The life and work of St. Paul

350 THE LIFE AND WOEZ OF ST. PAUI*
immediate, do they really suppose, on the one hand, that St. Paul had any
conception of Luther P or, on the other, that the main development of
lawlessness, the main human representative of the power of Satan, is the
succession of the Popes? Can any sane man of competent education seriously
argue that it is the Papacy which pre-eminently arrays itself in superiority to,
and antagonism against, every one who is called God, or every object of
worship ? l that its essential characteristic marks are lawlessness, lying won-
ders, and blasphemous self-exaltation ? or that the annihilation of the Papacy
which has long been so physically and politically weak " by the breath of
His mouth and the brightness of His is coming," to be one main result of
Christ's return P Again, do they suppose that St. Paul had, during his first
visit, repeatedly revealed anything analogous to the development of the
Papacy an event which, in their sense of the word, can only be regarded
as having taken place many centuries afterwards to the Thessalonians who
and who
believed that the coming of Christ might take place on any day,
required two epistles to undeceive them in the notion P If these suppositions
do not sink under the weight of their own intrinsic unreasonableness, let them
in the name of calm sense and Christian charity be consigned henceforth to
the vast limbo of hypotheses which time, by accumulated proofs, has shown to
be utterly untenable. 2
To that vast limbo of exploded exegesis the vastest and the dreariest that
human imagination has conceived I have no intention of adding a fresh conjecture.
That " the check " was the Roman Empire, and " the checker " the
Roman Emperor, may bo regarded as reasonably certain ; beyond this, all U
uncertain conjecture. In the Excursus I shall merely mention, in the briefest
possible manner, as altogether doubtful, and most of them as utterly valueless,
the attempts hitherto made to furnish a definite explanation of the expressions
lined ; and shall then content myself with pointing out, no less briefly, the
the advent
1 "
St. Paul's Lawless One," and "Man of Sin,"who is to be destroyed by
of Christ must have some chronological analogy to St. John's Antichrist. Now St. John's
Antichrist in the Epistles is mainly Gnostic heresy ("omnis haereticus Antichristus "
Luther), and the denial that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (1 John iv. 3). In the
Apocalypse it is Nero. In the Old Testament Antichrist is Antiochus Epiphanes. What
has this to do either with the Papacy or with the Reformation ?
2 If it be urged that this was the view of Jewell and Hooker, Andrewes and Sander-
son, &c. , the answer is that the knowledge of the Church is not stationary or stereotyped.
The Spirit of God is with her, and is ever leading her to wider and fuller knowledge of
the truth. Had those great men been living now, they too would hve enlarged many
of their views iu accordance with the advance now made in the interpretation of the
Scripture. Few can have less sympathy than I have with the distinctive specialities of
the Church of Rome ; but in spite of what we hold to be her many and most seriou*
errors she is, by the free acknowledgment of our own formularies, a Church, and a Christian
Church, and has been pre-eminently a mother of saints, and many of her Popes have
been good, and noble, and holy men, and vast benefactors of the world, and splendid
maintainers of the Faith of Christ ; and I refuse to regard them as " sons of perdition,"
or representatives of blasphemy and lawlessness, or to consider the destruction of their
line with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord as the one thing to be
looked forward to with joy at the coming of Him who we believe will welcome many of
them, and myriads of those who accept their rule, into the blessed company of Hu)
redeemed.