! Whether it was a bug in the utility, or perhaps a malicious attack by a hacker, I cannot say. I was able to restore most of the pages and posts from a backup file, but I lost several days work, 4 posts including 3 whole books, many editions on other pages and posts, and recent comments. This left me discouraged. But I can only blame myself for not making a more recent backup of the database after so much work.

I may switch to Drupal which I hear has much better security against malicious attacks. At this time, I am experimenting with a Drupal installation on http://gakudo-jpn.net/ One really cool thing that Drupal has is built in ability to publish books into chapters in separate pages! WordPress cannot do that so easily. It needs a third party plugin called Multipage, what this site is using. Third party plugins are subject to bugs that the WordPress developer have no control over.

I believe a bug in a plugin called WP-Optimize was the culprit. I uninstalled it.

Another WordPress plugin I uninstalled is WordFence. I find this plugin next to useless. It never really protected this site from malicious hacker code, it only told me about being hacked after the fact! And usually by then the site was infected so bad I could not even view it. Moreover, WordFence filled the database with junk! After removing WordFence, the database sql file was reduced from 60 megabytes to only 12!

I also got rid of WordPress Online Backup. I think it’s better to export the database directly from MyPHPAdmin in Cpanel. WordPress Online Backup took a lot of resources and slowed down the site.

James Aitken Wylie

“The Papacy Is The Antichrist” is a classic work By Rev. J. A. WYLIE, LL.D. James Aitken Wylie (1808-1890) was a Scottish historian of religion and Presbyterian minister. He was a prolific writer and is most famous for writing The History of Protestantism.

My good friend Walt Stickel of http://granddesignexposed.com/ linked to http://seawaves.us/na/web4/papacyantichrist.html from his website from which I got this article. The font on that site is too small and hard on my eyes to read which is why I am re-posting it on my own website. I also hope for this article to be more accessible for everyone. Thanks to WordPress technology, it’s simple to re-post classic books to make them easier for me to read. And also thanks to an on-line tool I used to remove unnecessary link breaks.

PREFACE.

The following demonstration is rested on no narrow basis. Its two postulates, like two posterns, admit us into the edifice, but they are not its foundations. The whole economy of Redemption, and the whole course of History are the broad substructions on which the argument is based and built up; and the author humbly submits that it cannot be overturned, or the conclusion arrived at set aside, without dislocating and shaking the structure of both Revelation and providence. The same line of proof which establishes that Christ is the promised Messiah, conversely applied, establishes that the Roman system is the predicted Apostacy. In the life of Christ we behold the converse of what the Antichrist must be; and in the prophecy of the Antichrist we are shown the converse of what Christ must be, and was. And when we place the Papacy between the two, and compare it with each, we find, on the one hand, that it is the perfect converse of Christ as seen in His life; and, on the other, that it is the perfect image of the Antichrist, as shown in the prophecy of him. We conclude, therefore, that if Jesus of Nazareth be the Christ, the Roman Papacy is the Antichrist.

We shall not go far afield in this discussion: nor is it in the least necessary to do so. The materials for a right decision on the question before us lie close at hand. The Apostle John, speaking of the great apostacy to arise in Christendom, calls it the “Antichrist.” And the Pope has taken to himself, as the name that best describes his office, the title “Vicar of Christ.” All we shall ask as the basis of our argument are these two accepted facts, namely, that John styles the “apostacy,” “the Antichrist,” and that the head of the Roman system styles himself “Christ’s Vicar.”

The Papacy holds in its name the key of its meaning. We shall make use of that key in unlocking its mystery and true character. The Papacy cannot complain though we adopt this line of interpretation. We do nothing more than use the key it has put into our hands.

The Apostle John, we have said, speaking of the apostacy, the coming of which he predicts, styles it the “Antichrist.” And we have also said that the Papacy, speaking through its representative and head, calls itself the “Vicar of Christ.” The first, “Antichrist,” is a Greek word, the second, “Vicar,” is an English word; but the two are in reality one, for both words have the same meaning. Antichrist translated into English is Vice-Christ, or Vicar of Christ; and Vicar of Christ, rendered into Greek is Antichrist – Antichristos. If we can establish this –and the ordinary use of the word by those to whom the Greek was a vernacular, is decisive on the point –we shall have no difficulty in showing that this is the meaning of the word “Antichrist,” –even a Vice-Christ. And if so, then every time the Pope claims to be the Vicar of Christ, he pleads at the bar of the world that he is the “Antichrist.”

Moreover, this will clear our way and simplify our discussion. For, let it be noted, if Antichrist signifies a Vice-Christ –that is, one who comes in the room of Christ –deception, dissimulation, counterfeit, must be an essential element in his character. In whatever persons or systems that fundamental characteristic is lacking, we fail to find the “Antichrist,” whatever may be their general opposition to Christ and to Christianity, or whatever other features of the Antichrist they may bear. They may have every other characteristic by which prophecy had described this noted adversary of Christ and his gospel, yet, lacking this fundamental one, their claim to this pre-eminently evil distinction cannot be admitted. This enables us to dismiss summarily and at once a host of Antichrists which have been conjured up by persons who have drawn upon their imagination, rather than followed any sound principle of prophetic interpretation. The cause of the papacy is served by the false glosses and mistaken interpretations of Scripture which interpose a pseudo-antichrist betwixt it and Prophecy, which unfolds against it so black a record, and suspends above it so terrible a doom.

We shall suppose that an atheist or an infidel has been put to the bar to answer to a charge of being the Antichrist. He has manifested a Satanic malignity against the Gospel, and has laboured to the utmost of his power to destroy it. He has blasphemed God, execrated Christ, and derided, vilified, and persecuted all who profess His name, and on these grounds he has been assumed to be the Antichrist. The case is no imaginary one. Atheists and scoffers in former ages, Voltaire and Paine in later times, Communists and Pantheists in our own day, have all been arraigned as the Antichrist.

Well, let us suppose that one or other of these notoriously wicked personages or systems has been put to the bar, on the charge of being the “adversary” predicted by John. “Who are you?” says the judge. “Are you a Vice-Christ? So you make a profession of Christianity, and under that pretext seek to undermine and destroy it? “No,” replies the accused. “I am no counterfeit. Christ and His Gospel I hate; but I am an open enemy, I fight under no mask.” Turning to the likeness drawn by Paul and John of Christ’s great rival and opponent, and finding the outstanding and essential feature in the portrait absent in the accused, the judge would be constrained to say, “I do not find the charge proven. Go your way; you are not the Antichrist.”

Mohammedanism comes nearer than any other of the opposing systems to the Antichrist of the Bible; yet it falls a long way short of it. Mohamet did not disavow the mission of Jesus; on the contrary, he professed to hold Him in honour as a prophet. And in much the same way do His followers still feel towards Christ. But Islam does not profess to be an imitation of Christianity. Any counterfeit that can be discovered in Mohammedanism is partial and shadowy when placed alongside the bold, sharp-cut counterfeit of Romanism. It requires a violent stretch of imagination to accept Mohammedanism, or, indeed, any other known ism, as a Vice-Christ. Of all systems that ever were on the earth, or are now upon it, Romanism alone meets all the requirements of prophecy, and exhibits all the features of the Vice-Christ; and it does so with a completeness and a truthfulness which enable the man who permits himself to be guided by the statements of the Word of God on the one hand, and the facts of history on the other, to say at once, “This is the Antichrist.”

What we have said is meant to indicate the lines on which our demonstration will proceed. We must trace the parallelism betwixt their respective chiefs, Christ and the Pope, along the entire line of their career. In this parallelism lies the essence of Antichristianism, and of course the strength of our argument. It is this counterfeit, so exact and complete, which has misled the world into the belief that this is Christianity, to the waste of ages not a few, the unsettling and overthrow of kingdoms, the stunting of the human understanding, and the loss of millions of immortal souls.

It is somewhat remarkable that the clearest, fullest, and most life-like description of Antichrist we possess is that which was given of him before he arose. The Papacy –if we may be allowed to anticipate what it will be the object of the following pages to demonstrate –the Papacy has been twelve hundred years in existence, and during all these centuries, it has been one of the main actors in the world: neither time nor opportunity has been lacking to it for the display of its spirit and aims. The record of its deeds lies open to the world, and he that runs may read it; and after so long, and, we may add, so dismal an acquaintance with it, it might be supposed that we should now be able to give a fuller and truer description of it than any that could possibly be given before it had come into existence. Yet no. Incomparably the most life-like portrait of the Papacy that exists, is that which was given by Paul in the first century, when writing to the Thessalonian Christians, and which we give below.

Paul’s is not the only painting of Popery on the page of the Bible. Daniel, centuries before, had foreshadowed the rise of this system in imagery of graphic vividness and dramatic grandeur. A little while after Paul, John, in symbols equally majestic and awful, foretold the advent of the same power. The vision was doubled, because the thing was sure. Paul comes in between these two prophecies –two, yet one – as their inspired interpreter. He employs neither figure nor symbol, but in words, plain yet solemn, he lifts the veil and lays bare the infernal origin and Satanic character of that power, which, when he wrote, was so near, that the Christians to whom he addressed his epistle might almost hear the sound of its approaching footsteps, and see the shadow which it had already begun to project upon the Church and the world. We quote the passage, 2 Thess. ii. 1-11.

“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose 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. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”

In order to introduce ourselves to our subject, we have taken it for granted that the system described by Paul in the passage we have just quoted is the papacy. This is the thing to be established. We now proceed to prove this, and provided we shall show on good and conclusive grounds that the system depicted by Paul is the Roman apostacy, and that this is the same system which Daniel and John have portrayed under symbolic imagery, it will follow that one who admits the Bible to be the Word of God, and that Paul wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, must believe that the Papacy –that is, the Roman apostacy –is the Antichrist of Scripture.

This is not point of mere speculation. It is a question that has attendant upon it great practical issues. This inquiry has for its object the ascertainment of the true meaning of an important part of the Word of God, even the better half of its prophecies. Moreover, on this question must rest the verdict we are to pronounce on that society which calls itself “the church,” as also the revelations in which we are to stand to it. And on it, too, must depend whether we shall abandon or whether we shall continue to occupy the ground which we have been accustomed to regard as our divine central position in our war with Popery; or, rather, whether we ought not to end this war, and confess that we have been fighting all along under a mistake.

Who is Antichrist? It will help us to the right answer to this question if we shall first determine, What is Antichrist?

Antichrist is an enemy who makes war with the Son of God. Of that there is no doubt. But what is the form of this war, and under what character does Antichrist carry it on? Does he wage it openly, or does he fight it under a mask? Does he take the field as an open rebel and a declared foe, or does he come as a friendly adherent who professes to bring support and help to the cause which, in reality, he seeks to undermine and destroy? To determine this point, let us look at the meaning of the word Antichrist as employed in Scripture.

The reader sees that the term is a composite one, being made up of two words anti and Christ. The name is one of new formation; being compounded, it would seem, for this very enemy, and by its etymology expressing more exactly and perfectly his character than any older word could. The precise question now before us is this –What is the precise sense of anti in this connection? Does it designate an enemy who says openly and truly, “I am against Christ.” Or does it designate one who says plausibly, yet falsely, “I am for Christ.” Which?

To determine this, let us look at the force given to this prefix by writers in both classic literature and Holy Scripture. First, the old classic writers. By these the preposition anti is often employed to designate a substitute. This is, in fact, a very common use of it in the classic writers. For instance, anti-basileus, he who is the locum tenens of a king, or as we now should say viceroy: anti having in this case the force of the English term vice. He who filled the place of consul was antihupatos, pro-counsul. He who took the place of an absent guest at a feast was styled antideipnos. The preposition is used in this sense of the great Substitute Himself. Christ is said to have given Himself as an antilutron, a ransom in the stead of all. Classic usage does not require us to give only one sense to this word, and restrict it to one who seeks openly, and by force, to seat himself in the place of another, and by violent usurpation bring that other’s authority to an end. We are at liberty to apply it to one who steals into the office of another under the mask of friendship; and while professing to uphold his interest, labours to destroy them. This leaves us free to turn to the use of the word in Scripture.

The Antichrist comes first into view in our Lord’s discourse recorded in Matt.xxiv. 24, and Mark xiii. 22. “For false Christs (pseudoxristos) and false prophets shall arise, and shall show signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.’ Our Lord does not, indeed, use the word Antichrist, but what is almost its synonym pseudo-Christ. Nevertheless, the persons whose coming He foretells are in the line of Antichrist; they belong to the same family, and their grand characteristic is deception. Manifestly, they are not open enemies, but pretended friends; they are “false Christs and false prophets,” and as such are forerunners of that great Antichrist who is to succeed them, and in whom they are to find their fuller development and final consummation. They shall seek by “signs and wonders,” false, of course, to obscure the glory of Christ’s true miracles, to weaken the evidence of His Messiahship arising therefrom, and to draw men away from Him, and after themselves.

The other place in the New Testament in which reference is made to Antichrist is the 1st and 2nd Epistles of John. The idea which John presents of the Antichrist is quite in harmony with that of our Lord. John looks for him in the guise of a Deceiver. “Little children,” says John (1st Epistle ii. 18), “it is the last time: and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many Antichrists.” After this announcement of a special and great Antichrist, to follow in the wake of those minor Antichrists that were already arrived, and were urging their claims on the attention of the world, he comes to look more closely at the giant who was to stand up after these dwarfs had passed away. He notes prominently one characteristic of him, and it is his falsehood. Antichrist, says John, is to be a liar (verse 22). “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is Antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.”

“St John’s words,” says Archbishop Trench, “seem to me decisive on the matter, that resistance to, and defiance of, Christ, not the false assumption if his character and offices, is the essential mark of Antichrist.” (Synonyms of the New Testament, by R.C. Trench, B.D., p.120 Cambridge and London, 1854) Such is Dr Trench’s opinion; but he gives no grounds for it, and we are unable to imagine any. We draw the exactly opposite conclusion from the apostle’s words, even that the “false assumption of His character and offices” is an essential mark of Antichrist. “He is a liar,” says John. But if he comes boldly and truthfully avowing himself the enemy of Christ, how is he a liar? If he avows, without concealment, his impious design of overthrowing Christ, with what truth can he be spoken of as a deceiver? But such is the character plainly ascribed to him by John (2nd epistle, verse 7): -“For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an Antichrist.” Plainly the exegesis, or rather supposition, of Dr Trench is inadmissible.

Dr Chalmers had no difficulty in seeing the Roman system in the “apostacy” predicted by Paul. We find him saying in his Scripture Readings: -“Save us, O Lord, from falling away, lest we share in the perdition that waiteth on the great apostacy. We hold the usurpation of Rome to be evidently pointed at, and therefore let us maintain our distance, and keep up our resolute protest against its great abominations.” (Dr Chalmers’ Sabbath Scripture Readings, vol. I., p.310. Edinburgh, 1848.)

Archbishop Trench was misled, it may be, by the strength of the term deny. “He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.” But he who does not confess when he is called to do so, denies. Such is the use of the word in these applications all through the New Testament. Such is the use John makes of it in this very passage: -“for many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” It is clear that Antichrist, as depicted by our Lord and by His Apostle John, is to wear a mask, and to profess one thing and act another. He is to enter the church as Judas entered the garden –professedly to kiss his Master, but in reality to betray Him. He is to come with words of peace in his mouth but war in his heart. He is to be a counterfeit Christ –Christ’s likeness stamped on base metal. He is to be an imitation of Christ, -a close, clever, and astute imitation, which will deceive the world for ages, those only excepted who, taught by the Holy Spirit, shall be able to see through the disguise and detect the enemy under the mask of the friend.

Antichrist, then, is a counterfeit. But this one mark is not alone sufficient to identify the person on whom it is found as the great apostate. All deceit in religion is anti-Christian; the other marks must come along with this one to warrant us to say that we have found that pre-eminently wicked one, and that portentous combination of all evil that is to form the Antichrist. Yet this one mark enables us to test certain theories which have been advanced on this subject. If Antichrist must necessarily be a deceiver –a false Christ – then no Atheist or body of Atheists can be Antichrist. No Pantheist of body of Pantheists can be Antichrist. They are not deceivers; they are open enemies. They make war in defiance of God and Christ, and under the protestation that there is no such person as the Bible affirms filling the office of the world’s Mediator and Saviour. They hold the whole affair to be an invention of priests. Antichrist dare make no such avowal. It would be fatal to him. Were he to affirm that Christianity is a fable, and out and out imposture, he would cut away the ground from under his own feet. He would deny the very first postulate in his system; for there must first be a Christ before there can be an Antichrist.

And not less does this mark shut us up to the rejection of the theory which has been advanced with much earnestness and some plausibility, that Antichrist is a political character, or potentate, some frightfully tyrannical and portentously wicked King, who is to arise, and for a short space devastate the world by arms. This is an altogether different Antichrist from that Antichrist which prophecy foreshadows. He may resemble, nay, surpass him, in open violence, but he lacks the profound dissimulation under which Antichrist is to commit his atrocities. The rage of the mere tyrant is indiscriminately vented upon the world at large; Antichrist’s rage is concentrated on one particular object and cause; nor with any propriety can such a one be said to sit in the “temple of God,” the seat on which the mock-Christ specially delights to show himself. Prophecy absolutely refuses to see in either of these theories the altogether unique and over-topping system of hypocrisy, blasphemy, and tyranny which it has foretold. So far we are helped in our search. When we are able to put aside some of the false Antichrists, we come more within sight of the true one. We turn now to the prophecy of Paul, and we shall be blind indeed, if, after the study of it, we shall be in any doubt as to whose likeness it is that looks forth upon us from this remarkable prediction.

The name Antichrist, it is true, does not occur in this prophecy. It is not needed. John had given the name. Paul presents us with his portrait. He limns the Antichrist with a power, a truth, an accuracy and a fulness which have left nothing for the eighteen centuries which have since rolled past to supplement, much less to correct or amend. The strokes with which this portrait is drawn are few, but each is a lightning-flash, and every member and feature of the terrible Colossus stands revealed. Paul did not paint this portrait and leave it as a riddle to perplex and baffle future ages. With history in our hands, there is no room for a moment’s doubt about it.

Since Paul wrote, there has been only one system to which this portrait can apply. It applies to it in every particular, as the photograph agrees in every lineament with the living face from which it was taken; but it will agree with no other system that now is or ever was on the earth, even as the photograph will not agree with any countenance but that which stamped itself upon the plate of the artist. So clearly did the spirit of prophecy foresee the coming of Antichrist, and so truthfully did he enable Paul to depict him.

The key of this prophecy is in the seventh verse, “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work!” “The mystery of iniquity!” The phrase is a striking one. It is not simply iniquity, it is the “mystery of iniquity.” Since the time when the first transgression in Eden opened the door for the its entrance, iniquity had never been absent from the earth. History is little else than a sorrowful recital of iniquities. But now a new epoch was to be opened in the career of evil. A hitherto unexampled and unthought-of organization of iniquity was about to appear. The phrase “mystery of iniquity” suggests a secret and terrible conspiracy to sin, amongst beings of various ranks and faculties, and perhaps also of various natures. Not a mere series of isolated acts, but a skillfully-constructed system, the several parts nicely adjusted to one another, and their joint working educing a product of tremendous evil character, surpassing what any former age had witnessed. That “mystery” was as yet undivulged, but it was even now, when Paul wrote, travelling towards the light, and would be revealed in due time.

“The Mystery of Iniquity.”

This is our true standpoint, whence we may look around over the whole passage. When surveyed from this position, Paul’s prophecy will be seen to have an amplitude of meaning and a depth of import as profound as its range is vast. We venture to think that the height and depth of this prophecy have not yet been very accurately measured, or its meaning fully fathomed.

What is the “mystery of iniquity?” The phrase suggests another –the “mystery of godliness.” Paul writing to Timothy says (1 Epistle, chap. ii. 16): -“Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.” These two phrases stand alone in the Bible. We read but once of the “mystery of godliness,” and but once of the “mystery of iniquity.” They are the two pre-eminently grand mysteries of Revelation. They stand over against each other: the “mystery of iniquity,” fashioning its outward character and semblance upon the “mystery of godliness,” making it its pattern, till at last the “mystery of iniquity” presents itself to the world a perfect imitation and counterfeit of the “mystery of godliness.”

Seeing the two mysteries stand so related to each other, the one mystery interprets the other. We must give the same height and depth, the same length and breadth, to the one as to the other, so far as the diverse origin and character of the two will permit.

We ask, then, what is the precise idea of the Holy Spirit in the phrase the “mystery of godliness?” Does the phrase denote simply that system of spiritual truth which God has been developing during the successive ages of the world, which now at last stands fully manifested in the Gospel? No doubt this is part of the “mystery of godliness,” but it is not the whole, nor indeed is it the principle part of it. The “mystery of godliness” is not the development of a system only, it is the development of a person. So does the apostle define it. “Without controversy,” says he, “great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.” It was the gradual development of certain great and supernatural principles and truths through symbols, prophecies and typical persons, till at last they attained their completed development and full manifestation in the person of the Son of God.

The “mystery of iniquity,” which stands over against the “mystery of godliness” as its parallel and counterfeit, must be like it –like it in having its source outside the world, like it in its slow and gradual development, and like it in its final culmination. Of it, too, we must say it is not the development of a system only, it is the development of a person. It is the gathering together of all the principles of evil, and the marshalling of them into one organization or host, and their embodiment at last in a representative person or head –Antichrist. He was to be the grand outcome of the apostacy; not its mere ornamental head, but its executive. He was to guide its counsels, inspire its policy, execute its decrees; in short, he was to be the organ through which it terrible powers were to be put forth.

This we take to be the ruling idea in the passage. Just as the “mystery of godliness” is not merely the manifestation of the system of godliness, but the manifestation of God Himself, so the “mystery of iniquity” is not merely the manifestation of the system of iniquity, but the manifestation of the person or author of iniquity. The prophecy brings before us two mysteries, the one the counterfeit in all points of the other. We have an invisible agent, even God, beneath the one; we have an invisible agent, even Satan, beneath the other. We have the one mystery culminating at last in an incarnation, “God manifest in the flesh.” We see the other in like manner culminating in an incarnation, in a loose sense; for all its principles concentrate themselves in and show themselves to the world through its living head on earth, Antichrist. We may go even farther and say that there is as real an incarnation of the spirit and mind of Satan in the “mystery of iniquity,” as there is of the spirit and mind of God in the “mystery of godliness.” And as in Christ God and man meet; so in Antichrist, his counterfeit and rival, the human and the superhuman meet and act together –earth-born man and arch-angel fallen.

The apostle having brought these two mysteries upon the stage, and shown them to us standing face to face, goes on to trace the parallel between the two. This parallel is distinctly discernible in every stage of their career. The apostle traces it first in their rise; second, in their coming; and third, in their full and completed development. Let us follow the parallelism, step by step and stage by stage.

In their rise. “for the mystery of iniquity doth already work.” It was already in existence, its energies were all astir, but it worked in secret, and was inaudible to the world. It worked as leaven doth in the meal, which keeps silently fermenting in the mass till the whole has been leavened. It worked as the seed does in the soil, which, germinating in the darkness, pierces the clod, bursts into the light, and receiving an accession of strength from the sun and air, shoots up in the stem and at last culminates in flower and fruit.

The mystery of iniquity worked as treason works. The conspirators meet in secret conclave, they concert their plans unknown to the world, they speak in whispers, but their schemes at length ripen, and now they come abroad into the light of day, and proclaim in the house-tops what they had hatched in darkness. So did the “mystery of iniquity” work.

So, too, did the “mystery of godliness” work. Even at this initial stage of the two mysteries we trace a resemblance between them. Let us think how long the Gospel worked before it issued in the incarnation of the Son of God. For ages and for generations Christianity was a hidden mystery. The redemption of men by means of the incarnation of the Son of God was a secret profoundly hidden in the councils of God in eternity, and even after time had begun its course it long remained a secret unknown to the world. Bit by bit this mystery revealed itself. First, the idea of incarnation was dimly made known. In the first promise, mention was made of the “seed of the woman,” and on this obscure intimation was built the hope of a Deliverer, and that hope descended the ages with the race. The idea of expiation was next revealed in the appointment of sacrifice, which also, with the hope which is expressed and sustained, came down the stream of time. Next a complete system of ceremonial worship was instituted, to reveal the coming redemption in the amplitude of its blessings. Still the veil was upon it. It stood before the world in type. There arose an illustrious series of august personages, who were forerunners or types of Christ. They exhibited to the church the offices which her incarnate Saviour was to fill, and the work He was to execute. There stood up an order of prophetical men who prefigured Him as the Great Teacher; there stood up an order of sacrificial men who prefigured Him as the One Priest. There stood up an order of kingly men who prefigured Him as a Monarch, and a Monarch who was to be higher and mightier than any of the monarchs of earth. The Kings of the House of Judah foreshadowed Him as sprung of a royal stock, and the heir of a throne which all nations should serve, and before which all kings should bow.

Thus did the “mystery of godliness” work, unfolding and still unfolding itself as the ages passed on –the type growing ever the clearer, and the prophecy ever the fuller – till at last the “mystery” stepped out from behind the veil, and stood before the world, perfected, finished, and fully revealed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ – “God manifest in the flesh;” and centering in His person, and flowing out from it, through His life and ministry and death, as rays from the sun, were all the glorious doctrines of the Gospel.

In like manner the “mystery of iniquity” kept travelling, by the same stages, towards the day of its final revelation. It was not the production of one but many ages. The fashion of the world changed: great empires which had filled the earth with their glory and burdened it with their oppression, went down into the grave. Worships arose with their powerful hierarchies and grand ceremonials, and when their day was over passed away, leaving only ruined fanes and deserted altars to tell that they had ever been. But the “mystery of iniquity” as if deathless, like the Being which inspired it, refused to succumb to these shocks. It kept on its course, over broken thrones and desecrated altars, ever reaching forth to that high goal where it should show itself to the nations and be the wonder of all that dwell upon the earth.

Silently and stealthily this “mystery” pursued its course. For ages and for generations it too was a hidden mystery. Paul tells us that it was working in his day. This warrants us to say that Antichrist was then born, and was making trial of his infantile powers. The world did not hear his working, but Paul, by the spirit of prophecy did so, and sounded an alarm to the church. The Gnostics and other teachers of error that had gone forth into the world so early as Paul’s day, were Antichrists, and those in especial who propagated the delusion that it was a phantom which the Jews seized, and crucified on Calvary. They seemed to admit the mission of Christ, yet they subverted the great end of His coming by denying His incarnation, and, by consequence, the whole work of redemption. But, though these teachers were anti-Christian, they were not the Antichrist. After them, Paul gave warning there should come one far mightier than they, “the latchet of whose shoes they were not worthy to loose.” They were misgrown and misshapen Antichrists; their system of error was immature, and their power of attack contemptible, compared with that full-grown anti-Christianism which would stand up on after days, and say to the world, “I am Christ,” and under that colour make war upon the true Christ.

Nay, even before the apostle’s day the “mystery of iniquity” has begun to work. From the beginning Satan had made the line of error to run parallel with the line of truth. He had been a close observer of God’s plan from the first, and he made it the model on which to form his own. Never was the Divine plan advanced a stage without Satan making a corresponding advance in his plan, as like to the other as it was possible to make it, in all outward respects, but essentially antagonistic to it in principle and spirit. Satan has been a counterfeit from the beginning. Even in the times of Paganism he never showed himself as an avowed adversary, or waged open war. He nowhere established a system of Atheism. He permitted the great idea of a God to be received in the Pagan world; but he took care to intercept the influence of that great truth in the heart and life by seducing men to the worship of “gods many,” and these gods in man’s own likeness. He set up altar against altar, priesthood against priesthood, and sacrifice against sacrifice; and he enlarged and beautified his ritual in the heathen world till it seemed no unworthy rival of the divinely instituted ceremonial on Mount Moriah.

Moreover, he sent forth pioneers to keep alive expectation in the pagan world of some Great One yet to come. He showed to the world a colossal picture of the Antichrist while yet he was at a distance. For what were the Caesars, king and priest of the Roman world, but types of that more terrible power, temporal and spiritual, that was to centre in the chair of the Popes? That colossal image he kept full in the world’s view, till the “fulness of the time” for Antichrist’s appearance had arrived, and then he withdrew the image, and brought forward the great reality, the “Man of Sin” now come to his full birth, though not as yet to his full stature, and he found for him a seat and throne on the Seven Hills.

Beginning his career in the days of Paul, it was not till the thirteenth century that the “Man of Sin” reached his maturity, and stood before the world full grown. During all these ages, he kept stretching himself higher and higher, piling assumption upon assumption, and prerogative upon prerogative, till at last, he raised himself to a height from which he looked down not only upon all churches, but upon all kings and kingdoms. He claimed to be the world’s one bishop and world’s one monarch. In the first century he is seen as the humble pastor, whose only care is to feed his flock, and who looks for no crown save that which the chief shepherd may be pleased to give him at his appearing. In the thirteenth he is beheld as a mighty potentate, who stands with his foot planted on every throne and realm of Christendom. He writes himself a “King of Kings,” and he claims by divine right to administer all the affairs of earth. If we except Christianity, there is no similar example in history of what was at first so small, becoming in the end so great. Three hundred Popes and more are seen, one after the other, steadily prosecuting this idea, without once relaxing in their efforts or turning aside from the pursuit. Each in succession takes up the plan at the point where his predecessor had left it, and carries it a stage nearer its consummation. For thirteen hundred years on end, we see the enterprise pushed forward with an undeviating constancy, and an unflinching courage, with a perseverance and a subtilty, -in short, a combination of powers never before seen working together for the realization of any other project. There is more than man here. The spirit who conceived this plan, who inspired the actors and kept them working century after century, on the same lines, till at last the goal was reached, was more than human. Paul tells us that its author was Satan.

A great apostacy was to precede the rise of the Antichrist. In truth, the “Man of Sin” was to grow out of that apostacy. Be not “troubled” or alarmed says the apostle writing to the Thessalonians, as if time were to be wound up, and Christ were to return (Thess. 2:2,3): -“That day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that Man of Sin be revealed.” Not a falling away, but, the falling away, as it is in the original Greek -some great and notable apostacy: the Church must pass through a dark and terrible shadow before Christ shall return. The prophets had spoken not obscurely of that evil time. It was the burden of Daniel’s prophecy; it was repeated in the symbolic picturings of John. Paul in his other writings had referred to it, portraying with brief but vivid touches the essential characteristics of the power which at that era was to cast his dark shadow on the world.

Hardly had the early persecutions ceased till that falling away set in. Jerome lifts the veil in the fourth century, and disclosed a truly melancholy picture. In vain we look for the humility, the simplicity, and the purity of the early Church. The gold refined in the furnace of ten persecutions is waxing dim. The vine which Paul planted at Rome is being transformed into the vine of Sodom. The pastors of the church are becoming inflamed with the love of riches, and are striving with one another for pre-eminence. Rome daily sees her bishop ride forth in a gilded chariot, drawn by prancing steeds. Her clergy show themselves attired in robes of silk. The members of their flock crowd alternately the church and the theatre, and rush with indecent haste from superstitious rites performed at the tombs of the martyrs to the games and sports of the circus. The “apostacy” has fairly set in. The corruption grows with the current of the centuries. It shapes itself into system, it builds error upon error, and buttresses itself all round with assumptions and falsehoods. The organization in which it enshrines itself necessarily and naturally finds for itself a chief or head. Now comes the Pope and his hierarchy. The “Man of Sin” has appeared.

He is seen to rise out of the earth of a paganised Christianity. Like the soil from which he is sprung, he is pagan in essence though Christian in appearance. Several notable events helped him to attain his full stature. We must indicate, a few -not all-of these, for it is impossible to write the history of thirteen centuries in one short chapter. The first event which contributed, and contributed essentially to the development of the Papacy was the removal of the Emperor from Rome. Had Caesar continued to reside in his old capital, he would, as the phrase is, have “sat” upon the Pope, and this aspiring ecclesiastic could not have shot up into the powerful potentate which prophecy had foretold. But Constantine (A.D. 334) removed to the new Rome on the Bosphorus, leaving the old capital of the world to the Bishop of Rome, who was henceforth the first and most influential personage in that city. It was then, probably, that the idea of founding an ecclesiastical monarchy suggested itself to him. He had fallen heir, by what must have seemed a lucky accident, to the old capital of the world; he was, moreover, possessor of the chair of Peter, or believed himself to be so, and out of these two -the old town of the Caesars and the old chair of the apostle, it might even be possible -so, doubtless, he reasoned, to fabricate an empire that would one day rival and even overtop that of the emperors. These, it might have been thought beforehand, were but slender materials to bear the weight of so great an enterprise; yet with their help, and aided, doubtless, by deeper that mere human counsel, he projected a sovereignty which has not had its like on earth, which survived the fall of the Roman Empire, which lived through all the convulsions and overturnings of the Middle Ages, and which has come down to our day, and has the art, when men believe it to be about to expire, of rallying its powers, and coming back upon the world.

About this time, moreover, the equality which had reigned among the pastors of the church in the primitive age was broken. The bishops claimed superiority above the presbyters. Nor was there equality even among the bishops themselves. They took precedence, not according to their learning, or their talents, or their piety, but according to the rank of the city in which their see was placed. Finally, a new and loftier order arose overtopping the episcopate. Christendom was partitioned into five great patriarchates -Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. These were the five great cities of the empire, and their bishops were constituted the five great princes of the church.

Now came the momentous question, for a while so keenly agitated, Which of the five shall be the first? Constantinople claimed this honour for her patriarch, on the ground that it was the residence of the Emperor. Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem each put in its claim, but to no effect. Constantinople found, however, a powerful rival in the old city on the banks of the Tiber. Rome had been the head of the world, the throne of the Caesars; around it was still the halo of a thousand victories, and that gave it a mysterious influence over the imaginations of men, who began to see in its bishop the first ecclesiastic of the Christian world. The popular suffrage had pronounced in favour of the Roman bishop before his rank had received imperial ratification. He was installed as the first of the five patriarchs in A.D. 606. The Emperor Phocas, displeased with the bishop of Constantinople, who had condemned the murder of Maurice, by which Phocas opened his way to the imperial dignity, made Boniface III. universal bishop. The imperial edict, however, gave to the Roman bishop only the precedence among the five patriarchs; it gave him no power or jurisdiction over them.

Mere rank the bishops of Rome held to be but an empty honour. What they coveted was substantial power. Their policy was now shaped with the view of reducing the whole clergy of the church into obedience to the Roman chair, and exalting the popes to supreme and absolute sovereignity. Centuries passed away, in the course of which, by the help of many an artifice, and under cover of many a pretext, the Roman bishops slowly extended their power over the West. The darkness which accompanied the descent of the Gothic nations favoured their project in a high degree. “Bad wares,’ says Puffendorf, in his Introduction to the History of Europe, “are best vended in the dark, or at least in a dim light.”

Some of the “wares” vended in these “dark” times were sufficiently remarkable. Out of many we give but two examples. The Emperor Constantine, by his last will and testament, was made to bequeath to Silvester, Bishop of Rome, the whole Western Empire, including palace, regalia, and all the belongings of the master of the world. A goodly dowry, verily, for the poor fisherman. Then came another “windfall” to the papacy, in the shape of the decretals of Isidore. This last showed the church, to her equal surprise and delight, that her Popes from Peter downwards had held the same state, lived in the same magnificence, and promulgated their pontifical will in briefs, edicts, and bulls in the same authoritative and lordly style, as the grand Popes of the Middle Ages. Both documents, it is unnecessary to say, were sheer forgeries. They are acknowledged by Romanists to be so. They could not have stood a moment’s scrutiny in an enlightened age. But they were accepted as genuine in the darkness of the times that gave them birth, and vast conclusions were founded upon them. The fabrications of Isidore were made the substructions of canon law, and that stupendous fabric of legislation is still maintained to be of divine authority, despite that it is now acknowledged to be founded on a forgery.

The northern nations arrived in southern Europe in the fifth and succeeding centuries ignorant of Christianity. This was another cause that favored the advancement of the “Man of Sin.” These nations, on their arrival in Italy, beheld a great spiritual potentate seated in the chair of Caesar. He told them that he was the successor of Peter the Apostle, whom Christ had constituted his Vicar on earth, with power to transmit all his prerogatives, spiritual and temporal, to his successors in his office. This was the only Gospel the Pope ever preached to the barbarian tribes. They had no means of testing the legitimacy of these mighty claims. In the Pope himself they recognised no very distant resemblance to their own arch-druid; the rites of the Roman temples were not unlike the worship they had practiced in their pagan homes; they had easy access to the baptismal fount, their pagan beliefs and manners forming no impediment; nation after nation entered the Roman pale, the Franks leading the way, and earning for themselves the title of the “eldest son of the Church.” The Gothic nations had found in the Pope, before whose chair they now bowed down, a common spiritual Father. Thus was accomplished another notable stage in the development of the Papacy.

His dignity enhanced by this vast accession of new subjects, the Pope set himself to strengthen his power within the Church by completing the subjection and vassalage of the clergy. He let slip no opportunity that offered to compass this end. Since the fifth century the bishops who lived on this side the Alps used to go to Rome to visit the sepulchres of the Apostles Peter and Paul. This journey was a voluntary one, being undertaken to gratify the devout or superstitious feelings of the pious excursionist. In no long time it was made obligatory, and those who failed to present themselves at the apostolic threshold were subjected to rebuke, as lukewarm in their devotion to the Holy Chair. It was next interpreted in the sense that the itinerant bishops had sought confirmation at Rome, and that all bishops ought to go thither for that end. Thus there came another accession of prerogative and dignity to the papal chair.

Further, it was a usual practice of churches and bishops to ask the advice of the Roman Church in matters of consequence and difficulty, or crave the right interpretation of particular cannons. When they at Rome perceived that their advice was taken as a decision, they began to send their decrees before they were demanded, on pretence that Rome being the first See of the Christian world, her bishop ought to take care that the canons and ecclesiastical laws were duly kept. Hence another encroachment upon the liberties of churches and pastors, and another accession to papal dignity and jurisdiction. And further, when differences or quarrels arose betwixt bishop and bishop, or betwixt church and church, nothing was more natural that for the parties at variance to solicit the mediation of the Bishop of Rome. The Pope willingly undertook the task of composing their contentions, but the price he exacted was a still further surrender of the liberties of the Church. He thence took occasion to assume the office of a judge, and to represent his chair as a tribunal to which he had a right to summon parties. At times he came in betwixt the Metropolitan and his diocesan, and on one pretext or other, deposed the latter, to the wakening of the jurisdiction of the former, Moreover, it sometimes happened that parties who had been condemned before provincial tribunals were encouraged to appeal to Rome, where the cause was reheard and the provincial sentence, it might be, revoked. By these stealthy and persistent steps, the Pope contrived to keep on the ascending grade.

There followed other most ingenious devices, all for the same end. Among these was the pall of consecration. The pall was sent to all bishops from the Pope, at first as a gift. It was next represented as indispensable, and that without it no bishops could discharge the functions of his office. Thus a new hold was obtained over the clergy, and a new method invented of replenishing the papal coffers; for a high price was put on this mystic article of dress, which was woven of the wool of the lambs of St Agnes.

To the same end were annats imposed. This was the sum paid by bishops when they changed from one see to another, a practice allowed by the Pope for the gain it brought him. The multiplication of monks and friars tended to the same end. The Pope summoned into existence the corps of the regular clergy to play them off against the army of the seculars. He acted on the maxim, “divide, and conquer.” The monks were a check upon the bishops; they watched their proceedings and carried their report to Rome. They had acquired a vast reputation for holiness, and the direction of consciences through the confessional was mainly in their hands. They had discovered the secret of amassing riches by the arts of mendicancy. They swarmed over Europe, and were thoroughly devoted to the interests of the papal see; and if any bishop set himself in opposition to the Pope, they raised such a clamour against him as speedily convinced him that the had no alternative but submission.

Especially did the English monk Winfrid, who changed his name to Boniface, enlarge the papal dominion. This man is commonly but erroneously credited with the first Christianization of Germany. Invested with the authority of the pope’s legate, he traversed the countries on the east of the Rhine, rooting out the schools and churches of the Evangelical faith which had been numerously planted in that region of Europe by the Culdee missionaries of the Irish and Scottish nations, substituting in their room Roman monasteries and cathedrals. This was the work of Boniface; a work well pleasing to Rome, inasmuch as it greatly widened the bounds of the pontificial sway.

Among the events of these disastrous ages, contributing to the growth of the papal power, not the least influential were the Crusades. They evoked a mighty outburst of enthusiasm around the papal chair. They place powerful kings, vast treasures, and countless soldiers at the service of the pope. He took into his own management the estates of those who went to fight for the recovery of the Holy Land; exempting their owners from the jurisdiction of the civil power in both civil and criminal causes. When the fury of the Crusades had spent itself, it was found that the spirit of princes was broken, their resources dried up, their realms impoverished by the loss of their subjects, and the only institution that had profited by the frenzy was the Papacy, which now, every other interest abased, rose aloft in greater grandeur than ever. Nor was this the end of the matter. The fanatical fury which had found its first fearful discharge on the plains of Syria, was diverted back to the land whence it had come, and there it vented without exhausting itself in those bloody persecutions and wars against heretics, which rage for centuries in Christendom.

The Crusades have carried us into the thirteenth century. We must turn back to the eighth and ninth centuries, and note certain political changes that occurred in those ages, which contributed material aid to the Papacy in fulfilling its destiny.

It was the deep aim of the Pope to plant his seat in a place where he should owe no subjection to any civil power. He desired to have a country of his own, such as might be sufficient to maintain his grandeur, and whence he should reign as a temporal king as well as a spiritual sovereign. For a business like this, much time and labour were needed. The project was manifestly unattainable so long as an emperor reigned in the West, or the Gothic monarchy subsisted in Italy. But strange to say, events conspired to make empty and void a place where the Pope might set up his combined spiritual and temporal sovereignty, so long his cherished but unavowed aim. The first step was the overthrow of the Gothic power in Italy by Justinian. Italy and Rome now became a province of the Eastern Empire. The jurisdiction of the absent emperor was henceforward shadowy and weak; but even that slight restraint was impatiently borne, and Pope Gregory II. began to plot how to be rid of it altogether. The conflict betwixt the Eastern and Western Churches on the subject of image-worship was then raging. The Romans zealously maintained the cause of images. The emperor, with the Eastern Church, were ranged in opposition. Pope Gregory instigated the Romans to refuse the tribute to the emperor. The revolt was successful; the imperial representative at Ravenna was slain, and the last vestiges of the emperor’s jurisdiction over Rome and Italy were annihilated. (It is worthy of note, by the way, that the Romans by their revolt against their lawful emperor put their necks under a yoke that continued to gall them for twelve centuries. They did not succeed in breaking it till 1870.)

The Pope was now in sight of independent temporal sovereignty, but he had not yet fully achieved it. Tidings out of the north troubled him. The Longobards had crossed the Alps, and were already at Ravenna. There was no power in the spiritual artillery to arrest the victorious advance of these hardy warriors. In his extremity, Pope Zachary turned his eyes to Pepin, who, from Grand Marshal had become King of France. The Pope did not supplicate in vain. Pepin first, and his son Charlemagne next (774). Conquered the Longobards, and endowed the papal chair with all the cities and lands in Italy which had been subject to the jurisdiction of the Greek rulers. The Pope was now a crowned monarch.

This was the third intervention by arms in the Pope’s behalf, and the third Gothic power which had fallen before him. First, the Vandals established themselves in the diocese proper of the Pope, occupying his pre-destined domain, and hindering his predestined development. The arms of Justinian under his general Belisarius, swept them off. Second, the Ostrogoths planted themselves in Italy, and their near neighborhood overawed the Pope, and prevented his expansion. They, too, were rooted out by the arms of Justinian. Last came, as we have said, the Longobards, pressing onwards to the gates of Rome. The sword of France drove them back. Thus, a field was kept clear on which the Pope might develop both his spiritual and temporal sovereignty; and thus was fulfilled what Daniel (Daniel vii. 8) had foretold, that of the ten horns, or dynasties of the modern Europe, three should be “plucked up” before the little horn, or papacy. Their kingdoms and crowns were given to the Pope, and it is probable that it was in memory of these events that it became customary for the Pope, in the following centuries, to array himself in a tiara. The pastor of the Tiber had become a monarch with a triple crown.

Was the Pope now content? He sat amid the princes and kings of earth as their equal. But to be simply their equal he held to be an affront to his superhuman office as God’s vicegerent. He aspired to plant his throne among the stars, and thence look down upon all the dignities and princedoms of earth. And to this dazzling height he at last climbed up.

There arose in the eleventh century a Pope of vast capacity, of inflexible resolution, and towering pride, Gregory VII. -Hildebrand. He put before the world, with a precision, a boldness, and an argumentative force, never till then brought to its support, the claim to be the Vicar of Christ. This was the foundation-stone on which he rested his scheme of pontificial jurisdiction and grandeur. As Christ’s Vicar, he claimed to surpass all earthly monarchs in glory and power, as far as the sun surpasses the moon in brightness. He claimed, in short, to be God upon the earth. There followed a series of popes who struggled through two dreadful centuries of war and bloodshed to convert Gregory’s theory into fact. The struggle was successful in the end: the mitre triumphed over the empire. The scheme of Gregory VII. In all its amplitude of jurisdiction and magnificence -and, we may add, in all its amplitude of despotism and blasphemy -was exhibited to the world in the person and reign of Innocent III. , in the thirteenth century. The history of the world does not show another achievement of equal magnitude. The glory of the Pharaohs; the state and power of the Kings of Babylon; the victories and magnificence of the Caesars, all pale before this great conquest of the Popes. Now had come the noon of the Papacy; but, as we have remarked elsewhere, the noon of the Popedom was the midnight of the world.

The career both of Christ and of Antichrist was to end on a throne; though each was to reach his destined elevation by a very different road. Not till we find them on their respective thrones shall we see the parallelism perfected and completed. This we must reserve for a subsequent chapter. Meanwhile we pursue the parallelism through its successive preparatory stages, till it reaches this great climax.

We advance to another point in the parallelism betwixt Christ and Antichrist. We find it in the pretended miracles by which the Papacy has sought to persuade the world that it was not the adversary but the friend of Christ. This pretence of miracles was to form a far too prominent feature in the coming Antichrist to be left out in Paul’s great portraiture of him. “Whose coming is after the manner of Satan,” says the apostle, speaking by the Spirit (2 Thess. 2: 9), “with all power and signs and lying wonders.” The essential characteristic of Antichristianism, we have said, is its assumption of a character the very opposite of its true character. It was to be a secret undermining of Christianity under the show of being itself Christianity; a deadly war waged against Christ, under the bold assertion that itself is Christ. This necessitated, on the part of the Papacy, a profound study of the mission and character and life of Christ, in order to make its imitation as close and perfect as possible, and so draw the world away from him, and after itself. It must not be a vague and shadowy resemblance, traceable in only a few points. If the world is to be deceived, the counterfeit must be skillfully executed -the work of a great master -and it must be consistently sustained throughout. Ancient paganism was no lame or despicable counterfeit of the divinely-appointed worship at Jerusalem. Ancient paganism, however, was but a first attempt; and it was far from having exhausted the ingenuity and resource of its author. His subtilty and craft were to be set a-working a second time, and the result was to be a perfect and finished counterfeit -a masterpiece.

“Whose coming is after the working of Satan.” The two comings here contrasted -we say contrasted, for the parallelism is only on the surface, beneath, all is contrast, and contrariety -are the coming of God in the mission of His Son, and the coming of Satan in the mission of Antichrist. God is the author of truth, and the manner of His coming is by the propagation of great truths which dispel the darkness around the soul of man, and chase the night of error from the world. Satan is the author of falsehood; he has been a deceiver from the beginning, and he comes in the propagation of deceits, chicaneries, lies, errors and delusion, which, blinding the mind, only prepare men for being plunged into still greater errors and delusions.

“With all power.” Let us mark how like Antichrist was to be to Christ in the particular just noted “all power.” Antichrist was to come with an assumption of power, an air of majesty, as if to say, “I am the Son of the Highest.” His look how lofty! His words how stout! So had Daniel, in the night visions, beheld him. “He waxed exceeding great,” says Daniel, “toward the south and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land.” He stood before the prophet, his feet planted on the earth, his head among the stars, claiming lordship over both worlds. “He waxed great even to the host of heaven; and he cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.” (Daniel viii.10.)

“All power,” said Christ to His disciples, “is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.” This power was the eternal gift of the Father to the Son as Mediator. This power he wielded from the first moment of His entering on His work of mediation. Though veiling it during the days of His humiliation on earth, this power was in Him, and showed itself at times in some stupendous act. The elements of nature were obedient to Him, so, too, were the spirits of darkness, and not less the angels of heaven. If need were, He had only to pray to His Father, and the celestial squadrons would have hastened to His aid. Satan could gather enough from ancient prophecy and song to show him that such power was to be the attribute of the Messiah. “I will make Him, my first-born, higher that the kings of the earth.” So sang David. “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. The Kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring presents; the Kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him; all nations shall serve Him.” Such was the glory which the coming Messiah cast before Him in prophecy, ages before He came. Satan must needs send forth his counterfeit Messiah with the mock symbols and attributes of a like power.

Antichrist, too, cast his shadow before him in prophecy before his actual coming as the triple-crowned chief of the Papacy. Daniel had seen his day afar off. How he contemplated and spoke of him we have already seen. With a few graphic strokes he paints the whole history of the Papacy. He traces it from its insignificant beginnings till it reaches its amazing and portentous height. We see the first sprouting of the “little horn.” We see Caesar vacate his seat; we see the “Vandal,” the “Ostrogoth,” and the “Longobard” plucked up before it. We see it rising by “leaps and bounds,” and now its head is among the stars. We see its “stout looks,” we hear its “great words,” and we witness with an awe bordering on terror its truculent deeds. He tramples on thrones; he roots up nations, he plucks the stars from their orbits; in fine, he dies all his pleasure, and there is none who can withstand his power, or say to him, “What doest thou?” John had a nearer view of the Antichrist in the visions of Patmos. He, too, like Daniel, is struck with his mighty and apparently irresistible power, and he makes this attribute prominent in his portraiture of him. John had known the vast prerogative of the Roman emperors; but here was a measure of power which surpassed that of the old “masters of the world,” and which appeared to the apostle more that human. In fact he expressly calls it the “gift” of the “dragon.” “The dragon gave him his power.” What the dragon gave to the Antichrist was not the power of the old Roman empire, but his own – that is, the dragon’s power. “And they worshipped the dragon which gave power to the beast” -that is, the temporal and spiritual monarchy which forms the Papacy. “And they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him? “And power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” (Rev.xiii. 2,4,7.)

In His intercessory prayer we find Christ saying, -“Father, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee. As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh that he should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” The power here said to be given the Son over all flesh was not His power as God. That could not be given Him, for He possessed it inherently. It was His power as Mediator, and the end for which it was given is specially noted, “that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.” (John xvii. 1,2.)

In like manner the power “over all kindreds and tongues and nations” which the dragon gave to the deputy whom he sent into the world, was a gift; and it was given for a draconic end. And, accordingly, no sooner is this power conferred, that we hear a chorus of worship ascending to the dragon from all them that dwell upon the earth, “whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,”( Rev. xiii. 8.)an obvious contrast to the company referred to in our Lord’s intercessory prayer, “them whom thou hast given Me.” And, next, in meet accompaniment of the worship offered by those who had made the dragon their god is the roar of blasphemy which is heard rising and swelling to heaven. There is given to Antichrist a mouth, and the opening of his mouth is as the opening of the doors of the pit; there issue out of it “great things and blasphemies.” “He opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.” And the scene finds fitting outcome in the proclamation of “war” against the saints, which continues to be carried on all through his predicted term of power.

Yes, verily, prophecy makes no mistakes. And history makes none in interpreting it. He who “hath understanding” may read off the visions which were seen on the banks of “the river of Ulai” and in the “Isle of Patmos,” in the events which have since passed over Europe. Let us open the roll of Christendom. Let us survey its ages from the fifth to the fifteenth century. We are conscious at first of gazing only at chaos. The crowd of actors and the conflict of events but distract and perplex the mind. Europe is a tumbling sea in which the old nations are being engulphed, and new and barbarian races are arriving to take their place. We can discover neither unity nor progress in the drama; all is tumult and darkness. Let us shut up the roll. But stay; before putting it away, let us search it again, and, it may be, we shall find footsteps in these great waters. The cloud begins to lift, and order to appear. The ferment in the minds of men gives birth to a great system, as yet without form or name. The materials of which this system, not yet constituted, is composed, are drawn from a great variety of sources. Ancient Paganism, Druidic and Scandinavian superstition, Jewish Rabbinism, and Oriental philosophy, all contribute their share to it. A corrupt “Church” arranges, combines and concatenates these heterogeneous elements, and stamping them with its own impress, presents it to the world as Christianity.

The new worship must have celebrants. A human agency gathers round it, and that agency comes gradually to be summed up and embodied in one great personality. Let us mark this Colossus. His visage grows as the centuries revolve, and comes at last to look forth upon us, distinct and stout and terrible; but it is not new. We have seen it before. It is the same that looked forth upon us from the prophecies of Daniel and John. It is the same that shows itself incarnated in the Popes of the Middle Ages. Let us mark how complete and perfect an incarnation we have of it in Innocent III., in whom the popedom came to its full growth, and showed itself to the world in all it superhuman magnificence and grandeur. During the terrible pontificate of this man all that prophecy had spoken of the Antichrist was verified in fullest measure. Its predicted height of arrogance, of blasphemy and of domination was reached, While this mighty Pope stood over it, Christendom was still with fear. The stricken kings and nations cowered beneath him. He was God’s vicegerent, and claimed to be obeyed with the instant and profound submission which is due to the Eternal King. He promulgated the dogma of transubstantiation; he initiated the ‘holy” office of the inquisition; he launched the crusades against heresy and heretics, and dealt his thunder bolts of interdict and excommunication all round Christendom, and beyond it, crushing everyone and everything that dared to lift up the heel against his pontifical will. If this is not the Antichrist, then Antichrist we never can see; for what more can we have of any prophecy than a complete and perfect fulfilment? And this is a complete and perfect fulfilment of the prophecy of the power and pride of Antichrist.

The “power” of the “Man of Sin” will come again before us farther on; meanwhile we pass to another point in the parallelism.

This was to be a notable characteristic of the Antichrist, “whose coming,” says the apostle (2 Thess. ii. 9). “is with signs and lying wonders.” These words were fitted to turn the eyes of the early Christians back upon the prophecy of Daniel, in which it had been foretold of the Antichrist that he should “practise and prosper.”( * Dan. Viii. 12.) The phrase is suggestive of imposing by delusive arts upon the senses and understandings of men, and so gaining an ascendency over them. Of a like meaning is the phrase which occurs farther on (v. 25) in the same chapter, “he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand.” Still clearer on this point are the prophecies of John, not yet given, it is true, but which were to close the volume of inspiration, and be the guide of Christians in the next age, in their outlook for the Antichrist. The claim to work miracles is here set down as one of his notable marks.

“And he doeth great wonders,” says John, speaking of the second beast or ecclesiastical organisation of the Antichrist, “so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And he deceiveth them that dwell in the earth, by the means of those miracles which he hath power to do.”( Rev. xiii. 18, 14.) This is in full agreement with Paul, who had already warned the primitive church that Antichrist would make his appearance as a miracle-worker.

Let us reflect how imperative it was on the Antichrist that he should claim the power of working miracles. Had he come as an open enemy, he would have had no need to pretend to such power; but, coming as the substitute and vicar of Christ, he must necessarily in this as in other points, imitate him whose substitute and vicar he professed to be.

The coming of Christ was signalised by mighty signs and wonders. The glory of miracle illustrated every step of His progress through the towns and villages of Galilee and Judea. The ancient prophets had performed miracles, but in none of them was seen the same affluence of miraculous power as in Christ. As light is in the stars, so was power in the prophets, but as light is in the sun, so was power in Christ. As He passed through the crowds of stricken men virtue flowed out of Him, and to “touch the hem of His garment, ” or hear the accents of His voice, was to be healed. Sight was given to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength was infused into the withered limb, reason resumed its office in the brain of the maniac, and the pulse in which fever throbbed and burned became calm and cool at His word or at His touch. Even the grave owned His power, and opened its doors in obedience to His summons. And gave back its tenant to the world of the living. Such were the “signs and wonders” that heralded the advent and attested the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Papacy, as the Vice-Christ, has, in like manner, sought to announce its advent, and certify its mission by the performance of “signs and wonders.” Scarce is there a miracle recorded of the Son of God which the Church of Rome does not profess to have wrought. She pretends to have opened blind eyes, to have unstopped deaf ears, to have cured fevers, agues, palsies, madness, to have cast out devils, to have driven away pestilence, stayed the ravages of blight, and done things which it were too tedious to mention. Extending still farther the sphere of her miraculous operation, she has entered the realms of the grave and shown that there too she wields power by pretending to give life to the dead. Certain of her “saints” have possessed the “gift of miracles” in an eminent degree, and their “lives” are one long record of prodigy and wonder. They have dried up rivers, walked upon the waves of the sea, and stilled tempests. Angels have descended to minister to them, and preternatural stars have shone out to lead them in the dark. In short, the Church of Rome claims to have wielded the same unbounded power over both the visible and the invisible world which Christ did, and to have imitated Him in all things, save the meekness of His spirit, the purity of His doctrine, and the holiness of His life.

Popery professes, too, to work spiritual wonders -those divine and saving changes on the heart and soul of man which Christianity accomplishes, and which it is the prerogative of Christianity alone to accomplish. The Church of Rome professes in baptism to regenerate the soul, and change the eternal destinies of the baptised. By anointing with oil, she fills men with the Holy Ghost; by her sacraments she replenishes them with grace; by ordination she bridges over eighteen centuries and joins the priest to Peter. Five words spoken at the altar change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Two words uttered in the confessional effect the pardon of the “penitent,” and the viaticum gives assurance to the man, setting out on his last journey, that he shall find the gates of Paradise open to give him entrance among the blessed. These are mighty wonders. It is thus that the false Christ has carried on the war against the true Christ.

But a single term is thrown in which effectually breaks the spell, and dissolves the power of these wonders over all who are not willfully subject to their illusion. The “mystery of iniquity” was to come with “lying wonders;” a most essential difference, which it becomes all to note who have a mind not to be deceived to their eternal loss.

The miracles of Christ were done in the light of day, in the presence of thousands who could sift them and subject them to infallible tests, and, who, having done so were forced to the conclusion that either the miracle was true, or their senses were false. Of those who saw them done not a few were the bitter enemies of the person who wrought them, and would have been glad to find that they were cheats, and not slow to have proclaimed the imposture to the world; and yet these miracles remained uncontradicted. No one in all the nation of the Jews ventured to deny the truth of any one miracle of Jesus. The farthest that malevolence and slander deemed it prudent to go was to insinuate that the miracle had been wrought by Satanic power. The reply to the accusation given on the spot, and at the time, was as conclusive as it was dignified, and it has lost none of its force even yet: “Can Satan cast out Satan?”

But let us mark how different it is with the other class of miracles, and how lacking they are in that indubitable evidence that attested the mission of the Son of God. There is not one of them that could maintain its claim as a veritable fact before a tribunal of unbiased and enlightened judges. Some of these miracles were evidently cheats on those in whose presence they were wrought. Of late many startling discoveries have been made of the machinery by which these “miracles” were done. Many of these wonders were not published to the world till some hundreds of years after they were said to have been wrought. Their workers would seem to have been unambitious of living fame, seeing they hid their light under a bushel. And some of these miracles are so childish that it is an insult to our understandings to ask us to believe that God ever interposed His power to work such deeds. Prophecy gave them the right name before they were done. They are lying wonders.

The Spiritual performances of the Church of Rome are emphatically “lying wonders.” Baptismal regeneration is a lying wonder, sacramental grace is a lying wonder, priestly power is a lying wonder, the absolution of the Confessional is a lying wonder, transubstantiation is the biggest wonder and the greatest lie of all, and extreme unction is a last and fatal lie. There is no reality behind any of these things, and they are the more to be deplored that they have immediate reference to the eternal world, and that millions take their departure to the world fully confiding in these lies for salvation.

Let us mark the parallelism. It is at once a parallel and a contrast. The Gospel came amid the effulgence of real miracles which were wrought by God, and were a Divine attestation to the Messiahship of His Son. Popery came amid the murky and delusive glare of false miracles, which were wrought by Satan, and which were his sign manual, bearing witness to all that the system in behalf of which they were done was the “Mystery of Iniquity.”

There is another class of wonders that the Papacy professes to do, and which are of a nature not quite so innocent and harmless as those enumerated above. Though equally false, they owe the terror they inspired and the suffering they inflicted to the belief that they were true and real. Speaking of the two-horned lamb like beast of the earth, John says, “And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down out of heaven upon the earth in the sight of men.”( Apoc. xiii. 13.

The prophecy found a striking fulfilment in the papal interdicts and excommunications so frequent in the Middle Ages, and not unknown in even our own day. These ebullitions of pontifical vengeance, it was pretended, were fire out of heaven: the fire of the wrath of God which the Pope had power to evoke, therewith to burn up his enemies. The blinded nations believed that in the voice of the Pope they heard the voice of God, and that the fulminations of the Vatican were the thunderings and lightnings of Divine wrath. A papal excommunication was more dreadful than the invasion of thousands of armed men. When launched against a kingdom what dismay, misery, and wailing overspread it. The whole course of life was instantly stopped. The lights were extinguished at the altar; the church doors were closed; the bells would not be tolled; marriages were celebrated in the graveyard; and the dead were buried in ditches. Men dared not make merry, for a sense of doom weighed upon their spirits. These terrible edicts pursued men into the other world, and souls arriving from the unhappy realm overhung by the papal curse found the gates of paradise shut, and had to wander forlorn till it should please the divinity of the Seven hills to lift off his sentence. Thus did the Papacy cause “fire” to come down from God out of heaven, and men, believing it to be real fire, were scorched by it. In the days of King John England lay under interdict for more than six years.

To the mightiest sovereign even the papal excommunication was a dreadful affair. He shook and trembled on his throne for his army could give him no protection; it was well, indeed, if both soldiers and subjects did not unite in carrying out the papal behest by driving him from his kingdom, if some fanatic monk, by the more quick despatch of the dagger, did not save them the trouble. European history furnishes a list of more than sixty-four emperors and kings deposed by the Popes. In the number is Henry II. of England, deposed by Alexander III.; King John, by Innocent III.; Richard and Edward, by Boniface IX., Henry VIII., by Clement VII., and again by Paul III.; Elizabeth, by Pius V. Even King Robert the Bruce had this terrible curse launched against him, but thanks to the Culdee element still strong in Scotland, King Robert and his subjects held the Pope’s fulmination but a brutum fulmen, and so it did not harm them. Almost all the bulls against crowned heads have contained clauses stripping them of their territories, and empowering their neighbour kings to invade and seize them; and influenced partly by a desire to serve the Pope, and partly by the greed of what was not their own, they have not been slow to act on the papal permission.

As a specimen of the lofty style of these fulminations -the mouth speaking great things -we give the Bull of Excommunication issued by Sixtus V. (1585) against the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde, whom he calls the “two sons of wrath.” It runs thus: -“The authority given to St. Peter and his successors by the immense power of the eternal King excels all the power of earthly princes: it passes uncontrolled sentence upon them all, and if it find any of them resisting the ordinance of God, it takes a more severe vengeance upon them, casting them down from their throne, however powerful they may be, and tumbling them to the lowest parts of the earth, as the ministers of aspiring Lucifer. We deprive them and their posterity of their dominions for ever. By the authority of these presents we absolve and free all persons from their oath of allegiance, and from all duty whatever, relating to dominion, fealty, and obedience, and we charge and forbid them all from presuming to obey them, or any of their admonitions, laws, or commands.”

The Romanists themselves have chosen the very figure of the Apocalypse, “fire from heaven,” to designate the Papal excommunications and anathemas. Thus Gregory VII. spoke of the Emperor Henry IV. when excommunicated as “struck with thunder.” (Afflatum fulmino -Danburg, 587. ) To the same effect is the account of the excommunication of the Emperor Frederick by Pope Innocent at the first Council of Lyons. “These words of excommunication, uttered in the midst of the Council, struck the hearers with terror as might the flashing thunderbolts. When with candles lighted and flung down, the Lord Pope and his assistant prelates flashed their lightning-fire terribly against the Emperor Frederick, now no longer to be called emperor, his procurators and friends burst into a bitter wailing and struck the thigh or breast on that day of wrath, of calamity, and of woe!( & Harduin, vii. 401.)

It was in the days of Gregory VII. that the papal heavens began thus to thunder and lighten. The first burst of the tempest continued for nearly two hundred years, its fury falling mainly on rebellious kings. When the kings were subdued the storm was next directed against heresy and heretics. Since the days of Innocent III. till our own revolution of 1688, there were only brief periods of silence in the pontifical firmament. For five centuries these thunders rolled almost without intermission or pause. Peal followed peal in rapid succession. The crusades of the Albigenses and Waldenses; the Hussite campaigns in Bohemia; the wars of Charles V. in Germany; the wars of the League in France; the butcheries of Alva in the Low Countries; the thirty years’ war in the German Fatherland; the St Bartholomew in France, and the equally bloody massacre of Irish Protestants in 1641; -these are only a few of the more notable thunder-bursts which have marked the course of that long tempest of pontifical wrath which began in the days of Hildebrand in the eleventh century, and continued its terrible reverberations till 1688.

In Rome’s Great Book of Curses one of the most notable is the “Bullum Coenae Domini.” It is truly an utterance from the “mouth speaking great things.” Framed since the Reformation, it curses all the various sections of the protestant Church, giving special prominence to Calvinists and Zuinglians. Its scope is wide indeed. The world and its inhabitants, so far as they were known to the framers of this bull, are compendiously cursed in it. Its thunders are heard re-echoing far beyond the limits if Christendom, and its lightnings are seen to strike the pirates of barbarous seas, as well as the Calvinists of Great Britain.

This bull was wont to be promulgated annually by the Pope in person, attended by a magnificent array of cardinals and priests. The ceremony took place in Maunday Thursday, -the Thursday before Easter, and was accompanied by numerous solemnities, fitted to strike the spectators with awe. It was read from the lofty vestibule of the Church of the Lateran, amid the firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, the blaring of trumpets, and the blazing of torches. When the curses of the bull had been thundered forth, the torches were extinguished and flung into the great piazza beneath, to signify the outer darkness into which all heretics shall finally be hurled. Pope Ganganelli in 1770 forbade the public reading of the bull Coenae Domini, but the practice was soon revived, and is still continued at Rome, though not in the same public fashion. But the discontinuance of its open promulgation matters nothing; it is unrepealed; all heretics are, ipso facto, under its ban, and the establishment of the papal Hierarchy gives it to all Romanists the force of law in the united Kingdom.

The papal wrath can at pleasure extend or contract is sphere. Nothing is so lofty as to be beyond its reach, and nothing is so minute as to be beneath it. It can vent itself in a tempest that covers a whole kingdom, and it can concentrate itself on a single individual.

If it shall be said that the “mouth” that spoke these “great things” in the past would not give utterance to them now, nor will ever utter such things in time to come; in other words, that the Roman Church and her Popes have renounced all these lofty claims, and no longer challenge supremacy over kings and princes, we have to remind those who make this affirmation that the late Pope, Pius IX., in a great state document, to which the seal of infallibility has since been twice appended, gives this assertion the most distinct and explicit contradiction. In the twenty-third Article of the Syllabus, Pius IX. condemns the proposition that the Roman Pontiffs and oecumenical councils have at any time “exceeded the limits of their power , or usurped the rights of princes.” This is a justification ex cathedra of the loftiest claims that ever emanated from the Papal Chair, and the most tyrannical usurpations ever made by Popes on the prerogatives of princes and the liberties of nations. With the history of the Popes before him, he solemnly declares that no one of them ever exceeded the bounds of his power: or as Dr G. F. von Schulte, Professor of Canon Law at Prague, summing up the teaching of Canon Law on this point, puts it, “The limits if the papal Almightiness on earth consist solely in their own will.” We may say with Shakespeare –

“Here’s a large mouth indeed That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas.”

These characteristics belong to the whole series of symbolic representations of the apostate power in Scripture, and thus they establish a perfect identity betwixt the “little horn” of Daniel, the “two-horned, lamb-like beast” of the Apocalypse, the “Man of Sin” of Paul, and the Antichrist of John.

We now approach the point where the parallelism culminates. Clear and distinct, like an Alpine peak, rises the CLIMAX in each case! The one stands clothed in the pure spiritual glory of heaven, the other arrays itself in the false splendours of earth. How close, apparently, are these two culminations, and yet how immeasurable the distance betwixt them!

Not all at once do we ascend these lofty summits. We must permit the apostle to lead us up by the several successive stages which conduct to them; in this way only can we obtain a full view of the parallelism. And be in a condition to see how real and grand it is.

The apostle begins at the lowest stage of the vast ascent. “And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way; and them shall that wicked be revealed.”( * 2 Thess. ii. 6,7,8.) The time for the revelation or apocalypse of Antichrist -for Antichrist was to have his apocalypse even as Christ had His -was not yet come. The “mystery of iniquity” was already working -working in the region of principles and influences, and working in the region of seducing spirits; but meanwhile, there existed a great “let,” or obstruction to his open revelation. Paul hints very plainly that the Thessalonian Christians knew what that obstruction was, and therefore he did not name it. He had visited them sometime before, and talked freely with them about the coming apostacy, and had mentioned the “let” which must first be removed before the apostacy could be free to develop itself. That obstruction was the Roman empire. When present, talking freely with them on the subject, Paul could say so in express terms; but it might be dangerous to name the Roman empire in an epistle to be read openly, and go the round of the churches. That might draw down on the Christians the displeasure of the Roman authorities. The apostle knew the hindrance in Antichrist’s path, having learned it, doubtless, by the study of Daniel, and the revelation of the spirit. It was known, moreover, to the early fathers, who all turned their eyes to Rome as the fated spot where the “lawless one” was first to show himself; but they spoke of him with bated breath, and in circumlocutionary phrase.

While the Roman Empire stood it was impossible that Antichrist should appear. Caesar was Pontifex Maximus; and while he held possession, there could not be two High Priests occupying the same capital, sharing the same throne, and sacrificing at the same altars. The first and lesser Pontifex Maximus must be removed before the second and greater could stand up. This was to happen in no long time. God would remove the “let,” by bringing the Gothic nations into Italy, overturning the empire, and making vacant the throne of Caesar. Then Antichrist would climb up to the empty seat. “God chased the Caesars from Rome,” says De Maistre, “that he might give it to the Popes.”

Let us mark next that it had been decreed of both Christ and Antichrist, that they should occupy thrones -no meaner seat than a royal one must either of them have. Christ was to sit on the throne of David, and Antichrist was to sit on the throne of Caesar. In pursuance thereof a train of providences preceded the advent of each, the final end of which was to make vacant the throne they were respectively to occupy. Three revolutions in the royal line of Judah were to make way for Christ, and four consecutive revolutions in the line of the world-power were to open the way for the coming of Antichrist. Jacob, on his deathbed, had given his posterity a sign of the instant appearance of the Messiah. That sign was a final break-down in the royal line: -“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.” (Gen. xlix.10.)When the time drew nigh Ezekiel sounded the alarm more definitively; giving warning that the throne of Judah should fall once, and a second and a third time, and then there would stand up a King whose “dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away.” Thus saith the Lord God, “Remove the diadem and take off the crown: I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, till He come whose right it is, and I will give it unto Him.”( & Ezekiel xxi. 26, 27.) The throne of Judah was overturned a first time by the separation of the Ten Tribes from the house of David. It was overturned a second time by the deportation of the nation to Babylon. It was overturned a third and last time in the subjugation of Judea by the Romans, who stript the descendants of David of the shadowy dominion they had wielded down to this time. Then Christ came, of whom the angel who announced His birth spoke thus: -“The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David; and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of His Kingdom there shall be no end.”( Luke i. 32,33.)

In Antichrist’s counterfeit church and kingdom the parallelism on this point is striking indeed. The “man of sin” was, when fully developed, to occupy the throne of this world. This magnificent post had been offered by the Tempter to the true Christ: “All the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them will I give thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.” The offer was promptly declined. The Tempter next turned him to the false Christ, “I will convert thy chair into a throne,” said he, to the bishop of Rome, “and thy pastoral staff into a royal sceptre, if thou wilt be my vassal.” The offer met no second refusal. The bargain was struck, and faithfully fulfilled on both sides. The stipulated worship was rendered, and the wages were fully paid. In witness we cite Innocent III. in the thirteenth century. Do we not hear him boasting that he had been set over the kingdoms to build and to pluck up at his pleasure? And how often do we find the same mighty claim in the mouth of his successors in the following centuries? Nay, even in our own day the echoes of the same proud boast are heard from the papal chair.

It took a thousand years to prepare the way of both, and seat each in his respective throne. The throne of David was emptied again and again, that it might be filled by the King of the eternal empire. The throne of the world-power was in like manner emptied again and again, that it might be filled by the king of whom it had been written, “he goeth into perdition.” The throne of the world-power was overturned a first time in the fall of Babylon; it was overturned a second time in the overthrow of the Medo-Persion Power. It was overturned a third time in the extinction of the Greek kingdom; and it was overturned a fourth and last time, when the Roman Empire fell before the Goths. There was no longer a Caesar at Rome. “He that letteth will let,” the apostle had said, “until he be taken out of the way.” He had now been taken out of the way, and the hour was come for “that Wicked” to be revealed.

Let us here mark, that both mysteries have the same culmination -an enthronization even. The “mystery of godliness,” beginning in the cradle, ends on the throne -the throne of heaven. The “mystery of iniquity,” beginning in the silent and hidden workings of early times, ends on the throne -the throne of earth.

It appears plain to us, though expositors have passed it over, that the two passages (1 Tim. 11. 16 and 2 Thess. ii. 3-12) -the one descriptive of the “mystery of godliness,” and the other descriptive of the “mystery of iniquity” -were intended by the apostle, to be, and are parallels clause by clause. Each clause in the one throws its light upon the corresponding clause in the other, and thus the depth and height of each mystery are evolved. A single glance at these two passages will suffice to show that it is by the same ascending gradations that we mount up to the climax of both mysteries. Let us look at each.

“And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” (1 Tim. iii. 16. ) It is thus the apostle, in a single verse, with masterly comprehensiveness, states the successive steps -the whole of that magnificent graduation, by which the mystery of godliness reached its mighty climax. “God was manifest in the flesh.” “Mary brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapt Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger.” There was the beginning of the mystery. This is the first step in the mighty ascent.

“Justified in the spirit.’ As when the Spirit descended upon Him in a visible form at His baptism; and again when He began His public ministry, with all its attendant miracles and wonders, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,” were the words with which, in the synagogue of Nazareth, He opened his first sermon, “for He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the meek.”

“Seen of angels.” As when they sang His natal hymn at Bethlehem, and when they ministered to Him in the wilderness, after His temptation, and again in His agony in the garden, when “there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening Him,” and on the morning of His resurrection, when two of them waited in His sepulchre to tell the women that He was risen.

“Preached unto the Gentiles.” “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” was His last charge to His apostles when about to ascend from the Mount of Olives. No sooner was the spirit given at Pentecost than his apostles and evangelists traveled all through the land of Israel, and passing beyond the bounds of Jewry, they preached the Gospel in the cities of Greece and Rome, and going on still farther toward the west, carried the tidings of the cross to the shores of Britain.

“Believed on in the world.” So rises the gradation, and so does the mystery of godliness advance to its culmination. The gods of paganism fall before the preaching of the “Crucified.” Mighty nations, both east and west, became obedient to the faith; the gospel made good its claim to be of heaven by the blessed fruits it everywhere brought forth; and Jesus was believed on as the true messiah and Saviour of the world.

“Received up into glory.” This is the final step; here the mystery culminates. We can now look along the entire line of its development, from the cradle in the stable to the eternal gates which are seen to lift themselves up that the King of Glory may enter, and sit down on the throne of universal and everlasting dominion, while seraph and seraphim and “every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them,” are heard saying, “Blessing and honour and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever.”( Apoc. V, 13.)

The “mystery of iniquity” passed through a precisely similar gradation, to issue in a climax which is an obvious and striking counterpart of that which we have just described. “The mystery of iniquity doth already work.” We here see it in its cradle. It was “justified” of Satan by the lying signs and wonders which he enabled its propagators to work. It was published unto the Gentiles by preaching friars and itinerant monks, who sought in all the deceivableness of unrighteousness to persuade men that the Pope was God’s vicar, and that the traditions of his Church were the true Gospel. It was believed on in the world by those whose names are not written in the Book of Life. And finally, it was received up into the heavens of ecclesiastical dominion and imperial glory. Its chief was now seen sitting in the temple of God; showing himself that he is God, while the kings and nations of the earth are beheld bowing before him, and ascribing to him dominion and power and glory. They worshipped the beast saying, “Who is like unto the beast?” “Power was given unto 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.”( Revel. xiii. 4-8.)

The Pope on the throne of thrones on earth is the counterfeit of Christ on the throne of thrones in heaven.

Mounted on the world’s highest seat, how was the Antichrist to demean himself? – With an arrogance never witnessed before. As regards kings, he was to hold himself their master, and as regards God, he was to deem himself His equal. “Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”( * 2 Thess. ii. 4. )

These words would appear to foreshadow a double usurpation on the part of Antichrist, the first, over all earthly rulers, and the second, over the great Ruler of heaven. The testimony of history is clear on both points. It shows that the ambition of the Pope has been twofold. He has vaulted over the throne of kings into the seat of God.

Who are they who are “called God,” whom Antichrist was to oppose, and over whom he was to exalt himself? We strongly incline to think that it is magistrates and kings who are meant. Righteous law is the expression of God’s will. Those who administer it are His deputies. On earth they fill the office, and bear the image of the Supreme Magistrate. Thus, in scripture, magistrates are called “gods.” “I have said ye are gods.” “God sitteth in the assembly of the mighty, He judgeth among the gods” (Ps. lxxxii. 1). “There be,” says the apostle (1 Cor. Viii. 5), “that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth.” And we are commanded to be subject to kings and all in authority, for conscience’ sake. In this light the clause foretells that Antichrist would usurp supremacy over all civil authority, and rule on earth; (This is the true exegesis of the passage. In the Greek it is, “all called theos, or that is sebasma,” which we may render thus, “all that is called divine, or that is venerable.) and truly the Papacy has fulfilled the prophecy to the letter. As a pretended divine and infallible Vice-gerency, it claims to hold, in its hands, the administration of all human affairs, temporal and spiritual, and to make all nations, magistrates, and kings accountable at its bar.

Let us here again mark the parallelism. This assumed Vice-gerency over all human affairs is another part of the false Christ’s imitation of the true Christ. Christ possesses this power in reality, therefore Antichrist must needs possess it in appearance. God the Father is the immediate Governor of the universe, but He carries on His government through God the Son. This power He has delegated to Christ as Head of the Church, and as a reward of His sufferings. “He raised Him from the dead,” says the apostle, “and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places; far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under His feet, and gave him to be Head over all things to the Church, which is his body.”( # Eph. i. 20-23)

These words expressly teach that the Father made Christ head of the Church, and so gave Him all spiritual power, and head of the world to the Church, and so subordinated to Him all temporal power. The passage, in fact, presents Him as seated on the throne of the universe, on His head the diadem of unlimited and everlasting dominion, in his hand the sceptre of a boundless empire; and at His bidding all the princedoms and powers of heaven, all the thrones, armies, and potentates of earth, in order to the effectual carrying out of the great ends of His mediatorial sovereignty.

The Popes were true to their assumed character as Vice-Christs in this point also. They claimed to be the world’s supreme magistrates. Cardinal Bellarmine affirms that every title which is in Scripture given to Christ appertains also to the Pope. Binding up in one colossal jurisdiction things temporal and spiritual, the Pope stretched his sceptre over all the seats of human judicature, and sat with his feet on the necks of kings, as well as of priests. He claimed it as his prerogative to judge all, but to be judged by none; to make laws, but to be subject to no law; thereby unconsciously vindicating his prophetic appellative”the lawless one.” He has had himself depicted holding in one hand the “keys” of spiritual authority, and in the other the sword of temporal power. He has taught that it was fit that all princes should kiss his feet, and has extorted from not a few this act of obedience. He has inculcated on monarchs that sound orthodoxy requires them to hold their kingdoms as fiefs of the papal chair; and to keep alive in them this pious frame of mind, he has imposed on them and on their subjects the tax of Peter’s Pence. If still he discerned in them the risings of pride, this meek vicar of Christ has plucked the sceptre from their hand, kicked their crown with his pontifical foot, and transferred their dominion to some more devout and jumble-minded neighbour. All this he has done “as set of God over the kingdoms and nations to plant and to pluck up-to build and to pull down -to make and to unmake kings.” “Is not the king of England my bondslave? (Pope Boniface VIII., to Philip, King of France) were words from the “great mouth.”

And the Popes have shown themselves on occasion as mighty in deeds as in words. Gregory VII. dethroned Henry IV. of Germany. Innocent III. Otho, and our King John. Paul III., Henry VIII. And Pius V. and Gregory XIII., passed sentence of deposition on Queen Elizabeth. Pius V., as “he alone who had been constituted prince over all nations and all kingdoms, to pull down, destroy, dissipate, disperse, plant, and build …pronounced the said Elizabeth, a heretic… and deprived her of the pretended right to the kingdom, as well as of every dominion, dignity and privilege what soever,” pronouncing the same anathema on all who dare obey her. If the annals of the Papacy at this hour are not illustrated by these solemn acts of pontifical justice, it is because the power, and not the right is lacking. The Roman Church has made it the solemn duty of all her members to destroy all Protestants when they are able to do so without danger to themselves. Bannes, a Dominican, determines “that Catholics in England and Saxony are excused from rising up against their Protestant princes with their subjects, because they commonly are not powerful enough, and the attempt in such circumstances would expose them to great danger.” (In. ii. 2; Thom. 9-12, art. ii.) Belarmine, one of their greatest authorities, is equally frank and explicit. He says, “If it were possible to root out the heretics, without doubt, they are to be destroyed root and branch; but if it cannot be done, because they are stronger that we, and there be danger that if they should oppose us that we should be worsted, then we are to be quiet.”( De Laicis, lib.iii. cap. 22.) The two latest Popes, Pius IX. and Leo. XIII. in their public manifestos, claim the same formidable power; but they prudently postpone the exercise of it till the arrival of a happier day to the Papacy.

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.”

If a son, then an heir. And what is the inheritance of which he is the heir? It is “perdition.” The kingdoms of the world and the glory of them first, perdition in the end. It was written of him before he arose “He goeth into perdition.” Better to have had the bitter first and the sweet after; but no; the day of his glory over and past, there comes the voice, “Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime had thy good things and Lazarus” (the church) “his evil things; now thou are tormented.” This inheritance is conveyed to the papacy in the same charter and made sure to it under the same seal as the “glory” that goes before it. The King of Heaven has made this decree and sealed it with His own signet, and the decree may no man change. As sure as the Papacy has had its glory so surely shall its doom come. Paul, before closing his prophecy, pauses, and in solemn and awful words foretells the night of horrors in which its career is to end. “That wicked – whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.” (2 Thess. ii. 8.)

There is here a dual destruction suspended above Antichrist -a slow wasting first, for, it may be, centuries, and a sudden and utter extinction in the end. This duality in the doom of Antichrist has been noted in prophecy ever since its beginning. It is emphasised by Daniel. Speaking of the ‘little horn” which had a mouth speaking great things, eyes like the eyes of a man, a look more stout than his fellows, and which made war with the saints, and was to have dominion over them, “until a time, times, and the dividing of time,” that is 1260 years, the prophet says. “The judgement shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end” (Daniel vii. 26. ) another proof, by the way, of identity betwixt the “little horn” of Daniel, and the Antichrist of John.

In the predicted doom of the Papacy there are thus two well-marked stages. There is, first, a gradual consumption; and there is, second, a sudden and terrible destruction.

The “consumption,” a slow and gradual process, is to be effected by the “spirit of His mouth,’ by which we understand the preaching of the Gospel. This consumption has been going on ever since the Bible was translated, and the Gospel began to be preached at the Reformation. Men have begun to see the errors of popery; its political props have been weakened, and in some instances struck from under it, and its hold generally on the nations of Christendom has been loosened; and thus the way has been prepared for the final stroke that will consummate its ruin. Great systems like the papacy, with their roots far down and spread wide around, cannot be plucked up while in their vigor without dislocating human society. They must be left to grow ripe and become rotten, and then the final stroke may be dealt them with safety to the church and the world.

When that hour shall have come then will the second part of the doom of the Papacy overtake it. The Lord shall “destroy” it “with the brightness of His coning.” The form of the judgment is left vague, but enough is said to warrant us to conclude that it will be swift and final -it will come with lightning flash, and its holy vengeance will be so manifest that, to use the figure in the prophecy, it will irradiate both heaven and earth with a moral splendour. Whether Christ shall then come as He came at the period of the flood, and as He came at the burning of Sodom, and again at the destruction of Jerusalem, when, Himself remaining on the throne of heaven, He girded the ministers of His wrath, and sent them down to earth to execute his vengeance on the ungodly; or whether, leaving His seat in glory He shall in very person descend and confront his Vicar, whether He shall return to close the Apocalypse in the divine magnificence in which He appeared to John in Patmos, when He came to open it, it is not necessary that we should here decide. Enough, that this “day of wrath” will be unspeakably great, and will rank as one of the greatest days of vengeance that have been on the earth since the foundation of the world. Paul despatches it in a single sentence; John expands it into a whole chapter. And in what other chapter of the bible or of human history is there such another spectacle of judgment -such another picture of blended horrors, of awestruck consternation, of loud and bitter wailings, and cries of woe as in the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse? “The kings of the earth shall bewail her and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning; standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, alas! Alas! That great city, for in one hour is she made desolate.” But this dark scene has one relieving feature. It is a scene that will not need to be repeated, for it will close earth’s evil days, and begin the hallelujahs of the nations. “And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.” (Rev. xviii. 9-19, 21.)

Let the reader remember that the portraiture he has been studying is not ours, but Paul’s. And, when he lifts his eyes from the picture, let him cast them around and try if he can discover the original of this likeness. The features are so vividly depicted, so sharply cut, that surely there can be no difficulty in detecting him, whose image they present. Paul did not paint at random. His is no vague sketch which may fit loosely any or most of the systems of error which have arisen in the course of the ages. When we read his prophecy, we have the overwhelming impression that Paul has in his eye some one grand, sharply-featured, long-lived, daringly wicked, and fearfully blasphemous confederacy, which, under the mask of friendliness, was to wage undying war against the Gospel. We are blind, indeed, if we cannot find the original of Paul’s portraiture. Here is one who has erected his throne in the Christian temple; who has usurped all the titles and functions of Christ; who has professed to mediate between God and man; to hold the keys of heaven and hell; to do great wonders, and make fire come down from heaven; who has changed laws, spoken “great words, ‘ forbidden to marry, commanded to abstain from meats, has clothed his priests in purple and scarlet and fine linen, decked with gold and precious stones; one who has made war with the saints, and been drunk with the blood of martyrs; who has put his foot on the neck of kings; nay, has clothed himself with the robe of the Eternal King; infallibility even; in fine, one who has said: I am Vice-Christ; I am vice- God. We go up to this man, and we say to him, “Thou art the Antichrist.” Let who will cringe and bow before thee; let who will patch anew thy vizor which begins to wax thread-bare and to permit the horrid features that lurk beneath it to shine through; let who will palliate thy crimes, and deny that ever thou didst persecute, and though simulating the meekness and innocence of the lamb, art a ravening wolf. Let who will befriend thee in the arrogant and blasphemous claims thou art still putting forth, we say of thee, “Thou art he of whom Paul in old time, writing by the Holy Ghost, spoke. Hear what he called thee! He named thee, ‘The Man of Sin,’ and ‘Son of Perdition.'”

Ah! You re-adjust your mask; and double the folds of your mantle; and looking down on the kings of earth once more at your feet, you say, “Am not I God?” We know thee who thou art. Thou art the fallen apostle! The minister of Lucifer! Thou camest from the abyss, and to the abyss shalt thou return!

We do not hesitate to say, that we have nearly as full and convincing evidence that the Roman Papacy is the Antichrist, as we have that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. In conclusion, let us note that Christianity stands alone, in having its Antichrist or counterfeit. Mohammedanism has no such counterfeit. Buddhism has no such counterfeit. There is not power or truth enough in these systems to call into existence a great opposing counterfeit system. Without the sun, there can be no shadows. The sun of Christianity has been accompanied all down the ages by this shadow. So far Antichrist does homage to the divinity of the Gospel. Unless Christ had gone before, Antichrist could not have come after.

And let the reader seriously ponder that this is the divine testimony regarding popery. As portrayed by a divinely-guided hand whose are its lineaments -its spirit and principles? They are those of Satan, the arch-enemy of God and His Church. This monstrous shape is the “wicked one.” Let us think what a formidable antagonist we have in this system. We wrestle not against flesh and blood -against the power and cunning of man; we have to encounter the power of hell -the cunning of the devil. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God.” (Eph. vi. 12-17.)

This article is from pages 533 – 537 of a book scanned and sent to me in PDF format by my good friend, Dr. John Gideon Hartnett, a professor at the University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia. It proves all modern translations of the New Testament have errors and omissions because they are not based on the Textus Receptus Greek manuscript. It also shows that the statement in the New International Version (NIV), about Mark 16:9-20 which says, “The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20” is false!

There may be some errors in article for it was scanned from a book and converted to text with optical character recognition software (ORC). Any typos brought to my attention will be corrected as soon as I get word of them.

THE MUTILATION OF MARK 16:9-20
FLOYD NOLEN JONES, Th.D., Ph.D.

Most modern Bible versions have a footnote to the effect that “these verses are not in the oldest, best, most reliable Greek manuscripts”. In laymen’s terms this means that Mark 16:9-20 are not in the 4th century Greek manuscripts, Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus Aleph which were derived from Origen’s (AD 185-254) edited New Testament (a 12th century minuscule also omits the verses. These verses are the Great Commission spoken by our Lord as recorded by Mark. It is an apostolic commission delegating great power to the body of Christ that it may continue the ministry of the Lord Jesus.

Of the approximately 3,119 Greek manuscripts of the NT extant today, none is complete. The segment of text bearing Mark 16 has been lost from many, but over 1,800 contain the section and verses 9-20 are present in all but the 3 cited above. The footnote is thus unveiled and laid bare as dishonest and deliberately misleading in intimating that these verses are not the Word of God. The external evidence is massive. Not only is the Greek manuscript attestation ratio over 600 to 1 in support of the verses (1,800 to 3 =99.99%) – all but one of the approximately 8,000 extant Latin mss, all but one of the approximately 1,000 Syriac versions as well as all the over 2,000 known Greek Lectionaries contain the verses. Mark 16:9-20 were cited by Church “Fathers” who lived 150 years or more before Vaticanus B or Sinaiticus Aleph were written: Papias (c.100), Justin Martyr (c.150), Irenaeus (c.180), Tertullian (c.195), and Hippolytus (c.200; see: John Burgon, The Revision Revised, London: John Murray Pub, 1883, pp.422-423).

Vaticanus B is an “uncial” manuscript. This means that all the letters are block capitalized; there are no spaces between the words, and there are no vowels. It is a codex (a book, not a scroll) of 759 leaves (10? by 10? inches) with three columns per page, each of which ranges from 40 to 44 lines per column. There are 16 to 18 letters on each line.

Vaticanus B adds to the Bible as it includes the Old Testament Apocrypha. Yet God said don’t add. It contains the Epistle of Barnabas (part of the Apocalyptic books of New Testament times) which teaches that water baptism saves the soul, again adding to the Word of God. However, the Word of God has also been deleted as Vaticanus B does not include Genesis 1:1-46:28, Psalms 106-138, Matthew 16:2-3, Romans 16:24. The Lord also said not to subtract. It also lacks Paul’s Pastoral Epistles (1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus and Philemon). In addition, the Book of Revelation as well as Hebrews 9:15-13:25 are missing. The latter teaches that the once for all sacrifice of Jesus ended the sacraments forever. There is also a conspicuous blank space where Mark 16:9-20 should be.

Erasmus was well aware of Vaticanus B and its variant readings in 1515 AD at which time he was preparing the New Testament Greek text. Because they read so differently from the vast majority of the approximately 200 mss he had already examined, Erasmus considered such readings spurious. For example, Vaticanus B leaves out “Mystery Babylon the Great”, “the seven heads that are the seven mountains upon which the harlot (the apostate religious system that began at Babel of which the Roman church is a part) sits”, and leaves out “the woman which is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth” which has seven mountains. All of this may be found in Revelation 17.

Mark 16 of the Vatican MSS has 42 lines in its first column and has only five letters in the 31st line of the second column. Thus there is a blank space left at the end of verse 8 separating Mark from the Gospel of Luke. That it is the only blank column in the entire 759 leaf MSS should alert us that something is very wrong here.

Mark 16:9-20 contains 971 Greek letters. Were 18 letters placed on each line in the void, 967 letters would be placed within it; hence, a scribe need only work in 4 letters over the last 519 (?? )lines. As the lines do not all equally end at the same place on their right margin, this would have been an easy task for any scribe. He certainly would not have placed a few scant letters on a single line in the following column to end Mark, leave the other 41 lines blank and then begin Luke at the top of the next column (a new book was always begun at the top of a column). Vaticanus written on very expensive vellum made from antelope hide; thus, great effort would have been taken to avoid such waste.

As the void would faithfully accommodate verses 9-20, the scribe who prepared Vaticanus B obviously knew of both the existence of these verses as well as their precise content. The older MSS from which Codex B was copied must have infallibly contained the 12 verses. For whatever reason, the scribe was instructed to leave them out; he obeyed but left a blank in memorial. Never was silence more eloquent! By leaving a space for the omitted verses, Vaticanus B brings to our attention a witness more ancient than itself – the earlier scribe! (see: John W. Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark, Oxford and London: James ParkeR & Co. Pub, 1871, p. 165)

Also an uncial, Codex Sinaiticus Aleph, (the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet) has 346 leaves or 694 pages each measuring 13 by 15 inches. Made from the finest antelope hides, each page. has four columns with 48 lines per column, and there are 12 to 14 letters to a line. The first portion of Sinaiticus was discovered in 1844 by Constantine von Tischendorf in the burn pile at the monastery of St. Catharine at the foot of Mount Sinai at which time he procured but 43 leaves of a Greek Old Testament (i.e., a Septuagint. That which is now known as Sinaiticus Aleph II is the codex he brought from Mt. Sinai in 1859.

It is always stated that Aleph is a “complete” Greek New Testament, but it is not. It adds, for example, the Shepherd of Hermas and Barnabas to the NT. It omits John 5:4,8:1-11; Mat. 16:2-3; Rom. 16:24; Mark 16:9-20; 1 John 5:7; Acts 8:37 and about a dozen other verses.

The most significant fact regarding these fourth-century MSS is that in both Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus Aleph, John 1:18 reads that Jesus was the only begotten “God” instead of the only begotten “Son”. That is the original Arian heresy! The most widely used Greek text in Bible colleges and seminaries today is Eberhard Nestle’s Greek text. Nestle likewise reads… only begotten “God” which means that God had a little God named Jesus who is thus a lesser God than the Father. This means that at first there was big God and He created a little god. Thus, Jesus comes out to be a created being, a God with a little “g”, but at the incarnation a god was not begotten. Our Lord already was and always had been God. At the incarnation God begat a son who, in so far His deity is concerned, is eternal (Micah 5:2). This reading renders these MSS as untrustworthy and depraved! Yet these are the two manuscripts most venerated by text critics over the past century.

These critics have ignored the text in nearly all the extant Greek manuscripts and have taken about 90% of all the words for their so called “restored” New Testament from Vaticanus B. About 7% of the remaining 10% comes from Sinaiticus Aleph. What makes this all the more confounding is that these two uncials have over 3,000 significant differences between themselves in the four Gospels alone! That B and Aleph have come to so dominate the discipline of Textual Criticism is all the more bewildering when we consider that no less than Theodore Cressy Skeat (1907-2003), formerly of the British Museum and coauthor of Scribes and Correctors of Codex Sinaiticus, London, Trustees of the British Museum Pub, 1938) believed that codex Vaticanus was a reject among the 50 copies that Eusebius prepared for the major churches throughout the Empire at the behest of Emperor Constantine (Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, 3rd ed, Oxford Uni. press, 1992, pp. 47-48)

The resulting corrupt Greek text has replaced the traditional Textus Receptus Greek New Testament which the believing Church has always accepted as the inerrant God inspired word. Moreover, its readings have recently been verified as going back at least as far as AD 66. Indeed, until 1904 the Greek Church had guaranteed the Byzantine text of the Textus Receptus, but even it finally succumbed to the continual onslaught from so called modern scholarship. Although they till hold fast to the readings found only in the Byzantine manuscripts, the Greek Church has departed from its centuries held declaration that the Textus Receptus reflected precisely the NT it had hand copied all the way back to the time of the Apostles and has instead adopted a “majority Byzantine text” mindset. The result is, that even though nearly all are of a very minor nature, the 1904 (as well as their 1960 upgrade) text departs from the Textus Receptus almost 2,000 limes (their estimation).

Sinaiticus is not a bound codex. Thus, any given folio (a sheet of paper folded in half to form four pages) can easily be pulled free and later replaced. Tischendorf himself noted that the folio containing Mark 14:54 to 16:8 and Luke 1:1 to 1:56 had not been written by the scribe which he designated as “A”. He said that Sinaiticus exhibited a different handwriting and ink on this leaf. Tischendorf goes on to add that scribe A wrote all of the New Testament in Aleph except six leaves plus part of a seventh) and that these six (which included Mark 16) were written by A’s colleague, scribe D. He stated that D wrote part of the Old Testament and also acted as diorthota or corrector of the New Testament. Tischendorf also identified Scribe D as the man who years earlier had penned Vaticannus B and left out Mark 16:9-20 resulting in the third column being left blank! Dr. FHA. Scrivener, as well Hort, likewise concluded that D was the scribe of Vaticanus (Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 4th ed, Edward Miller cd, London: George Bell and Sons Pub, 1894, Vol. 2, p. 337, fn. 1).

But there is more. Tischendorf further observed that there is a change in spacing and size of the individual letters. This was done by scribe D in an attempt to place some words in the void left by his removal of verses 9-20 that scribe A had originally placed in the codex. This is seen in that the first three columns on page 228 have 14 Greek letters per line; however, the letters in the fourth column are somewhat wider such that each line has only 12 letters. Coming to page 229 of the folio, we find that the first column has but 11.6 letters to the line, the second column has only three and one third lines with a letter spacing of 10.7. Having accomplished his goal of placing some words in the heretofore blank second column, the situation returns to normal and third column, which begins with Luke 1:1, has 14.1 letters per line and the fourth column 13.9.

Taken together, these circumstances undeniably testify that the sheet is a forgery. For whatever reason, scribe D, who years before had left the blank column in Vaticanus B, simply slipped the folio out that scribe A originally prepared, then rewrote and replaced it. He was obviously determined not to leave another column blank; a circumstance which for years he undoubtedly had to explain to various associates and authorities many times over. Thus, the blank column in B and Aleph are the work of a single scribe and thereby does not constitute the voice of two witnesses against the inclusion of Mark 16:9-20. The omission (or disappearance) is due to only one and the same person – the scribe who wrote B and then revised Aleph, or perhaps to an editor whose directions he acted. Furthermore, we have seen that the blank space Scribe D left in the Vaticanus B proves that he knew of the passage. As he is the copyist of that folio in Aleph, rather than being witnesses against the last twelve verses of Mark 16, both B and Aleph must be seen as actually bearing testimony to their existence in antiquity (see: John Burgon, The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels Vindicated and Established, Edward Miller ed, London: George Bell and Sons, 1896, pp. 298-301).

As to how and why verses 9-20 of Mark 16 came to be omitted in B and Aleph, we do not know with certainty – we were not there. Still, as already shown, we do know that the passage as well as its precise content was well known when these highly vaunted codices were prepared. However, a likely, logical explanation which is borne out by ecclesiastical usage does exist.

It is a historical fact that, at least as early as the 4th century, lessons from the NT were publicly read in the assemblies according to a definite scheme. Moreover, there is no sign of Mark 16:9-20 being omitted until the 4th century AD. Cyril at Jerusalem, Chrysostom at Constantinople and Antioch, and Augustine in North Africa all expressly bear witness that, at least by their time, a Lectionary was fully established in the churches throughout Christendom. The lections of portions of Scripture that were read aloud in public church services, very much like the responsive readings that are given in many of today’s assemblies (see: Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark, op. cit, pp. 287-320.)

Just when the Lectionary first took the form of a separate book is not known, but before the Church started producing Lectionaries, the start and end of the lections were indicated by inserting the Greek word αρχη (beginning) and το τελο (the end) in the margin. Often, the latter was placed within the text itself. These words were normally written in red ink so as to disassociate them from the actual Scriptures they were marking off. The twelve verses in dispute are found in every kown known copy of the Lectionary of the East, and they constitute one lection of the highest possible distinction. From the very first, Mark 16:9-20 has everywhere and by all branches of the Church been used for two of the its greatest Festivals – Easter and the Ascension. To suppose a portion of Scripture singled out for such extraordinary honor by the Church universal is a spurious addition to the Gospel of Mark must be recognized as absolutely irrational.

There was an ancient Church-lection for Easter (and other occasions) which ended at the 8th verse of Mark 16, and the Ascension Day lection began at verse nine. Now Eusebius tells us that το τελο (the end) is written in almost all the copies of the Gospel of Mark immediately after verse 8 (Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses, op. cit, p. 315). Thus, it must be seen as most reasonable that at some remote period an uninformed copyist penning Mark came across “the end” after the final words of verse eight- εφοβουντο-γαρ (“for they were afraid”). Upon seeing εφοβουντο-γαρ το τελο the scribe could well have misunderstood the significance of the liturgical note “το τελο” even τελο) and concluded that it meant to bring Mark’s Gospel to an end there. Such would account for the mutilation of the last chapter of Mark. This would even be more likely should Mark 16:8 occasionally happen to fall at the bottom of the left hand page of a manuscript and the text leaf was damaged or missing (which is true of one of the codices at Moscow). Once the mistake was made, any copies would obviously spread the omission. Of course, it is well known today that το τελο (or τελο) indicates the close of an ecclesiastical lection and not the close of a book.

Writing around 325 AD, Eusebius certainly knew of the so called “long ending” of Mark 16. In a fragment of a lost work addressed “to Marinus” which was written at least two decades before Vaticanus B saw the light of day, Marinus asks Eusebius: “How is it that according to Matthew (28:1) the Saviour appears to have risen ‘in the end of the Sabbath;’ but, according to Mark, ‘early the first day of the week’?” Now this last citation is from Mark 16:9, thus the verse already existed. In his answer, Eusebius replied that someone who wished to get rid of the entire passage (i.e., Mark 16:9-20, fnj) would offer that “… it is not met with in all the copies of Mark’s Gospel”. Eusebius goes on to say that a man of such persuasion would add that they were not in “the accurate copies” — that the passage is “met with seldom” and that it was absent from “almost all” copies (Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark, op. cit, pp. 120-123). Here the issue is not whether or not Eusebius supports the verses, the point is he testifies that Mark 16:9-20 was clearly known and its validity debated in his day. Obviously, if the “long ending” existed in Eusebius’ day, how can the text critics insist that it was inserted after B and Aleph but before the time of Erasmus?

Finally, do we really believe that God would have the greatest story ever told end at verse 8: “And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulcher for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any to any man; for they were afraid”. Would God allow the good news of the Gospel of His Son to end with his disciples cringing in fear? Is it really logical or even reasonable that Mark would conclude his Gospel without any reference to the appearance of the risen Christ to His disciples? I think not! Our reader should feel a deep sense of righteous indignation upon learning of the unscrupulous manner in which these verses have been presented by nearly All Bible publishers. το τελο.

You can download a complete work about the Bible from Dr. Floyd Nolen Jones, Which Version is the Bible in PDF format by right clicking this link and click save link.

A better discourse on this subject can be found on John Gideon Hartnett’s Revolution for Jesus website.

Book — WHY THEY CHANGED THE BIBLE, by David W. Daniels — http://www.amazon.com/Why-They-Changed-The-Bible/dp/0758909977

If you’re a King James Bible believer, you ought to already know the obvious changes that have been made in other bible versions. Despite the mountain of evidence that the King James Bible IS the Bible, there are still many who need more evidence. There is plenty in this book. When you compare these new translations (NIV, NKJV, ASV, etc.) and see what is being changed you will weep if you are a lover of truth.

Author David W. Daniels points out in his book, Why They Changed the Bible, how all modern Bibles are increasingly slanted to support Rome’s pagan dogmas. An entire section is devoted to the scheme to include the Apocrypha in the Bible. He describes how the Bible societies were, from the beginning, infiltrated with Jesuits or Vatican sympathizers. Bible societies agreed not only to change text wording to favor unbiblical Catholic teaching, but to add in the Apocrypha whenever requested. Bible translators all over the world are subject to a 1960s agreement with the Vatican to add the Apocrypha to any translation if the Catholic people groups ask for it. The history and tragic results of this are detailed in Why They Changed the Bible.

Seminaries all over the world are starting to require their students to get Bibles complete with something called the “Deuterocanonicals.” This is another word for what we know as the Apocrypha. It is also a deceptive word. It makes the reader think these fairytales, superstitions and occultism are actually a “secondary canon” on a level just below scripture —“scripture lite.” The truth is that they have raised men’s words to the level of God’s words and have lowered God’s words to the level of man’s.

The Vatican desperately needs the Apocrypha in the Bible. When they cannot distort a Bible passage to fit one of their pagan doctrines, they resort to the Apocrypha. For example, their teaching of purgatory is based on the Apocryphal books of 2 Maccabees 12:45 and Tobit 12:9. Using money to pay for sins appears in Ecclesiasticus 3:30 “Water will quench a flaming fire; and alms maketh an atonement for sins.”

The Apocrypha also contains such strange advice as using smoked fish liver to dispel demons (Tobit 6), and suggest that suicide, in some cases, is manly and noble (2 Maccabees 14:37-46). Strange historical inaccuracies also appear, such as the death records of Antiochus Epiphanes, who must have died twice when you compare 2 Maccabees 2:13-16 to 9:1-29. A search of Christianbook.com turns up 46 items for sale related to the Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha, with over two dozen Bibles that include them. Supposedly these are only for Roman Catholics, but Daniels’ research discovered that the groundwork has been laid over the decades within the Bible Societies to ultimately produce a Bible with the Apocrypha and subtle watering-down to create one world Bible for one world religion. This Jesuit pope’s PR campaign continues to sugarcoat the bait in the trap for Evangelicals who have already swallowed the poison of the modern (Catholic) versions.

A big thank you to my friend Patty in Kansas for sending me this article!

I had been using Fedora version 20 for most of year 2014. Fedora 21 was a welcome change for a few reasons.

1. I didn’t need to install the Nvidia video card driver. In Fedora 20 without this driver, the GPU fan would spin at top speed and was really noisy. With the driver the spinning would slow down just moments before the login screen would pop up. But with Fedora 21, the GPU fan slows down in a few seconds just after Linux starts to boot.
2. I’m finally satisfied using the default Gnome 3 Desktop GUI. But it involved some tweaking.
• I had to manually install with Yum dconf-editor and gnome-tweak-tool
• I used dconf-editor application to change org.gnome.nautilus.preferences key and set the option to check the “sort-directories-first”” The default mixed the directories with files — something I don’t like.
• I used the gnome-tweak-tool application to enlarge certain screen fonts to make it easier for me to read. And I used this took to add startup applications I like such as calc and Deluge.
3. Using the default Gnome 3 Desktop gui gives me notification of updates. In Fedora 20 I used Mate Desktop which for some reason did not give me notification of updates. I had to update manually about once a week.
4. The system seems to be faster. The Mint menu in the Mate Desktop gui was so slow to load.

More things you may need to do to set up Fedora 21

The green line shows my route along the Hokuriku and Meishin expressway from Niigata in the north to Osaka in the south.

The first driver to pick me up.

It was raining the previous evening but good weather the day of this trip. I took public transportation (680 yen or about $6.00) to Sakai Parking area on the Hokuriku Expressway. Sakae is a convenient place to hitchhike because I can go from there 3 different directions, either to Tokyo, Nagano or towards Osaka which includes Toyama, Ishikawa and Fukui Prefectures. But the parking area is not so big, and sometimes I’ve had to wait long periods to catch a ride, often an hour, sometimes two hours, and once 3 hours and 40 minutes!

I used to stand near the entrance ramp just before cars re-enter the expressway, but now I stand close to the concession stands where people walk after parking their vehicles. I learned this gives me more opportunity to catch a ride. Anybody who notices me or the A4 paper sign which shows my destination, I try to make eye contact with them and ask them if they would take me. Most say no but some stop to talk and encourage me. And doing so proves to them I can speak and understand their language. One reason why a person may not pick me up is because he or she fears the foreigner (me) cannot communicate with them in Japanese.

Though I have waited for long periods at Sakae parking area, today the very first man I met offered me a ride! He was going to Kashiwazaki, about 40 kilometers away. This was good for me because it took me to a parking area past Niigata Prefecture’s second largest city of Nagaoka where most of the drivers would be exiting the expressway.

The young man took me to Ozumi parking area just past Nagaoka. This parking area is smaller than Sakae, but more than half of the traffic will be traveling past the next large city of Kashiwazaki in the direction I want to go. After a relatively short time, a printer from Niigata City took me to Yoneyama service area just past Kashiwazaki.

Yoneyama is much larger than either Ozumi or Sakae, but much of the traffic will only go as far as Joetsu City, and some of the traffic will go toward Nagano Prefecture. It’s possible to go to Oaaka through Nagano, but the distance is longer. I would only accept a ride from a man going through Nagano if he were going as far as the cities near the southern edge of Nagano near Nagoya. That would definitely make it work going to Osaka via Nagano because it would be more than half the distance in a single ride. But such a scenario is rare.

After close to an hour wait at Yoneyama I caught a ride from a man going to Toyama city. He took me to Arisoumi service area, a good distance of 125 kilometers, the furthest in a single ride so far today.

After considerable wait for over an hour, a sweet couple from Ueda City in Nagano took me to Oyabegawa service area which is past Toyama city. Oyabegawa SA is large with many cars, but most of them would be going only as far as Kanazawa City in Ishikawa. I needed a ride that would take me past Kanazawa, and preferably to somewhere in Fukui Prefecture.

A gas lady gas station attendant approached me and asked my destination. She said she would tell the customers about me and maybe one of them would offer me a ride. I have been helped before by gas station attendants. A few minutes later she walked me to me with a cup of hot coffee in her hands! I’m not supposed to drink coffee because I consider caffeine an evil addicting drug which is harmful for health, but I accepted her gift and drank it. I don’t want to offend the Japanese who show me much kindness.

After 30 some minutes a lady going to Fukui offered me a ride. She took me to Onagatani just before Fukui city. From that point I was more than halfway to Osaka and absolutely positive I would make it that day.

A man saw my Osaka sign and told me he would be going a different direction, to Nagoya. But I realized that he could still take me further down the Hokuriku Expressway before he gets to the junction of the Meishi Expressway from where drivers can go either south to Osaka or north to Nagoya. The man then offered to take me as far as Kanda parking area just before the Maibara junction.

Kanda is a small parking area and I regretted getting off there. I could have gotten off at Shizugatake, a much larger service area though a shorter distance from where the man picked me up. But after only a few minutes, a lady saw my Osaka sign and offered to take me to Taga Service area. Though Taga is not far from Kanda, it is right on the Meishin expressway with all the traffic going my direction.

At Taga after 30 minutes or so, I approached a truck driver who offered me a ride to Suita Service area in Osaka! This was my exact destination and the end of hitchhiking that day. I arrived just a little after 5 p.m., 10 hours after I left home. From Suita it was a short walk to a bus stop from where I caught a 220 yen ($1.75) bus ride to Minami Senri station, and from there a 15 minute walk to Roger’s apartment. Total transportation that day was 900 yen or about $7.50. The Shinkansen (Bullet train) would have cost 22,000 yen ($175.00) and by plane 33,000 yen $275).

Did you know that in winter, the average temperate of a Japanese home is colder than homes in Russia? This is because houses in Japan have no central heating! I know from experience with 3 winters in Russia and 36 winters in Japan. Only individual rooms in Japan are heated by the use of portable kerosene burning stoves. The stoves are ignited only when the room is occupied, and usually extinguished when people leave the room. Even in bedrooms at night though occupied, they are turned off just before bed. It’s considered dangerous to leave them on at night when sleeping.

Click on any photo to see an enlargement.

This was the most common type of heater in Japan and is still sold today. It sits on the floor, weighs only a few pounds, and can be moved around easily. Its fuel is kerosene. In the event of an earthquake or somebody hitting it by accident, there is a mechanism that pulls down the wick to turn it off quickly in order to prevent a fire. The top gets hot and cannot be touched without burning one’s hand. Sometimes people set kettles on top to boil water or to add humidity to the air.

Here we see the heating element removed and the wick visible. When these types of heaters are still new, they are lit by pushing a lever which presses an electric heating coil against the wick. The coil becomes red hot when the lever is pressed. It is powered by two batteries in the back of the heater. However, in the case of an older heater, often the electric heating coil is either burned out, or the batteries are dead. In this case, rather than immediately replace the batteries, most people use a match to light the wick. In order to do this, the heating element must be raised up slightly by hand to get the match close to the wick. The problem of using a match is that unless the heating element is set back properly over the wick the way it should be, the kerosene will not burn hot enough and will produce a smelly black smoke that fills the room! Once this happened just after the kitchen ceiling was freshly painted white. The person left the room and it was not until several hours later the problem of the smokey heater was discovered. Can you guess what color the ceiling became? Gray!

This photo shows the back of the room heater. You can see the two dry cell batteries in the holder that are used to light the electric coil that ignites the wick. In a couple years it will stop working and a match will have to be used instead.

In these two photos you can see the tank that holds the kerosene fuel for the heater. The tank needs to be filled every other day if used regularly. The left photo shows the tank on its side on top of a different type of heater than the one above, but it is the same kind used.

Many homes use orange plastic containers to store the kerosene as shown in these photos. Some people use much larger drums and have the kerosene man come when empty, but it is cheaper to use the smaller containers and take them to the local gas station to fill them. I’m using a battery powered pump to fill the heater tank, but many people also use a siphon pump. The battery pump is designed to turn itself off when the tank is full, but sometimes the mechanism fails to work. There are accidents both with the battery pump and the siphon pump. The tank overflows and kerosene spills on the floor. Even without any spillage, I usually wind up with some kerosene on my hands when removing the pump from the tank.

This is a different type of kerosene heater which uses electricity from a wall socket to power an internal fan to blow the heat out. It also uses electricity to initially warm the kerosene to a certain temperature before it ignites. It is also portable can be moved around from room to room. Without electric AC power from a wall outlet, these types of heaters will not run! They are a bit heavier than the non-electric type of heater but it’s also more convenient to turn them on because you just need to push the power button. They won’t turn on immediately. It takes 2 or 3 minutes for a heating coil to warm the kerosene sufficiently to ignite. The newer models with better technology start a bit quicker because they use electricity to keep the kerosene warm, but it may also up the electric bill. However the quick on function can be disabled. They also have a thermostat device that regulates the amount of heat. You can adjust the temperature to higher or lower. I think the electric-kerosene heater may use fuel more efficiently than the wick only type.

In the event of a power outage, this heater will turn off immediately and are therefore useless if the power grid goes down! In January 2006, tens of thousands of homes in my area suffered a day long power outage due to heavy snow shorting out an insulator of a high voltage power line. We were glad that we had several non-AC power dependent kerosene heaters to use to warm our house. The electric AC power kerosene type of heater is high tech and will eventually break down. It cannot be started with a match. The top does not get hot and is therefore safer to use with little children in the room. If jarred or bumped, a safety mechanism will automatically turn the heater off. Another mechanism will turn the heater off after 3 hours. This is to prevent CO poisoning while sleeping at night. This is yet another reason why these heaters are never left on all the time.

Kerosene heater

Top view of the electric kerosene heater. Can you see that it is dented? The top of these types of stoves is thin metal. Because the top does not get hot like the non-electric wick heater, young people often are tempted to use them as chairs! Sitting on it only once will dent it permanently! Even worse than using it as a chair is to use it as a footstool. The resulting dent is yet more noticeable.

The low table in these photos is called a kotatsu. It has an electric heating element under the table connected to a power cord which is plugged into an AC wall outlet. Sitting at a kotatsu is another way the Japanese keep warm at home in the winter. Even though the room temperature may be cold, it feels quite warm and cozy to sit in front of the kotatsu with one’s legs under the table with the blanket covering them and keeping in the heat! Though electricity is expensive in Japan, the kotatsu doesn’t need much power to keep the small space under it warm. Moreover, it has a thermostat which turns the heater off when the temperature gets too high, and so using them is quite economical.

Martin Luther wrote this in 1520, around 3 years after he nailed his 95 Thesis on the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517. I was very inspired to read it for morning devotions! I would rather listen to a sermon from a man who lived his faith, and was persecuted for it, wouldn’t you? One man, Martin Luther, emancipated the entire world from the tyranny of the Pope and his Roman Catholic system which was bleeding the poor of his day. I believe the Vatican and the papacy continue to do so covertly to this very day! Some of the poorest countries in the world are largely Roman Catholic, and some of the richest are Protestant. Look at Norway — a nation with no public debt! (Reference: http://soundofheart.org/galacticfreepress/content/norway-has-no-debt-why )

[The translation is by H. Wace and C.A. Buckheim,
in First Principles of the Reformation (Philadelphia, 1885);
translation based on the Erlangen Edition (1828-70)
of Luther’s Collected Works.]

Christian faith has appeared to many an easy thing; nay, not a few even reckon it among the social virtues, as it were; and this they do because they have not made proof of it experimentally, and have never tasted of what efficacy it is. For it is not possible for any man to write well about it, or to understand well what is rightly written, who has not at some time tasted of its spirit, under the pressure of tribulation; while he who has tasted of it, even to a very small extent, can never write, speak, think, or hear about it sufficiently. For it is a living fountain, springing up unto eternal life, as Christ calls it in John iv.

Now, though I cannot boast of my abundance, and though I know how poorly I am furnished, yet I hope that, after having been vexed by various temptations, I have attained some little drop of faith, and that I can speak of this matter, if not with more elegance, certainly with more solidity, than those literal and too subtle disputants who have hitherto discoursed upon it without understanding their own words. That I may open then an easier way for the ignorant — for these alone I am trying to serve — I first lay down two propositions, concerning spiritual liberty and servitude: —

A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.

Although these statements appear contradictory, yet, when they are found to agree together, they will do excellently for my purpose. They are both the statements of Paul himself, who says, “Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself a servant unto all” (I Cor. ix. 19), and “Owe no man anything but to love one another” (Rom. xiii. 8). Now love is by its own nature dutiful and obedient to the beloved object. Thus even Christ, though Lord of all things, was yet made of a woman; made under the law; at once free and a servant; at once in the form of God and in the form of a servant.

Let us examine the subject on a deeper and less simple principle. Man is composed of a twofold nature, a spiritual and a bodily. As regards the spiritual nature, which they name the soul, he is called the spiritual, inward, new man; as regards the bodily nature, which they name the flesh, he is called the fleshly, outward, old man. The Apostle speaks of this: “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (II Cor. iv. 16). The result of this diversity is that in the Scriptures opposing statements are made concerning the same man, the fact being that in the same man these two men are opposed to one another; the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (Gal. v. 17).

We first approach the subject of the inward man, that we may see by what means a man becomes justified, free, and a true Christian; that is, a spiritual., new, and inward man. It is certain that absolutely none among outward things, under whatever name they may be reckoned, has any influence in producing Christian righteousness or liberty, nor, on the other hand, unrighteousness or slavery. This can be shown by an easy argument.

What can it profit to the soul that the body should be in good condition, free, and full of life; that it should eat, drink, and act according to its pleasure; when even the most impious slaves of every kind of vice are prosperous in these matters? Again, what harm can ill-health, bondage, hunger, thirst, or any other outward evil, do to the soul, when even the most pious of men, and the freest in the purity of their conscience, are harassed by these things? Neither of these states of things has to do with the liberty or the slavery of the soul.

And so it will profit nothing that the body should be adorned with sacred vestments, or dwell in holy places, or be occupied in sacred offices, or pray, fast, and abstain from certain meats, or do whatever works can be done through the body and in the body. Something widely different will be necessary for the justification and liberty of the soul, since the things I have spoken of can be done by an impious person, and only hypocrites are produced by devotion to these things. On the other hand, it will not at all injure the soul that the body should be clothed in profane raiment, should dwell in profane places, should eat and drink in the ordinary fashion, should not pray aloud, and should leave undone all the things above mentioned, which may be done by hypocrites.

And — to cast everything aside — even speculations, meditations, and whatever things can be performed by the exertions of the soul itself, are of no profit. One thing, and one alone, is necessary for life, justification, and Christian liberty; and that is the most holy word of God, the Gospel of Christ, as He says, “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me shall not die eternally” (John xi. 25), and also, “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John viii. 36), and, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. iv. 4).

Let us therefore hold it for certain and firmly established that the soul can do without everything except the word of God, without which none at all of its wants are provided for. But, having the word, it is rich and wants for nothing, since that is the word of life, of truth, of light, of peace, of justification, of salvation, of joy, of liberty, of wisdom, of virtue, of grace, of glory, and of every good thing. It is on this account that the prophet in a whole Psalm (Psalm cxix.), and in many other places, sighs for and calls upon the word of God with so many groanings and words. . . .

But you will ask, What is this word, and by what means is it to be used, since there are so many words of God? I answer, The Apostle Paul (Rom. I.) explains what it is, namely the Gospel of God, concerning His Son, incarnate, suffering, risen, and glorified through the spirit, the Sanctifier. To preach Christ is to feed the soul, to justify it, to set it free, and to save it, if it believes the preaching. For faith alone, and the efficacious use of the word of God, bring salvation. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. x. 9); and again, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. x. 4), and “The just shall live by faith” (Rom. I. 17). For the word of God cannot be received and honored by any works but by faith alone. Hence it is clear that as the soul needs the word alone for life and justification, so it is justified by faith alone, and not by any works. For if it could be justified by any other means, it would have no need of the word, nor consequently of faith.

But this faith cannot consist all with works; that is, if you imagine that you can be justified by those works, whatever they are, along with it. For this would be to halt between two opinions, to worship Baal, and to kiss the hand to him, which is a very great iniquity, as Job says. Therefore, when you begin to believe, you learn at the same time that all that is in you is utterly guilty, sinful, and damnable, according to that saying, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. iii. 23), and also: “There is none righteous, no, not one; they are all gone out of the way; they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Rom. iii. 10-12). When you have learnt this, you will know that Christ is necessary for you, since He has suffered and risen again for you, that, believing on Him, you might by this faith become another man, all your sins being remitted, and you being justified by the merits of another, namely Christ alone.

Since then this faith can reign only in the inward man, as it is said, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness” (Rom. x. 10); and since it alone justifies, it is evident that by no outward work or labor can the inward man be at all justified, made free, and saved; and that no works whatever have any relation to him. And so, on the other hand, it is solely by impiety and incredulity of heart that he become guilty and a slave of sin, deserving condemnation, not by any outward sin or work. Therefore the first care of every Christian ought to be to lay aside all reliance on works, and strengthen his faith alone more and more, and by it grow in the knowledge, not of works, but of Christ Jesus, who has suffered and risen again for him, as Peter teaches (I Peter v.) when he makes no other work to be a Christian one. Thus Christ, when the Jews asked Him what they should do that they might work the works of God, rejected the multitude of works; with which He saw that they were puffed up, and commanded them one thing only, saying, “This is the work of God: that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent, for Him hath God the Father sealed” (John vi. 27, 29)

Hence a right faith in Christ is an incomparable treasure, carrying with it universal salvation, and preserving from all evil, as it is said: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” (Mark xvi, 16.) Isaiah, looking to this treasure, predicted: “The consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of the land.” (Is. x. 22, 23.) As if he said: — “Faith, which is the brief and complete fulfilling of the law, will fill those who believe with such righteousness, that they will need nothing else for justification.” Thus too Paul says: “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness.” (Rom. x. 10)

But you ask how it can be the fact that faith alone justifies, and affords without works so great a treasure of good things, when so many works, ceremonies, and laws are prescribed to us in the Scripture. I answer: before all things bear in mind what I have said, that faith alone without works justifies, sets free, and saves. . . .

Thus the believing soul, by the pledge of its faith in Christ, becomes free from all sin, fearless of death, safe from hell, and endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of its husband Christ. Thus he presents to himself a glorious bride, without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word; that is, by faith in the word of life, righteousness, and salvation. Thus he betroths her unto himself “in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies.” (Hosea ii. 19, 20.). . . .

But that we may have a wider view of what grace which our inner man has in Christ, we must know that in the Old Testament God sanctified to Himself every first-born male. The birthright was of great value, giving a superiority over the rest by the double honor of priesthood and kingship. For the first-born brother was priest and lord of all the rest.

Under this figure was foreshown Christ, the true and only first-born of God the Father and of the Virgin Mary, and a true king and priest, not in a fleshly and earthly sense. For His kingdom is not of this world; it is in heavenly and spiritual things that He reigns and acts as priest; and these are righteousness, truth, wisdom, peace, salvation, &c. Not but that all things, even those of earth and hell, are subject to Him — for otherwise how could He defend and save us from them? — but it is not in these, nor by these, that His kingdom stands.

So too His priesthood does not consist in the outward display of vestments and gestures, as did the human priesthood of Aaron and our ecclesiastical priesthood at this day, but in spiritual things, wherein, in His invisible office, He intercedes for us with God in heaven, and there offers Himself, and performs all the duties of a priest; as Paul describes Him to the Hebrews under the figure of Melchizedek. Nor does he only pray and intercede for us; He also teaches us inwardly in the spirit with the living teachings of His Spirit. Now these are the two special offices of a priest, as is figured to us in the case of fleshly priests, by visible prayers and sermons.

As Christ by His birthright has obtained these two dignities, so He imparts and communicates them to every believer in Him, under that law of matrimony of which we have spoken above, by which all that is the husband’s is also the wife’s. Hence all we who believe on Christ are kings and priests in Christ, as it is said, “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (I Peter ii. 9).

These two things stand thus. First, as regards kingship, every Christian is by faith so exalted above all things that, in spiritual power, he is completely lord of all things, so that nothing whatever can do him any hurt; yea, all things are subject to him, and are compelled to be subservient to his salvation. Thus Paul says, “All things work together for good to them who are the called” (Rom. viii. 28), and also “Whether life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and ye are Christ’s” (I Cor. iii. 22, 23).

Not that in the sense of corporeal power any one among the Christians has been appointed to possess and rule all things, according to the mad and senseless idea of certain ecclesiastics. That is the office of kings, princes, and men upon earth. In the experience of life we see that we are subjected to all things, and suffer many things, even death. Yea, the more of a Christian any man is, to so many the more evils, sufferings, and deaths is he subject, as we see in the first place in Christ the first-born, and in all His holy brethren.

This is a spiritual power, which rules in the midst of enemies, and is powerful in the midst of distresses. And this is nothing else than that strength is made perfect in my weakness, and that I can turn all things to the profit of my salvation; so that even the cross and death are compelled to serve me and to work together for my salvation. This a lofty and eminent dignity, a true and almighty dominion, a spiritual empire, in which there is nothing so good, nothing so bad, as not to work together for my good, if only I believe. And yet there is nothing of which I have need — for faith alone suffices for my salvation — unless that in it faith may exercise the power and empire of its liberty. This is the inestimable power and liberty of Christians.

Nor are we only kings and the freest of all men, but also priests forever, a dignity far higher than kingship, because by that priesthood we are worthy to appear before God, to pray for others, and to teach one another mutually the things which are of God. For these are the duties of priests, and they cannot possibly be permitted to any unbeliever. Christ has obtained for us this favor, if we believe in Him: that just as we are His brethren and co-heirs and fellow-kings with Him, so we should be also fellow-priests with Him, and venture with confidence, through the spirit of faith, to come into the presence of God, and cry, “Abba, Father!” and to pray for one another, and to do all things which we see done and figured in the visible and corporeal office of priesthood. But to an unbelieving person nothing renders serve or works for good. He himself is in servitude to all things, and all things turn out for evil to him, because he uses all things in an impious way for his own advantage, and not for the glory of God. And thus he is not a priest, but a profane person, whose prayers are turned into sin, nor does he ever appear in the presence of God, because God does not hear sinners. . . .

Here you will ask, “If all who are in the Church are priests, by what character are those whom we now call priests to be distinguished from the laity?” I reply: By the used of these words, “priest,” “clergy,” “spiritual person,” “ecclesiastic,” an injustice has been done, since they have been transferred from the remaining body of Christians to those few who are now, by a hurtful custom, called ecclesiastics. For Holy Scripture makes no distinction between them, except that those who are now boastfully called popes, bishops, and lords, it calls ministers, servants, and stewards, who are to serve the rest in the ministry of the word, for teaching the faith of Christ and the liberty of believers. For though it is true that we are all equally priests, yet we cannot, nor, if we could, ought we all to, minister and teach publicly. Thus Paul says, “Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (I Cor. iv. 1).

This bad system has now issued in such a pompous display of power and such a terrible tyranny that no earthly government can be compared to it, as if the laity were something else than Christians. Through this perversion of things it has happened that the knowledge of Christian grace, of faith, of liberty, and altogether of Christ, has utterly perished, and has been succeeded by an intolerable bondage to human works and law; and, according to the Lamentations of Jeremiah, we have become slaves of the vilest men on earth, who abuse our misery to all the disgraceful and ignominious purposes of their own will. . . .

Let it suffice to say this concerning the inner man and its liberty, and concerning that righteousness of faith, which needs neither laws nor good work; nay, they are even hurtful to it, if any one pretends to be justified by them.

And now let us turn to the other part: to the outward man. Here we shall give an answer to all those who, taking offense at the word of faith and at what I have asserted, say, “If faith does everything, and by itself suffices for justification, why then are good works commanded? Are we then to take our ease and do no works, content with faith?” Not so, impious men, I reply; not so. That would indeed really be the case, if we were thoroughly and completely inner and spiritual persons; but that will not happen until the last day, when the dead shall be raised. As long as we live in the flesh, we are but beginning and making advances in that which shall be completed in a future life. On this account the Apostle calls that which we have in this life the first-fruits of the Spirit (Rom. viii. 23). In future we shall have the tenths, and the fullness of the Spirit. To this part belongs the fact I have stated before: that the Christian is the servant of all and subject of all. For in that part in which he is free he does no works, but in that in which he is a servant he does all works. Let us see on what principle this is so.

Although, as I have said, inwardly, and according to the spirit, a man is amply enough justified by faith, having all that he requires to have, except that this very faith and abundance ought to increase from day to day, even till the future life, still he remains in this mortal life upon earth, in which it is necessary that he should rule his own body and have intercourse with men. Here then works begin; here he must not take his ease; here he must give heed to exercise his body by fastings, watchings, labor, and other regular discipline, so that it may be subdued to the spirit, and obey and conform itself to the inner man and faith, and not rebel against them nor hinder them, as is its nature to do if it is not kept under. For the inner man, being conformed to God and created after the image of God through faith, rejoices and delights itself in Christ, in whom such blessings have been conferred on it, and hence has only this task before it: to serve God with joy and for nought in free love.

But in doing this he comes into collision with that contrary will in his own flesh, which is striving to serve the world and to see its own gratification. This the spirit of faith cannot and will not bear, but applies itself with cheerfulness and zeal to keep it down and restrain it, as Paul says, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin” (Rom. vii. 22, 23), and again, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway” (I Cor. ix. 27), and “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts” (Gal. v. 24).

These works, however, must not be done with any notion that by them a man can be justified before God — for faith, which alone is righteousness before God, will not bear with this false notion — but solely with this purpose: that the body may be brought into subjection, and be purified from its evil lusts, so that our eyes may be turned only to purging away those lusts. For when the soul has been cleansed by faith and made to love God, it would have all things to be cleansed in like manner, and especially its own body, so that all things might unite with it in the love and praise of God. Thus it comes that, from the requirements of his own body, a man cannot take his ease, but is compelled on its account to do many good works, that he many bring it into subjection. yet these works are not the means of his justification before God; he does them out of disinterested love to the service of God; looking to no other end than to do what is well-pleasing to Him whom he desires to obey most dutifully in all things.

On this principle every man may easily instruct himself in what measure, and with what distinctions, he ought to chasten his own body. He will fast, watch, and labor, just as much as he see to suffice for keeping down the wantonness and concupiscence of the body. But those who pretend to be justified by works are looking, not to the mortification of their lusts, but only to the works themselves; thinking that, if they can accomplish as many works and as great ones as possible, as is well with the, and they are justified. Sometimes they even injure their brain, and extinguish nature, or at least make it useless. This is enormous folly, and ignorance of Christian life and faith, when a man seek, without faith, to be justified and saved by works. . . .

A bishop, when he consecrates a church, confirms children, or performs any other duty of his office, is not consecrated as a bishop by these works; nay, unless he had been previously consecrated as bishop, not one of those works would have any validity; they would be foolish, childish, and ridiculous. Thus a Christian, being consecrated by his faith, does good works; but he is not by these works made a more sacred person, or more a Christian. That is the effect of faith alone; nay, unless he were previously a believer and a Christian, none of his works would have any value at all; they would really be impious and damnable sins.

True, then, are these two sayings: “Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works”; thus it is always necessary that the substance or person should be good before any good works can be done, and that good works should follow and proceed from a good person. As Christ says, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Matt. vii. 18). Now it is clear that the fruit does not bear the tree, nor does the tree grow on the fruit; but, on the contrary, the trees bear the fruit, and the fruit grows on the trees.

As then trees must exist before their fruit, and as the fruit does not make the tree either good or bad, but, on the contrary, a tree of either kind produces fruit of the same kind, so must first the person of the man be good or bad before he can do either or a bad work; and his works do not make him bad or good, but he himself makes his works either bad or good.

We may see the same thing in all handicrafts. A bad or good house does not make a bad or good builder, but a good or bad builder makes a good or bad house. And in general no work makes the workman such as it is itself; but the workman makes the work such as he is himself. Such is the case, too, with the works of men. Such as the man himself is, whether in faith or in unbelief, such is his work: good if it be done in faith; bad if in unbelief. For as works do not make a believing man, so neither do they make a justified man; but faith, as it makes a man a believer and justified, so also it makes his works good.

Since then works justify no man, but a man must be justified before he can do any good work, it is most evident that it is faith alone which, but the mere mercy of God through Christ, and by means of His word, can worthily and sufficiently justify and save the person; and that a Christian man needs no work, no law, for his salvation; for by faith he is free from all law, and in perfect freedom does gratuitously all that he does, seeking nothing either of profit or of salvation — since by the grace of God he is already saved and rich in all things through his faith — but solely that which is well-pleasing to God.

So, too, no good work can profit an unbeliever to justification and salvation; and, on the other hand, no evil work makes him an evil and condemned person, but that unbelief, which makes the person and the tree bad, makes his works evil and condemned. Wherefore, when any man is good or bad, this does not arise from his works, but from his faith or unbelief, as the wise man says, “The beginning of sin is to fall away from God”; that is, not to believe. Paul says, “He that cometh to God must believe” (Heb. xi. 6): and Christ says the same thing: “Either make the tree good, and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt” (Matt. xii. 33) — as much as to say, He who wishes to have good fruit will begin with the tree, and plant a good one; even so he who wishes to do good work must begin, not by working, but by believing, since it is this which makes the person good. For nothing makes the person good but faith, nor bad but unbelief. . . .

From all this it is easy to perceive on what principle good works are to be cast aside or embraced, and by what rule all teachings put forth concerning works are to be understood. For if works are brought forward as grounds of justification, and are done under false persuasion that we can pretend to be justified by them, they lay on us the yoke of necessity, and extinguish liberty along with faith, and by this very addition to their use they become no longer good, but really worthy of condemnation. For such works are not free, but blaspheme the grace of God, to which alone it belongs to justify and save through faith. Works cannot accomplish this, and yet, with impious presumption, through our folly, they take it upon themselves to do so; and thus break in with violence upon the office and glory of grace.

We do not then reject good works; nay we embrace them and teach them in the highest degree. It is not on their own account that we condemn them, but on account of this impious addition to them and the perverse notion of seeking justification by them. These things cause them to be only good in outward show, but in reality not good, since by them men are deceived and deceive others, like ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing . . . .

Lastly we will speak also of those works which he performs towards his neighbor. For man does not live for himself alone in this mortal body, in order to work on its account, but also for all men on earth; nay, he lives only for others, and not for himself. For it is to this end that he brings his own body into subjection, that he may be able to serve others more sincerely and more freely, as Paul says, “None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord” (Rom. xiv. 7, 8). Thus it is impossible that he should take his ease in this life, and not work for the good of his neighbors, since he must needs speak, act, and converse among men, just as Christ was made in the likeness of men and found in fashion as a man, and had His conservation among men.

Yet a Christian has need of none of these things for justification and salvation, but in all his works he ought to entertain this view and look only to this object — that he may serve and be useful to others in all that he does; having nothing before his eyes but the necessities and the advantage of his neighbor. Thus the Apostle commands us to work with our own hands, that we may have to give to those that need. He might have said, that we may support ourselves; but he tells us to give to those that need. It is the part of a Christian to take care of his own body for the very purpose that, by its soundness and well-being, he may be enable to labor, and to acquire and preserve property, for the aid of those who are in want, that thus the stronger member may serve the weaker member, and we may be children of God, thoughtful and busy one for another, bearing one another’s burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ.

Here is the truly Christian life, here is faith really working by love, when a man applies himself with joy and love to the works of that freest servitude in which he serves others voluntarily and for nought, himself abundantly satisfied in the fullness and riches of his own faith.

Thus, when Paul had taught the Phillippians how they had been made rich by that faith in Christ in which they had obtained all things, he teaches them further in these words: “If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, in any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfill ye my joy, that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than himself. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Phil. ii. 1-4).

In this we see clearly that the Apostle lays down this rule for a Christian life: that all our works should be directed to the advantage of others, since every Christian has such abundance through his faith that all his other works and his whole life remain over and above wherewith to serve and benefit his neighbor of spontaneous goodwill. . . .

Finally, for the sake of those to whom nothing can be stated so well but that they misunderstand and distort it, we must add a word, in case they can understand even that. There are very many persons who, when they hear of this liberty of faith, straightway turn it into an occasion of licence. They think that everything is now lawful for them, and do not choose to show themselves free men and Christians in any other way than by their contempt and reprehension of ceremonies, of traditions, of human laws; as it they were Christians merely because they refuse to fast on stated days, or eat flesh when others fast, or omit the customary prayers; scoffing at the precepts of men, but utterly passing over all the rest that belongs to the Christian religion. On the other hand, they are most pertinaciously resisted by those who strive after salvation solely by their observance of and reverence for ceremonies, as they would be saved merely because they fast on stated days, or abstain from flesh, or make formal prayers; talking loudly of the precepts of the church and of the Fathers, and not caring a straw about those things which belong to our genuine faith. Both these parties are plainly culpable, in that, while they neglect matters which are of weight and necessary for salvation, they contend noisily about such as are without weight and not necessary.

How much more rightly does the Apostle Paul teach us to walk in the middle path, condemning either extreme and saying, “Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth” (Rom. xiv. 3)! You see here how the Apostle blames those who, not from religious feeling, but in mere contempt, neglect and rail at ceremonial observances, and teaches them not to despise, since this “knowledge puffeth up.” Again, he teaches the pertinacious upholders of these things not to judge their opponents. For neither party observes towards the other that charity which edifieth. in this matter we must listen to Scripture, which teaches us to turn aside neither to the right hand nor to the left, but to follow those right precepts of the Lord which rejoice the heart. For just as a man is not righteous merely because he serves and is devoted to works and ceremonial rites, so neither will he be accounted righteous merely because he neglects and despises them. . . .

This is part two of a document written by Sir Isaac Newton titled: “Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St John” You can download the PDF file I got the text from by right clicking the above link and click save link. There is alternative text at the end of the file which I did not include in this post.

CHAP. I. Introduction, concerning the time when the Apocalypse was written.

Isaac Newton

Irenæus introduced an opinion that the Apocalypse was written in the time of Domitian; but then he also postponed the writing of some others of the sacred books, and was to place the Apocalypse after them: he might perhaps have heard from his master Polycarp that he had received this book from John about the time of Domitian’s death; or indeed John might himself at that time have made a new publication of it, from whence Irenæus might imagine it was then but newly written. Eusebius in his Chronicle and Ecclesiastical History follows Irenoeus; but afterwards [1] in his Evangelical Demonstrations, he conjoins the banishment of John into Patmos, with the deaths of Peter and Paul: and so do [2] Tertullian and PseudoProchorus, as well as the first author, whoever he was, of that very antient fable, that John was put by Nero into a vessel of hot oil, and coming out unhurt, was banished by him into Patmos. Tho this story be no more than a fiction yet was it founded on a tradition of the first churches, that John was banished into Patmos in the days of Nero. Epiphanius represents the Gospel of John as written in the time of Domitian, and the Apocalypse even before that of Nero. [3] Arethas in the beginning of his Commentary quotes the opinion of Irenæus from Eusebius, but follows it not: for he afterwards affirms the Apocalypse was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, and that former commentators had expounded the sixth seal of that destruction.

With the opinion of the first Commentators agrees the tradition of the Churches of Syria, preserved to this day in the title of the Syriac Version of the Apocalypse, which title is this: The Revelation which was made to John the Evangelist by God in the Island Patmos, into which he was banished by Nero the Cæsar. The fame is confirmed by a story told by [4] Eusebius out of Clemens Alexandrinus, and other antient authors, concerning a youth, whom John some time after his return from Patmos committed to the care of the Bishop of a certain city. The Bishop educated, instructed, and at length baptized him; but then remitting of his care, the young man thereupon got into ill company, and began by degrees first to revel and grow vitious, then to abuse and spoil those he met in the night; and at last grew so desperate, that his companions turning a band of highway men, made him their Captain: and, saith [5] Chrysostom, he continued their Captain a long time. At length John returning to that city, and hearing what was done, rode to the thief; and, when he out of reverence to his old master fled, John rode after him, recalled him, and restored him to the Church. This is a story of many years, and requires that John should have returned from Patmos rather at the death of Nero than at that of Domitian; because between the death of Domitian and that of John there were but two years and an half; and John in his old age was [6] so infirm as to be carried to Church, dying above 90 years old, and therefore could not be then suppos’d able to ride after the thief.

This opinion is further supported by the allusions in the Apocalypse to the Temple and Altar, and holy City, as then standing; and to the Gentiles, who were soon after to tread under foot the holy City and outward Court. ‘Tis confirmed also by the style of the Apocalypse itself, which is fuller of Hebraisms than his Gospel. For thence it may be gathered, that it was written when John was newly come out of Judea, where he had been used to the Syriac tongue; and that he did not write his Gospel, till by long converse with the Asiatick Greeks he had left off most of the Hebraisms. It is confirmed also by the many false Apocalypses, as those of Peter, Paul, Thomas, Stephen, Elias and Cerinthus, written in imitation of the true one. For as the many false Gospels, false Acts, and false Epistles were occasioned by true ones; and the writing many false Apocalypses, and ascribing them to Apostles and Prophets, argues that there was a true Apostolic one in great request with the first Christians: so this true one may well be suppos’d to have been written early, that there may be room in the Apostolic age for the writing of so many false ones afterwards, and fathering them upon Peter, Paul, Thomas and others, who were dead before John. Caius, who was contemporary with Tertullian, [7] tells us that Cerinthus wrote his Revelations as a great Apostle, and pretended the visions were shewn him by Angels, asserting a millennium of carnal pleasures at Jerusalem after the resurrection; so that his Apocalypse was plainly written in imitation of John’s: and yet he lived so early, that [8] he resisted the Apostles at Jerusalem in or before the first year of Claudius, that is, 26 years before the death of Nero, and [9] died before John.

These reasons may suffice for determining the time; and yet there is one more, which to considering men may seem a good reason, to others not. I’ll propound it, and leave it to every man’s judgment. The Apocalypse seems to be alluded to in the Epistles of Peter and that to the Hebrews and therefore to have been written before them. Such allusions in the Epistle to the Hebrews, I take to be the discourses concerning the HighPriest in the heavenly Tabernacle, who is both Priest and King, as was Melchisedec; and those concerning the word of God, with the sharp twoedged sword, the σαββατισμος, or millennial rest, the earth whose end is to be burned, suppose by the lake of fire, the judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries, the heavenly City which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God, the cloud of witnesses, mount Sion, heavenly Jerusalem, general assembly, spirits of just men made perfect, viz. by the resurrection, and the shaking of heaven and earth, and removing them, that the new heaven, new earth and new kingdom which cannot be shaken, may remain. In the first of Peter occur these:

[10] The Revelation of Jesus Christ, twice or thrice repeated; [11] the blood of Christ as of a Lamb foreordained before the foundation of the world; [12] the spiritual building in heaven, 1 Pet. ii. 5. an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us, who are kept unto the salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time, 1 Pet. i. 4, 5. [13] the royal Priesthood, [14] the holy Priesthood, [15] the judgment beginning at the house of God, and [16] the Church at Babylon. These are indeed obscurer allusions; but the second Epistle, from the 19th verse of the first Chapter to the end, seems to be a continued Commentary upon the Apocalypse. There, in writing to the Churches in Asia, to whom John was commanded to send this Prophecy, he tells them, they have a more sure word of Prophecy, to be heeded by them, as a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the daystar arise in their hearts, that is, until they begin to understand it: for no Prophecy, saith he, of the scripture is of any private interpretation; the Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Daniel [17] himself professes that he understood not his own Prophecies; and therefore the Churches were not to expect the interpretation from their Prophet John, but to study the Prophecies themselves. This is the substance of what Peter says in the first chapter; and then in the second he proceeds to describe, out of this sure word of Prophecy, how there should arise in the Church false Prophets, or false teachers, expressed collectively in the Apocalypse by the name of the false Prophet; who should bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, which is the character of Antichrist: And many, saith he, shall follow their lusts [18]; they that dwell on the earth [19] shall be deceived by the false Prophet, and be made drunk with the wine of the Whore’s fornication, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be blasphemed; for [20] the Beast is full of blasphemy: and thro’ covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandize of you; for these are the Merchants of the Earth, who trade with the great Whore, and their merchandize [21] is all things of price, with the bodies and souls of men: whose judgment—lingreth not, and their damnation [22] slumbreth not, but shall surely come upon them at the last day suddenly, as the flood upon the old world, and fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrha, when the just shall be delivered [23] like Lot; for the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished, in the lake of fire; but chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, [24] being made drunk with the wine of the Whore’s fornication; who despise dominion, and are not afraid to blaspheme glories; for the beast opened his mouth against God [25] to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. These, as natural brute beasts, the tenhorned beast and twohorned beast, or false Prophet, made to be taken and destroyed, in the lake of fire, blaspheme the things they understand not:—they count it pleasure to riot in the daytime— sporting themselves with their own deceivings, while they feast [26] with you, having eyes full of an [27] Adulteress: for the kingdoms of the beast live deliciously with the great Whore, and the nations are made drunk with the wine of her fornication. They are gone astray, following the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, the false Prophet [28] who taught Balak to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel. These are, not fountains of living water, but wells without water; not such clouds of Saints as the two witnesses ascend in, but clouds that are carried with a tempest, &c. Thus does the author of this Epistle spend all the second Chapter in describing the qualities of the Apocalyptic Beasts and false Prophet: and then in the third he goes on to describe their destruction more fully, and the future kingdom. He saith, that because the coming of Christ should be long deferred, they should scoff, saying, where is the promise of his coming? Then he describes the sudden coming of the day of the Lord upon them, as a thief in the night, which is the Apocalyptic phrase; and the millennium, or thousand years, which are with God but as a day; the passing away of the old heavens and earth, by a conflagration in the lake of fire, and our looking for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Seeing therefore Peter and John were Apostles of the circumcision, it seems to me that they staid with their Churches in Judea and Syria till the Romans made war upon their nation, that is, till the twelfth year of Nero; that they then followed the main body of their flying Churches into Asia, and that Peter went thence by Corinth to Rome; that the Roman Empire looked upon those Churches as enemies, because Jews by birth; and therefore to prevent insurrections, secured their leaders, and banished John into Patmos. It seems also probable to me that the Apocalypse was there composed, and that soon after the Epistle to the Hebrews and those of Peter were written to these Churches, with reference to this Prophecy as what they were particularly concerned in. For it appears by these Epistles, that they were written in times of general affliction and tribulation under the heathens, and by consequence when the Empire made war upon the Jews; for till then the heathens were at peace with the Christian Jews, as well as with the rest. The Epistle to the Hebrews, since it mentions Timothy as related to those Hebrews, must be written to them after their flight into Asia, where Timothy was Bishop; and by consequence after the war began, the Hebrews in Judea being strangers to Timothy. Peter seems also to call Rome Babylon, as well with respect to the war made upon Judea, and the approaching captivity, like that under old Babylon, as with respect to that name in the Apocalypse: and in writing to the strangers scattered thro’out Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, he seems to intimate that they were the strangers newly scattered by the Roman wars; for those were the only strangers there belonging to his care.

This account of things agrees best with history when duly rectified. For [29] Justin and [30] Irenæus say, that Simon Magus came to Rome in the reign of Claudius, and exercised juggling tricks there. Pseudo Clemens adds, that he endeavoured there to fly, but broke his neck thro’ the prayers of Peter. Whence [31] Eusebius, or rather his interpolator Jerom, has recorded, that Peter came to Rome in the second year of Claudius: but [32] Cyril Bishop of Jerusalem, Philastrius, Sulpitius, Prosper, Maximus Taurinensis, and Hegesippus junior, place this victory of Peter in the time of Nero. Indeed the antienter tradition was, that Peter came to Rome in the days of this Emperor, as may be seen in [33] Lactantius. Chrysostom [34] tells us, that the Apostles continued long in Judea, and that then being driven out by the Jews they went to the Gentiles. This dispersion was in the first year of the Jewish war, when the Jews, as Josephus tells us, began to be tumultuous and violent in all places. For all agree that the Apostles were dispersed into several regions at once; and Origen has set down the time, [35] telling us that in the beginning of the Judaic war, the Apostles and disciples of our Lord were scattered into all nations; Thomas into Parthia, Andrew into Scythia, John into Asia, and Peter first into Asia, where he preacht to the dispersion, and thence into Italy. [36] Dionysius Corinthius saith, that Peter went from Asia by Corinth to Rome, and all antiquity agrees that Peter and Paul were martyred there in the end of Nero’s reign. Mark went with Timothy to Rome, 2 Tim. iv. 11. Colos. iv. 10. Sylvanus was Paul’s assistant; and by the companions of Peter, mentioned in his first Epistle, we may know that he wrote from Rome; and the Antients generally agree, that in this Epistle he understood Rome by Babylon. His second Epistle was writ to the same dispersed strangers with the first, 2 Pet. iii. 1. and therein he saith, that Paul had writ of the same things to them, and also in his other Epistles, ver. 15, 16. Now as there is no Epistle of Paul to these strangers besides that to the Hebrews, so in this Epistle, chap. x. 11, 12. we find at large all those things which Peter had been speaking of, and here refers to; particularly the passing away of the old heavens and earth, and establishing an inheritance immoveable, with an exhortation to grace, because God, to the wicked, is a consuming fire, Heb. xii. 25, 26, 28, 29.

Having determined the time of writing the Apocalyse, I need not say much about the truth of it, since it was in such request with the first ages, that many endeavoured to imitate it, by feigning Apocalypses under the Apostles names; and the Apostles themselves, as I have just now shewed, studied it, and used its phrases; by which means the style of the Epistle to the Hebrews became more mystical than that of Paul’s other Epistles, and the style of John’s Gospel more figurative and majestical than that of the other Gospels. I do not apprehend that Christ was called the word of God in any book of the New Testament written before the Apocalypse; and therefore am of opinion, the language was taken from this Prophecy, as were also many other phrases in this Gospel, such as those of Christ’s being the light which enlightens the world, the lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world, the bridegroom, he that testifieth, he that came down from heaven, the Son of God, &c. Justin Martyr, who within thirty years after John’s death became a Christian, writes expresly that a certain man among the Christians whose name was John, one of the twelve Apostles of Christ, in the Revelation which was shewed him, prophesied that those who believed in Christ should live a thousand years at Jerusalem. And a few lines before he saith: But I, and as many as are Christians, in all things right in their opinions, believe both that there shall be a resurrection of the flesh, and a thousand years life at Jerusalem built, adorned and enlarged. Which is as much as to say, that all true Christians in that early age received this Prophecy: for in all ages, as many as believed the thousand years, received the Apocalypse as the foundation of their opinion: and I do not know one instance to the contrary. Papias Bishop of Hierapolis, a man of the Apostolic age, and one of John’s own disciples, did not only teach the doctrine of the thousand years, but also [37] asserted the Apocalypse as written by divine inspiration. Melito, who flourished next after Justin, [38] wrote a commentary upon this Prophecy; and he, being Bishop of Sardis one of the seven Churches, could neither be ignorant of their tradition about it, nor impose upon them. Irenæus, who was contemporary with Melito, wrote much upon it, and said, that the number 666 was in all the antient and approved copies; and that he had it also confirmed to him by those who had seen John face to face, meaning no doubt his master Polycarp for one. At the same time [39] Theophilus Bishop of Antioch asserted it, and so did Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Origen soon after; and their contemporary Hippolytus the Martyr, Metropolitan of the Arabians, [40] wrote a commentary upon it. All these were antient men, flourishing within a hundred and twenty years after John’s death, and of greatest note in the Churches of those times. Soon after did Victorinus Pictaviensis write another commentary upon it; and he lived in the time of Dioclesian. This may surely suffice to shew how the Apocalypse was received and studied in the first ages: and I do not indeed find any other book of the New Testament so strongly attested, or commented upon so early as this. The Prophecy said: Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this Prophecy, and keep the things which are written therein. This animated the first Christians to study it so much, till the difficulty made them remit, and comment more upon the other books of the New Testament. This was the state of the Apocalypse, till the thousand years being misunderstood, brought a prejudice against it: and Dionysius of Alexandria, noting how it abounded with barbarisms, that is with Hebraisms, promoted that prejudice so far, as to cause many Greeks in the fourth century to doubt of the book. But whilst the Latins, and a great part of the Greeks, always retained the Apocalypse, and the rest doubted only out of prejudice, it makes nothing against its authority.

This Prophecy is called the Revelation, with respect to the scripture of truth, which Daniel [41] was commanded to shut up and seal, till the time of the end. Daniel sealed it until the time of the end; and until that time comes, the Lamb is opening the seals: and afterwards the two Witnesses prophesy out of it a long time in sackcloth, before they ascend up to heaven in a cloud. All which is as much as to say, that these Prophecies of Daniel and John should not be understood till the time of the end: but then some should prophesy out of them in an afflicted and mournful state for a long time, and that but darkly, so as to convert but few. But in the very end, the Prophecy should be so far interpreted as to convince many. Then, saith Daniel, many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be encreased. For the Gospel must be preached in all nations before the great tribulation, and end of the world. The palmbearing multitude, which come out of this great tribulation, cannot be innumerable out of all nations, unless they be made so by the preaching of the Gospel before it comes. There must be a stone cut out of a mountain without hands, before it can fall upon the toes of the Image, and become a great mountain and fill the earth. An Angel must fly thro’ the midst of heaven with the everlasting Gospel to preach to all nations, before Babylon falls, and the Son of man reaps his harvest. The two Prophets must ascend up to heaven in a cloud, before the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of Christ. ‘Tis therefore a part of this Prophecy, that it should not be understood before the last age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of the Prophecy, that it is not yet understood. But if the last age, the age of opening these things, be now approaching, as by the great successes of late Interpreters it seems to be, we have more encouragement than ever to look into these things. If the general preaching of the Gospel be approaching, it is to us and our posterity that those words mainly belong: [42] In the time of the end the wise shall understand, but none of the wicked shall understand. [43] Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this Prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein.

The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretel times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world. For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence. For as the few and obscure Prophecies concerning Christ’s first coming were for setting up the Christian religion, which all nations have since corrupted; so the many and clear Prophecies concerning the things to be done at Christ’s second coming, are not only for predicting but also for effecting a recovery and reestablishment of the longlost truth, and setting up a kingdom wherein dwells righteousness. The event will prove the Apocalypse; and this Prophecy, thus proved and understood, will open the old Prophets, and all together will make known the true religion, and establish it. For he that will understand the old Prophets, must begin with this; but the time is not yet come for understanding them perfectly, because the main revolution predicted in them is not yet come to pass. In the days of the voice of the seventh Angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God shall be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the Prophets: and then the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign for ever, Apoc. x. 7. xi. 15. There is already so much of the Prophecy fulfilled, that as many as will take pains in this study, may see sufficient instances of God’s providence: but then the signal revolutions predicted by all the holy Prophets, will at once both turn mens eyes upon considering the predictions, and plainly interpret them. Till then we must content ourselves with interpreting what hath been already fulfilled.

Amongst the Interpreters of the last age there is scarce one of note who hath not made some discovery worth knowing; and thence I seem to gather that God is about opening these mysteries. The success of others put me upon considering it; and if I have done any thing which may be useful to following writers, I have my design.

Notes to Chap. I.
[1] Dem. Evang. l. 3.
[2] Vid. Pamelium in notis ad Tertull. de Præscriptionbus, n. 215 & Hieron l. 1. contra Jovinianum, c. 14. Edit.Erasmi.
[3] Areth. c. 18, 19.
[4] Hist. Eccl. l. 3. c. 23.
[5] Chrysost. ad Theodorum lapsum.
[6] Hieron. in Epist. ad Gal. l. 3. c. 6.
[7] Apud Euseb. Eccl. Hist. l. 3. c. 28. Edit. Valesii.
[8] Epiphan. Hæres. 28.
[9] Hieron. adv. Lucif.
[10] 1 Pet. i. 7, 13. iv. 13. & v. 1.
[11] Apoc. xiii. 8.
[12] Apoc. xxi.
[13] Apoc. i. 6. & v. 10.
[14] Apoc. xx. 6.
[15] Apoc. xx. 4, 12.
[16] Apoc. xvii.
[17] Dan. viii. 15, 16, 27. & xii. 8, 9.
[18] ασελγειας, in many of the best MSS.
[19] Apoc. xiii. 7, 12.
[20] Apoc. xiii. 1, 5, 6.
[21] Apoc. xviii. 12, 13.
[22] Apoc. xix. 20.
[23] Apoc. xxi. 3, 4.
[24] Apoc. ix. 21. and xvii. 2.
[25] Apoc. xiii. 6.
[26] Apoc. xviii. 3, 7, 9.
[27] μοιχαλιδος.
[28] Apoc. ii. 14.
[29] Apol. ad Antonin. Pium.
[30] Hæres. l. 1. c. 20. Vide etiam Tertullianum, Apol. c. 13.
[31] Euseb. Chron.
[32] Cyril Catech. 6. Philastr. de hæres. cap. 30. Sulp. Hist. l. 2. Prosper de promiss. dimid. temp. cap. 13. Maximus
serm. 5. in Natal. Apost. Hegesip. l. 2. c. 2.
[33] Lactant de mortib. Persec. c. 2.
[34] Hom. 70. in Matt. c. 22.
[35] Apud Euseb. Eccl. Hist. l. 2. c. 25.
[36] Euseb. Hist. l. 2. c. 25.
[37] Arethas in Proæm. comment. in Apoc.
[38] Euseb. Hist. l. 4. cap. 26. Hieron.
[39] Euseb. Hist. l. 4. c. 24.
[40] Hieron.
[41] Dan. x. 21. xii. 4, 9.
[42] Dan. xii. 4, 10.
[43] Apoc. i. 3.

The Apocalypse of John is written in the same style and language with the Prophecies of Daniel, and hath the same relation to them which they have to one another, so that all of them together make but one complete Prophecy; and in like manner it consists of two parts, an introductory Prophecy, and an Interpretation thereof.

The Prophecy is distinguished into seven successive parts, by the opening of the seven seals of the book which Daniel was commanded to seal up: and hence it is called the Apocalypse or Revelation of Jesus Christ. The time of the seventh seal is subdivided into eight successive parts by the silence in heaven for half an hour, and the sounding of seven trumpets successively: and the seventh trumpet sounds to the battle of the great day of God Almighty, whereby the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ, and those are destroyed that destroyed the earth.

The Interpretation begins with the words, And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the Ark of his Testament: and it continues to the end of the Prophecy. The Temple is the scene of the visions, and the visions in the Temple relate to the feast of the seventh month: for the feasts of the Jews were typical of things to come. The Passover related to the first coming of Christ, and the feasts of the seventh month to his second coming: his first coming being therefore over before this Prophecy was given, the feasts of the seventh month are here only alluded unto.

On the first day of that month, in the morning, the HighPriest dressed the lamps: and in allusion hereunto, this Prophecy begins with a vision of one like the Son of man in the HighPriest’s habit, appearing as it were in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, or over against the midst of them, dressing the lamps, which appeared like a rod of seven stars in his right hand: and this dressing was perform’d by the sending seven Epistles to the Angels or Bishops of the seven Churches of Asia, which in the primitive times illuminated the Temple or Church Catholick. These Epistles contain admonitions against the approaching Apostacy, and therefore relate to the times when the Apostacy began to work strongly, and before it prevailed. It began to work in the Apostles days, and was to continue working till the man of sin should be revealed. It began to work in the disciples of Simon, Menander, Carpocrates, Cerinthas, and such sorts of men as had imbibed the metaphysical philosophy of the Gentiles and Cabalistical Jews, and were thence called Gnosticks. John calls them Antichrists, saying that in his days there were many Antichrists. But these being condemned by the Apostles, and their immediate disciples, put the Churches in no danger during the opening of the first four seals. The visions at the opening of these seals relate only to the civil affairs of the heathen Roman Empire. So long the Apostolic traditions prevailed, and preserved the Church in its purity: and therefore the affairs of the Church do not begin to be considered in this Prophecy before the opening of the fifth seal. She began then to decline, and to want admonitions; and therefore is admonished by these Epistles, till the Apostacy prevailed and took place, which was at the opening of the seventh seal. The admonitions therefore in these seven Epistles relate to the state of the Church in the times of the fifth and sixth seals. At the opening of the fifth seal, the Church is purged from hypocrites by a great persecution. At the opening of the sixth, that which letted is taken out of the way, namely the heathen Roman Empire. At the opening of the seventh, the man of sin is revealed. And to these times the seven Epistles relate.

The seven Angels, to whom these Epistles were written, answer to the seven Amarcholim, who were Priests and chief Officers of the Temple, and had jointly the keys of the gates of the Temple, with those of the Treasuries, and the direction, appointment and oversight of all things in the Temple.

After the lamps were dresed, John saw the door of the Temple opened; and by the voice as it were of a trumpet, was called up to the eastern gate of the great court, to see the visions: and behold a throne was set, viz. the mercyseat upon the Ark of the Testament, which the Jews respected as the throne of God between the Cherubims, Exod. xxv. 2. Psal. xcix. 1. And he that sat on it was to look upon like Jasper and Sardine stone, that is, of an olive colour, the people of Judea being of that colour. And, the Sun being then in the East, a rainbow was about the throne, the emblem of glory. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats; answering to the chambers of the four and twenty Princes of the Priests, twelve on the south side, and twelve on the north side of the Priests Court. And upon the seats were four and twenty Elders sitting, clothed in white rayment, with crowns on their heads; representing the Princes of the four and twenty courses of the Priests clothed in linen. And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings, and voices, viz. the flashes of the fire upon the Altar at the morningsacrifice, and the thundering voices of those that sounded the trumpets, and sung at the Eastern gate of the Priests Court; for these being between John and the throne appeared to him as proceeding from the throne. And there were seven lamps of fire burning, in the Temple, before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God, or Angels of the seven Churches, represented in the beginning of this Prophecy by seven stars. And before the throne was a sea of glass clear as chrystal; the brazen sea between the porch of the Temple and the Altar, filled with clear water. And in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four Beasts full of eyes before and behind: that is, one Beast before the throne and one behind it, appearing to John as in the midst of the throne, and one on either side in the circle about it, to represent by the multitude of their eyes the people standing in the four sides of the peoples court. And the first Beast was like a lion, and the second was like a calf, and the third had the face of a man, and the fourth was like a flying eagle. The people of Israel in the wilderness encamped round about the tabernacle, and on the east side were three tribes under the standard of Judah, on the west were three tribes under the standard of Ephraim, on the south were three tribes under the standard of Reuben, and on the north were three tribes under the standard of Dan, Numb. ii. And the standard of Judah was a Lion, that of Ephraim an Ox, that of Reuben a Man, and that of Dan an Eagle, as the Jews affirm. Whence were framed the hieroglyphicks of Cherubims and Seraphims, to represent the people of Israel. A Cherubim had one body with four faces, the faces of a Lion, an Ox, a Man and an Eagle, looking to the four winds of heaven, without turning about, as in Ezekiel’s vision, chap. i. And four Seraphims had the same four faces with four bodies, one face to every body. The four Beasts are therefore four Seraphims standing in the four sides of the peoples court; the first in the eastern side with the head of a Lion, the second in the western side with the head of an Ox, the third in the southern side with the head of a Man, the fourth in the northern side with the head of an Eagle: and all four signify together the twelve tribes of Israel, out of whom the hundred forty and four thousand were sealed, Apoc. vii. 4. And the four Beasts had each of them six wings, two to a tribe, in all twenty and four wings, answering to the twenty and four stations of the people. And they were full of eyes within, or under their wings. And they rest not day and night, or at the morning and eveningsacrifices, saying, holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. These animals are therefore the Seraphims, which appeared to Isaiah [1] in a vision like this of the Apocalypse. For there also the Lord sat upon a throne in the temple; and the Seraphims each with six wings cried, Holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts. And when those animals give glory and honour and thanks to him that sitteth upon the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty Elders go into the Temple, and there fall down before him that sitteth on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. At the morning and eveningsacrifices, so soon as the sacrifice was laid upon the Altar, and the drinkoffering began to be poured out, the trumpets sounded, and the Levites sang by course three times; and every time when the trumpets sounded, the people fell down and worshiped. Three times therefore did the people worship; to express which number, the Beasts cry Holy, holy, holy: and the song being ended, the people prayed standing, till the solemnity was finished. In the mean time the Priests went into the Temple, and there fell down before him that sat upon the throne, and worshiped.

And John saw, in the right hand of him that sat upon the throne, a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals, viz. the book which Daniel was commanded to seal up, and which is here represented by the prophetic book of the Law laid up on the right side of the Ark, as it were in the right hand of him that sat on the throne: for the festivals and ceremonies of the Law prescribed to the people in this book, adumbrated those things which were predicted in the book of Daniel; and the writing within and on the backside of this book, relates to the synchronal Prophecies. [2] And none was found worthy to open the book but the Lamb of God. And lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four Beasts, and in the midst of the Elders, that is, at the foot of the Altar, stood a lamb as it had been slain, the morningsacrifice; having seven horns, which are the seven Churches, and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And he came, and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne: And when he had taken the book, the four Beasts and four and twenty Elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us, unto our God, Kings and Priests, and we shall reign on the earth. The Beasts and Elders therefore represent the primitive Christians of all nations; and the worship of these Christians in their Churches is here represented under the form of worshiping God and the Lamb in the Temple: God for his benefaction in creating all things, and the Lamb for his benefaction in redeeming us with his blood: God as sitting upon the throne and living for ever, and the Lamb as exalted above all by the merits of his death. And I heard, saith John, the voice of many Angels round about the throne, and the Beasts and the Elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I, saying, Blessing, honour, glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. And the four Beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty Elders fell down and worshiped him that liveth for ever and ever. This was the worship of the primitive Christians.

It was the custom for the High Priest, seven days before the fast of the seventh month, to continue constantly in the Temple, and study the book of the Law, that he might be perfect in it against the day of expiation; wherein the service, which was various and intricate, was wholly to be performed by himself; part of which service was reading the Law to the people: and to promote his studying it, there were certain Priests appointed by the Sanhedrim to be with him those seven days in one of his chambers in the Temple, and there to discourse with him about the Law, and read it to him, and put him in mind of reading and studying it himself. This his opening and reading the Law those seven days, is alluded unto in the Lamb’s opening the seals. We are to conceive that those seven days begin in the evening before each day; for the Jews began their day in the evening, and that the solemnity of the fast begins in the morning of the seventh day.

The seventh seal was therefore opened on the day of expiation, and then there was silence in heaven for half an hour. And an Angel, the HighPriest, stood at the Altar, having a golden Censer; and there was given him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all Saints, upon the golden Altar which was before the throne. The custom was on other days, for one of the Priests to take fire from the great Altar in a silver Censer; but on this day, for the HighPriest to take fire from the great Altar in a golden Censer: and when he was come down from the great Altar, he took incense from one of the Priests who brought it to him, and went with it to the golden Altar: and while he offered the incense, the people prayed without in silence, which is the silence in heaven for half an hour. When the HighPriest had laid the incense on the Altar, he carried a Censer of it burning in his hand, into the most holy place before the Ark. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the Saints, ascended up before God out of the Angel’s hand. On other days there was a certain measure of incense for the golden Altar: on this day there was a greater quantity for both the Altar and the most holy Place, and therefore it is called much incense. After this the Angel took the Censer, and filled it with fire from the great Altar, and cast it into the earth; that is, by the hands of the Priests who belong to his mystical body, he cast it to the earth without the Temple, for burning the Goat which was the Lord’s lot. And at this and other concomitant sacrifices, until the eveningsacrifice was ended, there were voices, and thundrings, and lightnings, and an earthquake; that is, the voice of the HighPriest reading the Law to the people, and other voices and thundrings from the trumpets and templemusick at the sacrifices, and lightnings from the fire of the Altar.

The solemnity of the day of expiation being finished, the seven Angels found their trumpets at the great sacrifices of the seven days of the feast of tabernacles; and at the same sacrifices, the seven thunders utter their voices, which are the musick of the Temple, and singing of the Levites, intermixed with the soundings of the trumpets: and the seven Angels pour out their vials of wrath, which are the drinkofferings of those sacrifices.

When six of the seals were opened, John said: [3] And after these things, that is, after the visions of the sixth seal, I saw four Angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another Angel ascending from the East, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four Angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. This sealing alludes to a tradition of the Jews, that upon the day of expiation all the people of Israel are sealed up in the books of life and death. For the Jews in their Talmud [4] tell us, that in the beginning of every new year, or first day of the month Tisri, the seventh month of the sacred year, three books are opened in judgment; the book of life, in which the names of those are written who are perfectly just; the book of death, in which the names of those are written who are Atheists or very wicked; and a third book, of those whose judgment is suspended till the day of expiation, and whose names are not written in the book of life or death before that day. The first ten days of this month they call the penitential days; and all these days they fast and pray very much, and are very devout, that on the tenth day their sins may be remitted, and their names may be written in the book of life; which day is therefore called the day of expiation. And upon this tenth day, in returning home from the Synagogues, they say to one another, God the creator seal you to a good year. For they conceive that the books are now sealed up, and that the sentence of God remains unchanged henceforward to the end of the year. The same thing is signified by the two Goats, upon whose foreheads the HighPriest yearly, on the day of expiation, lays the two lots inscribed, For God and For Azazel; God’s lot signifying the people who are sealed with the name of God in their foreheads; and the lot Azazel, which was sent into the wilderness, representing those who receive the mark and name of the Beast, and go into the wilderness with the great Whore.

The servants of God being therefore sealed in the day of expiation, we may conceive that this sealing is synchronal to the visions which appear upon opening the seventh seal; and that when the Lamb had opened six of the seals and seen the visions relating to the inside of the sixth, he looked on the backside of the seventh leaf, and then saw the four Angels holding the four winds of heaven, and another Angel ascending from the East with the seal of God. Conceive also, that the Angels which held the four winds were the first four of the seven Angels, who upon opening the seventh seal were seen standing before God; and that upon their holding the winds, there was silence in heaven for half an hour; and that while the servants of God were sealing, the Angel with the golden Censer offered their prayers with incense upon the golden Altar, and read the Law: and that so soon as they were sealed, the winds hurt the earth at the sounding of the first trumpet, and the sea at the sounding of the second; these winds signifying the wars, to which the first four trumpets sounded. For as the first four seals are distinguished from the three last by the appearance of four horsemen towards the four winds of heaven; so the wars of the first four trumpets are distinguished from those of the three last, by representing these by four winds, and the others by three great woes.

In one of Ezekiel’s visions, when the Babylonian captivity was at hand, six men appeared with slaughterweapons; and a seventh, who [5] appeared among them clothed in white linen and a writer’s inkhorn by his side, is commanded to go thro’ the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations done in the midst thereof: and then the six men, like the Angels of the first six trumpets, are commanded to slay those men who are not marked. Conceive therefore that the hundred forty and four thousand are sealed, to preserve them from the plagues of the first six trumpets; and that at length by the preaching of the everlasting gospel, they grow into a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues: and at the sounding of the seventh trumpet come out of the great tribulation with Palms in their hands: the kingdoms of this world, by the war to which that trumpet sounds, becoming the kingdoms of God and his Christ. For the solemnity of the great Hosannah was kept by the Jews upon the seventh or last day of the feast of tabernacles; the Jews upon that day carrying Palms in their hands, and crying Hosannah.

After six of the Angels, answering to the six men with slaughter-weapons, had sounded their trumpets, the Lamb in the form of a mighty Angel cane down from heaven clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the Sun, and his feet as pillars of fire, the shape in which Christ appeared in the beginning of this Prophecy; and he had in his hand a little book open, the book which he had newly opened; for he received but one book from him that sitteth upon the throne, and he alone was worthy to open and look on this book. And he set his right foot upon the sea and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth. It was the custom for the HighPriest on the day of expiation, to stand in an elevated place in the peoples court, at the Eastern gate of the Priests court, and read the Law to the people, while the Heifer and the Goat which was the Lord’s lot, were burning without the Temple. We may therefore suppose him standing in such a manner, that his right foot might appear to John as it were standing on the sea of glass, and his left foot on the ground of the house; and that he cried with a loud voice, in reading the Law on the day of expiation. And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. Thunders are the voice of a cloud, and a cloud signifies a multitude; and this multitude may be the Levites, who sang with thundering voices, and played with musical instruments at the great sacrifices, on the seven days of the feast of Tabernacles: at which times the trumpets also sounded. For the trumpets sounded, and the Levites sang alternately, three times at every sacrifice. The Prophecy therefore of the seven thunders is nothing else than a repetition of the Prophecy of the seven trumpets in another form. And the Angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, that after the seven thunders there should be time no longer; but in the days of the voice of the seventh Angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the Prophets. The voices of the thunders therefore last to the end of this world, and so do those of the trumpets.

And the voice which I heard from heaven, saith John, spake unto me again and said, Go and take the little book, &c. And I took the little book out of the Angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey, and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings. This is an introduction to a new Prophecy, to a repetition of the Prophecy of the whole book; and alludes to Ezekiel’s eating a roll or book spread open before him, and written within and without, full of lamentations and mourning and woe, but sweet in his mouth. Eating and drinking signify acquiring and possessing; and eating the book is becoming inspired with the Prophecy contained in it. It implies being inspired in a vigorous and extraordinary manner with the Prophecy of the whole book, and therefore signifies a lively repetition of the whole Prophecy by way of interpretation, and begins not till the first Prophecy, that of the seals and trumpets, is ended. It was sweet in John’s mouth, and therefore begins not with the bitter Prophecy of the Babylonian captivity, and the Gentiles being in the outward court of the Temple, and treading the holy city under foot; and the prophesying of the two Witnesses in sackcloth, and their smiting the earth with all plagues, and being killed by the Beast; but so soon as the Prophecy of the trumpets is ended, it begins with the sweet Prophecy of the glorious Woman in heaven, and the victory of Michael over the Dragon; and after that, it is bitter in John’s belly, by a large description of the times of the great Apostacy.

And the Angel stood, upon the earth and sea, saying, Rise and measure the Temple of God and the Altar, and them that worship therein, that is, their courts with the buildings thereon, viz. the square court of the Temple called the separate place, and the square court of the Altar called the Priests court, and the court of them that worship in the Temple called the new court: but the great court which is without the Temple, leave out, and measure it not, for it is given to the Gentiles, and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. This measuring hath reference to Ezekiel’s measuring the Temple of Solomon: there the whole Temple, including the outward court, was measured, to signify that it should be rebuilt in the latter days. Here the courts of the Temple and Altar, and they who worship therein, are only measured, to signify the building of a second Temple, for those that are sealed out of all the twelve tribes of Israel, and worship in the inward court of sincerity and truth: but John is commanded to leave out the outward court, or outward form of religion and Churchgovernment, because it is given to the Babylonian Gentiles. For the glorious woman in heaven, the remnant of whole seed kept the commandments of God, and had the testimony of Jesus, continued the same woman in outward form after her flight into the wilderness, whereby she quitted her former sincerity and piety, and became the great Whore. She lost her chastity, but kept her outward form and shape. And while the Gentiles tread the holy city underfoot, and worship in the outward court, the two witnesses, represented perhaps by the two feet of the Angel standing on the sea and earth, prophesied against them, and had power, like Elijah and Moses, to consume their enemies with fire proceeding out of their mouth, and to shut heaven that it rain not in the days of their Prophecy, and to turn the waters into blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they will, that is, with the plagues of the trumpets and vials of wrath; and at length they are slain, rise again from the dead, and ascend up to heaven in a cloud; and then the seventh trumpet sounds to the day of judgment.

The Prophecy being finished, John is inspired anew by the eaten book, and begins the Interpretation thereof with these words, And the Temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his Temple the Ark of the Testament. By the Ark, we may know that this was the first Temple; for the second Temple had no Ark. And there were lightnings, and voices, and thundrings, and an earthquake, and great hail. These answer to the wars in the Roman Empire, during the reign of the four horsemen, who appeared upon opening the first four seals. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the Sun. In the Prophecy, the affairs of the Church begin to be considered at the opening of the fifth seal; and in the Interpretation, they begin at the same time with the vision of the Church in the form of a woman in heaven: there she is persecuted, and here she is pained in travail. The Interpretation proceeds down first to the sealing of the servants of God, and marking the rest with the mark of the Beast; and then to the day of judgment, represented by a harvest and vintage. Then it returns back to the times of opening the seventh seal, and interprets the Prophecy of the seven trumpets by the pouring out of seven vials of wrath. The Angels who pour them out, come out of the Temple of the Tabernacle; that is, out of the second Temple, for the Tabernacle had no outward court. Then it returns back again to the times of measuring the Temple and Altar, and of the Gentiles worshiping in the outward court, and of the Beast killing the witnesses in the streets of the great city; and interprets these things by the vision of a woman sitting on the Beast, drunken with the blood of the Saints; and proceeds in the interpretation downwards to the fall of the great city and the day of judgment.

The whole Prophecy of the book, represented by the book of the Law, is therefore repeated, and interpreted in the visions which follow those of sounding the seventh trumpet, and begin with that of the Temple of God opened in heaven. Only the things, which the seven thunders uttered, were not written down, and therefore not interpreted.

Notes to Chap. II.
[1] Isa. vi.
[2] Apoc. v.
[3] Apoc. vii
[4] Buxtorf in Synogoga Judaica, c. 18, 21.
[5] Ezek. ix.

The whole scene of sacred Prophecy is composed of three principal parts: the regions beyond Euphrates, represented by the two first Beasts of Daniel; the Empire of the Greeks on this side of Euphrates, represented by the Leopard and by the HeGoat; and the Empire of the Latins on this side of Greece, represented by the Beast with ten horns. And to these three parts, the phrases of the third part of the earth, sea, rivers, trees, ships, stars, sun, and moon, relate. I place the body of the fourth Beast on this side of Greece, because the three first of the four Beasts had their lives prolonged after their dominion was taken away, and therefore belong not to the body of the fourth. He only stamped them with his feet.

By the earth, the Jews understood the great continent of all Asia and Africa, to which they had access by land: and by the Isles of the sea, they understood the places to which they sailed by sea, particularly all Europe: and hence in this Prophecy, the earth and sea are put for the nations of the Greek and Latin Empires.

The third and fourth Beasts of Daniel are the same with the Dragon and tenhorned Beast of John, but with this difference: John puts the Dragon for the whole Roman Empire while it continued entire, because it was entire when that Prophecy was given; and the Beast he considers not till the Empire became divided: and then he puts the Dragon for the Empire of the Greeks, and the Beast for the Empire of the Latins. Hence it is that the Dragon and Beast have common heads and common horns: but the Dragon hath crowns only upon his heads, and the Beast only upon his horns; because the Beast and his horns reigned not before they were divided from the Dragon: and when the Dragon gave the Beast his throne, the ten horns received power as Kings, the same hour with the Beast. The heads are seven successive Kings. Four of them were the four horsemen which appeared at the opening of the first four seals. In the latter end of the sixth head, or seal, considered as present in the visions, it is said, five of the seven Kings are fallen, and one is, and another is not yet come; and the Beast that was and is not, being wounded to death with a sword, he is the eighth, and of the seven: he was therefore a collateral part of the seventh. The horns are the same with those of Daniel’s fourth Beast, described above.

The four horsemen which appear at the opening of the first four seals, have been well explained by Mr. Mede; excepting that I had rather continue the third to the end of the reign of the three Gordians and Philip the Arabian, those being Kings from the South, and begin the fourth with the reign of Decius, and continue it till the reign of Dioclesian. For the fourth horseman sat upon a pale horse, and his name was Death; and hell followed with him; and power was given them to kill unto the fourth part of the earth, with the sword, and with famine, and with the plague, and with the Beasts of the earth, or armies of invaders and rebels: and as such were the times during all this interval. Hitherto the Roman Empire continued in an undivided monarchical form, except rebellions; and such it is represented by the four horsemen. But Dioclesian divided it between himself and Maximianus, A.C. 285; and it continued in that divided state, till the victory of Constantine the great over Licinius, A.C. 323, which put an end to the heathen persecutions set on foot by Dioclesian and Maximianus, and described at the opening of the fifth seal. But this division of the Empire was imperfect, the whole being still under one and the same Senate. The same victory of Constantine over Licinius a heathen persecutor, began the fall of the heathen Empire, described at the opening of the sixth seal: and the visions of this seal continue till after the reign of Julian the Apostate, he being a heathen Emperor, and reigning over the whole Roman Empire.

The affairs of the Church begin to be considered at the opening of the fifth seal, as was said above. Then she is represented by a woman in the Temple of heaven, clothed with the sun of righteousness, and the moon of Jewish ceremonies under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars relating to the twelve Apostles and to the twelve tribes of Israel. When she fled from the Temple into the wilderness, she left in the Temple a remnant of her seed, who kept the commandments of God, and had the testimony of Jesus Christ; and therefore before her flight she represented the true primitive Church of God, tho afterwards she degenerated like Aholah and Aholibah. In Diocesian’s persecution she cried, travelling in birth, and pained to be delivered. And in the end of that persecution, by the victory of Constantine over Maxentius A.C. 312, she brought forth a manchild, such a child as was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, a Christian Empire. And her child, by the victory of Constantine over Licinius, A.C. 323, was caught up unto God and to his throne. And the woman, by the division of the Roman Empire into the Greek and Latin Empires, fled from the first Temple into the wilderness, or spiritually barren Empire of the Latins, where she is found afterwards sitting upon the Beast and upon the seven mountains; and is called the great city which reigneth over the Kings of the earth, that is, over the ten Kings who give their kingdom to her Beast.

But before her flight there was war in heaven between Michael and the Dragon, the Christian and the heathen religions; and the Dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world, was cast out to the earth, and his Angels were cast out with him. And John heard a voice in heaven, saying, Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony. And they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe be to the inhabiters of the earth and sea, or people of the Greek and Latin Empires, for the devil is come down amongst you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

And when the Dragon saw that he was cast down from the Roman throne, and the manchild caught up thither, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the manchild; and to her, by the division of the Roman Empire between the cities of Rome and Constantinople A.C. 330, were given two wings of a great eagle, the symbol of the Roman Empire, that she might flee from the first Temple into the wilderness of Arabia, to her place at Babylon mystically so called. And the serpent, by the division of the same Empire between the sons of Constantine the great, A.C. 337, cast out of his mouth water as a flood, the Western Empire, after the woman; that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. And the earth, or Greek Empire, helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood, by the victory of Constantius over Magnentius, A.C. 353, and thus the Beast was wounded to death with a sword. And the Dragon was wroth with the woman, in the reign of Julian the Apostate A.C. 361, and, by a new division of the Empire between Valentinian and Valens, A.C. 364, went from her into the Eastern Empire to make war with the remnant of her seed, which she left behind her when she fled: and thus the Beast revived. By the next division of the Empire, which was between Gratian and Theodosius A.C. 379, the Beast with ten horns rose out of the sea, and the Beast with two horns out of the earth: and by the last division thereof, which was between the sons of Theodosius, A.C. 395, the Dragon gave the Beast his power and throne, and great authority. And the ten horns received power as Kings, the same hour with the Beast.

At length the woman arrived at her place of temporal as well as spiritual dominion upon the back of the Beast, where she is nourished a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent; not in his kingdom, but at a distance from him. She is nourished by the merchants of the earth, three times or years and an half, or 42 months, or 1260 days: and in these Prophecies days are put for years. During all this time the Beast acted, and she sat upon him, that is, reigned over him, and over the ten Kings who gave their power and strength, that is, their kingdom to the Beast; and she was drunken with the blood of the Saints. By all these circumstances she is the eleventh horn of Daniel’s fourth Beast, who reigned with a look more stout than his fellows, and was of a different kind from the rest, and had eyes and a mouth like the woman; and made war with the saints, and prevailed against them, and wore them out, and thought to change times and laws, and had them given into his hand, until a time, and times, and half a time. These characters of the woman, and little horn of the Beast, agree perfectly: in respect of her temporal dominion, she was a horn of the Beast; in respect of her spiritual dominion, she rode upon him in the form of a woman, and was his Church, and committed fornication with the ten Kings.

The second Beast, which rose up out of the earth, was the Church of the Greek Empire: for it had two horns like those of the Lamb, and therefore was a Church; and it spake as the Dragon, and therefore was of his religion; and it came up out of the earth, and by consequence in his kingdom. It is called also the false Prophet who wrought miracles before the first Beast, by which he deceived them that received his mark, and worshiped his image. When the Dragon went from the woman to make war with the remnant of her seed, this Beast arising out of the earth assisted in that war, and caused the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the authority of the first Beast, whose mortal wound was healed, and to make an Image to him, that is, to assemble a body of men like him in point of religion. He had also power to give life and authority to the Image, so that it could both speak, and by dictating cause that all religious bodies of men, who would not worship the authority of the Image, should be mystically killed. And he causeth all men to receive a mark in their right hand or in their forehead, and that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark, or the name of the Beast, or the number of his name; all the rest being excommunicated by the Beast with two horns. His mark is (picture of three Roman crosses), and his name ΛΑΤΕΙΝΟΣ, and the number of his name 666.

Thus the Beast, after he was wounded to death with a sword and revived, was deified, as the heathens used to deify their Kings after death, and had an Image erected to him; and his worshipers were initiated in this new religion, by receiving the mark or name of this new God, or the number of his name. By killing all that will not worship him and his Image, the first Temple, illuminated by the lamps of the seven Churches, is demolished, and a new Temple built for them who will not worship him; and the outward court of this new Temple, or outward form of a Church, is given to the Gentiles, who worship the Beast and his Image: while they who will not worship him, are sealed with the name of God in their foreheads, and retire into the inward court of this new Temple. These are the 144000 sealed out of all the twelve tribes of Israel, and called the two Witnesses, as being derived from the two wings of the woman while she was flying into the wilderness, and represented by two of the seven candlesticks. These appear to John in the inward court of the second Temple, standing on mount Sion with the Lamb, and as it were on the sea of glass. These are the Saints of the most High, and the host of heaven, and the holy people spoken of by Daniel, as worn out and trampled under foot, and destroyed in the latter times by the little horns of his fourth Beast and HeGoat.

While the Gentiles tread the holy city under foot, God gives power to his two Witnesses, and they prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days clothed in sackcloth. They are called the two Olive trees, with relation to the two Olivetrees, which in Zechary’s vision, chap. iv. stand on either side of the golden candlestick to supply the lamps with oil: and Olivetrees, according to the Apostle Paul, represent Churches, Rom. xi. They supply the lamps with oil, by maintaining teachers. They are also called the two candlesticks; which in this Prophecy signify Churches, the seven Churches of Asia being represented by seven candlesticks. Five of these Churches were found faulty, and threatned if they did not repent; the other two were without fault, and so their candlesticks were fit to be placed in the second Temple. These were the Churches in Smyrna and Philadelphia. They were in a state of tribulation and persecution, and the only two of the seven in such a state: and so their candlesticks were fit to represent the Churches in affliction in the times of the second Temple, and the only two of the seven that were fit. The two Witnesses are not new Churches: they are the posterity of the primitive Church, the posterity of the two wings of the woman, and so are fitly represented by two of the primitive candlesticks. We may conceive therefore, that when the first Temple was destroyed, and a new one built for them who worship in the inward court, two of the seven candlesticks were placed in this new Temple.

The affairs of the Church are not considered during the opening of the first four seals. They begin to be consider’d at the opening of the fifth seal, as was said above; and are further considered at the opening of the sixth seal; and the seventh seal contains the times of the great Apostacy. And therefore I refer the Epistles to the seven Churches unto the times of the fifth and sixth seals: for they relate to the Church when she began to decline, and contain admonitions against the great Apostacy then approaching.

When Eusebius had brought down his Ecclesiatical History to the reign of Dioclesian, he thus describes the state of the Church: Qualem quantamque gloriam simul ac libertatem doctrina veræ erga supremum Deum pietatis à Christo primùm hominibus annunciata, apud omnes Græcos pariter & barbaros ante persecutionem nostrâ memoriâ excitatam, consecuta sit, nos certè pro merito explicare non possumus. Argumento esse possit Imperatorum benignitas erga nostros: quibus regendas etiam provincias committebant, omni sacrificandi metu eos liberantes ob singularem, qua in religionem nostram affecti erant, benevolentiam. And a little after: Jam vero quis innumerabilem hominum quotidiè ad fidem Christi confugientium turbam, quis numerum ecclesiarum in singulis urbibus, quis illustres populorum concursus in ædibus sacris, cumulatè possit describere? Quo factum est, ut priscis ædificiis jam non contenti, in singulis urbibus spatiosas ab ipsis fundamentis exstruerent ecclesias. Atque hæc progressii temporis increscentia, & quotidiè in majus & melius proficiscentia, nec livor ullus atterere, nec malignitas dæmonis fascinare, nec hominum insidiæ prohibere unquam potuerunt, quamdiu omnipotentis Dei dextra populum suum, utpote tali dignum præsidio, texit atque custodiit. Sed cum ex nimia libertate in negligentiam ac desidiam prolapsi essemus; cum alter alteri invidere atque obtrectare cæpisset; cum inter nos quasi bella intestina gereremus, verbis, tanquam armis quibusdam hastisque, nos mutuò vulnerantes; cum Antistites adversus Antistites, populi in populos collisi, jurgia ac tumultus agitarent; denique cum fraus & simulatio ad summum malitiæ culmen adolevisset: tum divina ultio, levi brachio ut solet, integro adhuc ecclesiæ statu, & fidelium turbis liberè convenientibus, sensim ac moderatè in nos cæpit animadvertere; orsà primùm persecutione ab iis qui militabant. Cum verò sensu omni destituti de placando Dei numine ne cogitaremus quidem; quin potius instar impiorum quorundam res humanas nullâ providentiâ gubernari rati, alia quotidiè crimina aliis adjiceremus: cum Pastores nostri spretâ religionis regulâ, mutuis inter se contentionibus decertarent, nihil aliud quam jurgia, minas, æmulationem, odia, ac mutuas inimicitias amplificare studentes; principatum quasi tyrannidem quandam contentissimè sibi vindicantes: tunc demùm juxta dictum Hieremiæ, obscuravit Dominus in ira sua filiam Sion, & dejecit de cælo gloriam Israel,—per Ecclesiarum scilicet subversionem, &c. This was the state of the Church just before the subversion of the Churches in the beginning of Dioclesian’s persecution: and to this state of the Church agrees the first of the seven Epistles to the Angel of the seven Churches, [1] that to the Church in Ephesus. I have something against thee, saith Christ to the Angel of that Church, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. The Nicolaitans are the Continentes above described, who placed religion in abstinence from marriage, abandoning their wives if they had any. They are here called Nicolaitans, from Nicolas one of the seven deacons of the primitive Church of Jerusalem; who having a beautiful wife, and being taxed with uxoriousness, abandoned her, and permitted her to marry whom she pleased, saying that we must disuse the flesh; and thenceforward lived a single life in continency, as his children also. The Continentes afterwards embraced the doctrine of Æons and Ghosts male and female, and were avoided by the Churches till the fourth century; and the Church of Ephesus is here commended for hating their deeds.

The persecution of Dioclesian began in the year of Christ 302, and lasted ten years in the Eastern Empire and two years in the Western. To this state of the Church the second Epistle, to the Church of Smyrna, agrees. I know, saith [2] Christ, thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, but thou art rich; and I know the blasphemy of them, which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: Behold, the Devil shall call some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. The tribulation of ten days can agree to no other persecution than that of Dioclesian, it being the only persecution which lasted ten years. By the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan, I understand the Idolatry of the Nicolaitans, who falsly said they were Christians.

The Nicolaitans are complained of also in [3] the third Epistle, as men that held the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to Idols, and [4] to commit spiritual fornication. For Balaam taught the Moabites and Midianites to tempt and invite Israel by their women to commit fornication, and to feast with them at the sacrifices of their Gods. The Dragon therefore began now to come down among the inhabitants of the earth and sea.

The Nicolaitans are also complained of in the fourth Epistle, under the name of the woman Jezabel, who calleth herself a Prophetess, to teach and to seduce the servants of Christ to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to Idols. The woman therefore began now to fly into the wilderness.

The reign of Constantine the great from the time of his conquering Licinius, was monarchical over the whole Roman Empire. Then the Empire became divided between the sons of Constantine: and afterwards it was again united under Constantius, by his victory over Magnentius. To the affairs of the Church in these three successive periods of time, the third, fourth, and fifth Epistles, that is, those to the Angels of the Churches in Pergamus, Thyatira, and Sardis, seem to relate. The next Emperor was Julian the Apostate.

In the sixth Epistle, [5] to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia, Christ saith: Because in the reign of the heathen Emperor Julian, thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which by the woman’s flying into the wilderness, and the Dragon’s making war with the remnant of her seed, and the killing of all who will not worship the Image of the Beast, shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth, and to distinguish them by sealing the one with the name of God in their foreheads, and marking the other with the mark of the Beast. Him that overcometh, I will make a pillar in the Temple of my God; and he shall go no more out of it. And I will write upon him the name of my God in his forehead. So the Christians of the Church of Philadelphia, as many of them as overcome, are sealed with the seal of God, and placed in the second Temple, and go no more out. The same is to be understood of the Church in Smyrna, which also kept the word of God’s patience, and was without fault. These two Churches, with their posterity, are therefore the two Pillars, and the two Candlesticks, and the two Witnesses in the second Temple.

After the reign of the Emperor Julian, and his successor Jovian who reigned but five months, the Empire became again divided between Valentinian and Valens. Then the Church Catholick, in the Epistle to the Angel of the Church of Laodicea, is reprehended as lukewarm, and [6] threatned to be spewed out of Christ’s mouth. She said, that she was rich and increased with goods, and had need of nothing, being in outward prosperity; and knew not that she was inwardly wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. She is therefore spewed out of Christ’s mouth at the opening of the seventh seal: and this puts an end to the times of the first Temple.

About one half of the Roman Empire turned Christians in the time of Constantine the great and his sons. After Julian had opened the Temples, and restored the worship of the heathens, the Emperors Valentinian and Valens tolerated it all their reign; and therefore the Prophecy of the sixth seal was not fully accomplished before the reign of their successor Gratian. It was the custom of the heathen Priests, in the beginning of the reign of every sovereign Emperor, to offer him the dignity and habit of the Pontifex Maximus. This dignity all Emperors had hitherto accepted: but Gratian rejected it, threw down the idols, interdicted the sacrifices, and took away their revenues with the salaries and authority of the Priests. Theodosius the great followed his example; and heathenism afterwards recovered itself no more, but decreased so fast, that Prudentius, about ten years after the death of Theodosius, called the heathens, vix pauca ingenia & pars hominum rarissima. Whence the affairs of the sixth seal ended with the reign of Valens, or rather with the beginning of the reign of Theodosius, when he, like his predecessor Gratian, rejected the dignity of Pontifex Maximus. For the Romans were very much infested by the invasions of foreign nations in the reign of Valentinian and Valens: Hoc tempore, saith Ammianus, velut per universum orbem Romanum bellicum canentibus buccinis, excitæ gentes sævissimæ limites sibi proximos persultabant: Gallias Rhætiasque simul Alemanni populabantur: Sarmatæ Pannonias & Quadi: Picti, Saxones, & Scoti & Attacotti Britannos ærumnis vexavere continuis: Austoriani, Mauricæque aliæ gentes Africam solito acriùs incursabant: Thracias diripiebant prædatorii globi Gotthorum: Persarum Rex manus Armeniis injectabat. And whilst the Emperors were busy in repelling these enemies, the Hunns and Alans and Goths came over the Danube in two bodies, overcame and slew Valens, and made so great a slaughter of the Roman army, that Ammianus saith: Nec ulla Annalibus præter Cannensem ita ad internecionem res legitur gesta. These wars were not fully stopt on all sides till the beginning of the reign of Theodosius, A.C. 379 & 380: but thenceforward the Empire remained quiet from foreign armies, till his death, A.C. 395. So long the four winds were held: and so long there was silence in heaven. And the seventh seal was opened when this silence began.

Mr. Mede hath explained the Prophecy of the first six trumpets not much amiss: but if he had observed, that the Prophecy of pouring out the vials of wrath is synchronal to that of sounding the trumpets, his explanation would have been yet more complete.

The name of Woes is given to the wars to which the three last trumpets sound, to distinguish them from the wars of the four first. The sacrifices on the first four days of the feast of Tabernacles, at which the first four trumpets sound, and the first four vials of wrath are poured out, are slaughters in four great wars; and these wars are represented by four winds from the four corners of the earth. The first was an east wind, the second a west wind, the third a south wind, and the fourth a north wind, with respect to the city of Rome, the metropolis of the old Roman Empire. These four plagues fell upon the third part of the Earth, Sea, Rivers, Sun, Moon and Stars; that is, upon the Earth, Sea, Rivers, Sun, Moon and Stars of the third part of the whole scene of these Prophecies of Daniel and John.

The plague of the eastern wind [7] at the sounding of the first trumpet, was to fall upon the Earth, that is, upon the nations of the Greek Empire. Accordingly, after the death of Theodosius the great, the Goths, Sarmatians, Hunns, Isaurians, and Austorian Moors invaded and miserably wasted Greece, Thrace, Asia minor, Armenia, Syria, Egypt, Lybia, and Illyricum, for ten or twelve years together.

The plague of the western wind at the sounding of the second trumpet, was to fall upon the Sea, or Western Empire, by means of a great mountain burning with fire cast into it, and turning it to blood. Accordingly in the year 407, that Empire began to be invaded by the Visigoths, Vandals, Alans, Sueves, Burgundians, Ostrogoths, Heruli, Quadi, Gepides; and by these wars it was broken into ten kingdoms, and miserably wasted: and Rome itself, the burning mountain, was besieged and taken by the Ostrogoths, in the beginning of these miseries.

The plague of the southern wind at the sounding of the third trumpet, was to cause a great star, burning as it were a lamp, to fall from heaven upon the rivers and fountains of waters, the Western Empire now divided into many kingdoms, and to turn them to wormwood and blood, and make them bitter. Accordingly Genseric, the King of the Vandals and Alans in Spain, A.C. 427, enter’d Africa with an army of eighty thousand men; where he invaded the Moors, and made war upon the Romans, both there and on the seacoasts of Europe, for fifty years together, almost without intermission, taking Hippo A.C. 431, and Carthage the capital of Africa A.C. 439. In A.C. 455, with a numerous fleet and an army of three hundred thousand Vandals and Moors, he invaded Italy, took and plundered Rome, Naples, Capua, and many other cities; carrying thence their wealth with the flower of the people into Africa: and the next year, A.C. 456, he rent all Africa from the Empire, totally expelling the Romans. Then the Vandals invaded and took the Islands of the Mediterranean, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Ebusus, Majorca, Minorca, &c. and Ricimer besieged the Emperer Anthemius in Rome, took the city, and gave his soldiers the plunder, A.C. 472. The Visigoths about the same time drove the Romans out of Spain: and now the Western Emperor, the great star which fell from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, having by all these wars gradually lost almost all his dominions, was invaded, and conquered in one year by Odoacer King of the Heruli, A.C. 476. After this the Moors revolted A.C. 477, and weakned the Vandals by several wars, and took Mauritania from them. These wars continued till the Vandals were conquered by Belisarius, A.C. 534. and by all these wars Africa was almost depopulated, according to Procopius, who reckons that above five millions of men perished in them. When the Vandals first invaded Africa, that country was very populous, consisting of about 700 bishopricks, more than were in all France, Spain and Italy together: but by the wars between the Vandals, Romans and Moors, it was depopulated to that degree, that Procopius tells us, it was next to a miracle for a traveller to see a man.

In pouring out the third vial it is [8] said: Thou art righteous, O Lord,—because thou hast judged thus: for they have shed the blood of thy Saints and Prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy. How they shed the blood of Saints, may be understood by the following Edict of the Emperor Honorius, procured by four Bishops sent to him by a Council of African Bishops, who met at Carthage 14 June, A.C. 410.

Impp. Honor. &. Theod. AA. Heracliano Com. Afric.

Oraculo penitus remoto, quo ad ritus suos hæreticæ superstitionis abrepserant, sciant omnes sanctæ legis inimici, plectendos se poena & proscriptionis & sanguinis, si ultra convenire per publicum, execrandâ sceleris sui temeritate temptaverint. Dat. viii. Kal. Sept. Varano V.C. Cons. A.C. 410.

Which Edict was five years after fortified by the following.

Impp. Honor. & Theod. AA. Heracliano Com. Afric.

Sciant cuncti qui ad ritus suos hæresis superstitionibus obrepserant sacrosanctæ legis inimici, plectendos se poenâ & proscriptionis & sanguinis, si ultra convenire per publicum exercendi sceleris sui temeritate temptaverint: ne quâ vera divinaque reverentia contagione temeretur. Dat. viii. Kal. Sept. Honorio x. & Theod. vi. AA. Coss. A.C. 415.

These Edicts being directed to the governor of Africa, extended only to the Africans. Before these there were many severe ones against the Donatists, but they did not extend to blood. These two were the first which made their meetings, and the meetings of all dissenters, capital: for by hereticks in these Edicts are meant all dissenters, as is manifest by the following against Euresius a Luciferan Bishop.

Impp. Arcad. & Honor. AA. Aureliano Proc. Africæ.

Hæreticorum vocabulo continentur, & latis adversus eos sanctionibus debent succumbere, qui vel levi argumento à judicio Catholicæ religionis & tramite detecti fuerint deviare: ideoque experientia tua Euresium hæreticum esse cognoscat. Dat. iii. Non. Sept. Constantinop. Olybrio & Probino Coss. A.C. 395.

The Greek Emperor Zeno adopted Theoderic King of the Ostrogoths to be his son, made him master of the horse and Patricius, and Consul of Constantinople; and recommending to him the Roman people and Senate, gave him the Western Empire, and sent him into Italy against Odoacer King of the Heruli. Theoderic thereupon led his nation into Italy, conquered Odoacer, and reigned over Italy, Sicily, Rhætia, Noricum, Dalmatia, Liburnia, Istria, and part of Suevia, Pannonia and Gallia. Whence Ennodius said, in a Panegyric to Theoderic: Ad limitem suum Romana regna remeâsse. Theoderic reigned with great prudence, moderation and felicity; treated the Romans with singular benevolence, governed them by their own laws, and restored their government under their Senate and Consuls, he himself supplying the place of Emperor, without assuming the title. Ita sibi parentibus præfuit, saith Procopius, ut vere Imperatori conveniens decus nullum ipsi abesset: Justitiæ magnus ei cultus, legumque diligens custodia: terras à vicinis barbaris servavit intactas, &c. Whence I do not reckon the reign of this King, amongst the plagues of the four winds.

The plague of the northern wind, at the sounding of the fourth trumpet, was to cause the Sun, Moon and Stars, that is, the King, kingdom and Princes of the Western Empire, to be darkned, and to continue some time in darkness. Accordingly Belisarius, having conquered the Vandals, invaded Italy A.C. 535, and made war upon the Ostrogoths in Dalmatia, Liburnia, Venetia, Lombardy, Tuscany, and other regions northward from Rome, twenty years together. In this war many cities were taken and retaken. In retaking Millain from the Romans, the Ostrogoths slew all the males young and old, amounting, as Procopius reckons, to three hundred thousand, and sent the women captives to their allies the Burgundians. Rome itself was taken and retaken several times, and thereby the people were thinned; the old government by a Senate ceased, the nobles were ruined, and all the glory of the city was extinguish’d: and A.C. 552, after a war of seventeen years, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths fell; yet the remainder of the Ostrogoths, and an army of Germans called in to their assistance, continued the war three or four years longer. Then ensued the war of the Heruli, who, as Anastasius tells us, perimebant cunctam Italiam, slew all Italy. This was followed by the war of the Lombards, the fiercest of all the Barbarians, which began A.C. 568, and lasted for thirty eight years together; factâ tali clade, saith Anastasius, qualem à sæculo nullus meminit; ending at last in the Papacy of Sabinian, A.C. 605, by a peace then made with the Lombards. Three years before this war ended, Gregory the great, then Bishop of Rome, thus speaks of it: Qualiter enim & quotidianis gladiis & quantis Longobardorum incursionibus, ecce jam per triginta quinque annorum longitudinem premimur, nullis explere vocibus suggestionis valemus: and in one of his Sermons to the people, he thus expresses the great consumption of the Romans by these wars: Ex illa plebe innumerabili quanti remanseritis aspicitis, & tamen adhuc quotidiè flagella urgent, repentini casus opprimunt, novæ res & improvisæ clades affligunt. In another Sermon he thus describes the desolations: Destructæ urbes, eversa sunt castra, depopulati agri, in solitudinem terra redacta est. Nullus in agris incola, penè nullus in urbibus habitator remansit. Et tamen ipsæ parvæ generis humani reliquiæ adhuc quotidiè & sine cessatione feriuntur, & finem non habent flagella coelestis justitiæ. Ipsa autem quæ aliquando mundi Domina esse videbatur, qualis remansit Roma conspicimus innumeris doloribus multipliciter attrita, defolatione civium, impressione hostium, frequentiâ ruinarum.—Ecce jam de illa omnes hujus fæculi potentes ablati sunt.—Ecce populi defecerunt.—Ubi enim Senatus? Ubi jam populus? Contabuerunt ossa, consumptæ sunt carnes. Omnis enim sæcularium dignitatum ordo extinctus est, & tamen ipsos vos paucos qui remansimus, adhuc quotidié gladii, adhuc quotidié innumeræ tribulationes premunt.—Vacua jam ardet Roma. Quid autem ista de hominibus dicimus? Cum ruinis crebrescentibus ipsa quoque destrui ædificia videmus. Postquam defecerunt homines etiam parietes cadunt. Jam ecce desolata, ecce contrita, ecce gemitibus oppressa est, &c. All this was spoken by Gregory to the people of Rome, who were witnesses of the truth of it. Thus by the plagues of the four winds, the Empire of the Greeks was shaken, and the Empire of the Latins fell; and Rome remained nothing more than the capital of a poor dukedom, subordinate to Ravenna, the seat of the Exarchs.

The fifth trumpet sounded to the wars, which the King of the South, as he is called by Daniel, made in the time of the end, in pushing at the King who did according to his will. This plague began with the opening of the bottomless pit, which denotes the letting out of a false religion: the smoke which came out of the pit, signifying the multitude which embraced that religion; and the locusts which came out of the smoke, the armies which came out of that multitude. This pit was opened, to let out smoke and locusts into the regions of the four monarchies, or some of them. The King of these locusts was the Angel of the bottomless pit, being chief governor as well in religious as civil affairs, such as was the Caliph of the Saracens. Swarms of locusts often arise in Arabia fælix, and from thence infest the neighbouring nations: and so are a very fit type of the numerous armies of Arabians invading the Romans. They began to invade them A.C. 634, and to reign at Damascus A.C. 637. They built Bagdad A.C. 766, and reigned over Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Africa and Spain. They afterwards lost Africa to Mahades, A.C. 910; Media, Hircania, Chorasan, and all Persia, to the Dailamites, between the years 927 and 935; Mesopotamia and Miafarekin to Nasiruddaulas, A.C. 930; Syria and Egypt to Achsjid, A.C. 935, and now being in great distress, the Caliph of Bagdad, A.C. 936, surrendred all the rest of his temporal power to Mahomet the son of Rajici, King of Wasit in Chaldea, and made him Emperor of Emperors. But Mahomet within two years lost Bagdad to the Turks; and thenceforward Bagdad was sometimes in the hands of the Turks, and sometimes in the hands of the Saracens, till Togrulbeig, called also Togra, Dogrissa, Tangrolipix, and Sadoc, conquered Chorasan and Persia; and A.C. 1055, added Bagdad to his Empire, making it the seat thereof. His successors OlubArflan and Melechschah, conquered the regions upon Euphrates; and these conquests, after the death of Melechschah, brake into the kingdoms of Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Cappadocia. The whole time that the Caliphs of the Saracens reigned with a temporal dominion at Damascus and Bagdad together, was 300 years, viz. from the year 637 to the year 936 inclusive. Now locusts live but five months; and therefore, for the decorum of the type, these locusts are said to hurt men five months and five months, as if they had lived about five months at Damascus, and again about five months at Bagdad; in all ten months, or 300 prophetic days, which are years.

The sixth trumpet sounded to the wars, which Daniel’s King of the North made against the King abovementioned, who did according to his will. In these wars the King of the North, according to Daniel, conquered the Empire of the Greeks, and also Judea, Egypt, Lybia, and Ethiopia: and by these conquests the Empire of the Turks was set up, as may be known by the extent thereof. These wars commenced A.C. 1258, when the four kingdoms of the Turks seated upon Euphrates, that of Armenia major seated at Miyapharekin, Megarkin or Martyropolis, that of Mesopotamia seated at Mosul, that of all Syria seated at Aleppo, and that of Cappadocia seated at Iconium, were invaded by the Tartars under Hulacu, and driven into the western parts of Asia minor, where they made war upon the Greeks, and began to erect the present Empire of the Turks. Upon the sounding of the sixth trumpet, [9] John heard a voice from the four horns of the golden Altar which is before God, saying to the sixth Angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four Angels which are bound at the great river Euphrates. And the four Angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour and a day, and a month and a year, for to slay the third part of men. By the four horns of the golden Altar, is signified the situation of the head cities of the said four kingdoms, Miyapharekin, Mosul, Aleppo, and Iconium, which were in a quadrangle. They slew the third part of men, when they conquered the Greek Empire, and took Constantinople, A.C. 1453. and they began to be prepared for this purpose, when OlubArslan began to conquer the nations upon Euphrates, A.C. 1063. The interval is called an hour and a day, and a month and a year, or 391 prophetic days, which are years. In the first thirty years, OlubArslan and Melechschah conquered the nations upon Euphrates, and reigned over the whole. Melechschah died A.C. 1092, and was succeeded by a little child; and then this kingdom broke into the four kingdoms abovementioned.

Notes to Chap. III.
[1] Apoc. ii. 4, &c.
[2] Apoc. ii. 9, 10.
[3] Ver. 14.
[4] Numb. xxv. 1, 2, 18, & xxi. 16.
[5] Apoc. iii. 10, 12.
[6] Apoc. iii. 16, 17.
[7] Apoc. viii. 7, &c.
[8] Apoc. xvi. 5, 6.
[9] Apoc. ix. 13, &c.
THE

Luther burning the Pope's bull in front of the east gate of Wittenberg in December 1520.

Exsurge Domine (Latin: Arise O Lord) is a papal bull issued on 15 June 1520 by Pope Leo X. It was written in response to the teachings of Martin Luther which opposed the views of the papacy. It censured forty one propositions extracted from Luther’s 95 theses and subsequent writings, and threatened him with excommunication unless he recanted within a sixty day period commencing upon the publication of the bull in Saxony and its neighboring regions. Luther refused to recant and responded instead by composing polemical tracts lashing out at the papacy and by publicly burning a copy of the bull on 10 December 1520. (From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exsurge_Domine

I have heard that a bull against me has gone through the whole earth before it came to me, because being a daughter of darkness it feared the light of my face. For this reason and also because it condemns manifestly the Christian articles I had my doubts whether it really came from Rome and was not rather the progeny of that man of lies, dissimulation, errors, and heresy, that monster John Eck. The suspicion was further increased when it was said that Eck was the apostle of the bull. Indeed the sty1e and the spittle all point to Eck. True, it is not impossible that where Eck is the apostle there one should find the kingdom of Antichrist. Nevertheless in the meantime I will act as if I thought Leo not responsible, not that I may honor the Roman name, but because I do not consider myself worthy to suffer such high things for the truth of God. For who before God would be happier than Luther if he were condemned from so great and high a source for such manifest truth? But the cause seeks a worthier martyr. I with my sins merit other things. But whoever wrote this bull, he is Antichrist. I protest before God, our Lord Jesus, his sacred angels, and the whole world that with my whole heart I dissent from the damnation of this bull, that I curse and execrate it as sacrilege and blasphemy of Christ, God’s Son and our Lord. This be my recantation, Oh bull, thou daughter of bulls.

Having given my testimony I proceed to take up the bull. Peter said that you should give a reason for the faith that is in you, but this bull condemns me from its own word without any proof from Scripture, whereas I back up all my assertions from the Bible. I ask thee, ignorant Antichrist, dost thou think that with thy naked words thou canst prevail against the armor of Scripture? Hast thou learned this from Cologne and Louvain? If this is all it takes, just to say, “I dissent, I deny,” what foo1, what ass, what mole, what log could not condemn? Does not thy meretricious brow blush that with thine inane smoke thou withstandest the lightning of the divine Word? Why do we not believe the Turks? Why do we not admit the Jews? Why do we not honor the heretic if damning is all that it takes? But Luther, who is used to bellum, is not afraid of bullam . I can distinguish between inane paper and the omnipotent Word of God.

They show their ignorance and bad conscience by inventing the adverb “respectively.” My articles are called “respectively some heretical, some erroneous, some scandalous,” which is as much as to say, “We don’t know which are which.” 0h meticulous ignorance! I wish to be instructed, not respectively, but absolutely and certainly. I demand that they show absolutely, not respectively, distinctly and not confusedly, certainly and not probably, clearly and not obscurely, point by point and not in a lump, just what is heretical. Let them show where I am a heretic, or dry up their spittle. They say that some articles are heretical, some erroneous, some scandalous, some offensive. The implication is that those which are heretical are not erroneous, those which are erroneous are not scandalous, and those which are scandalous are not offensive. What then is this, to say that something is not heretica1, not scandalous, not false, but yet is offensive? So then, you impious and insensate papists, write soberly if you want to write. Whether this bull is by Eck or by the pope, it is the sum of all impiety, blasphemy, ignorance, impudence, hypocrisy, lying – in a word, it is Satan and his Antichrist.

Where are you now, most excellent Charles the Emperor, kings, and Christian princes? You were baptized into the name of Christ, and can you suffer these Tartar voices of Antichrist? Where are you, bishops? Where, doctors? Where are you who confess Christ? Woe to all who live in these times. The wrath of God is coming upon the papists, the enemies Of the cross of Christ, that all men should resist them. You then, Leo X, you cardinals and the rest of you at Rome, I tell you to your faces: “If this bull has come out in your name, then I will use the power which has been given me in baptism whereby I became a son of God and co-heir with Christ, established upon the rock against which the gates of hell cannot prevail. I call upon you to renounce your diabolical blasphemy and audacious impiety, and, if you will not, we shall all hold your seat as possessed and oppressed by Satan, the damned seat of Antichrist; in the name of Jesus Christ, whom you persecute. But my zea1 carries me away. I am not yet persuaded that the bull is by the pope but rather by that apostle of impiety, John Eck….

If anyone despises my fraternal warning, I am free from his blood in the last judgment. It is better that I should die a thousand times than that I should retract one syllable of the condemned articles. And as they excommunicated me for the sacrilege of heresy, so I excommunicate them in the name of the sacred truth of God. Christ will judge whose excommunication will stand. Amen.

Source: Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Hendrickson Classic, 1950)(pp. 153-155).

Me hugging a huge palm street on Hollywood boulevard, Los Angeles California

I’ve lived in Japan for 36 years at the time of this post — more than half of my life. In 2014 I had an opportunity to go to Los Angeles for a week. You might find my observations of America compared to Japan interesting.

1. People using skateboards for transportation! At least in L.A. they do. I’ve never seen this in Japan.
2. Exact change needed when riding a city bus! In Japan all buses have a machine by the driver that will break a 1000 yen bill into coins.
3. Some buses don’t accept cash, only credit or debit cards! The bus I rode from the airport to L.A. Union station was such a bus. The driver let me ride for free!
4. Toilet technology the same as it was when I was a kid in the 1950s! In Japan, toilets are high-tech! They all have washlets that will wash your bottom just by pressing a button. Some you don’t even have to flush manually. The toilet will flush automatically when you leave the toilet seat.
5. Slow service at shops. In Japan, people do not need to wait as long to be served. Lines are much shorter.
6. Trash on the streets. In Japan, some out-of-the-way areas are filled with litter, but not the ones frequented by the public. Ironically America has more public trashcans than Japan does! In Japan, it costs money to get rid of the trash. There are no trashcans in public parks or on the streets.
7. Great pizza and hotdogs! In Japan good pizza is expensive, and hotdogs are not nearly as tasty.
8. Huge variety of food products! The selection in Japan is mostly limited to Japanese food.
9. Great bread! Japanese eat white bread mostly. Good bread is expensive.
10. People bumming money! Twice I was asked for money by strangers. I gave them a dollar each. This doesn’t happen in Japan.
11. Crumpled money! Lots of Americans apparently do not use wallets. Japanese do. Paper bills are not nearly as crumpled as American dollars.
12. More outgoing people in public. Japanese on the street are rather shy and inhibited to talk to strangers.

The graph shows distances hitchhiked from 2005 to the present.

In 2014 I hitchhiked 28,352 kilometers (17,720 miles). That’s 4304 kilometers or 2690 miles more than year 2013– a record to date! The older I get, the easier it is to catch a ride! 🙂

"It has often been charged... that Catholicism is overlaid with many pagan incrustations. Catholicism is ready to accept that accusation - and even to make it her boast... the great god Pan is not really dead, he is baptized" -The Story of Catholicism p 37

"The Church did everything it could to stamp out such 'pagan' rites, but had to capitulate and allow the rites to continue with only the name of the local deity changed to some Christian saint's name." -Religious Tradition and Myth. Dr. Edwin Goodenough, Professor of Religion, Harvard University. p. 56, 57

The title of this post says what I want to say. See the Youtube to know why.

I found this on http://wwfar.com/inquisitionupdate/research/vaticantakeover.html

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free;
While God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.

I like to expose the enemy with his own words.

(Rev.) Dr. Cahill declared that “he would rather the Catholic should read the worst books of immorality than the Protestant Bible-that forgery of God’s Word, that slander of Christ.” – (Roman Catholic Tablet, December 17, 1853, p. 804).

“Do you allow your flock to read the Bible at all?” said a writer in the Contemporary Review to a friend of his, a parish priest. “No, sir, I do not; you forget that I am a physician, not a poisoner of souls.” -Contemporary Review April, 1894, p. 576.

“The doctrines of the Catholic Church are entirely independent of Holy Scripture.” Familiar Explanation of Catholic Doctrine, Rev. M. Muller, p.151.

Their refusal to surrender the scriptures was an offense that the Papacy could not tolerate. The Papacy was determined to exterminate the heretics from the face of the Earth. The heretics greatest offense, was that they refused to worship God according to the will of the Pope. For this crime, the heretics suffered every humiliation, insult and torture that man could event: ( Fox’s Book Of Martyrs)

1) Hanged and their genitals were cut off
2) The mothers were whipped
3) The women’s breast were ripped off
4) They were tied up and fried in a large pan
5) Their mouths were sewed shut
6) They were placed into a pot of boiling water
7) Their arms and legs were cut off
8) Some had their eyes bored out

The decree set forth in the year 1229 A.D. by the Council of Valencia… places Bible on The Index of Forbidden Books. The doctrine withholds “it is forbidden for laymen (common man) to read the Old and New Testaments. – We forbid them most severely to have the above books in the popular vernacular.” “The lords of the districts shall carefully seek out the heretics in dwellings, hovels, and forests, and even their underground retreats shall be entirely wiped out.” Council Tolosanum, Pope Gregory IX, Anno. Chr. 1229

The church Council of Tarragona ruled that: “No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after the promulgation of this decree, so they may be burned.” D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en France, 1910, p.14.

“Socialism, Communism, clandestine societies, Bible societies… pests of this sort must be destroyed by all means.” The encyclical Quanta Cura Issued by Pope Pius IX, December 6, 1866

“The Bible does not pretend to be a formulary of belief, as in a creed or catechism. There is nowhere in the New Testament a clear, methodical statement of the teaching of Christ” -Question Box, p. 66

“The very nature of the Bible ought to prove to any thinking man the impossibility of its being the one safe method to find out what the Savior taught.” Ibid., p. 67

70 year old man who took me to Akita City.He says he has been married for 50 years.

Today for the first time instead of hitchhiking on lonely Route 345 along the Sea of Japan, I took the train 25 kilometers further to Gatsugi station so I could hitchhike on Route 7 which has more traffic. It was cold but it wasn’t raining or snowing as it was the previous week.

Five drivers took me to Hachiryu which is the beginning of a free expressway. I opted to get off there even though the driver said he was going further. Hachiryu (means 8 dragons) is an ideal place to hitchhike because the preponderance of traffic is going the direction I need to go – north. They want to take advantage of the free expressway that goes north from that point. Not many cars would be going south from Hachiryu because the road is a tollroad going south. Tolls are expensive on non-free expressways. Only those people who are in a hurry or those who can easily afford it will take them.

After over 30 minutes wait for a car to stop for me, I was getting desperate. In less than two hours it would be dark. Darkness ends further hitchhiking that day. Finally a lady stopped! I immediately jumped into her car without asking her destination. What a mistake that was! I assumed she would go at least as far as Higashi Noshiro, the second exit going north and another good place to hitchhike. But I was dismayed to learn she would get off at the first exit, Minami Noshiro. I knew both from experience and logic Minami Noshiro is a bad place to hitchhike! Most of the traffic would be going the opposite direction toward where I came from, to the south and not north toward my destination. The lady knew from the sign I was holding that I was going both north and east from that point. Why would she think she was helping me? She wasn’t. She actually hindered my journey by picking me up! Nevertheless I was courteous and thanked her. She was on her way to a hospital to be treated for a cold. I gave her a few drops of my pepperment oil and told her to rub it on her nose. Since I have been using pepperment oil, I hardly get a cold anymore.

I knew God would have to do a miracle for me to get me out of my fix. And sometimes He uses my mistakes to get me to meet people I would not have met otherwise.

A man stopped for me. Sure enough, he was going south. I told him no thank you and he drove off. Later I wondered if I should have told him to take me back to Hachiryu. I decided to do so with the next driver who stopped if he or she was going that direction.

After a considerable wait, another lady stopped for me. She was also going south, but when I told her I was going north to Hirosaki and would be passing through Odate (the birthplace of the dog Hachi of the film of the same name starring Richard Gere) , she said she would take me to Odate! It is her home town and it would give her an opportunity to visit her mother. The miracle I needed! God is good!

The lady is a nurse. Nurses often stop for me. She was glad to hear the Message I shared with her from the Bible. She called me a “happiness doctor.” I really wanted to take her photo but she said no. She is 40, a mother of two daughters, and her husband is 43 centimeters taller than she is! He is 190 cm tall. Not many Japanese are taller than me. I’m 183 cm.

The first papal visit to America. Lyndon B. Johnson meets Pope Paul VI in New York City, on October 4, 1965.

I was inspired to make this page after reading Vatican take over of America officially April 16 2008 which was sent to me by my new friend, Walt Stickel of http://granddesignexposed.com/

Do you notice what is common with everybody meeting the Pope in these photos? They are all wearing black! Quote from the article:

…wear BLACK in compliance with Vatican protocol. Black is required as a sign of submission, penance, worship, and subservience

Richard Nixon meets Pope Paul Vi in Vatican City.

Gerald Food and Henry Kissinger meet Pope Paul VI in Vatican City.

Jimmy Carter meets Pope John Paul II on October 6, 1979 in the White House. First visit to the White House by a reigning Pope.

Ronald Reagan meets Pope John Paul II in Fairbanks, Alaska on May 2, 1884

President George H.W. Bush with Pope John Paul II in the papal library at the Vatican on May 27, 1989,

Bill Clinton with Pope John Paul ii

George W. Bush with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City.

George W. Bush and his wife greet Pope Benedict XVI

Barack Obama with Pope Benedict XVI

Interestingly, there are photos of Ronald Reagan wearing brown when meeting the Pope. I wonder if Reagan was trying to tell him something.

The Pope meets Hitler

This is from a book by David A. Plaisted called, “Estimates of the Number Killed by the Papacy in the Middle Ages and later” You can download the entire document here.

Some of the text from that document:

Here are some of the places where figures about religious persecutions are given. Dowling in his History of Romanism says

“From the birth of Popery in 606 to the present time, it is estimated by careful and credible historians, that more than fifty millions of the human family, have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors, an average of more than forty thousand religious murders for every year of the existence of popery.”

— “History of Romanism,” pp. 541, 542. New York: 1871.

Commenting on this quote, a fundamental Baptist web site says the following:

Concerning the figure of two million killed, Bourne writes

Bertrand, the Papal Legate, wrote a letter to Pope Honorius, desiring to be recalled from the croisade against the primitive witnesses and contenders for the faith. In that authentic document, he stated, that within fifteen years, 300,000 of those crossed soldiers had become victims to their own fanatical and blind fury. Their unrelenting and insatiable thirst for Christian and human blood spared none within the reach of their impetuous despotism and unrestricted usurpations. On the river Garonne, a conflict occurred between the croisaders, with their ecclesiastical leaders, the Prelates of Thoulouse and Comminges; who solemnly promised to all their vassals the full pardon of sin, and the possession of heaven immediately, if they were slain in the battle. The Spanish monarch and his confederates acknowledged that they must have lost 400,000 men, in that tremendous conflict, and immediately after it-but the Papists boasted, that including the women and children, they had massacred more than two millions of the human family, in that solitary croisade against the southwest part of France.

— Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 402-403.

In only one crusade, two million Albigenses were killed. How many must there have been altogether, and how many millions more must have been killed during the entire Middle Ages! Another source writes

The Catholic crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France (from 1209-1229), under Popes Innocent III., Honorius III. and Gregory IX., was one of the bloodiest tragedies in human history. … The number of Albigenses that perished in the twenty years’ war is estimated at from one to two millions.

— Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XIV.

W. E. H. Lecky says:

“That the Church of Rome has shed more innocent blood than any other institution that has ever existed among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant who has a competent knowledge of history. The memorials, indeed, of many of her persecutions are now so scanty, that it is impossible to form a complete conception of the multitude of her victims, and it is quite certain that no power of imagination can adequately realize their sufferings.” — “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe,” Vol. II, p. 32. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910.

The following quotation is from The Glorious Reformation by S. S. SCHMUCKER, D. D., Discourse in Commemoration of the Glorious Reformation of the Sixteenth Century; delivered before the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of West Pennsylvania, by the Rev. S. S. Schmucker, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. Published by Gould and Newman. 1838.

Need I speak to you of the thirty years’ war in Germany, which was mainly instigated by the Jesuits, in order to deprive the Protestants of the right of free religious worship, secured to them by the treaty of Augsburg? Or of the Irish rebellion, of the inhuman butchery of about fifteen millions of Indians in South America, Mexico and Cuba, by the Spanish papists? In short, it is calculated by authentic historians, that papal Rome has shed the blood of sixty-eight millions of the human race in order to establish her unfounded claims to religious dominion (citing Dr. Brownlee’s “Popery an enemy to civil liberty”, p. 105).

Estimates range up to 7 to 12 million for the number who died in the thirty years’ war, and higher:

This was the century of the last religious wars in “Christendom,” the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, fomented by the Jesuits, reducing the people to cannibalism, and the population of Bohemia from 4,000,000 to 780,000, and of Germany from 20,000,000 to 7,000,000, and making Southern Germany almost a desert, …

— Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII.

Concerning the Irish rebellion, John Temple’s True Impartial History of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, written in 1644, puts the number of victims at 300,000, but other estimates are much smaller. Some estimates are larger:

In addition to the Jesuit or Catholic atrocities of this century already enumerated with some particulars, they massacred 400 Protestants at Grossoto, in Lombardy, July 19th, 1620; are said to have destroyed 400,000 Protestants in Ireland, in 1641, by outright murder, and cold, and hunger, and drowning; …

— Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII.

In fact, the population of Ireland is estimated to have decreased from 2 million in 1640 to 1.7 million in 1672, according to R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (1988). However, this could have resulted from British reprisals to some extent and from emigration, forced or voluntary. The population should have increased by about 200,000 during this period, assuming a 30 percent growth rate per century. This implies that 500,000 people in excess of normal either died or left Ireland during this time, and is consistent with 300,000 or more Protestants being killed in 1641.

The figure of 68 million appeared in Schmucker’s talk in 1838, in Brownlee’s book of 1836, and also in a book “Plea for the West” by Lyman Beecher (Cincinnati, Truman and Smith, 1835), pp. 130-131:

And let me ask again, whether the Catholic religion, in its union with the state, has proved itself so unambitious, meek, and unaspiring so feeble, and easy to be entreated, as to justify-a proud, contempt of its avowed purpose and systematic movements to secure an ascendancy in this nation? It is accidental that in alliance with despotic governments, it has swayed a sceptre of iron, for ten centuries over nearly one-third of; the population of, the globe, and by a death of violence is estimated to have swept from ‘the’ earth about sixty-eight millions of its inhabitants, and holds now in darkness and bondage nearly half the civilized world?

The exact quote of Brownlee referenced above is as follows:

In one word, the church of Rome has spent immense treasures and shed, in murder, the blood of sixty eight millions and five hundred thousand of the human race, to establish before the astonished and disgusted world, her fixed determination to annihilate every claim set up by the human family to liberty, and the right of unbounded freedom of conscience.

— Popery an enemy to civil liberty, 1836, pp. 104-105.

Also, in another work Brownlee states

Papal Rome has shed the blood of fifty millions of Christians in Europe!

— The Roman Catholic Religion viewed in the light of Prophecy and History, New York, Charles K. Moore, 1843, page 60.

And later in the same work,

The best writers enumerate fifty millions of Christians destroyed by fire, and the sword, and the inquisition; and fifteen millions of natives of the American continent and islands; and three millions of Moors in Europe, and one million and a half of Jews. Now, here are sixty-nine millions and five hundred thousands of human beings, murdered by “the woman of the Roman hills, who was drunk with the blood of the saints.” And this horrid list does not include those of her own subjects, who fell in the crusades in Asia, and in her wars against European Christians, and in South America!

— page 97.

These quotations make it clear that the figure of 50 million refers only to Christians in Europe, and does not include Christians killed elsewhere. It is also clear that Brownlee is taking these figures not from just one person, but from at least two, “the best writers,” and ignoring others that he feels are less qualified. Many others must have been convinced of the reputation of these individuals as well, judging from the frequency with which the figure of 50 million is quoted.

Brownlee further comments on the number killed by the Papacy in another work as follows:

When Laguedoc was invaded by these monsters, one hundred thousand Albigensees fell in one day! See Bruys vol. iii. 139.

— page 346

There perished under pope Julian 200,000 Christians: and by the French massacre, on a moderate calculation, in 3 months, 100,000. Of the Waldenses there perished 150,000; of the Albigenses, 150,000. There perished by the Jesuits in 30 years only 900,000. The Duke of Alva destroyed by the common hangman alone, 36,000 persons; the amount murdered by him is set down by Grotius at 100,000! There perished by the fire, and tortures of the Inquisition in Spain, Italy, and France 150,000. … In the Irish massacres there perished 150,000 Protestants!

To sum up the whole, the Roman Catholic church has caused the ruin, and destruction of a million and a half of Moors in Spain; nearly two millions of Jews South America in Europe. In Mexico, and , including the islands of Cuba and St. Domingo, fifteen millions of Indians, in 40 years, fell victims to popery. And in Europe, and the East Indies, and in America, 50 millions of Protestants, at least, have been murdered by it!

Thus the church of Rome stands before the world, “the woman in scarlet, on the scarlet colored Beast.” A church claiming to be Christian, drenched in the blood of sixty-eight millions, and five hundred thousand human beings!

— W. C. Brownlee, Letters in the Roman Catholic controversy, 1834, pp. 347-348.

Brownlee apparently revised the 69 million figure downwards to 68 million. So the figure of 68 million has several sources in the early 1800’s. The source for some of Brownlee’s figures appears in the following quotation:

These forced baptisms, and the consequent claims which the pope set up over “his slaves,” caused the death of one million five hundred thousand Moors, and on the most moderate calculation, that of two millions of Jews! See Dr. M. Geddes’s Tracts on Popery, vol. i.

— W. C. Brownlee, Popery the Enemy of Civil and Religious Liberty, J. S. Taylor, New York, 1836, p. 88.

The work of Michael Geddes referred to may have been Miscellaneous Tracts …, 3^rd ed., London, 1730, 3 volumes. In 1678 Geddes went to Lisbon, and returned to England in 1688. During his stay in Lisbon, he collected many documents concerning Spanish and Portuguese history, and in 1714 published his “Tracts on Divers Subjects” in three volumes, a translation of the most interesting documents he obtained. In 1715 a posthumous volume of tracts against the Roman Catholic Church appeared. In addition to those killed, many were exiled:

It has been calculated that, from the time of the conquest of Granada until 1609, three millions of Arabs were exiled from Spanish soil; and never have the plains of Valencia, Murcia and Granada recovered the flourishing aspect that they wore when cultivated by their former masters. The decree of 1609 was as fatal to Spain as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was to France nearly a hundred years later.

— Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian’s History of the World, vol. 8, p. 259.

In 1492, persecution was begun against the Jews, of whom 500,000 were expelled from Spain and their wealth confiscated. In seventy years the population of Spain was reduced from 10,000,000 to 6,000,000 by the banishment of Jews, Moors and Morescoes (“Christianized” Moors), the most wealthy and intelligent of the inhabitants of that country.

— Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XV.

In fact, the population of Spain had at one time been twenty million higher:

It is estimated that the total population in the middle of the tenth century was about thirty millions: a phenomenal increase of population, betokening of itself a very high degree of civilization. A population normally, with fair sanitation and hygienic conditions, doubles in a quarter of a century. It will tell you in a word what the Moors had done, and what the Spaniards afterwards undid, if you reflect that this Spanish population, which was thirty millions in the tenth century, is now only twenty- two millions. The figure of thirty millions in the tenth century is an extraordinary tribute to the science and wisdom of the Moors. England, for instance, had then a population of about two or three million people.

— Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, Chapter XXV.

This suggests that the Christian reconquest of Spain cost this country alone over 20 million lives. This loss could not have resulted from the Plague, because the loss from the Plague was recovered by 1500.

The figure of 68 million appears again in a later work:

Alexander Campbell, well known religions leader of the nineteenth century, stated in debate with John B. Purcell, Bishop of Cincinnati, in 1837 that the records of historians and martyrologists show that it may be reasonable to estimate that from fifty to sixty-eight millions of human beings died, suffered torture, lost their possessions, or were otherwise devoured by the Roman Catholic Church during the awful years of the Inquisition. Bishop Purcell made little effort to refute these figures. (Citing A Debate on the Roman Catholic Religion, Christian Publishing Co., 1837, p. 327.)

Walter M. Montano, a former Catholic priest, asserts in his book, Behind the Purple Curtain that it has been estimated that fifty million people died for their faith during the twelve hundred years of the Dark Ages. (Citing Walter M. Montano, Behind the Purple Curtain, Cowman Publications, 1950, page 91.)

— The Shadow of Rome, by John B. Wilder; Zondervan Publishing Co., 1960, page 87.

Campbell may be referring to the martyrology of Samuel Clarke, written in 1651. Perhaps this figure of 68 million came from Brownlee or somewhere else, possibly the writings of Llorente or Clark’s Martyrology, cited above.

Such figures sometimes appear in recent books, such as Wilder’s, but in general, all the figures about the number killed by the Papacy go back many years and have reputable sources. It is interesting that Campbell implies that the figure of 68 million includes many who were not killed, but just persecuted, while the three earlier references, including Brownlee, state that this number were killed. Campbell may have taken the earlier figure and misread it as including those who were persecuted but not killed. Here are more quotations about the number killed by the Papacy:

For professing faith contrary to the teachings of the Church of Rome, history records the martyrdom of more then one hundred million people. A million Waldenses and Albigenses [Swiss and French Christians who renounced papal authority] perished during a crusade proclaimed by Pope Innocent III in 1208. Beginning from the establishment of the Jesuits in 1540 to 1580, nine hundred thousand were destroyed. One hundred and fifty thousand perished by the Inquisition in thirty years. Within the space of thirty-eight years after the edict of Charles V against the Protestants, fifty thousand persons were hanged, beheaded, or burned alive for heresy. Eighteen thousand more perished during the administration of the Duke of Alva in five and a half years.

— Brief Bible Readings, p. 16.

This great antichristian power robbed the church of its gospel light and plunged the world into the Dark Ages. It put to death and thus took away the lives of from fifty to one hundred millions of the saints of the Most High.

— Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, 1950, p. 170.

One thousand years covers the crest of the persecutions when from 50,000,000 to 150,000,000 martyrs died of the sword, at the stake, in dungeons, and of starvation because of the confiscation of their earthly possessions.

— Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, 1950, p. 185.

In like manner the blood of a hundred million martyrs cries for justice to the One who says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay saith the Lord.” Rom 12:19.

— Bunch, Taylor, Studies in the Revelation, 1933?, p. 105.

Let us keep a sense of proportion. The record of Christianity from the days when it first obtained the power to persecute is one of the most ghastly in history. The total number of Manichaeans, Arians, Priscillianists, Paulicians, Bogomiles, Cathari, Waldensians, Albigensians, witches, Lollards, Hussites, Jews and Protestants killed because of their rebellion against Rome clearly runs to many millions; and beyond these actual executions or massacres is the enormously larger number of those who were tortured, imprisoned, or beggared. I am concerned rather with the positive historical aspect of this. In almost every century a large part of the race has endeavored to reject the Christian religion, and, if in those centuries there had been the same freedom as we enjoy, Roman Catholicism would, in spite of the universal ignorance, have shrunk long ago into a sect. The religious history of Europe has never yet been written.

— The Story Of Religious Controversy Chapter XXIII by Joseph McCabe (an atheist) who lived from 1867 to 1955.

‘The church,’ says [Martin] Luther, has never burned a heretic.’ . . I reply that this argument proves not the opinion, but the ignorance or impudence of Luther. Since almost infinite” numbers were either burned or otherwise killed,’ Luther either did not know it, and was therefore ignorant, or if he was not ignorant, he is convicted of impudence and falsehood, —for that heretics were often burned by the [Catholic] Church may be proved from many examples.

— Robert Bellarmine, Disputationes de Controversiis, Tom. ii, Lib. III, cap. XXII, “Objections Answered,” 1682 edition. (Bellarmine was a Roman Catholic.)

Some have computed, that, from the year 1518 to1548, fifteen million of Protestants have perished by war and the Inquisition. This may be overcharged, but certainly the number of them in these thirty years, as well as since is almost incredible. To these we may add innumerable martyrs, in ancient, middle, and late ages, in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, France, England, Ireland, and many other parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

(from the commentary on the book of Revelation in Wesley’s “Explanatory Notes on the New Testament,” fifth edition, 1788), in which the comments on the book of Revelation are translated from the work of the German scholar John Bengel, and Wesley stated that he did not necessarily defend all of Bengel’s statements.)

Writing about the Jesuits, Lord states

They are accused of securing the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,– one of the greatest crimes in the history of modern times, which led to the expulsion of four hundred thousand Protestants from France, and the execution of four hundred thousand more.

— John Lord, Beacon Lights of History, volume VI, p. 325.

Some estimate that a million or even two million Huguenots fled France as a result, and a million and half converted, willingly or otherwise, to Catholicism. In fact, even before the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenot wars took place in France, and many perished as well:

Some two millions of lives had perished since the breaking out of the civil wars.

— James A. Wylie, The History of Protestantism, Vol. 2, Book 17, Chapter 19.

One estimate (Mariejol) is as high as four million. In 1660 there were about 1,200,000 Huguenots (Protestants) in France, according to one source. In 1562, 10 to 20 percent of France’s population of 16 million were Huguenots. At one point, the (Catholic) Cardinal of Sainte-croix estimated that more than half of the French population were Huguenots. It is estimated that more than one million Huguenots were slain trying to escape or became slaves in the galleys of the King of France.

A final figure:

Mede has calculated from good authorities “that in the war with the Albigenses and Waldenses there perished of these people, in France alone, 1,000,000.”

— Christ and Antichrist, by Samuel J. Cassels, 1846, page 257.

And many similar figures could be given.

Chapter 2. The plausibility of massive persecution

The following quotation shows the attitude of the Papacy towards heretics, which lends ample credibility to a large figure for the number persecuted and killed in the Middle Ages:

Treason. The following paragraph from the “Review of the principles and history of Popery” contains an accurate summary of Romanism, as it involves the interest and safety of Protestant governments and nations. “Refractory princes who have not been disposed to glut Rome’s insatiable thirst with enough of Christian blood, or who have not assented to all the Papistical usurpations and arrogant claims, have experienced no mercy. The right of succession has been denied and subverted, for the smallest personal taint of Anti-Romanism, or for the toleration of it in others; and indescribable difficulties always were interposed against the rebellious ruler’s restoration to power, even after he had made every possible renunciation, and degraded himself to the most humiliating penances, and received the amplest pontifical absolutions. For suspected and actual heresy, sentence of excommunication and deposition was fulminated against governors, more than for any other causes. Treasonable plots, conspiracies, insurrections, and rebellions, were formed, promoted, executed, and by pretended pleas of religion were justified, delighted in, and eulogized. Those infernal proceedings were blasphemously ascribed to the inspiration of God, and when any success attended the scheme, it was imputed to the divine approval, and unquestionable miraculous interposition. To execute those traitorous machinations, or to die in the attempt, was pronounced to be infallible proof of the most exalted piety, and the certain path to eternal felicity; entitling the actor to the honour of saintship, and the glorious crown of martyrdom. On the contrary, obedience and loyalty on the part of Papists to Protestant governments, are declared damnable sins, for which there is no pardon either in this world, or in eternity. To convince the bigoted adherents of the Papacy, that all such treasons are works of pre-eminent piety, pretended prayers, discourses, sacraments, ecclesiastical censures, absolutions, oaths, and covenants, with all that is apparently sacred and imposing in religion, have been prostituted; and all that is exciting and fascinating in superstition has been effectually employed among the votaries of the Romish Priesthood, who are divested of every sentiment of religion, virtue, or humanity. The absolute duty of assassinating Protestant rulers, especially after sentence has been pronounced against them by the Pope, is constantly taught and vehemently proclaimed; with the most deliberate resolution, and after the most solemn preparations, that nefarious criminality has frequently been perpetrated; although it has more often been unsuccessfully attempted: but in all cases the remorseless murderers have been exalted in Popish estimation to the very highest honours: and some of them were worshipped with the same adoration which is performed to the Romish canonized saints.”

— Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 410-412.

The following statement concerning England in about the year 1400 gives more insight into the extent of the persecutions.

By this it was enacted that any one whom an ecclesiastical court should have declared to be guilty, or strongly suspected, of heresy, should, on being made over to the sheriff with a certificate to that effect, be publicly burnt.

[footnote, page 298] It is remarked that England was the only country where such a statute was needed, as elsewhere the secular powers at once carried out the sentence.

— James C. Robertson, History of the Christian Church, The Young Churchman Co., 1904, p. 297.

These persecutions were not necessarily directed by the hierarchy of the church, but for the most part probably originated at a much lower level, from the “ecclesiastical feudalism” of the Middle Ages, as described by Williams:

Abbes and bishops in consequence became suzerains, temporal lords, having numerous vassals ready to take up arms for their cause, counts of justice – in fact all the prerogatives exercised by the great landlords. … This ecclesiastical feudalism was so extensive, so powerful, that in France and England it possessed during the Middle Ages more than a fifth of all the land; in Germany nearly a third.

— Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian’s History of the World, vol. 8, p. 487.

Probably the greatest number of those who perished by the Papacy in Europe did so at the hands of these local authorities, on the grounds of suspected heresy or opposition to the church, and not necessarily at the direction of the Pope, preceded by a trial, nor mentioned in records. Who would there have been to interfere with the actions of the local abbes and bishops? The constant elimination of a few heretics here and there, in many locations, continued for many years, could easily have added up to a total of millions without making much of an impression on recorded history. Throughout the Middle Ages as the possessions of the church increased, so would the number and power of these officials have increased, together with the number of their victims. During the Crusades, their attention may have been externally directed, but with these ending in about 1272, the number of martyrs within Europe could have greatly increased.

The persecutions were not at all limited to the Inquisition, but took many forms. Many of the victims were killed secretly and never brought to trial or sentenced. These deaths would never have appeared in the official records of the Inquisition. Such persecutions even continued until very recent times, as illustrated by the following quotation from W. C. Brownlee, Popery the Enemy of Civil and Religious Liberty, J. S. Taylor, New York, 1836, page 124:

I beg to direct you to the history of Spain, which, at length, is beginning to raise her head from the dust; and of Austria, Italy, and Naples. There everything is exclusive and sanguinary. Utter a word against the priest, or his senseless mummery, or refuse to fall down before the wafer god, and the dagger is plunged into your heart!

Note that it was common knowledge in Brownlee’s day that such executions of dissenters from Catholicism took place. Another quotation from Brownlee, p. 115 gives further support to this fact:

Listen, I beseech you, to your fellow-citizens, who have returned from their travels in Italy, Austria, and Naples, or South America. In these lands the drawn sword of papal myrmidons is put to the throats of every public speaker, and editor, and author! One unpopish idea,–one single charge against despotism,–one word in praise of liberty,-one innuendo against priestcraft, even although you say no more than that you have seen them in their priestly robes, at the cockpit; and deeply engaged, publicly, in gambling, with their mistresses, and licentious companions: one appeal, even though feebly uttered, for a free press,-for pure Christianity, and the rights of human conscience, will cost a man his liberty, or life, in one brief hour! Men may be as wicked as any of the ghostly leaders of the fashion that way; men may blaspheme God, and set heaven and hell at defiance, providing they do it with all due courtesy to the priests: they may, be consummate profligates, but it must be according to canonical rule. Crimes and vices contravene no law, providing the church be respected, and her dues be paid! But woe to the patriot who shall whisper an insinuation, or print an effusion of a noble spirit, bursting with holy indignation against the hypocrisy, the priestly espionage, and despotism of popery! This is the only unpardonable sin at Rome. It can never be forgiven him, either in this world, or in purgatory! The dungeon cells, placed by papal care, at the bishop’s service, in each cathedral; and the cells of the inquisition, and the agonies, and moanings, and shrieks of the oppressed, breathed only on the ear of heaven -these-these are the overwhelming proofs of popery’s deadly hostility to the freedom of speech, and the press!

This description of persecution derives from the testimony of many travelers to Catholic countries at that time. If such persecution took place in the early nineteenth century, how much more must it have occurred in the Middle Ages when the Papacy was at the height of its power! For example, M’Crie relates (The Reformation in Spain, pp. 181-188) how a Spaniard in the year 1546 converted to Protestantism and was in consequence killed by his brother, who never was punished for his deed. There must have been many such assassinations in the Middle Ages by loyal Catholics who were jealous for the reputation of the Virgin Mary. In fact, threats and persecution even took place in the United States, according to Brownlee, pp. 210-211:

Who have their dungeon cells under their cathedrals, in which they claim, as inquisitors of their own diocese, to imprison free men in our republic? Foreign popish bishops! And the facts respecting a man being so confined and scourged, in the cells at Baltimore, until he recanted, have been published, and not to this day contradicted! … Who are in the habit of uttering ferocious threats “to assassinate and burn up” those Protestants who successfully oppose Romanism? The foreign papists! I have in my possession the evidence of no less than six such inhuman threatenings against myself.

Persecution also took the form of murders by corrupt authorities, as described in the following passage from Peter’s Tomb Recently Discovered in Jerusalem, by F. Paul Peterson, 1960, p. 45:

At length a Sclavonian waterman came to the palace with a startling story. He said that on the night when the prince disappeared, while he was watching some timber on the river, he saw two men approach the bank, and look cautiously around to see if they were observed. Seeing no one, they made a signal to two others, one of whom was on horseback, and who carried a dead body swung carelessly across his horse. He advanced to the river, flung the corpse far into the water, and then rode away. Upon being asked why he had not mentioned this before, the waterman replied that it was a common occurrence, and that he had seen more than a hundred bodies thrown into the Tiber in a similar manner.

Even as recently as the mid twentieth century, dissenters from Catholicism were in danger, according to the following quotations:

But to even bring things closer home; an acquaintance told me of a recent conversation between a Protestant relative of hers and a Roman Catholic. The Catholic said, “I would like to see the blood of Protestants flow down the streets of this city.” The Protestant was rightly surprised and said, “How can you say that, we are friends and you know that I am a Protestant?” The Catholic responded, “Yes, I know, but the greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward.” Since they teach Catholics from childhood on, that to kill a Protestant is to do God a service, we had better be careful how we put Catholics in public office [but note that such teaching does not appear to be continued today, and also other quotations show that many Catholics oppose such persecution].

While I was in Ohio recently, I was told the same story by two people at different times, of a pastor who has a Christian broadcast. Through the preaching of the Gospel, this pastor at times would have Roman Catholics tell him of their difficulties and ask for advice. One case was of a lady who implicated a priest in a scandal. The pastor would always advise all those who came to him, according to the Scripture, and would urge all to trust only in Jesus Christ for their salvation. Several times, this pastor received strange telephone calls. Once a woman called and advised the pastor never to have communications with Catholics who call or write in to him. He responded that it was his God-given duty to help in any way possible, all those who came to him, and that he could not comply with her request. She then said that bodily harm could come to him or those Catholics who communicated with him. The pastor responded that surely the Catholic Church would not be guilty of such an unchristian act. The answer came that the Catholic Church was too “holy” to shed blood, but they had their agents who would. Mark you, what an outrage on human intelligence, to leave the impression that the instigators of bloodshed are innocent. This is a perfect example how they do their nefarious acts, whether to individuals or nations, and manage to keep hidden from the public.

— Peterson, 1960, pp. 50-51.

While travelling on a train in Spain I talked with quite a number of Spanish Catholics, and some of them in hushed voices said, while armed soldiers were passing to and fro outside our compartment door, “I am a Catholic, but I do not agree with the way the priests are persecuting the Protestants.” You hear such statements in all Catholic countries. Six months ago, in Brazil, a fanatical mob led by a priest destroyed a Baptist and a Presbyterian Church. It got out into the papers there, and honest Catholics all over the land raised their voices against such barbarity. The same is true of the priestly murders of Christians in Colombia. But Rome does not mind, nor is she checked by mere protests.

— “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Catholic Church” by F. Paul Peterson, published privately, 1959, page 21.

A pastor in Britain, who had been a missionary in Lebanon, told me the following story: A young man had visited America when World War II had broken out, and remained there until the war was over. He then returned to Lebanon enquiring about his relatives. He was told that only a cousin remained and she had entered a Convent. He went there and saw her and they decided to be married, which is lawful in Lebanon. They spoke to the Superior about it and it was agreed that he should come back the next day to take her away. When he came back the Superior said that she had already given him the girl. He responded, “Why no, you did not give me the girl.” The Superior insisted and called two nuns and asked them if it was not true that they had given him the girl, and they bore testimony to the statement. His first thought was to notify the police, but then he realised that he would have to give an account as to what had been done with the girl, since there were testimonies against him. But murder will out. Next door to the Convent lived an old couple. The man was not feeling well, and he asked his wife to make him some tea from the lemon blossoms of a tree which they had in their back yard. The wife climbed the tree, picked the blossoms, when she noticed that over the high wall the nuns were digging a large hole in the ground. She told her husband of the strange incident, who accused her of being mad to say that at night the nuns were digging a large hole in the ground. But he went out and verified the fact. They reported the incident to the police, who were directed to the spot, and excavation was made and the girl was found. She had been poisoned. The Convent was made into a Government institution, and the nuns were judged according to the law. A large book could be written over modern occurrences of this type. Rome never changes.

— Peterson, 1959, pp. 44-45.

A British Consul in Yugoslavia told the following incident to a good friend of mine, which happened in the early days of Marshall Tito. There was a boys’ school run by priests and, not far away, was a small village made up of Protestants. One day the priests told the boys that the Protestants should be killed and, together with the priests, the horrible massacre was carried out. Tito, hearing of this, sent his troops and killed every priest and boy in the school.

— Peterson, 1959, p 50.

Just recently I was in various cities in Eire (Southern Ireland), and while travelling there I spoke to over 15 priests about salvation through Christ. I realized I was treading on dangerous ground, but one Irishman seemed to realize it more than I did. I was in a compartment in a train with about sixteen people, one of whom was a priest. I gave him a good testimony, telling him of my experience of conversion. I had just asked him about his own experiences with God (which is quite an embarrassing question), when the Irishman next to him entered into the talk, but quickly steered the conversation to other matters. Later, when we had to change trains, this Irishman came to me and apologized for the way he had changed the subject. But he asked me, “Didn’t you know that man was a priest ? “I replied that I knew that. He then said, “You were in danger, for this is Southern Ireland.”

— Peterson, 1959, p. 111.

During its rise to power, the Papacy also essentially exterminated the Heruli shortly after 493 A.D., the Vandals soon after 533 A.D., and the Ostrogoths in 554 A.D, all of whom were asserted to hold to the Arian belief. However, Limborch (The History of the Inquisition, p. 95) doubts that Arius held the views attributed to him. Concerning the Vandals, Bunch writes

“It is reckoned that during the reign of Justinian, Africa lost five millions of inhabitants; thus Arianism was extinguished in that region, not by any enforcement of conformity, but by the extermination of the race which had introduced and professed it.” – History of the Christian Church, J.C. Robertson, Vol. 1, p. 521.

— Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, p. 101.

Of course, the Heruli and the Ostrogoths also undoubtedly numbered in the millions, and were exterminated. Everywhere one looks there is evidence of millions and millions of people who were killed by the Papacy in various stages of its history. The Hussites were also nearly exterminated:

[footnote, speaking of Innocent VIII] Yet on the papal throne he played the zealot against the Germans, whom he accused of magic, in his bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, etc., and also against the Hussites, whom he well nigh exterminated.

— Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian’s History of the World, vol. 8, p. 643.

Furthermore, in a footnote speaking of the thirty years’ war which started in Bohemia where the Hussites originated, Krus and Webb write

The intensity of that conflict surpassed that of other types of armed confrontations. In Bohemia, for instance, there were whole sections of the country in which nobody was left to bury the dead. The total population of Bohemia decreased in the 17th century from about 3 million to 500,000. These population changes are representative of other areas of Central Europe afflicted by the Thirty Years War.

— Krus, D.J., & Webb, J.M. (1993) Quantification of Santayana’s cultural schism theory. Psychological Reports, 72, 319-325.

In fact, many sects had been exterminated throughout the history of Rome:

The inquisitor Reinerius, who died in 1259, has left it on record: “Concerning the sects of ancient heretics, observe, that there have been more than seventy: all of which, except the sects of the Manichaeans and the Arians and the Runcarians and the Leonists which have infected Germany, have through the favour of God, been destroyed.

— Broadbent, E.H., The Pilgrim Church, Gospel Folio Press, 2002, p. 90 (originally published in 1931).

One of these sects lost a hundred thousand to persecution:

An edict was issued under the regency of Theodora, which decreed that the Paulicians should be exterminated by fire and sword, or brought back to the Greek church. … It is affirmed by civil and ecclesiastical historians, that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were put to death.

, Chapter 16.