ON THE THIRD POSSIBLE CHURCH, OR THE CHURCH OF ANTICHRIST. Eccle sia Cattolica non, ma il Papismo denunciamo, perchè suggerito dal interesse, perchè fortificato dalla menzogna, perchè radicato dal più abbominevole despotismo, perchè contrario al diritto e ai titoli incommunicabili di Cristo, ed alla tranquillità d'ogni Chiesa e d'ogni Stato.-SPANZOTTI. : Thus, on the depluming of the Pope, every bird had his own feather in the partage whereof, what he had gotten by sacrilege, was restored to Christ; what by usurpation, was given to the King, the (National) Church and the State; what by oppression, was remitted to each particular Christian.-Fuller's Church History of Britain, Book v. 143 ON THE CHURCH, NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. Ir our forefathers were annoyed with the cant of over-boiling zeal, arising out of the belief, that the Pope is Antichrist, and likewise (sexu mutato) the Harlot of Babylon: we are more endangered by the twaddle of humid charity, which (some years ago at least) used to drizzle, a something between mist and small rain, from the higher region of our Church atmosphere. It was sanctioned, I mean, both in the pulpit and the senate by sundry dignitaries, whose horror of Jacobinism during the then panic of property led them to adopt the principles and language of Laud and his faction. And once more the Church of Rome, in contrast with Protestant dissenters, became "a right dear, though erring sister." And the heaviest charge against the Romish Pontificate was, that the Italian politics and nepotism of a series of Popes had converted so great a good into an intolerable grievance. We were reminded that Grotius and Leibnitz had regarded a visible head of the Catholic Church as most desirable; that they, and with them more than one Primate of our own Church, yearned for a conciliating settlement of the differ ences between the Romish and Protestant Churches; and mainly in order that there might exist really, as well as nominally, a visible head of the Church Universal, a fixt centre of unity. Of course the tenet that the Pope was in any sense the Antichrist predicted by Paul was decried as fanatical and Puritanical cant. Now it is a duty of Christian charity to presume that the men, who in the present day employ this language, are, or believe themselves to be, Christians; and that they do not privately think that St. Paul, in the two celebrated passages of his First and Second Epistles to the Church at Thessalonica, (1. iv., 13—18; 11. ii. 1—12), practised a ruse de guerre, and meant only by throwing the fulfilment beyond the life of the present generation, and by a terrific detail of the horrors and calamities that were to precede it, to damp the impatience, and silence the objections, excited by the expectation and the delay of our Lord's personal re-appearance. Again as the persons, of whom I have been speaking, are well educated men and men of sober minds, it may be safely taken for granted that they do not understand by Antichrist any nondescript monster, or suppose it to be the proper name or designation of some one individual man or devil exclusively. The Christians of the second century, sharing in a delusion that prevailed over the whole Roman Empire, believed that Nero would come to life again, and be Antichrist: and I have been informed that a learned clergy man of our own times, endowed with the gift of prophecy by assiduous study of the Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse, asserts the same thing of Napoleon Buonaparte. But, as before said, it would be calumnious to attribute such pitiable fanaticism to the parties here in question. And to them I venture to affirm that if by Antichrist be meant—what alone can rationally be meant a power in the Christian Church, which in the name of Christ, and at once pretending and usurping his authority, is systematically subversive of the essential and distinguishing characters and purposes of the Christian Church: then, if the Papacy, and the Romish hierarchy as far as it is Papal, be not Antichrist, the guilt of schism in its most aggravated form lies on the authors of the Reformation. For nothing less than this could have justified so tremendous a rent in the Catholic Church with all its foreseen most calamitous consequences. And so Luther himself thought; and so thought Wicliff before him. Only in the conviction that Christianity itself was at stake,-that the cause was that of Christ in conflict with Antichrist,-could, or did, even the lion-hearted Luther with unquailed spirit avow to himself;—I bring not peace, but a sword into the world. It is my full conviction, a conviction formed after a long and patient study of the subject in detail;-and if in support of this competence I only add that I have read, and with care, the L |