The life and work of St. Paul

THE MAN OF SIN. 729
government would perish with Claudius, the reigning Emperor, and that his successor
would be the Man of Sin, his anticipation was fulfilled. If he further anticipated that
this representative of lawless and already working opposition to God and His Christ would
be destroyed by the second Advent, he was then absolutely right so far as its Judaio
elements were concerned, and so far as the second Advent was foreshadowed by the
destruction of Jerusalem ; and his anticipations were only mistaken on a point respecting
which all knowledge was confessedly withheld only in that ante-dating of the personal
second Advent which was common to him with all Christians in the first century of
Christianity. Nor need it be surprising to any one that he should mingle Jewish and
heathen elements in the colours with which he painted the coming Antichrist. In doing
this he was in full accord with that which must be the case, and with the dim expecta-
tions of paganism no less than with Rabbinic notions respecting the rival of the Messiah. 1
Further than this we cannot go ; and since we cannot since all attempts at nearer
indication have failed since by God's express and declared Providence we are as far as
the Thessalonians could have been from any accurate conception as to the times and
seasons of the coming of Christ it is clear that we lose no vital truth of the Gospel by
our inability to find the exact interpretation of an enigma which has been hitherto
Insoluble, and of which, had it been necessary for ua, the exact explanation would not
have been withheld. 3
1 It was but a few years after this time that Balbillus, the Ephesian Jew, who professed a knowledge
of astrology, used the prophecies of the Old Testament to assure Nero that he should be King
at Jerusalem.
s The Thessalonians, says St. Augustine, knew what St. Paul meant, we do not
"
Nos qai
neacimufl quod ilii scieb&at pervenire labore ad id quod sennit Apoatolua eupirnua, nee valemus."