I -.LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIf * Received. jSeptz mber., ... ...i 885 . A c cess ions No . . 2,? il)le, and accepted by all Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant. We say, then, that God having given such a gift as prophecy, it is clear that He intended us to make use of it, and to profit by it ; else we may surely infer the gift would not have been bestowed. Under this conviction, we find that good men in all ages of the Church, both before and after the coming of our Saviour, have made prophecy the subject of their studies, while they endea- voured by means of its light to read the pur- poses of God in what was passed and accom- X PREFACE. plished, as well as to enter into those same Divine purposes in what still remained as yet unfulfilled. (See 1 Peter i. 1012.) The history of the heathen world reveals a similar feeling amongst all nations; the ora- cles of their false divinities were indeed a poor counterfeit of the prophecies of the true God ; still they did homage to a great principle, and bore witness to the fact how eagerly men dive into the future, while they proved the necessity of true prophecies. Amongst the heathen there remained also a large store of the ancient true prophecies along with that portion of other Divine truths, which they still retained, ob- scured and corrupted as they were by their own vain reasonings and erroneous traditions. But amongst the people of God, whether under the Mosaic or the Christian dispensa- tions, the most eminent lights of the Church have ever turned their minds to the considera- tion of prophecy, and in proportion to the magnitude of the events in the sphere of which they were placed, have they striven to examine the relations between such events and pro- phecy. And assuredly they were right in doing PREFACE. XI so. No doubt they were often mistaken in their application of particular prophecies to particular events ; and yet their labours con- tributed to the sum of general interpretation, which (it must be acknowledged) is singularly uniform in its conclusions, if due allowance be made for natural divergencies upon particular details. Thus, 'to give an example, it is quite remarkable what a unity there is amongst commentators upon the Little Horn describe d by Daniel as growing out of the Grecian beast ! Even Protestants agree with Catholics in tin Mi- interpretation of this portion of prophecy. And so with other portions also, as we shall have occasion to see hereafter. And though, at the moment, in the application of par- ticular prophecies to particular events, great mistakes may very naturally be made, still it will be found that there was much that was valuable connected with the labours, even of those who blundered in some of their conclusions, inasmuch as they laid down prin- ciples of interpretation, which others afterwards found to be of the greatest value, not only in ascertaining truth, but in rectifying their Xll PREFACE. blunders. And as an instance of what I mean, I should say that the most powerful arguments to disprove the Protestant theory that the pope was the fulfilment of prophecy as relating to Antichrist, have come to me from the very writings of Protestant commentators, which undertook to establish the soundness of this very theory. So also students of prophecy may have erred in supposing that the events of their own day had any place at all in prophecy, at least any distinct and definite place, and yet that ought not discourage others from considering other events in their possible relation to prophecy. The only conclusion, that it seems to me may be fairly drawn from any such past failures of interpretation, is, not that we should not en- deavour to find out any such relation between what is going on in the world and prophecy; but that, in our labours to attain this, we should act with great caution and humility, and abstain from all dogmatizing assurance, simply stating our opinion, and the reasons on which it is grounded : leaving it to God and to the future to do the rest : moreover bearing in PREFACE. Xlll mind the words of the Apostle Peter, "That no prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation/' (2 Peter i. 20.) These few observations we felt we owed to our readers as preliminary to our entering on the very interesting question, as to the possible relation that may exist between the Divine prophecies of the Holy Scripture and the great events that are now taking place all over the earth, and that seem likely to usher in others of still greater magnitude. But in all our observations on this most interesting subject, we here declare that we submit all that we have written to the infallible authority of our Holy Mother, the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to whom alone belongs the true interpretation of Divine Scripture. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PACK ON THE USE AND ADVANTAGE OP DIVINE PROPHECY . 1 CHAPTER II. PROPHECIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT CONCERNING AN CHRIST . . . . . . . . 7 CHAPTER III. PROOFS CHIEFLY DERIVED PROM THE PROPHECIES OP I 'AUL AND ST. JOHN THAT THIS GREAT ANTICHRIST WAS MAHOMET ; AND THAT THE MAHOMETAN EMPIRE WITH ITS RELIGIOUS SYSTEM WAS THE KINGDOM OP ANTICHRIST . . 41 CHAPTER IV. THE HISTORY OP THE MAHOMETAN EMPIRE is THE LITERAL FULFILMENT OP THE PROPHECIES OP HOLY WlUT, RELATING TO THE KINGDOM AND DOMINION OP ANTICHRIST ... ., . . . . ... ... 102 CHAPTER V. PROPHECIES OP DANIEL RELATING TO MAHOMETANISM AND THE FUTURE DESTRUCTION OF THE TURKISH EMPIRE ... ... ... 176 XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. PACK PROPHECIES RELATING TO EVENTS CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH, AND SUBSEQUENT TO, THE BREAKING UP OF THE TURKISH EMPIRE ... ... .... .. .. 204 CONCLUSION . 252 APPENDIX 257 AN INQUIRY INTO THE PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST, CHAPTEE I. ON THE USE AND ADVANTAGE OF DIVINE PROPHECY. OF all the evidences of the truth of revealed religion, there is perhaps not one that holds so important a rank not even miracles being excepted as prophecy. That this is so, reason alone must convince us. Who but God can possibly know what is still future ? A man well acquainted with history, versed in the experience of the past, or who has studied the hidden depths of human nature, may assuredly form conjectures, more or less probable, of what is likely to happen in the times imme- diately bordering on his own; for, indepen- dently of what is called the Philosophy of History, which may assist him in some slight degree to unravel the mysteries of the future, there is no event of great magnitude which 2 AN INQUIRY INTO THE must not have been prepared at least by a series of smaller events, the chain of which he already finds commenced, so that its coming (to use the beautiful expression of our wise poet) " casts its shadow before it" In this sense the politician, the philosopher, the poet, may be said to prophesy. In this sense, aided, too, no doubt, by the superior craft and experience of evil spirits, as the holy fathers of the Catholic Church abundantly prove, the heathen oracles foretold, and fore- told correctly, many events. But who does not see the infinite difference between such predictions as these, whether natural or preter-natural, and the prophecies of our Sacred Scriptures ? prophecies which, made many thousand years ago, foretell the events which are to take place even to the consummation of the world ? prophecies, which foretell what the free will of unborn millions in the remotest ages was foreseen by the mind of God as certain to accomplish ? prophecies, in fine, which not only lay bare the future, but reveal the great and glorious purposes of the Almighty, which He intended to bring to perfection out of a series of acts having no individual reference the one to the other, nor, indeed, ordained as though by a fate inconsistent with the freedom of the PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 3 human will; but which, foreseen by Him as the certain result of that very free will of which He was the Author and Creator, were made subservient by Him to that unity of gracious purpose which could never appear so glorious as when triumphing over a chaos that must have baffled the highest created intelli- gence, nor so beneficent as when turning the abuses of man's freedom at once to the benefit of the creature so abusing it, and to the greatest glory of the Creator so offended and so dishonoured by it ? Truly, when we contemplate the wonderful prophecies of our Sacred Scriptures, we may well exclaim, in the devout and humble Ian- guage of St. Paul, " O ! the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God ! how incomprehensible are His judge- ments, and His ways past finding out ! " (Romans xi. 33.) But if we may say of these Divine prophe- cies that they perhaps constitute the strongest evidence of the truth of that revelation of which they form a part, and in which they hold so conspicuous a place, it is no less true that their fulfilment, manifested by the event, is their only certain and satisfactory expositor. This truth is beautifully expressed by the prince of the apostles, the glorious St. Peter : B2 4 AN INQUIRY INTO THE "We have also a more sure word of pro- phecy, to which ye do well to give heed, as unto a light shining in a dark place, until the day shine forth " (2 Peter i. 1921) ,- that is, until the event manifest its fulfilment ; while we learn, from the same words, that the great object of prophecy, separate from that still higher one of serving as an evidence of reve- lation, is " to shine as a light in a dark place ; " or, in other words, to enable the Christian to read the designs of God on the dark face of events. Amongst all the various events foretold by the prophecies of God, there are two which appear to hold a place conspicuous amongst all the rest, and to which the others hold a subordinate relation : the first of these is the coming of the Messiah, that is, the Christ ; the second is the coming of the Antichrist. Of these two great events we may say, that as, on the one hand, Almighty God has made every human event subservient to His great and glorious designs, manifested and accomplished in the incarnation of his Son, that is, in the coming of Christ; so, on the other, man's great enemy, Satan, has endeavoured to render the same subservient to that grand scheme which he devised to counteract the work of God, namely, the coming of Antichrist. Hence PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 5 the whole history of the human race may be compared to a sublime epic, in which the contending powers are, in the invisible world, Almighty God with His blessed angels against Satan and the rebel angels ; in the visible world, Christ and Antichrist; whilst the op- posite camps are the city of God (that is, the Holy Catholic Church) on the one hand, and the city of the devil (that is, fallen human nature warring against God) on the other. And as Almighty God, the Supreme Disposer of human events, turns all to the glory of His cause, that is, the good of His Holy Church, consisting as it does of redeemed and regenerate men purchased by the blood of Christ, so that the whole chain of Divine acts is, as it were, riveted to that single Divine purpose, namely, the coming of Christ, and the establishment of His spiritual king- dom; so the devil, in all his contradictory plans and schemes, would at least make the wickedness of all of them subservient to the single diabolical purpose meditated in the coming of Antichrist, and the establishment of his iniquitous kingdom. It would seem that the blessed apostle St. John viewed Antichrist in this light, when in his first epistle he thus wrote : " Little children, this is the last hour : and like as 6 AN INQUIRY INTO THE ye have heard that Antichrist is to come, even so now (I tell you) there are already many Antichrists." (1 John ii. 18.) That is, besides the general evil and malice me- ditated by Satan in the acts to which he tempted and directed all his agents and in- struments, from the foundation of the world, he had an especial reference to the coming of Antichrist, as the full development of all his designs : so that, as all the holy personages who went before Christ, were so many types of Christ ; so, in like manner, all the servants of Satan who were to precede Antichrist, were so many types of him, and might therefore be termed, not inappropriately, so many Anti- christs, as the apostle said : " There are already many Antichrists." It is the object of the present treatise to endeavour, humbly treading in the footsteps of the earliest fathers and doctors of the Holy Catholic Church, to unfold the prophecies of God, which relate to this masterpiece of Satanic malice and craft, manifested in the coming of Antichrist. PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. CHAPTER II. PROPHECIES OP THE OLD TESTAMENT CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. WE read, in the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel, the following words (verses 1 to 14) : "1. In the first year of Balthassar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream ; and the vision of his head was upon his bed : and writing the dream, he comprehended it in few words ; and relating the sum of it, in short he said : " 2. I saw in my vision by night, and behold the four winds of heaven strove upon the great sea: "3. And four great beasts, different one from another, came up out of the sea. " 4. The first was like a lioness, and had the wings of an eagle : I beheld till her wings were plucked off, and she was lifted up from the earth, and stood upon her feet as a man, and the heart of a man was given unto her. "5. And behold another beast like a bear stood up on one side, and there were three rows in the mouth thereof, and in the teeth thereof; and thus they said to it, Arise, devour much flesh. 8 AN INQUIRY INTO THE " 6. After this, I beheld, and lo ! another like a leopard, and it had upon it four wings as of a fowl, and the beast had four heads, and power was given unto it. " 7. After this, I beheld in the vision of the night, and lo ! a fourth beast, terrible and wonderful, and exceeding strong ; it had great iron teeth, eating and breaking in pieces, and treading down the rest with its feet : and it was unlike to the other beasts, which I had seen before it, and it had ten horns. "8. I considered the horns, and behold another little horn sprung out of the midst of them ; and three of the first horns were plucked up at the presence thereof : and behold eyes, like the eyes of a man, were in this horn, and a mouth speaking great things. " 9. I beheld, till thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days sat : his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like unto clean wool; his throne like flames of fire ; the wheels of it like a burning fire. " 10. A swift stream of fire issued forth from before him : thousands of thousands ministered to him ; and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him : the judge- ment sat, and the books were opened. "11. I beheld, because of the great words, PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 9 which that horn spake : and I saw that the beast was slain, and the body thereof was destroyed, and given to the fire to be burnt. " 12. And that the power of the other beasts was taken away ; and that times of life were appointed them for a time and a time. "13. I beheld therefore in the vision of the night, and lo ! one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of Days; and they pre- sented him before Him. " 14. And He gave him power, and glory, and a kingdom : and all peoples, tribes, and tongues, shall serve him; his power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away : and his kingdom that shall not be destroyed." In these sublime and mysterious words, does the Prophet Daniel lay open to us the whole mystery of God, containing the prediction of all the principal events from his own time even unto the end of the world. All commentators agree that the four beasts signified the four great monarchies or empires, which were des- tined to arise on the earth, successively holding dominion over all nations. In fact this inter- pretation was revealed to Daniel along with the vision itself, as we find stated in the same chapter, from the 16th to the 28th verse. That great father and doctor of the Church, 10 AN INQUIRY INTO THE St. Jerome, commenting (Hieronymi Comment, in Daniel, e. vii. torn. v. p. 584, ed. Basi- liensis) upon this vision, thus interprets it : " I understand by the four winds of heaven, four angelical powers, to whose guardianship the principal kingdoms of the world are com- mitted, as we read in the book of Deuter- onomy : e When the Most High divided the nations asunder, when he separated the children of Adam, He constituted the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God ; but the Lord's portion is His people, yea, Jacob is the boundary of His heritage? By the sea is signified the world, or the secular state of mankind, tossed to and fro with the billows of human passions ; as our Lord interprets the same figure in His parable of the net cast into the sea. Hence the dragon is called the king of all that moves in the waters, and, according to David, his heads are bruised in the sea. (PsaL Ixxiii.) And we read in the Prophet Amos (Amos ix.) : c Though he go down to the depth of the sea, there will I command the dragon, and he shall devour him? But as for the four beasts that arose from the sea, and were dif- ferent one from the other, if we listen to the angel's interpretation, we may know the mean- ing of the vision. These four great beasts, says he, are four kingdoms, that shall arise PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 11 from the earth. But the four winds of heaven, that strove on the great sea, are termed winds of heaven, because each angel striveth with God for the kingdom that is committed to his guardianship. And we must remark, that by the term beasts is signified the brute force and cruelty of the several kingdoms. But in the vision, the first was like a lioness, and it had the wings of an eagle : this was the kingdom of Babylon, and it was symbolized by a lioness, rather than a lion, on account of its savage cruelties, as well as its luxury and beastly lust." We may here remark, to interrupt for a mo- ment the commentary of St. Jerome, that our own illustrious traveller Layard has discovered in his laborious investigations of the ruins of the old Assyrian power at Nineveh, and in the territory of the great Babylonian empire, nu- merous remnants of vast colossal statues of winged lionesses, some of which are now depo- sited in our own British Museum. These figures probably symbolized the Assyrian power, and in that case it was very natural that in the vision that empire should be so represented to the prophet. And it is evident that those statues must have had a symbolical meaning, which was well understood by the people amongst whom they were erected. The lioness would signify a mighty people, emerging from 12 AN INQUIRY INTO THE the desert of barbarism, and the wings that aided it in its flight would signify the arts and appliances of civilization, which enabled it to soar above the low and grovelling pursuits of savage life, while the nature and character of the lioness would express the moral and phy- sical qualities of that people. But let us listen to St. Jerome : " ' And it had the wings of an eagle/ By this I understand the pride of that most powerful kingdom, for Esaias the Prophet, speaking of the prince of pride, saith, f I will place my throne above the stars of heaven, and I will be like unto the Most High.' (Isaias xli.) And in another place it is said of him : ' Yea, though thou be lifted up on high like an eagle, yet will I drag thee down from thence/ Moreover, as the lion amongst beasts, so the eagle hath a sort of royalty amongst birds. And as the eagle is said to live to a great age, so it may be said that the Assyrian monarchy subsisted for many centuries. But when the prophet tells us that its wings were plucked off, whether from the lioness or the eagle, that refers to the other kingdoms which that empire ruled over, and by which it soared over the rest of the world. And when it is said that it was taken from the earth, the words evidently refer to the destruction of the Chaldean empire ; and what follows ' That it stood on its feet like a PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 13 man, and the heart of a man was given to it :' if we apply it to Nabuchodonosor, it is evident that at one period he was deprived of his royal state, and was afterwards restored to it, so that he learnt he was a man, and not a savage beast ; and he took back the heart which he had lost in his dreadful humiliation. But if we interpret it in general of the Chaldean kingdom, it would mean, that when Balthassar was slain, and the Chaldean dominion was overthrown by the Medes and Persians, the men of Babylon learnt that they were frail, and liable to fall like other men. We must also remark the order observed by the prophet in this vision, and we shall find that it exactly coincides with that which we have already seen in the great metallic statue in the dream of Nabuchodonosor. What in DaniePs vision is described as a lioness with eagles' wings, is there called the head of gold ;" [and both the one and the other signify the Babylonian or Assyrian monarchy.] " But the Prophet continues, ' and behold a second beast like unto a bear/ This relates to the power, of which it is said in Nabuchodo- nosor's dream of the statue : e and his breast and his arms were of silver/ The Medo- Persian empire is compared to a bear, on account of the strength and fierceness of that 14 AN INQUIRY INTO THE power." And here we may interrupt for a moment the commentary of St. Jerome, to observe, that there also may be some allusion on the part of the prophet to the geographical position of the two empires in question. The Assyrian monarchy was in a more southern latitude, nearer the tropics, and so it is com- pared to a lioness, for such animals abound within its territory ; while Persia, situated much further to the north, and diversified with great mountains, abounded with bears ; and so it is not unaptly symbolized by that very animal. But to return to St. Jerome : " More- over the habits of the Persians were hardy and frugal, like what we read of the Lacedaemonians, and as we may see detailed at length by Xeno- phon in his ' History of the Education of the elder Cyrus / and when it is said ' that it stood up on one side,' the Hebrews thus interpret it, that the Medo-Persians never did anything to persecute Israel. Hence by Zachariah the Pro- phet they are called ' white horses' But ' there were three rows in the mouth and in the teeth thereof.' This has been interpreted of the three principalities into which the Medo-Persian em- pire was subdivided, as we read in the TTC/HKOTTI) of Baltasar and Darius, that there were three princes, each of whom presided over one hun- dred and twenty satrapies. But others have PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 15 made it refer to three kings, who reigned after Cyrus over the Persian empire, but without telling us which they refer to. But as we find from history, that after Cyrus, who reigned for thirty years, there followed Cambyses and his brothers the Magi, and then Darius, under whom the restoration of the Temple of Jeru- salem was commenced; and then the fifth king, Xerxes, the son of Darius; Artabanus, the sixth; the seventh, Artaxerxes, surnamed Longimanus, or long-handed; Xerxes, the eighth; Sogdianus, the ninth; the tenth, Darius, surnamed Nofloc ; the eleventh, Arta- xerxes, who was called MvY}ft(uv, that is, 'the Rememberer ;' the twelfth, another Artaxerxes, who was surnamed Ochus ; the thirteenth, Arses, the son of Ochus ; the fourteenth, Darius, son of Arsamus, who was conquered by Alexander, king of Macedon. How then can it be true to say there were but three kings of the Persians, unless indeed there were three who were specially conspicuous for their cruelty, which I do not find from history to have been the case. The 'three rows' then in the mouth of the Persian beast, and in the teeth thereof, must signify three kingdoms those of the Babylonians, the Medes, and the Persians, which were fused into one kingdom. And whereas the prophet continues, ' And thus 16 AN INQUIRY INTO THE they said unto it : Arise, devour much flesh ; ' that may refer to the period of Assuerus, whom the Septuagint names Artaxerxes, when Aman exhorted him in one day to slay all the Jews. We must observe the prophet does not say, that the beast devoured much flesh, but that they said unto it, ' Arise and devour much flesh ;' signi- fying that the thing would be planned, but not executed." And here we may add to the expo- sition of St. Jerome, that these words may also refer to the unsuccessful expeditions of Darius, and subsequently of Xerxes, against Greece, when the wonderful bravery of the Greeks overthrew the almost countless hosts of the Persians in the memorable battles of Mara- thon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, and Salamis. But St. Jerome continues : " ( After this I beheld, and lo ! another beast, like unto a leopard/ The third kingdom, of which it is said, in the corresponding vision of Nabuchodo- nosor's statue, ' his belly and his thighs of brass? This kingdom is that of the Macedonian Greeks, and it is compared to a leopard, one of the swiftest of beasts, and o/ojuTjrficrJ : to signify its headlong course of conquest. And it had four wings ; signifying the wonderful rapidity with which Alexander the Great won victory after victory, from the Illyrian and Adriatic Sea even to the Indian Ocean and the Ganges ; so PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 17 that in six years he subdued a large portion of Europe and the whole of Asia. That it had four heads, is to be understood of the sub- division of Alexander's empire, immediately after his death, between his four principal generals, viz. : Ptolemy, Seleucus, Philip, and Antigonus." St. Jerome then proceeds in his commentary to the fourtli beast. " ' After this* saith the Prophet, ' I beheld in the vision of the ?///////, and lo ! a fourth beast, terrible and won- derful, and exceeding strong ; it had great iron teeth and it had ten horns : I considered the horns, and behold another little horn sprung out of the midst of them : and three of the first horns were plucked up at the presence thereof: (UK! behold eyes like the eyes of a man were in this horn, and a mouth speaking great things' This fourth beast signifieth the Roman empire, which now governs the whole world; and it corresponds with that part of Nabuchodo- nosor's statue, of which it is said, ' its legs were of iron, but the feet part of iron and part of potter's clay : ' in this place it is only the iron that is referred to, the Prophet witnessing 'that it had great iron teeth/ And here I wonder not a little, that whereas the Prophet had compared the three former empires to beasts, the habits of which we are acquainted with, such as the lioness, the bear, and the c 18 AN INQUIRY INTO THE leopard, he compares the Roman empire to no known animal, but simply terms it a beast exceeding strong and terrible. What can be the meaning of this ? possibly to excite a still greater fear of the power and fierceness of the fourth empire, by giving it no definite name ; as if to insinuate, that whatever there was of such fierceness and strength in all other beasts, we might expect to find all this combined and united in the Roman empire. But what Daniel passes over in silence, the Hebrew interpreters think is supplied by David in the Psalms, where he saith, f the wild boar from the forest hath devoured her/ which is read thus in another version, ' all the wild beasts of the field have devoured her/ which would refer to the fact that the Roman empire was an agglomeration of all nations and kingdoms, seeing that the Roman beast either devoured them all, or reduced them to tribute and subjection: in reference to which Daniel here says of this beast, that it devoured all things, and trampled them under its feet " St. Jerome here refers to the interpretation which Porphyrius had given of this prophecy, and especially of the horns, in which he understood the little horn to signify Antiochus Epiphanes. But St. Jerome rejects this as utterly untenable, the fourth beast referring to the Roman em- PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 19 pire, and not to the kingdoms into which Alexander's empire was subdivided ; and, after declaring this, he winds up with these remark- able words : " Let us therefore say, what hath been handed down to us by all ecclesiastical writers : that in the latter days of the world, when the Roman empire shall have been de- stroyed, ten kings shall arise, who shall parcel out the Roman territory between themselves : after which an eleventh king shall arise, small iu his beginnings, who shall subdue three of those other kings." And here St. Jerome adds (what he could only have learnt from the same remarkable tradition, which he tells us pre- vailed in the early Church), that the three kings referred to, were " those of Egypt, Africa, and Ethiopia, or the interior of Asia." How re- markably this has been fulfilled we shall show more at large in a subsequent chapter. " ' And behold/ says the Prophet, ' there were as it were the eyes of a man in that horn / to show that he was not the devil or an evil spirit as some have thought, but a man, in whom Satan would dwell with his whole force; ' and he had a mouth speaking great things:' for he is the same, as the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition [spoken of by St. Paul in his second Epistle to the Thessaloniaus], who sitteth in the Temple of God, making himself as it were God." Thus c2 20 AN INQUIRY INTO THE far have we quoted the words of the great St. Jerome, we shall have to refer to them again later, as well as to the prophecy of Daniel, to which they relate. The same great revelation had already been made to King Nabuchodonosor, as we find in the second chapter of the same prophecy (Dan. ii. 31 45), under the figure of a vast statue, composed of four different materials, answering to the four beasts in Daniel's vision, as we have already had occasion to see pointed out to us by St. Jerome in his commentary on that vision. The only difference between the two visions consists in this, that the second con- tains a fuller development of future events than the first; the groundwork of both being evi- dently the same. In the sequel we shall observe that still fuller developments of the mighty events, connected with these four empires, and subsequent to them, are revealed to the Prophet. We have already seen, from the quotations given from St. Jerome, what was his inter- pretation of the four beasts, and in this inter- pretation we may safely affirm that all other commentators agree with him. For if any have ventured to dissent from the general expla- nation, they are really too insignificant to be seriously dealt with. We may therefore lay it down, as the tradition of the Church, that the PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 21 four beasts, and the four metals of Nabuchodo- nosor's statue, undoubtedly signify, 1st. The Assyrian-Babylonian empire ; 2nd. The Medo-Persian empire ; 3rd. The Macedonian-Greek empire founded by Alexander the Great ; 4th. The Roman empire, which these pro- phecies clearly indicate as the most powerful of them all. But, besides these four empires, the Prophet speaks of a fifth, which he clearly intimates should be different from all the rest, which should be the kingdom set up by Almighty God Himself; and that its first establishment should take place before the expiration of the period allotted to the four empires, which we have just named. This is revealed to us in the forty- fourth verse of the second chapter of Daniel in these words : " But, in the days of those king- doms, the God of Heaven shall set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed" What kingdom is this, but that spiritual one of Jesus Christ, His Holy Catholic and Apos- tolic Church ? that kingdom, of which He declared "my kingdom is not of this world/' of which He laid the first foundations on that blessed day when, just before His glorious Ascension into Heaven, He thus addressed His apostles, giving them the mighty com- 22 AN INQUIRY INTO THE mission to found it : " All power is given to me in Heaven and on Earth, going therefore TEACH YE all nations : baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; TEACHING them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you : and be- hold I am with you, ALL DAYS even to the CONSUMMATION of the WORLD." This was the kingdom which Daniel had declared, so many hundred years before, the God of Heaven would set up, which Jesus Christ the God of Heaven actually did set up, and which He set up " in the days of those kingdoms/' that is, while the Roman empire, ruling as it did over the terri- tory of all the other monarchies, still swayed the destinies of the earth, and of which Daniel declared "that it should never be destroyed;" while Jesus Christ, its founder, affirmed that He Himself would abide with it "for ever, even to the end of the world." The Prophet having described the founda- tion of this fifth kingdom, which was God's own kingdom, a spiritual kingdom, of which in the same chapter it is said " a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands " (Dan. ii. 34), as well to signify that no human force would be used for its foundation, as to denote the supernatural birth of its Founder Jesus Christ, he goes on to describe the foundation PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 23 of another kingdom, the distinctive character- istic of which would be, that it would make war with the saints of God, that is, according to the language of Scripture, the people of God, in other words, with the fifth kingdom, or the Catholic Church. Having described the fourth great monarchy, or the Roman empire, under the figure of a beast " terrible and wonderful (Dan. vii. 7, 8), and exceeding strong, having great iron teeth, with which it devoured and brake in pieces, treading down the rest with its feet/' the Pro- phet adds, " that it was unlike the other beasts, and that it had ten horns." Now what can this mean, except that the Roman empire was not to be supplanted, like the other great monarchies, by another universal monarchy, but that when the period of its dissolution should arrive, it should be subdivided into ten kingdoms ? In the sixth verse of this same chapter (Dan. vii.), the third monarchy, or the Greek empire of Alexander, had already been described as having four heads ; and in the eighth chapter (Dan. viii. 8), the same Mace- donian Greek empire is described as a he-goat with a notable horn and four lesser horns ; and the four heads in the first vision and the four horns in the latter, symbolized the subdivision of Alexander's empire after his death amongst 24 AN INQUIRY INTO THE liis four generals, who founded four distinct kingdoms out of it; so here, in the seventh and eighth verses of the seventh chapter, we find the Roman empire dissolved into ten kingdoms, which the Prophet foresaw under the symbolical figure of ten horns. What ensues thereupon ? Listen to the Prophet : "I considered the horns, and behold, another little horn sprung out of the midst of them: and three of the first horns were plucked up at the presence thereof: and behold eyes, like the eyes of a man, were in this horn, and a mouth speaking great things." And a little further on, in the eleventh verse, he continues : " I beheld, because of the voice of the great words which that horn spake ; " and again, in the twenty -first verse : " I beheld, and lo ! that horn made war against the saints, and prevailed over them ; " and again, in the twenty-fourth verse : " And another horn shall rise up after the other ten horns, and he shall be mightier than the former, and he shall bring down three kings, and he shall speak words against the High One, and shall crush the saints of the Most High; and he shall think himself able to change times and laws, and the saints shall be delivered into his hand, until a time, and times (in the dual number, meaning, therefore, two times), and half a PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 25 time ; after which," concludes the Prophet, " judgment shall sit, that his power may be taken away, and be broken in pieces, and perish even to the end." Now, who is this little horn, of which such great and terrible things are here foretold ? The holy fathers of the Church, with one con- sent, declare that it is that great opponent of God and of His Church which, in the language of the New Testament prophecies, is denomi- nated Antichrist ; and in this interpretation all later commentators, whether Catholic or Protestant, agree. The only question agitated between them is, " IVho is this Antichrist ? " It is true that Mr. Faber, the rector of Long Newton, has laboured, in a work entitled " The Sacred Calendar of Prophecy," to establish a distinction between Antichrist and the Man of Sin; but, speaking generally of Protestant com- mentators since the first period of their separa- tion from the Catholic Church, it is true that they agree with ourselves in regarding the Little Horn of Daniel, the Man *of Sin of St. Paul, the Antichrist of St. John, and the False Pro- phet of the Apocalypse, as the same personage. It is with such who agree in holding this view that we are specially concerned in this treatise, although indirectly we have to do with others also, as will be seen in the sequel. 26 AN INQUIRY INTO THE It is not the place, as yet, to answer the question, " Who is the Antichrist ? " we shall do this in another chapter: here we confine ourselves to the consideration of some of the characteristics of Antichrist, as they are fore- told in this prophecy of Daniel, reserving it for our interpretation of other prophecies, both in Daniel and elsewhere, fully to develop who the great Antichrist really is. In the prophecy before us, this, at least, seems quite clear, that Antichrist was not to appear in the world until after the dissolution of the Roman empire, and its consequent sub- division into ten kingdoms ; that he was to rise up amongst these, and to subdue three of them ; that he was to speak great things against God and against His saints ; in other words, against God, as the revealer and founder of the Christian Church, which was, as we have already seen, the kingdom of the saints, or the fifth monarchy, which the Prophet told us God would found " in the days of those kingdoms " (Dan. ii. 44) ; that is, during the period allotted for the duration of the four monarchies ; in other words, before the dissolution of the Roman empire : that is, Christ was to found His kingdom before the dissolution of the Roman empire, Antichrist was to found his after its dissolution. Finally, this prophecy PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 27 contains a prediction of the period for which this kingdom of Antichrist was to last, namely, for the mystical period of a time, times, and half a time, that is, for one year, for two years (the word times, both in the Hebrew and Greek versions, being in the dual number), and for half a year; that is alto- gether, for three years and a half. What is meant by this symbolical period of three years and a half, we shall discuss later. In fine, in these two prophecies of Daniel, contained in the second and seventh chapters, we have the prediction of Christ's kingdom, and of Anti- christ's kingdom ; that the former was to be founded, as we have just observed, before the dissolution of the Roman empire, the latter shortly after that dissolution ; that the former was to last for ever, and that the latter was to last for the symbolical period of three years and a half. Now let us proceed to the eighth chapter of Daniel. In this chapter the Prophet relates a vision which he had concerning two of the four great monarchies, the four monar- chies which formed the subject of the vision related in the last chapter. It may perhaps here be asked, of what use could it be to show the Prophet so many visions concern- ing the same thing ? The reason is obvious ; 28 AN INQUIRY INTO THE the Prophet does, or rather the Holy Spirit deals with the Prophet, as a skilful artist treats any subject, of which he would convey to persons at a distance an accurate idea : he presents his subject to them in different points of view, first giving them a general view of it, and then in successive sketches after- wards he displays all its different details. By and by we shall see the exceeding value and force of these different details, *in establishing the date as well as the locality of Antichrist. Thus in the seventh chapter we have the vision of the four great monarchies, of the establish- ment of the Catholi c Church, related still more emphatically in the second chapter, forty-fourth verse, and of the kingdom of Antichrist in opposition to it ; whilst in the eighth chapter, we have the vision of two out of those four monarchies, together with the establishment of Antichrist's kingdom as coming out of the second of these two monarchies, namely, out of the Grecian beast, though, as the Prophet says (viii. 23), not until " after their reign" Let us now consider this prophecy contained in the eighth chapter. The Prophet teUs us that this vision was revealed to him in the castle of Susa, in the third year of King Bal- thassar's reign. " And I lifted up my eyes," says Daniel, " and saw : and behold a ram PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 29 stood before the water, having two high horns, and one higher than the other, and growing up." (Dan. viii. 3.) The interpretation of this verse is given by the angel Gabriel in the twentieth verse of this same chapter, in these words : " The ram, which thou sawest with the horns, is the king of the Medes and Per- sians." In other words, the ram is the Per- sian monarchy, and the two horns are the two great nations coalescing together in the for- mation of that empire, viz., the Medes and Persians, and the horn, which was the higher of the two, is evidently the Persians, who took the lead in regard to the Medes in forming the empire. In the fifth verse, the Prophet describes the vision of another beast, which he saw under the form of a he-goat : " And behold a he-goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and he touched not the ground, and the he-goat had a notable horn between his eyes." The Prophet then describes the violent combat, which took place between the he-goat and the ram : in the seventh verse he declares that the he-goat overcame and destroyed the ram, but in the eighth verse he describes the breaking of the notable horn already mentioned, in the place of which four other horns arose. Now before we proceed further, let us look at the twenty-first verse of 30 AN INQUIRY INTO THE the same chapter (Dan. viii. 21), and we shall find all these figures interpreted by the angel Gabriel. The he-goat is declared to be the Greek or Macedonian monarchy j the notable horn, which came up between the eyes of the he-goat, is the first king or founder of this monarchy, that is, Alexander the Great, the rapidity of whose conquests is aptly figured by the expression of the Prophet, that the he- goat " touched not the ground ; " and we are then informed by the same angelic interpreter, that immediately upon his death, his empire should be subdivided into four portions or kingdoms, of which his four principal generals became the four first kings respectively : all which, history informs us, was literally accom- plished upon the death of Alexander, when the mighty dominions of this extraordinary con- queror were subdivided amongst his four gene- rals ; Antipater taking possession of Mace- donia ; Lysimachus of Thrace and the Helles- pont ; Ptolemy of Egypt and its dependencies ; and Seleucus of Syria, including Babylon, part of Arabia, Persia, and the other Asiatic pro- vinces of the old Medo-Persian empire. Having described this, the Prophet at once proceeds to the subject of Antichrist; for so St. Jerome assures us that the tradition of primitive interpreters understood the Prophet's PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 31 words. (Hunc locum plerique nostrorum ad Antichristum referunt. Hieronymi in Dan. c. viii. torn. v. p. 589.) "And out of one of them came forth a little horn, and it became great against the south, and against the east, and against the strong ; and it was magnified even unto the strength of heaven, and it threw down of the strength, and of the stars, and trod upon them : and it was magnified even unto the prince of the strength ; and it took away from him the continual sacrifice, and cast down the place of his sanctuary, and strength was given him against the continual sacrifice, be- cause of sins : and truth shall be cast down on the ground, and he shall do and shall prosper." In the thirteenth verse, which follows, Daniel hears a saint, who was present in the heavenly vision, asking another saint, how long should be the vision unto the end of the desolation, and of the dominion of the little horn, concerning which such terrible things are here predicted ? To which question the following answer is re- turned : " Unto evening and morning two thousand three hundred days ; and the sanctu- ary shall be cleansed." This prophecy is, per- haps, one of the most important in the whole book, as it gives us the clue for calculating the period when Antichrist shall perish, and the sanctuary of God, that is, the Holy Land and 32 AN INQUIRY INTO THE Jerusalem, if we understand it literally, shall be freed from his pollutions, and if we take it mystically, when the Holy Catholic Church shall be delivered from the defiling contact of his impious conflict. By the term two thousand three hundred days, we understand symbolical or prophetic days, that is, according to the interpretation given to the word day, in the prophecy of the seventy weeks of days. (Dan. ix. 24) . Days, which signify and sym- bolize years. That in the prophecy of the seventy weeks a day symbolized a year, no one, who compares the event with the prediction, will for a moment deny. Seventy weeks would amount to four hundred and ninety days, and it was pre- cisely at the close of four hundred and ninety years from the time specified to the Prophet, that our Lord's advent took place ; the conclu- sion, therefore, of all Christian interpreters has been that the term week in that prophecy must signify a period of seven prophetic days, each day symbolizing a year. And if in one prophecy the event has proved the necessity of this inter- pretation, there is every reason from analogy to conclude that the same method of interpre- tation is to be observed in regard to the meaning of other prophetic periods also. And what tends still further to corroborate this are the words of God Himself to Moses, recorded in the Book of Numbers (Numb. xiv. 34) ; " according to PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 33 the number of the forty days, wherein you viewed the land : a year shall be counted for a f/fty.' And again we read in the Book of K/ekiel the Prophet (Ezek. iv. 5, 6) : "And I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished this, thou shalt sleep 11 upon thy right side : and thou shalt take upon thee the iniquity of the house of Juda forty days: a day for a ycur, yea, Prophet, that this little horn was to grow up within these limits after the time (Dan. viii. 23, "After tlu'ir reign") allotted for the duration of the four monarchies into which Alexander's empire was to be subdivided (for how else can we interpret the expression " after their reign ?"), warrants us in looking for the coming of Antichrist after these four portions of Alex- ander's empire should have ceased to be inde- 38 AN INQUIRY INTO THE pendent kingdoms, that is, after they should have been absorbed into the Roman empire, which is DanieFs fourth beast : whilst the other prophecy, that a little horn (of which Daniel predicates precisely the same things, as he had predicated of the little horn growing out of the Macedonian he-goat) should arise out of the ten horns or kingdoms of the subverted and subdivided Roman empire, fixes the period of his coming as clearly as the preceding prophecy of the he-goat had fixed his locality. And here we are met by an objection, which Protestant commentators are not slow to ad- vance. They deny the identity of the little horn of the Macedonian he-goat, with that of the Roman beast. They agree with us in all we have advanced about the period of the ap- pearance of the little horn of the Macedonian he-goat, as they agree with us also in their personal application of that prophecy : but they do not agree with us in admitting the identity of this little horn, with the little horn, which the Prophet describes as issuing out of the sub- divided Roman empire. In maintaining this theory, in opposition to our's, which asserts the identity of the two little horns, Protestants seem to forget that the Roman beast must represent the whole Roman empire, and not alone the western half PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 39 of it : that the empire of the Macedonian he- f/odt had already become a portion of the Roman c//t/>ire, and consequently, in looking for the ten horns into which the Roman empire to be subdivided, that we must look for them not only in the western half, but in the rn portion also of this same Roman em- : and consequently, that when the Prophet ks of the little horn that rose up amongst the ten other horns of the Roman empire, it is altogether arbitrary and unreasonable to say that we are to look for this little horn only within the precincts of the western empire, and that he is not to be expected within the pre- cinct> of the eastern half of the Roman beast. If so, then how comes it, that the Prophet in describing, what Protestants gratuitously as- sume to be the western little horn, makes no mention whatever of that other little horn, which they themselves cannot deny was destined to arise in the east out of the precincts of the Macedonian he-goat? How comes it, I say, that the Prophet tells us of only one, instead of two little horns, issuing out of the Roman beast, if the Protestant theory be correct that there really were two such horns ? Assuredly no satisfactory answer can be given to this question on the Protestant theory, whereas on our theory the answer is simple and obvious, 40 AN INQUIRY INTO THE because there was but one such little horn, and therefore but one is described as issuing out of the Roman beast. The prophecy of the eighth chapter had already prepared us to expect and to conclude this, for when the angel explained to Daniel the time of the coming of the little horn which he had seen issuing out of the Macedonian he-goat, he expressly assured him that it would be after the reign of the four kingdoms of the Macedonian he-goat, that is, after they ceased to be independent kingdoms, and after they had been absorbed within the limits of the Roman beast. All Protestants, as far as I know, admit that the little horn of the Macedonian he-goat did, in point of fact, not appear until after the breaking up of the Roman empire : I therefore conclude, peremp- torily, that the little horn described by the Prophet as issuing out of the Roman beast is the little horn of the Macedonian he-goat, consequently that the Roman little horn is to be looked for within the precincts of the Eastern, not the Western Roman empire, that is, in other words, within the geographical limits of the domains of the Macedonian he- goat. PROPHECIES CHA PROOFS CHIEFLY DERIVED FROM THE PROPHECIES OF ST. PAUL I ) ST. JOHN THAT THIS GREAT ANTICHRIST WAS MAHOMET ; A1TO THAT THE MAHOMETAN EMPIRE WITH ITS RELIGIOUS SYSTEM WAS THE KINGDOM OF ANTICHRIST. THE question that must now occupy our atten- tion is whether Antichrist, of whom we have already been considering the remarkable pre- dictions -iven by the Prophet Daniel, be come or not? and secondly, whether any political and religious system has arisen in the world, resulting from the work of any celebrated personage, recorded in history, that bears a sufficient resemblance either to what the pro- phecies of Daniel, or others of the New Testa- ment, to which we are now about to turn our attention, have described, so that we should be justified in coming to the conclusion that such a personage was the predicted Antichrist, and such a polity the Antichristian empire? In regard to the first question it is un- doubtedly the opinion of many Catholic authors that Antichrist has not yet appeared; but all the authors, who take this view, hold that Antichrist is to reign only for the brief period 42 AN INQUIRY INTO THE of three literal years and a half, and that his empire and dominion are not to outlive their founder, but to perish with him after that exceedingly short duration. Other Catholic authors however take another view, affirming that Antichrist is already come, and that the duration of his dominion was not to be for the literal period of three years and a half, or of 1260 natural and literal days, but for a prophetic period so called, which would in reality amount to 1260 years. The only difference between such years and natural years being, that they are years of 360 not 365 days each, such dif- ference resulting from the precise terms in which the prophecies relating to them are couched. We at once inform our readers that this latter view is the one which we adopt, and which appears to us most consonant to Holy Scripture, to the earliest traditions of the Church, and to common sense. By-and-bye we shall unfold the scriptural and traditional arguments which go to establish this theory, but it seems to us eminently agreeable to common sense also, and to all sound analogy. For on the face of it, is it likely that all the wonderful and awful descriptions of Antichrist, as given in Scripture, could be fulfilled in the short period of three literal years and a half? PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 43 that every evil personage recorded in history is a sort of Antichrist, or type of the great Antichrist, we have scriptural authority for affirming ; but if the real Antichrist is to last for only three years and a half, many of his types would be infinitely worse than the great antitype himself. For instance Arius, whose heresy desolated the Church for centuries, must have done much more mischief to the Church and to the souls of men, than any such ephe- ! Antielirist ever could do: and what shall we say of the three centuries of Pagan-Roman persecution of the early Church on this theory ? Assuredly no persecutor for three literal years and a half could ever rival the accumulated amount of the ten great persecutions enacted all over the earth by the Pagan-Roman em- perors. Or what ought we to think of the still greater mischief perpetrated by Mahometanism during the last twelve centuries on such a theory as this ? It is evident that if Antichrist be not yet come, and if his continuance is only to be for three literal years and a half, instead of being the principal incarnation of evil, to which prophecy points, he would be vastly inferior in this respect to what were merely types and shadows of what he was to be. It is therefore obvious to us, that either some enduring form of evil, already recorded in history, must be the 44 AN INQUIRY INTO THE predicted Antichrist, or if not, that at least it must be some system still future, which will at any rate endure as long as its predecessors and its types, and which can in no case be realized by an ephemeral Antichrist enduring only for three years and a half. We shall proceed to show why we believe that this great Antichrist is not future, but that he belongs to the region of the past and to the domains of fulfilled prophecy. It is well known to our readers, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, that almost all Pro- testant commentators on prophecy so far at least coincide with our view, as to admit the symbolical nature of the prophetic period of three years and a half or 1260 days, and that Antichrist is already come. We need scarcely say that they do not agree with us as to whom prophecy points as the predicted Antichrist. Mr. Mede, a writer cer- tainly of no mean repute whether for learning or ability, has left on record what were his views on this question. The learned Bishop Newton has done the same, and his treatise on the prophecies is certainly a work of great ability and research. That great philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, Sir Isaac New- ton, has done the same also, and however erroneous his conclusions, as Catholics must PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 45 necessarily affirm them to be, they are at any rate the homage of a great mind and of a bril- liant genius to the Divinity of the Scripture prophecies. And to say nothing of other minor authors, or of the continental Protestants from Luther downwards, in our own time the subject has certainly been ably handled, although on wron^r premises and false principles, by modern \vriier>, IK li a> 1 orster, Faber, and Elliott. All thesr \\riter.s havi- laboured to show, ac- og to their respective theories, that the eiihrr the Antichrist, or the Man of Sin, or the False Prophet of the Apocalypse, or that he was all three of these figurative eharaeters combined. They have laboured to show that the Catholic Church of Christ fell at a very early period into a fatal apostacy from her primitive faith, that she defiled the reve- lation of God with a demonolatrous worship of saints and angels, an idolatrous worship of images and the Eucharist, and with a general practice, that fully warranted both them and their forefathers in quitting her communion, and in denouncing her to mankind as the Babylon of prophecy doomed to destruction, and as the most impious foe both of God and man. On the other hand, Catholic writers, ever >inee the outbreak of the Protestant Revolu- 46 AN INQUIRY INTO THE tion of the sixteenth century, have striven to show, and they have done it successfully, that the Protestant theory of Antichrist was con- trary not only to the whole teaching of the Catholic Church in all ages, and the tradition both of East and West, but utterly at variance with the statements of prophecy itself, and that if true, it would do more than annihilate the claims of Catholicity, it would overthrow those of Christianity itself; for what becomes of that religion, as a fact of any practical importance to mankind, if you entirely sepa- rate it from the Church, if you make it a mere theory, that has never been properly carried out or realized upon earth ? Of course, in saying this, Catholics are far from denying or overlooking the fearful abuses that have, alas ! ever existed in the Christian Church. Our Lord and Master prepared us for these. He tells us, that these abuses and scandals must of necessity arise even within His own king- dom, the Church, and that they will never be entirely rooted out until His second coming to judge the living and the dead. But Catho- lics, while they admit this, and deplore it, are surely right in saying that the Protestant theory goes much further. It passes beyond the corruption of individual members and in- dividual pastors, and affirms that the whole PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 47 body of the Church has been corrupted, that her doctrine has been perverted, her practice (as approved by her oecumenical councils) has become idolatrous, that from having once been the Church of the living God, authorized by Him "to teach all nations," she has become for many ages the very synagogue of Satan, a sink of corruption, and nothing less than "the irivat Babylonian Harlot," "the mother of all the abominations of the earth." (Apocalypse xvii. 5.) If this be true, they must show not only how such a result is consistent with the ronmii MM, iriven by Christ to this same Church "to teach all nations," but how it agrees with His glorious promise " that the gates of hell should never prevail against His Church," and that He would remain with the visible teach- ing Church " always even unto the end of the world." (Matt, xxviii. 20.) The commission given by our Lord to His visible Church, and the promises with which He consecrated and confirmed that commission, are utterly inconsistent with the Protestant theory of prophetic interpretation. It cannot be denied even by those who hold this theory, that the visible Catholic Church of the present day is the Church which Christ's apostles founded, and which is the offspring of our Lord's command to them to teach all nations ; 48 AN INQUIRY INTO THE how then could Christ command the nations to submit to a teaching, which after three or four centuries was to become idolatrous and blasphemous ? and yet assuredly He places no limit to the commission He gave, but on the contrary promised to be with it " always, even to the end of the world/' In a word Christ declares " the gates of hell shall never prevail against His Church : " the Protestant theory asserts, that the gates of hell have prevailed against it : for if idolatrous teaching be not a gate of hell, we know not what can deserve to be so called. Now all this has been trium- phantly shown over and over again by Catholic writers. Whoever wrote with greater power on this subject, than the great and pious Cardinal Bellarmine ? and if the Protestant student of prophecy would turn to the voluminous com- mentaries of that able interpreter of Scripture Cornelius a Lapide, or to those of the learned Salmeron, who has literally exhausted the sub- ject, they would see how very weak are the grounds for their own interpretation, how con- tradictory it is to the whole tenor of Scrip- ture, how it is founded on mere assumptions, on gross misrepresentations of historical facts, or on a still grosser misunderstanding of Ca- tholic usages and doctrines, or on an illogical PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 49 confusion between the character of the Church as a body, and the crimes of some of her pastors or individual members. But it was not merely at the period of the great falling away from the Catholic Church, that Catholic authors refuted the theories of their adversaries. As time rolled on, the sub- was continually taken up on both sides, and often treated in a new point of view as to nc of its details. \\ e may here mention some others of the principal writers, who have handled this por- tion of Scriptural interpretation on the Catho- lic side of the question : and by referring to their pages, the reader will be better able to form an estimate of this immensely important subject. The great Bossuet wrote a treatise on the Apocalypse, which, like all he wrote, is full of ability and of edifying matter. The venerable Father Holtzhauser, of Bingen, on the Rhine, did the .same, and a most interesting and valu- able treatise it is. There was also an exposi- tion of the Apocalypse published by an Eng- lish Catholic bishop, Dr. Walmesley, under the assumed name of Pastorini : and just before the close of the last century, an English lady, who had embraced the Catholic faith, pub- lished a most able and learned disquisition on E 50 AN INQUIRY INTO THE the same mysterious book, under the title of ' ' Preuves Incontestables de la Verite de PEglise Catholique et Apostolique deduites de 1' Apoca- lypse." There is, too, a very valuable and interesting disquisition on Daniel's prophecy relating to the little horn in the tenth volume of the Abbe Rohrbacher's " History of the Catholic Church," in which he proves with great ability that Mahomet is that little horn and the Antichrist of prophecy. There have been also several minor treatises on the Apoca- lypse. Still, however, it may be advisable for others to continue digging in the same inex- haustible mine, and it may be, that as time flows on, and events develop themselves, the true meaning of prophecy, and its connection with what is passing around us, may possibly receive some elucidation. But now it is time we should reply to the question, Is Antichrist still to come, or is he already come? I answer, he is come : and if the further question be put, Who then is he ? I answer, without any doubt or misgiving what- ever, Mahomet is he : Mahomet is the great Antichrist foretold in the Sacred Scriptures : and this is what I shall endeavour to prove in the following disquisition. St. John the Evangelist, he to whom our Lord made his special Revelation of what was to PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 51 come to pass even to the end of the world, tells us, in his first Epistle and the second chapter ;'iid the eighteenth verse, " Little children, it is the last hour," that is to say, the last period of the world, or the last dispensation of God to men, " and as you have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now there are many Antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last hour." . . . . " They uent out from us; but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have remained with us ; but that they may be made manifest that they are not all of us." And again, in the twenty- second verse he continues, " This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son." St. John here gives us an unmistakeable clue to discover the great Antichrist. He tells us that the very basis of his teaching will be " to deny the Father and the Son." He says, and he says most truly, that even when he wrote his Mpistle, there u ere already many Antichrists, and that they were heretics, who had left the Apostolic Communion : "They went out from US." Hence it is evident that any spirit that opposeth the authority of the one Catholic Church founded by the Apostles at the com- mand of Christ, who said to them, " Go ye and teach all nations," is a spirit of Antichrist, whether such heretics were forerunners of the 52 AN INQUIRY INTO THE great Antichrist, or whether they have arisen since, and have trodden in his footsteps. All such spirits have a natural sympathy for one another, and they all are linked together by one common design : the spirit which actuates them is a spirit that " denieth the Father and the Son" It will not be difficult to explain, why it was quite reasonable for Antichrist, on his false principles, or rather for Satan who inspired him, to deny f( the Father and the Son :" and why this denial of " the Father and the Son" should be the highest act of human impiety. For assuming the truth of Divine Revelation, and of the statement it makes to us of the Fall of Man, and that man having sinned, and so fallen from God, could never by any act of his own recover the favour of that God, but that God provided a way for recover- ing His grace by the incarnation of His own Son, God like Himself, who by His meritorious obedience, and by His patient endurance of sufferings, and even of a cruel death upon the cross, obtained for mankind, what otherwise man could never have merited for himself, a restoration to God's favour, and the power of " working out his own salvation with fear and trembling;" I say, assuming the truth of all this, which all Christians do assume, is it not clear that the denial of the Persons of " the PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 53 Father and the Son" in God denies the whole scheme of human redemption and salvation, undermining thereby the whole system which Christ came on earth to teach, and consequently doing the utmost to undo what was done by Christ, in a word, doing that which all common sense and analogy would lead one to expect that Antichrist, when he was fully revealed, would do? But this is not all; we shall here- after have occasion to show, from prophecy, what other things this great Antichrist was to do, and how completely all these predictions have been fulfilled in Mahomet, and his re- ligion and empire. But St. John tells us that \eu in his day " there were many Antichrists," and it is remarkable how all the heresies that sprung up in the early Church tended to that great denial " of the Father and Son" which received its fullest development in the very words of the Mahometan creed, " God is one. God is eternal. He hath neither begotten, nor is begotten." Chapter 112 of the Koran, being the first of the last three Revelations, which " the False Prophet" impiously pre- tended that God had revealed to him at Mecca. These words emphatically deny the whole doctrine of Christ, the whole scheme of human redemption, and the Personal distinction and existence " of the Father and the Son" in the 54 AN INQUIRY INTO THE Godhead. " God hath neither begotten nor is begotten/' says Mahomet : " This is ANTI- CHRIST, that denieth the FATHER and the SON," says the inspired Evangelist and Apostle St. John, he that leaned on the bosom of Christ at His last supper, and drew in from the Sacred Heart of his Lord and Master the stream of Grace and Truth. Is it then too much to say that in this special feature, attributed by St. John to Antichrist, Mahomet literally fulfils the predictions of Holy Writ ? The truth of this will become more and more apparent as we trace the links between the early heretics, of whom St. John said, " Already there are many Antichrists," and the great arch-heresy promulgated by Mahomet in his Koran, in which, summing up and carrying out all the denials contained in previous here- sies, he affirmed " that God hath neither be- gotten nor is begotten" that is, that there is neither " the Father nor the Son" in the God- head. In the very days of St. John the Evangelist, there were heretics, who, separating themselves from the Apostolic communion, and resisting the authoritative teaching of the Church, af- firmed that Christ was not come in the flesh \ that He only assumed a phantom of human nature, no real body. The effect of this heresy PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 55 was to deny and overthrow the reality of the atonement : and when Mahomet came, one of his principal heresies was to deny that Christ had died upon a cross, or had redeemed man- kind by his death. By this heresy Mahomet adopted those of the Gnostics, of Cerinthus, of the Marcionites, the Ebionites, and the earliest recorded in Church history. As these curlier forms and varieties of the same great fundamental heresy died out, they were repro- duced in still more definite shape by the cele- hratcd heroiarch Arius ; he, like his predeces- sors, overthrew the doctrine of redemption thnmdi Christ, by denying the Divinity of our Lord : for though he allowed a sort of Godhead in ChriM. he denied the eternal Sonship, and the equality of the Son with the Father. Nestorius, too, while agreeing with the Catho- lic doctrine of the blessed Trinity, overthrew the Divinity of Jesus, by denying the hypos- tatic or personal union between Christ and God the Son ; he affirmed that there were two Persotis, absolutely distinct in Christ, so that God the Son was not Christ, nor Jesus God the Son : so that, according to him, the all-holy Mary was not the Mother of God, but of a mere man, and consequently he virtually over- threw the doctrine of the atonement ; for how could one mere man atone for sins of millions 56 AN INQUIRY INTO THE of men ? and yet Nestorius was not aware of the consequences of his own heresy. Then followed Eutyches, who in another way came to the same impious conclusion of the virtual denial of the atonement ; for he denied the distinction of natures in Christ. Running into the opposite extreme against the heresy of Nestorius, who affirmed not only the distinc- tion of natures, but of Persons, in Christ, he (Eutyches) denied that Christ had at once the nature of God and the nature of man, and he affirmed that the manhood of Christ was alto- gether confounded with the nature of God the Son, so that he was not truly man, as well as truly God : and by this heresy he overthrew all the reality of Christ's merits and sufferings, for the Divinity can neither merit nor suffer, although the creature cannot have infinite merit (such as the Redeemer of all men must have) unless hypostatically united, as the Church teaches us the humanity of Christ was, with the Divinity. Then the Manicheans, uniting in themselves all previous heresies, car- ried on the tradition of impious denial, till at last, when the Roman empire had been re- moved, and the world was once more plunged in barbarian anarchy, Mahomet came forth from his obscurity, to usher in a new religion, and to found a new empire. His religion was PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 57 to supersede Christianity, and his empire was to be universal, so he said, and so he promised his deluded followers. He admitted that Christ i Prophet, but he denied that He was God, and he spurned at the doctrine of the atone- ment, and he proclaimed himself to be the last and the greatest of the Prophets, consequently greater than Christ : and as Christ had founded a religion and a spiritual empire, to embrace one day within its sacred bounds the whole t of the world, so did this "Father and Son dnnjiiiti" Antichrist found a carnal and sensual religion, connecting it with a brutal- izing and carnal empire; and as Christ had connected the establishment of His empire with that of every virtue, especially with the Divine gift of continence and virginity, so did this beastly Antichrist associate his empire with the reign of promiscuous concubinage, and of every sensual gratification. What he adopted and retained of revealed Divine Truth was but the mask and the cloak for his impious blasphemies, to deceive the unwary, and if pos- sible to lead captive even the elect. And how many millions and hundreds of millions of men has he not led captive from the first dawning of his career up to this very hour, in which we see England and France ranging themselves in battle array to uphold his old, now worn out, cursed 58 AN INQUIRY INTO THE dominion ! How many fair provinces of holy Church has he not trampled down ! how many millions of Christians has he not slain during more than twelve centuries ! how has he not desolated the richest and most beauteous pro- vinces of the earth, diffusing barrenness and desolation over lands flowing with milk and honey, stopping the current of civilization, and realizing to the letter all the hideous descrip- tions of Antichrist and Antichristian dominion contained in the infallible prophecies of God's Word! It is a remarkable fact connected with the spiritual affinity, of which we have been speak- ing, between Mahomet and the early heretics, that Mahomet was actually assisted by Nes- torians and Jews in compiling the first outlines of his religious system. This fact is attested by all historians, and it is another fulfilment of the conditions of that spiritual genealogy of Antichrist indicated in the passages of St. John's Epistle, which we have already cited. But if we turn from the words of St. John to the writings of St. Paul, who also predicted many things concerning the great Antichrist, as all commentators unite in affirming, we shall find all that he foretold no less lite- rally and strikingly fulfilled in the person of Mahomet. PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 59 St. Paul, in his second Epistle to the Thessa- lonians, and in the second chapter, writes as follows : " And we beseech you, Brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus, and of our gathering together unto him ; that you be not easily moved from your mind, nor be frighted, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by epistle as sent from us, as if the day of the Lord were at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means; for unless there come a revolt first, and the Man of Sin be revealed, the Son of JVnliti<>n, who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the Temple of God, showing himself as if he were God. Remember you not, that when I was yet with you, I told you these things ? and now you know what with- holdeth that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity already worketh : only that he, who now holdeth, do hold, until he be taken out of the way; and then that \virked one shall be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming; him, whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish : because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. 60 AN INQUIRY INTO THE Therefore, God shall send them the operation of error, to believe a lie/' If we examine these very remarkable words of the Apostle, we shall see that his object was to instruct his Thessalonian disciples that the day of our Lord's second coming was not so near at hand, as some, who had misinterpreted our Lord's words (St. Luke xxii. 32), " Amen I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away, till all things be fulfilled," had supposed. He tells them, therefore, that many things are to happen in the world before that day arrives : that it will not come " until there has been a revolt first." Now this word, which our English Catholic version thus renders, is in the original Greek termed " 17 airoaraaia" and in the Anglican version it is translated a falling away, which comes nearer the expression of the Latin Vulgate, which words it " dis- cessio," than either the original Greek or the English Catholic version, although the latter professes to follow the Vulgate. But the Eng- lish word "apostasy" would certainly come nearer to the Greek than any other, and we must not forget it was in the Greek that the Apostle wrote. The Apostle then foretells, that before the day of the Lord, that is the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, shall arrive, there will be "the apostasy" that is, " a PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 61 i/rcat apostasy :" and this apostasy is coupled with the revelation of " the Man of Sin" evi- (1 ntly showing that the two are identified together, and that the apostasy will be his work ; in other words, that there was to be a religious system instituted by the Man of Sin for the purpose of superseding Christianity, and of inducing all men to apostatize from it. Further, the Apostle tells the Thessalonians that the Man of Sin, and the great apostasy lie was to usher in, would not be manifested " until that, which now holdeth" or restraineth their appearance, "be taken way " or removed: and then, he concludes, " shall that wicked one be reveated." At the same time St. Paul declares that "the mystery of iniquity already worketh," which agrees with the statement of the Evan- gelist St. John, " already are there many Anti- chri>ts." It is evident, therefore, that what St. Paul calls " the Apostasy" which he iden- tifies with " the Man of Sin," and what St. John calls "Antichrist" was to be ushered in by the heresies that prevailed in the earliest periods, the connection of which with Maho- metanism we have already shown. But St. Paul's prediction to the Thessalonians gives us many other marks by which this Man of Sin was to be known. Now the first of these is 62 AN INQUIRY INTO THE the period of his appearance. This is distinctly noted by the Apostle. " That which now holdeth and restraineth shall be removed, and then shall that wicked one be revealed." Now what was it that withheld, and that was to be removed ? so as to make way for Antichrist ? The early fathers with one consent declare that St. Paul referred to the Roman empire : as long as this empire lasted, the coming of Antichrist was to be delayed, but when once this was gone, then " was that wicked one to be revealed." "Who holds," says Tertullian, " but the Roman empire ? the division of which into ten kingdoms will bring on Antichrist: and then, according to the Apostle, that wicked one shall be revealed." (Tertullian de Resur- rect. Carnis, cap. 24.) And that great doctor and most learned ancient Father St. Jerome, commenting on these same words of the Apostle, " only he who now holdeth doth hold, until he be taken out of the way' 3 writes thus : " The Apostle by this expression, He who now holdeth, signifieth the Roman empire. He says it in obscure terms, for if he had spoken openly, he would by his imprudence have excited the rage of the persecutors against the Christians, and against the Church, which was then in its very infancy." (Hieronymi, in Jeremiam, cap. 25.) PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 63 And again the same holy doctor, on another occasion explaining the same passage, says: "Only th; t the Roman empire, which at pre- sent hohleth all nations beneath its sway, be taken away, and then shall Antichrist come." (Hieronymi, Epist. cli. ad Algas. qu. xi.) The illustrious Patriarch of Constantinople, St. John Chrysnsiume, commenting on the same text, speaks thus : " It may be asked, what is the meaning of St. Paul, when he says, you know what ir'itltlioldeth him from being revealed; and why does the Apostle speak so obscurely? It is hrcaiiM' he has in view the Roman empire : and on that account, with good reason, he speaks in obscure and enigmatical terms, for fear of in Hating the Romans. The Apostle then on this account says: only that he, who now holdeth, doth hold, until he be taken out of the way ; that is, when the Roman empire shall have been removed from the face of the earth, then shall Antichrist come/' (Chrysost. Homelia iv. /// Pdu/i Itjiist. ad Thessalonicenses ii.) A still earlier lather of the Church, the great Lactan- tius, speaking of the latter period of the world, says : " At that time desolation will overspread the whole earth, destroying everything : the cause of which desolation will be that the Roman empire (I shudder to say it, but I must needs say it, because it is to be) will be taken 64 AN INQUIRY INTO THE away from the earth, and the empire will return into Asia, the East will domineer again, and the West will be subdued." (Lactantii, lib. vii. c. 15.) These expressions of Lactantius are most remarkable, and their fulfilment is equally remarkable : for they have been fulfilled to the very letter. The Roman empire was no sooner overthrown, than it was subdivided into a number of comparatively small states, where- upon Mahomet arose in the Asiatic provinces of the old Roman empire, and founded upon its ruins another mighty empire, which was for ages the terror of the West, and the scourge of Christendom. The holy patriarch of Jerusalem St. Cyril also thus writes: " The devil will raise up a famous man, who will seize upon the domains of the Roman empire. That man Antichrist will appear, as soon as the Roman empire shall have come to its conclusion. " (Cyrilli, Cateches, 15.) And we may well say these words of St. Cyril are still more remark- able, and still more literally fulfilled, when we remember that the very diocese of Jerusalem, over which this great father of the Church was at that time presiding, was destined to become a province of the Mahometan empire, and Jerusalem itself was to be captured by the Caliph Omar, within a few years after the destruction of the Roman empire, and no very PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 65 long period after the saint had uttered these remarkable words : but about all this we shall have to say more by and by. Vie might add other citations from the holy fathers to the same purpose, but we have already given enough ; we will therefore conclude this part of our subject witli the following remarkable passage from St. Jerome (Hieron. in Daniel, cap. vii. : " Krjro dicamus, quod omnes Scrip- thri's Ecclesiastici tradiderunt : in consumma- tione inn nd i, quando regnum destruendum est Romanorum, decem futures Reges, qui orbem ' Romanum inter so dividant; et undecimum surreeturum esse Regem Parvulum, qui tres s de i.'' From this passage of the great St. Jerome, we learn that the tradition was universal in the Church of his day, that im- mediately after the breaking up of the Roman empire it would be parcelled out into ten kingdoms, by which number might be in- tended either the literal number into which the Roman territory would be subdivided, or as other fathers often explain the Scripture numerals, it might mean simply to express f/ir wJiole number of states into which the pos- ons of the old Roman empire would be F 66 AN INQUIRY INTO THE subdivided. But whether the Holy Ghost intended this number to be taken literally or in a more general sense, St. Jerome declares that the tradition of the whole Church handed down that amongst them a king would arise, who was to subdue three of the others, and he adds that these three were, according to the same tradition, those of Egypt, of Africa (or the northern provinces of that continent for so the Romans termed that portion), and of Ethiopia (that is Babylon and Asia). How remarkably all this has been fulfilled by the conquests of Mahometanism we shall hereafter see more fully. It is clear, therefore, that according to the unanimous teaching of the Primitive Church St. PauFs expressions to the Thessalonians indicated that Antichrist (as St. John calls him), or the Man of Sin, as St. Paul here terms him, would not be revealed until the Roman empire was removed, but that very shortly after that event was consummated, and its ancient territory subdivided into ten king- doms (as the Prophet Daniel had foretold), this Man of Sin would be revealed. Accordingly we find the Roman empire was no sooner broken up and subdivided, than a most extraordinary person arose in Arabia of the name of Mahomet, a person of obscure PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 67 origin and of but little consideration in the beginning, and this person pretended that he was sent by God as the last and the greatest of His prophets, and that his mission was to overthrow the Christian religion, to found another religion on its ruins, and also to found a universal empire, to which he was to subdue the whole human race, forcing them, under pain of temporal death and everlasting con- demnation, to embrace his new religion and submit to his dominion. Within an astonish- ingly short period after the first promulgation of this new religion and the foundation of the temporal sovereignty connected with it, we find that either Mahomet or his immediate successors had subdued the greater part of the East and of Africa, had established his infamous apostacy in the fairest dioceses of the Eastern and African Churches, and had filled all Chris- tendom with terror. St. Jerome had written the different passages we have cited between the years 331 and 422 of the Christian era; in 170 the lloman empire was extinguished by the deposition of its last Western emperor, who bore the ominous name of Romulus Augustu- lus ; out of the political chaos there had arisen a number of new states, amongst which the emperor of Constantinople for a long while held a sort of primatial dignity; and in 612 F2 68 AN INQUIRY INTO THE Mahomet commenced the publication of his Koran. That this was the revelation of the Man of Sin foretold by St. Paul we shall now proceed to show : we have already shown how the fundamental doctrine of the Koran fulfilled St. John the Evangelist's prediction of the fun- damental teaching of the great Antichrist, it remains for us to show how the conduct of Mahomet agreed with St. Paul's prophetic description of the Man of Sin, as given in his second epistle to the Thessalonians. The Roman empire had been broken up, the whole Christian Church was looking forwards (as the testimonies we have already cited from the holy fathers sufficiently prove) with terror and anxiety to the predicted appearance of the Man of Sin, when in the year 609 a fearful sign was sent by the Almighty to warn Chris- tendom, and especially Eastern Christendom, of the visitation that impended. The powers of darkness were let loose ; and as Satan had furiously raged against Christ in His passion and death, so now he directed his fury against the image of Christ crucified, and against the true cross, which the holy Empress St. Helena had discovered and deposited in a costly shrine at Jerusalem. In the year 609, as the bishops and clergy in divers cities of the province of (rulatia were making solemn processions, prc- PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 69 ceded by the holy cross, all at once a great prodigy was beheld. The crosses reeled to and fro, and no human force could keep them steady; an evil feeling seized upon men, and all felt conscious that a new power of wicked- ness was coming upon the earth. The account of this awful sign is given at length in the his- tory of St. Theodore Siceotes, one of the most illustrious saints of the Greek Church. (50- rnnn Annalcs, torn. viii. pp. 203 205.) At that time the most blessed Saint Thomas was patriarch of Constantinople. The intelligence which the bishops forwarded to him of the prodigy, which had been witnessed by vast numbers in so many places, greatly alarmed the holy father. In his distress, he wrote to the man of God, St. Theodore Siceotes, bidding him come to Constantinople, that he might consult him. The patriarch then asked him, as the king of Babylon had formerly asked Daniel the Prophet to interpret his dream, what this sign meant. The man of God seemed unwilling to answer the question ; but on the patriarch conjuring him for the love of God to do so, St. Theodore bursting into a flood of tears, thus addressed him : " Most holy father, it seemed to me that I ought not too much to grieve you, for it is not well that you should know the meaning of these things ; 70 AN INQUIRY INTO THE but since it is commanded byyou that I should explain the mystery, be it known unto you that this movement of the crosses foretokens unto us great and numberless calamities. Myriads of Christians will shortly abandon our most holy religion ; on all sides the barbarians will attack the territory of the faithful ; there will be such bloodshed as hath not been seen before, with great destruction and seditions all over the earth. The churches will be abandoned, and the ruin of God's worship and of the empire approacheth. Know, more- over, that the coming of THE ADVERSARY is at hand." No sooner did the holy patriarch hear these words, than he melted into tears, and falling on his knees, he besought the man of God to intercede with the Lord, that He would take him out of this world before these horrible calamities came upon the Church. The saint replied, that rather he would pray to God to preserve his holiness for the good of his flock, and of so many churches over which he presided. Shortly after this, the Per- sians, having declared war upon the empire, ravaged it in many of its richest provinces, took the city of Jerusalem, and carried away from the famous church of the holy sepulchre the true cross, which had been enshrined there by the blessed Empress St. Helena. This PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 71 deplorable event took place in the year 615 ; and two years before this it was that Mahomet first published his famous Koran, thus fulfil- ling, as we shall soon see, the prediction of the blessed St. Theodore Siceotes. (See at length, The Life of St. Theodore Siceotes, by the Monk Eleusius ; also, Surius, April 22.) Let us now examine how far the character of Mahomet agreed with St. Paul's description of the Man of Sin. The apostle calls him " the Son of Perdition." The elect are called in Scripture "the Children of God," " Sons of God," and " heirs of everlasting life." It is not wonderful, therefore, that the apostle should call Antichrist a " Son of Perdition " a "Man of Sin." Such a name rightly be- longs to him, for he is the child of the devil ; he springs from the source of perdition, and his ways are those of sin and wickedness. As Christ is termed by all the Prophets "the Just " and " the Righteous " above all others, so Antichrist would naturally be the very type of sin and injustice, and his teaching would open wide the gates of perdition. Now what heretic has ever arisen in the world, of whom this was so true, as it was of Mahomet ? Other heretics retained at least the outward profession of Christianity, the belief and use of the sacraments ordained by Christ. Many 72 AN INQUIRY INTO THE heretics, and we may say all the earlier here- tics, who lived before the coming of Mahomet, retained the daily sacrifice of the holy Eucha- rist ; and though there could be no hope of salvation for the miserable heresiarchs them- selves, still many of their followers might be invincibly ignorant (to use the phrase of Catho- lic theology) of their state of heresy or schism, and so by God's mercy, and the merits of Christ applied to them by the sacraments of baptism or of penance in articulo mortis, they might be saved. But Mahomet abolished Christianity root and branch ; he took away the daily sacrifice, which the Prophet Daniel expressly foretold that Antichrist would do, and instead thereof he established vain repe- titions of unmeaning prayers, in which there was no love expressed for God, nor any hope in the merits of a Redeemer. He utterly denied the passion of Christ, which he con- sidered a disgraceful doctrine, and he abolished all the seven sacraments of grace, which our Lord had instituted as so many fountains, whereby he might apply and communicate to mankind the fruits of His passion and death. Could Antichrist establish a more appropriate work than this ? or one which more com- pletely could undo the work of Christ ? Was not, then, the work of Mahomet precisely PROPHECIES CONCERNING what all analogy would have led us for the work of Antichrist ? In other it' Mahomet be not Antichrist, be not Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, it is not possible that any heretic can ever arise who would more literally fulfil the predictions of (iod's word concerning that awful personage than has been done by Mahomet. The more we look into the Mahometan system, the more clearly does this fact manifest itself. The doctrine of Christ had taught men all justice, to abstain from even the thought of evil, to live a holy, pure life. "Be ye perfect/' said our Lord, " as your Heavenly Father is pert But what was the doctrine of Mahomet? In the fortieth year of his age, he shut him- self up in the caverns of Mount Hera, not far from the city of Mecca ; there he remained for >i\ entire months, from time to time he made his wife, his children, and his servants visit him, and he entertained them with strange accounts of nocturnal visions and apparitions, with which he declared that he was favoured. At length, on the twenty-third night of the month of Ramadan, he beheld, as he assured his wife, the following vision. A voice called him by his name, a bright light from heaven illumined the whole country, and the Alcoran, the last 74 AN INQUIRY INTO THE Revelation of God to men, descended from heaven, complete in all its parts. It was borne, said he, on the hands of the Archangel Gabriel, and such was the splendour and brilliancy of the messenger, that it was more than the eyes of Mahomet could bear, so he besought him in future to appear in human form. This Gabriel promised that he would do, having saluted Mahomet as "the Prophet of God." After which he commanded him to read through the Koran, which he had no sooner done, than Gabriel carried it back to heaven, promising to bring it back again, as it should be needed, chapter by chapter. Now, can we imagine any description that more perfectly agrees with the words of St. Paul in his second Epistle to the Thessalonians, where, describing the revelation of the Man of Sin, he says : " Whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders?" Who was it that per- sonated the Angel Gabriel, but Satan himself, of whom the same St. Paul declares, that he is wont "to transform himself into an angel of light ?" Then Mahomet came "in all power " with the power of the sword and of armies. Christ came meek and lowly, and when one of His disciples drew the sword, He rebuked him and said, " Put back thy sword into the scab- bard, for all they that take the sword shall PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 75 perish })y the sword :" and having said this He healed the wound of His mortal enemy. Christ came to minister unto the meanest of His fol- lowers, saxinir, ' My kingdom is not of this world :" He had indeed a kingdom, but it was not a kingdom of flesh and blood, but of holi- ness, of peace, and of love. But the kingdom of Mahomet was one of earthly power (in all power) : it was a kingdom of luxury and sen- suality, in uhich it was permitted to men to indulge to the full in all the sins of the flesh, and in which he promised t'.ie same sensual enjoyments even in the life to come. Then the Man of Sin was to come, "in signs, and I n't n< j in, niters" And could there be <: renter signs, than what God had given to His Church of the near coming of this Son of Per- dition? Could there be a more striking sign, than the miraculous shaking of the crosses, uhich St. Theodore Siceotes explained to St. Thomas, the Patriarch of Constantinople, "as the sign of the immediate coming of the adver- sary >" Could there be a greater sign of the revelation of this Man of Sin, than the miracu- lous shaking of the cross ? The cross of Christ trembled at the coming of Mahomet, and well might it seem to tremble, for Mahomet was its bitterest foe. The cross had redeemed the world, and the Koran of Mahomet was to undo the redemption of the cross. For three hours 76 AN INQUIRY INTO THE our Lord Jesus had hung in mortal agony on the cross, giving birth to the children of His adoption, and purchasing the souls of His elect ; setting them, moreover, an example of cruci- fixion to the world, and of a renunciation of all our corrupt passions and lusts; but Ma- homet came to level the cross,* and to preach sensuality, to set up the power of this world, and to procure the ruin of countless millions of human souls, for whom the Lord Jesus had shed His precious blood. Well might the cross tremble ! well might such a sign usher in the coming of Christ's arch-enemy, of Anti- christ, and well might the revelation of the Alcoran synchronize with the capture of Jeru- salem, and the carrying away of the true cross into the land of the infidel Persians, that very people who were destined to become one of the first conquests of the Mahometan apostacy ! Oh ! these indeed were signs, such as amply verified the prediction of the blessed Apostle St. Paul. Nor were these the only signs :* St. Paul had given another, the removal * Amongst other signs, that marked the coming in of the Mahometan empire, we may mention what the Byzantine historian Cedrenus relates as having occurred at the death of the False Prophet : the apparition in the heavens, during thirty days, of a vast comet in the shape of a sword, which was interpreted as a sign of the scourge that impended over Christendom. "MfTo C ye rbv 5a.va.Tov TOV StrjXarov PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 77 and destruction of the Roman empire, and all the fathers of the Church, with one con- senting voice, had proclaimed that this would be the siyn of Anticlirist's coming. The Roman empire fell, and the empire of Mahomet was revealed. The kingdom of Christ waxed weak, torn by the internal strife of heresy and seliism, and the cross was seen to shake and to tremble. It only remained for the "Son of Perdition" to inaugurate his accursed "apos- tacy" by the "tying wonders" foretold by St. Paul. And here we see unfolded to us these very lyinir wonders, in all the force of their " seductive iniquity." Was it not a wonder, when Satan appeared in the garb of Gabriel to the impious Mahomet?* when he ushered in to his vision the blasphemous and impious Koran? when he shook the rocks of Mount Hera, and terrified even the heart of Mahomet himself, accustomed, as he said he was, to such nocturnal visions? Was this event, pregnant \\ith the spiritual and temporal destruction of countless millions of men, not to be called as Movgov/icr ityai'i) Kara utotjufipiav dffTijp o ioflrtfff Trponrjvuwv TIJV TUIV 'Ajod/3wv twiKparfiav' tptive ->. ///itpac rpta'covra, tftaret'vwv dirb fieffrmpplas w upKToi'. iir ft i'r^of/r/'/r." Gewgii Cedreni Historiarum . torn. i. p. 745. Vbb Rohrbacher's tenth volume of Ecclesiastical >ry. 78 AN INQUIRY INTO THE St. Paul foretold of it, a " wonder," and " a lying wonder" seeing that it was invented by Satan to usher in the most false and lying system of impiety that had ever been palmed upon the credulity of fallen man ? Yes, Ma- homet came "in lying wonders" and he deceived mankind more than any impostor or deceiver that had ever preceded him. . It has been sometimes urged by commentators, who did not admit that Mahomet was the Antichrist of prophecy, that whereas it was foretold in God's Word that Antichrist should perform great wonders, by which he was to deceive mankind, Mahomet did not pretend to the gift of mira- cles. It is true that Mahomet did not pretend to the gift of miracles, if by miracles be under- stood the power of healing diseases, of raising the dead to life, or such other miracles as have always been wrought in the Church of God : and Mahomet was right in not pretending to such a gift, inasmuch as he had none such, and, had he pretended to it, his imposture would quickly have been found out : but he did lay claim to wonderful and supernatural commu- nications with God, and these were assuredly to be called " lying wonders/' as St. Paul had termed them. They were surely wonders in every sense of the term, and they were " lying" PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 79 wonders, because they were false, vile impos- tures, and diabolical deceits. On one memorable occasion* in the year 621, A.D., Mahomet pretended that the Angel (labriel brought him a miraculous beast, called Kl-Borac, on which he mounted and ascended to the seventh heaven, \vhere he conversed face to lace \\ii\\ God, and was proclaimed greater than all the prophets and all the angels of ( I od ! When he entered the first heaven Adam came and made obeisance to him, and recom- mendrd himself to his prayers! God's Word tells us that all the ancient fathers of the Old Testament had been delivered from the prison, in which they were detained, by the preaching of Messiah in person (1 Peter iii. 19), who, as the Church teaches us, applied to their souls the merits of his precious death, and then transported them to Paradise, "leading cap- tivity captive," as David had foretold in the Psalms. But all this is denied by the impious Mahomet, who, on the contrary, pretends that Adam came and recommended himself to his prayers ! as if the prayers of Mahomet would prove more efficacious than the merits of the God-Man ! In one of these heavens he tells us he saw Issa or Jesus, but he does not say * See Vie de Mahomet, Koran, Kasimirski. 80 AN INQUIRY INTO THE in which. Now is it possible to conceive blas- phemous falsehood beyond all this ? At least, unless we believe the word of Mahomet, arid embrace Islamism, we must come to this con- clusion. I will not dwell upon the other lying wonders which Mahomet relates of this journey to the seventh heaven; the miraculous cock, which was several thousand miles high, and which crowed so loud as to be heard by the whole universe; or the colossal angel he met in the third heaven, whose height was equal to one hundred and forty thousand years of the swiftest travelling ! or the other ridiculous fables he recounts of this prodigious journey; but I will only add, in conclusion, that, when he reached the seventh heaven, Gabriel was not allowed to accompany him further, but Mahomet, holier than the highest angel, climbed the tree Sedra, and so ascended through a boundless ocean of light to the very throne of God Himself, on the steps of which he beheld these words : <( la Allah ilia Allah, va Mohammed rasoul Allah ;" the meaning of which is, " There is no God, but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet." He was no sooner admitted to the presence of the Most High, than God, placing one hand on his breast, and the other on his shoulder, revealed to him all Truth, and declared to him that he was the most perfect of all creatures, and that PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 81 he should be honoured and raised above all other men, and that he should be the Re- deemer of all those that believed in him, that he should know all languages, and that the spoils of all he conquered in war should belong to him alone. He then ordered him to pre- scribe fifty prayers a day to his followers, but on the remonstrance of Mahomet He reduced the number to five ! After which Mahomet ret u rued to the earth, and recounted to his deluded disciples the Satanic vision, with which Lucifer hud deceived his proud and presump- tuous mind. Could blasphemy, falsehood, and folly go beyond this? This was the man, who was destined to be the chief opponent of Jesus Christ, of whom the Apostle St. Paul most properly foretold, " who opposeth and is lifted up above all that is called God and worshipped." That he opposed Christ, no one who has read history would venture to deny, for the records of twelve cen- turies are at hand to prove that no one ever opposed with such awful success the extension of Christ's kingdom : and if we wanted a clue to the interpretation of the other statement of the Apostle, " that he should be lifted up above all that is called God and worshipped," surely the miraculous journey of Mahomet, we have just been describing, furnishes it for us. Ma- 82 AN INQUIRY INTO THE hornet proclaims himself as having been pro- nounced by God Himself as the " most perfect of all creatures." What was this but to lift himself (for it was not really God who lifted him to this blasphemous height) above all "that is called God and worshipped?" If he proclaimed himself the highest of all creatures, he was of course higher than Christ, who was a creature at the same time as God. He was higher than Mary, the all-pure Mother of God. In other words, "he lifted himself above all that is called God and worshipped." Jesus is called God because He is at once God and Man, and as such He is rightly worshipped : but Mahomet proclaimed himself greater than Jesus, he therefore (( lifted himself above all that is called God and worshipped." Again, in Scripture, princes and kings are sometimes called Gods; thus we read in Deuteronomy, " Thou shalt not curse the Gods, nor speak evil of the rulers of my people." So that, when the Apostle tells us that the Man of Sin would exalt himself above all that is called God, he meant that he would exalt himself above angels and archangels, above prophets and saints, above the all-holy Mother of God, and even above Jesus, the eternal Son of God, who is God blessed for evermore. Now all this Mahomet literally did, and by so doing he PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 83 exalted himself both directly and indirectly " above all that is called God and worshipped." But Mahomet was not only a religious im- postor, " a False Prophet/' he aimed at other ends besides the religious veneration of his fellow-men : he aimed at dominion over them, at nothing short of universal empire; for he said that he was sent by God to subdue all other kings and potentates, and to subject them to himself: in this sense, therefore, also he equally exalted himself above all that is called God and worshipped; for in Scripture the term worship is applied not only to the honour which is due to God, but also to that which is due to kings and princes : hence we MI how literally and completely Mahomet ful- filled the Apostle's prediction of the Man of Sin, that he would " lift himself above ALL " (whether in Heaven or on earth) "that is called God and worshipped." But this is not all that St. Paul foretold, he continues : " So that he sitteth in the Temple of God, showing himself as if he were God." By this I understand that the Man of Sin would endeavour to usurp for himself, in the Tcmpk of God, that is in the public worship paid by mankind to the Supreme Being, whether in material temples or in the temple of con- science, that place, in which He alone had a 84 AN INQUIRY INTO THE right to sit, who, as the Word of God declared, sat down "at the right hand of God the Father," in virtue of His eternal Sonship, that eternal generation from the Father, which it was the special province of Mahomet utterly to deny in his famous dogma "that God neither be- getteth nor is begotten." Yes, we may indeed truly say, that when Mahomet asserted himself to be " the highest of all creatures, 33 and the Redeemer of mankind, he not only robbed our Lord Jesus Christ of his glory, of whom St. Paul had said " that He thought it not robbery to be equal with God : " for He indeed was truly equal with God : but he took that place in the mystical, as well as the real, Temple of God, which belonged to Christ and to Christ alone. In another, and a still more literal sense, did Mahomet also fulfil this prophecy, when Jeru- salem was taken by his general the Caliph Omar, and when on the site of Solomon's Temple, which, above all others, is pre-emi- nently styled in Scripture "the Temple of God," he impiously pretended to restore that sacred edifice, and did in fact defile that most holy spot by erecting thereon one of his prin- cipal mosques : thus placing, as Daniel the Prophet and our blessed Lord had foretold, "the abomination of desolation in the Holy PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 85 Place/' and on that sacred ground proclaiming himself the highest and holiest of all crea- tures, the greatest of the prophets, and, as he reported of himself in his nocturnal journey to the seventh heaven, "the Saviour of all who should believe in him." And it is a remarkable fact connected with the taking of Jerusalem by tin Caliph Omar, that Saint Sophronius, who was patriarch of that city at the time, expressly declared that he saw in that event the fulfil- ment of the prophecy of Daniel concerning the ,nii nut t mi of Desolation in the Holy Place" (Dunn I \\. 31.) Cedrenus, the learned Byzantine annalist, attests this fact as follows : " Ou/wapoe ccc TTJV aytav TTO\IV K'n/17/XoU IvSvfJLCUTlV f)fJL(t>lt(TfJLlvO iv rt SaravticTjv EvSeticvv/ievoc, rov Naov TWV 'lovSaiwv, ov ^IicoSojurjcre ' oti]c fffrwg Iv TOTT^ fiyiy." (Cedrenus, Hist. Comp. torn. i. p. 746.) And in a subsequent chapter the same author mentions a remarkable fact, " that when Omar commenced his famous mosque on the site of Solomon's Temple, the building, in spite of all his efforts, continually fell down, and on the Caliph inquiring of the Jews the reason of this 86 AN INQUIRY INTO THE prodigy, the latter informed him it was because of the cross which the Christians had erected upon their church on the Mount of Olives, whereupon Omar ordered that cross, and many others also, to be demolished." (Cedrenus, Hist. Comp. torn. i. p. 754.) What was this, but " to sit in the temple of God, showing himself, as if he were God, 33 as if he were that, which none but Christ, who is " God of God and very God of very God 3 ' is and can be ? In fine, if Mahomet has not fulfilled the Apostle's prediction, both in the spirit and the letter, we know not how it could be fulfilled. But we now come to a further description of the Man of Sin in this remarkable prophecy of St. Paul (2 Thess. xi. 9, 10), "whose coming is .... in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish : because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. There- fore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe a lie." If ever a system was based on the seduction of iniquity, it surely was that of Mahomet. Look at the morality which he practised, which he taught his disciples to practise, and it will not be difficult to under- stand what the Apostle means by " seduction of iniquity," when addressed to the corrupt nature of fallen man. The very paradise he promised PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 87 to his deluded followers, is a place of debauchery, a sink of " iniquity." Whole troops of beautiful houris are provided to gratify the everlasting and insatiable lust of the Mahometan elect, and that there may be no stint, no progeny ever follows this unbridled concubinage : it is an everlasting enjoyment of the basest pleasures, without the end or the sanction of marriage : pleasures which, as mankind now tastes them, are essentially allied with the debasements of nal -in, and which the pure religion of Jesus had restricted to the single use of mar- riage, while it taught men to forego them alto- gether, if they would seek perfectly to please their Heavenly Creator, by imitating here on earth the purity and the innocence of angels. Jesus Christ had restored woman to her ori- ginal rank in the scale of God's creation; Mahomet degraded her again into the mere instrument of passion, and the slave of man. Our Lord had made marriage the holiest and the happiest union of man and wife, to be for ever consecrated to each other, with no thought of another to inspire jealousy or divide their love, and this union He pronounced indissoluble, except by death. Mahomet restored polygamy, and consecrated divorce. Thus, instead of de- veloping the holy tendencies of Christianity, he threw men back, and as he impiously pre- 88 AN INQUIRY INTO THE tended, by the authority of God Himself, into all the degradations of human corruption, such as even enlightened pagans viewed with shame and disgust. What has been the result of this legislation of the false Prophet ? Let the his- tory of Mahometanism answer the question : in order to enable a comparatively few privileged men to enjoy the possession of whole troops of women, hundreds and thousands of men are annually condemned to mutilation, and so sen- tenced to a debased and compulsory celibacy. Thus fulfilling another prophecy of the same St. Paul in his epistle to his disciple St. Timothy (1 Tim. iv. 14) : " Now the Spirit manifestly saith, that in the last times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, and having their conscience seared, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving by the faith- ful, and by them that have known the truth." How remarkably is this fulfilled by the eunuchs of Mahometanism, whom this impious system has effectually forbidden to marry, although it has thrown open to them every other brutal and degrading licence. What a contrast be- tween this diabolical celibacy, and the angelical celibacy of the monastic state in the Catholic PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 89 Church ! The former is that of Mahomet, what the devil has long practised in hell : the latter is the life of the angels of God, of whom Jesus said, " That they neither marry, nor are given in marriage ;" that life which He, the Lamb of God, led, when He trod this earth in pain and sorrow for three-and-thirty years, seeking and saving that which was lost ; that life, which in every age of Christianity, thousands and tens of thousands of His followers have led in imi- tation of Him, and of whom, when translated to a happier life, the beloved disciple witnesses that he heard them singing such a heavenly song as no one else could learn, for, said the evangelist, " these were virgins, who were never defiled with women, and they follow the Lamb whithersoever Hegoeth." (Apocalypse xiv. 4.) And as with the contrast between Mahometan and Christian celibacy, so also between Chris- tian self-denial, and the impious and truly Manidieaii abstinence of the false Prophet, to which the Apostle St. Paul here alludes. In the old law, Moses had commanded for mystical and temporary reasons abstinence from certain meats, but this uncleanness was washed away in the all-atoning blood of Christ; Mahomet renewed what had now lost all rational signifi- cation, and to the restrictions of Judaism, he added blasphemies of his own : he abolished 90 AN INQUIRY INTO THE the daily sacrifice of the new law : that sacrifice which our Lord Jesus Christ, as Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech, had instituted in the form of bread and wine ; the sacrifice which the Prophet Malachi had foretold would everywhere be offered amongst the Gentiles. And that he might as it were stamp that Divine oblation of the Christian altar with the seal of his malediction, he pretended that God had told him, that wine was an abomination, in- vented by Satan (Alcoran v. 92) ; such were the abstinences imposed by Mahomet on the meats and creatures of God, which, as the Apostle said, " God had created to be received with thanksgiving:" how different from the abstinences of the Christian Church, which, on the contrary, proclaim, that every creature of God is good, and that when for a season, or on given days, we abstain from any of them, we do so, not because they are evil, but for morti- fication and penance, that we may subdue the flesh to the spirit, that we may learn to use the gifts of God with moderation and sobriety, for the purpose ordained by Him, and not to gra- tify our mere animal appetite, or a spirit of luxury. But if we turn from the doctrine of Mahomet to his own conduct and practice, we shall find that his example was on a par with his teach- PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 91 ing. Not content with fifteen wives, and a whole host of concubines and female slaves, at the age of fifty-four, he fell in love with Aicha, a beautiful girl of only nine years of age, who was just married to his own adopted son, Zaid. The unfortunate man was forced to repudiate his wile to gratify the insatiable passions of the Prophet, who immediately took possession of her, and married her : and when some of his followers murmured at his brutality, how did he answer them? He makes the angel Gabriel descend from heaven with a fresh chapter of the Koran, prepared on purpose, in which the incest and adultery of the Prophet is vindicated by a blasphemy, and the God of heaven is made to say, that He gives a special privilege to the Prophet to marry any woman upon earth, no matter what previous ties she may have con- tracted, provided she be ready to yield to his solicitations.* It was surely not too much for St. Paul to have foretold of this Man of Sin, that he would come " in all seduction of iniquity," nor can Mahomet be charged with having done too little to fulfil, even to the extremest point of the letter, the inspired pre- diction of the Apostle ! But if such was his unbridled career of lust * See Alcoran, chap, xxxiii. p. 341. Paris edit. 1844. 92 AN INQUIRY INTO THE and passion, his cruelty was, if possible, greater still. For this, too, the lying revelations of the Koran gave him the amplest scope. If any one doubted his divine mission, the fifth chapter of this blasphemous book (Alcoran v. 37) tells us how Mahomet was to deal with him : " Behold, what is to be the recompense of those who oppose God and His Apostle" (that is Mahomet] , " you shall put them to death, or you shall crucify them, you shall cut off their hands and their feet alternately : they shall be banished from their country ; they shall be loaded with ignominy in this life, and they shall receive a cruel chastisement in the life to come." With such an authority in his hands, is it wonderful that this false Prophet should have committed the cruelties which history records, or that his followers in every age should have been as conspicuous for their horrible disregard of human life and human suffering, as they have been for their unbridled lust and unnatural crimes ? But we will not pursue this odious subject further : enough has been said to convince our readers, and we ought rather to apologise for recounting to Christian ears the unspeakable wickedness of him whom the Apostle rightly forenamed " the Man of Sin." We have thus far examined the prophetic PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 93 statements of the Apostle Paul concerning the general characteristics of the Man of Sin, and we have found that the apostolic prediction is fully borne out by the history and character of Mahomet : but there is another fact foretold by the Apostle, which we have not yet con- sidered, but which greatly increases the evi- dence that Mahomet is the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition. The Apostle tells us that he would not only come, as we have already shown, 'in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish," but he adds, " therefore God shall send tin ,11 the operation of error to believe a lie : that all may be judged, who have not believed the truth ) but have consented to ini- gvity." How remarkably was this prophecy fulfilled in the early history of Mahometanism. We have already seen, that both from the expres- sion of St. Paul, " the mystery of iniquity already worketh," and that of St. John, " al- ready are there many Antichrists," a prepa- ration for the revelation of the Man of Sin was going on from the very beginning of the Church; and St. John had shown that this preparation was wrought by the early heretics and separatists, for, speaking of these Anti- christs, he says : " They went out from us ; but they were not of us; for if they had been 94 AN INQUIRY INTO THE of us, they would no doubt have remained with us : " that is, they left the apostolic com- munion of Christ's holy Catholic Church, and they did so because they would not submit to its authority: "They were not of us;" that is, they would not listen to our teaching. And so it was ; the ground was gradually pre- pared all over the provinces of the East for the advent of him who was destined to set up a new religion in the place of Jesus Christ's religion, that of His Apostolic Church ; and this ground was prepared by the gradual and successive undermining of the Catholic faith in those countries by the erroneous teaching of the various heretics. So when Mahomet arose, the men who were the first to aid him in the compilation of his impostures were Jews and Nestorians, that is, those " who had not believed the truth" of Jesus, and those "who had consented to iniquity; 3 ' in other words, those who had refused to embrace the doc- trine of the Messiah, and those who had perverted it. And those who flocked to his standard, and embraced his soul-destroying doctrines, were, as he himself assures us, the Christians, both clergy and laity, of the Asi- atic provinces, in which he first exercised his diabolical apostleship. If the reader will con- sult the fifth chapter of the Koran and the PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 95 eighty-fifth verse, he will find Mahomet witnessing to this fact; and an awful fact it was. We thus see not only that Mahomet was the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, the Great Antichrist, but likewise that he was the founder of a great false religious system ; and hence, in the Apocalypse of St. John he is termed, on this latter account, " the False Prophet." Under this name he is mentioned expressly in tin sixteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, and the thirteenth verse. Could any name be more appropriate for Mahomet ? He affirmed of himself that he was pre-eminently above all others the Prophet of God. Now, unless he really was what he pretended to be, he was of course pre-eminently what the Apocalypse terms him, " the FALSE PROPHET." And this appel- lation well accords with what we have already seen in Daniel concerning the little horn, that it had " a mouth speaking great things" and " eyes like unto a man." Now what descrip- tion could better portray the great pretender to the title of God's greatest Prophet ? The mouth speaking great things aptly sym- bolizes the false and blasphemous doctrines uttered by the mouth of Mahomet ; while " the eyes as it were of a man" are the most appro- priate designation of the pretended Seer or 96 AN INQUIRY INTO THE Prophet* and well express those evil eyes of Mahomet with which he beheld the false visions of Satan, those nocturnal apparitions of which he speaks so much, and on which he blasphemously grounded his pretensions. But there is one more Scriptural prediction concerning this great Antichrist which may well wind up and conclude our prophetic proofs that Mahomet is the great Antichrist. It is given in the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, and in the eighteenth verse : " Here is wisdom. He that hath understand- ing let him count the number of the beast : for it is the number of a man ; and the number of him is six hundred and sixty-six" Every student of prophecy is aware of the many and various interpretations that have been given to this mysterious number. How Protestants have laboured to make it agree with their anti-Catholic and anti-papal theories. How at one time they have made it spell Aaravoe, at another AouSojSetfcoc, at another PwjuiuO, and the rest. But if it can be shown, with at least equal force, that it furnishes the letters which spell the name of Mahomet, as that name was written by cotemporary Greek au- thors, having already shown that the other * See Histoire Universelle de 1'Eglise Catholique, par Rohrbacher, vol. x. p. 2. PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 97 prophecies relating to Antichrist have been so literally and so perfectly fulfilled in that very Mahomet, I should submit that Mahomet must have a better claim to the mysterious number 666 than any of his rivals, even admitting which I do not admit that their names may with equal accuracy be extracted from the sum of Greek letters expressing it. The following explanation of the mystic number was sent me the other day by my learned friend the Abbe Vandrival, one of the most profound students of Oriental literature in France. I give it in his own words. M ~ 40 A = 1 Y = 400 B = 2 H = 8 A = 4 A = 1 A = 1 M = 40 A = 30 M = 40 A = 30 E = 5 H = 8 A = 4 B = 2 N = 50 Total, 666 In other words, MYHAMMEA B'N AB- AAAA'H spells the number 666; that is, Mahomet the Son of Abdallah. My learned friend appends to his exposition of the number 666 these remarkable words : "Les 1260 jours, 42 mois, ou 3| ans, sont H 98 AN INQUIRY INTO THE bien pres de finir ; I'lslamisme se meurt ; FAntechrist va etre mis a mort, alors nous aurons un beau regne pour la religion, mais apres une secousse bien forte encore. Voila ce que nous pensons id" Other Catholic commentators, taking the Byzantine-Greek mode of spelling the name of Mahomet, in preference to the Arabic, as given by my learned friend the Abbe Vandrival, de- rive the number 666 from the name written thus, Mao/zf-ne, which I confess I myself should be inclined to adopt, that being the way in which his name has been popularly written amongst the Greeks.* The sum in this case is as follows : M = 40 a = 1 6 70 V- = 40 = 5 r 300 i = 10 C = 200 = 666 f This result is surely a remarkable fact; but * See Salmeron, Praeludia in Apocalypsin, torn. xvi. p. 366. t Mr. Forster, in his work " M ahometanism Vnveikd," states " The name of Mahomet, as written in the idiom of PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 99 another Catholic commentator gives another interpretation, which is also equally remarkable in its way, and may perhaps be equally correct, for it is not uncommon for a text of Scripture to have a double meaning. This writer says : " Ainsi puisque le nombre de la Bete est le nombre d'un homme, cela signifie d'un individu qui a commence a se faire connaitre au monde, soit par lui-meme, soit par [les consequences de] ses actions a telle ou telle date; et si cette epoque se date a 1'annee ou les Mahome- tans completerent la conquete de toute la terre ijlorieuse done parle Daniel (c'est k dire la terre Sainte) ; tout cela fut accompli et acheve en 666, et il est certain que ce fut cette conquete qui porta leur puissance au plus haut point." * In other words, it was that conquest which completed the character of Mahomet as the predicted Man of Sin ; for he was not only to exhibit in his own person all that St. Paul, and the other prophets of God, had predicated of the Apocalypse by the Byzantine historians, accurately re- turns the prophetic number 666. This mystical number (understood, it has been shown, of Mahometanism by the Oxford monk Roger Bacon) was first applied to Mahomet personally by Fevardentius ; and I am obliged to subscribe the judgment of a venerable authority still living, that his interpretation is preferable to all succeeding conjectures." (Mafionietanism Unveiled, p. 238.) * Preuves de 1'Eglise Catholique, p. 243. 100 AN INQUIRY INTO THE him, but he was to accomplish by means of the forces, which he himself set in motion, the conquest of Jerusalem, and the subsequent subjection of the whole of Palestine. Some may object to this interpretation, inasmuch as it extends the fulfilment of prophecies, that seem to belong personally to himself, to the consequences of his policy subsequent to his death. But this objection has no real weight, for if it had, it would equally overthrow the application of the prophecies that belong to Christ Himself. How often in Scripture is it said of Messiah, that He shall subdue all na- tions to His spiritual rule : and yet during His lifetime He never so subdued them, although He has done so since by the preachers of His Word : and therefore we rightly say that Christ has done it, and that the event has completed the prophetic history of Christ. Now then, if Mahomet be Antichrist, and Antichrist be a diabolical counterpart of the Christ, the con- quest of the Holy Land by the disciples and successors of Mahomet may rightly be looked upon as the act of Mahomet himself, and con- sequently as filling up the prophetic description of Antichrist. For assuredly every man is re- sponsible for the consequences of his own acts, whether they be good or bad, and in proportion as they result more directly from his own con- triving and designing. PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 101 We have thus endeavoured to show the ful- filment of the prophecies relating to Antichrist in the history of Mahomet, and the foundation of his Antichristian empire ; it now remains for us to unfold, in the next chapter, how the his- tory of that empire from its first foundation until the present time has literally fulfilled, what was predicted in Holy Writ concerning the kingdom and empire of Antichrist. 102 AN INQUIRY INTO THE CHAPTER IV. THE HISTORY OF THE MAHOMETAN EMPIRE IS THE LITERAL FULFILMENT OF THE PROPHECIES OF HOLY WRIT, RELATING TO THE KINGDOM AND DOMINION OF ANTICHRIST. BEFORE we exhibit to our readers the history of the Mahometan empire, as the fulfilment of the prophecies relating to the empire of Anti- christ, it is necessary that we consider, for a few moments, the history of the Catholic Church, that is, of the kingdom and empire of Christ. For it is impossible to form a right view of the Antichristian empire, unless we set before our readers the parallel history of the Christian empire of the Church, inasmuch as it is in the mutual conflict between these two powers, that one of the main evidences is developed of the fulfilment of Divine prophecy. If we turn to the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, we find the following words : " And a great sign appeared in heaven : a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." Now, what is meant by this symbol ? In its first and limited application, I should refer it PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 103 to the blessed Virgin Mary, the all-pure Mother of God, for she might well be com- pared to a woman "clothed with the sun" seeing that she was "full of the grace of God" as the angel Gabriel had declared of her, " Hail full of grace/' (Luke i. 28), "the Lord is with thee ;" that is, she was filled with God, and might well, therefore, be compared to a woman clothed with the sun, for the sun was an emblem of God ; and the moon was said to be u nd IT the feet of Mary, because the moon symbolized the variable and empty things of tins life, which our blessed Lady trod under IKT feet : while the crown of twelve stars, that encircled her head, signified, on the one hand, the twelve patriarchs of the people of Israel, and the twelve tribes into which that people was subdivided, and, on the other, the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, who were the chosen patriarchs of the Christian Church, that is, of the children of Mary, for, in the strictest sense of the term, Mary, as the Mother of Christ, is also the mother of all those who are born again in Christ, and who were all committed to her maternal keeping by Christ upon the cross in the person of John the beloved disciple. And when, in the fifth verse, the Prophet tells us, that " She brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod, and her AN INQUIRY INTO THE Son was taken up to God, and to His throne ;" it is evident that Christ our Lord, the only Son of Mary, is most distinctly referred to; but in a more extended and general sense, there can be no doubt that the Catholic Church of Christ is " the woman clothed with the sun," and so all interpreters, both ancient and modern, have with one accord interpreted this symbol. Now, applying it to the Church, she appears " in heaven/' that is, in the region of God, in the region of His grace and mercy unto men, for no one but God designed this marvellous and admirable creation of His bounty and wisdom. She is " clothed with the sun/ 3 that is, with that " Sun of Righteousness" that was to rise upon the earth "with healing in His wings," as Isaias the Prophet had foretold. Her being " clothed with the sun" denoted her infallible authority, and her unerring truth, for how can there be any darkness of error in the teaching of her who is " clothed with the sun ?" This symbolical description of the Church well accords with the words of Christ when He first instituted her. " Go ye and teach all nations, and lo ! / am with you always, even unto the end of the world." What Christ then promised, St. John, in the Apocalypse, beholds accomplished in the mystic symbol of the Divine vision; and that there PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTIOHM^T. 105 might be no mistake concerning the referred to as "the woman clothed sun" it is presently added, " and on her head (there was) a crown of twelve stars : " that is, of the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, they whom lie sent to gather His Church out of all nations. Hence the true Church of Christ has always been termed the Catholic and Apostolic Church, that is, the Church of all nations (which is the signification of the title Catholic), and the Church founded by the twelve Apostles, which is the reason why we call her Apostolical. "And being with child, she cried, travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered." The Church's child is every child of Adam, baptized in the sacred laver of regeneration, and she might well be described as travailing with pain, when the birth of her first children cost her so many cruel persecutions, as she endured during the three first centuries of her exist- ence. The Prophet continues, "And there was seen another sign in heaven : and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns : and on his heads seven diadems : and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth : and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered ; that when she should be de- livered, he might devour her Son: and she 106 AN INQUIRY INTO THE brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod : and her Son was taken up to God, and to His throne." Now, who was represented by this " other sign in heaven ?" " The great red dragon ?" If we take it in its first and direct application, it would evidently refer to Satan, and the ninth verse of this same chapter, puts this out of all doubt ; but if we take it in a more extended sense, it would refer to Satan as working by and through mankind ; in other words, it would signify the whole mass of fallen men, ruled over and directed by the devil. Taking it in this sense, I should understand the seven-headed and ten-horned dragon to symbolize the whole mass of mankind, ruled over by the enemy of God; and the seven heads of this dragon would signify the seven great kingdoms'* or associations of fallen men, which from the time of Noah until the end of the world were to carry out the devil's purposes in opposition to God, and to His true religion. Viewed in this light, the seven heads of the dragon would signify: 1. The Egyptian monarchy; 2. The Assyrian ; 3. The Chaldean or Babylonian ; 4. The Medo-Persian; 5. The Grecian; 6. The Koman ; 7. The Antichristian empire of Ma- * It is in this sense that the Douay commentators under- stand it. PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 107 hornet. While the ten horns would signify the ten kingdoms, into which the Roman em- pire, or sixth head of the dragon, was to be sub- divided. While Mahometanism, or the dragon's seventh head, was destined eventually to absorb three of these ten horns or kingdoms, as we have already intimated, and shall still further explain in the course of this work. But although I feel no doubt that this is the most accurate interpretation of the Apocalyptic vision, it may also be referred in a somewhat more limited sense to that power which I be- lieve to have been the dragon's sixth head, namely, to the Roman empire : now the Roman empire was emphatically the instrument of the devil in persecuting the Church, that is, "the woman clothed with the sun/' on her first appearance in the world. Applying it, then, to the Roman empire, by the seven heads crowned with diadems I should understand either the seven principal emperors who exhibited the greatest fury in persecuting the Primitive Church, which I consider the most probable interpretation, or what some other commentators have taken it to mean, the seven forms of government that successively prevailed in the Roman state, being as follows : 1. The Kings; 2. Consuls; 3. Dictators; 4. Decemvirs ; 5. Military tribunes ; 6. Emperors ; 108 AN INQUIRY INTO THE 7. The senate, which co-existed with all the other heads, but, as sharing the sovereignty with them all, may well be counted for one of the mystic heads of the Roman dragon. Others have interpreted the seventh head of the Roman beast to mean the kingdom of Italy, established by Odoacer, king of the Heruli, after the deposition of R/omulus Augustulus, the last emperor, in 476 A.D. But I confess I think this less likely than the other interpretation ; for, whatever may be true of the different forms of government under which the Roman beast has subsisted, it is evident that in St, John's vision that beast is contemplated chiefly in its connection with the Church, as Satan's first instrument in persecuting her. Now Rome never persecuted the Church under any of her seven forms of government except the imperial; why, therefore, should her seven heads, in that sense of them, be introduced in connection with the persecutions of the early Church, when it is clear neither the kings, nor the consuls, nor the dictators, nor the decemvirs, nor the military tribunes ever persecuted the Church ? for all these forms of government were passed and gone when the Church's his- tory commenced. But it is quite clear that seven of the Roman emperors were conspicuous for their fury in persecuting the Church ; for PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 109 although, if we include Tiberius, under whom the crucifixion of our Lord Himself and the martyrdom of St. Stephen took place, there were eleven emperors who persecuted the Church, we may certainly conclude from his- tory that there were seven who were conspi- cuous above all the rest of the emperors for the terrible cruelty with which they waged this internal war; and these seven I should enumerate thus: 1. Nero; 2. Domitian ; 3. Trajan; 4. Hadrian; 5. Decius; 6. Aurelian; 7. Dioclesian : and it would seem that Diocle- siau was the worst of them all. But there is another reason for interpreting in this passage the seven heads, exclusively of the emperors, and it is that they are ex- pressly said to be diademed heads, an appel- lation which belongs more properly to the emperors than to any of the other governing powers, if, at least, we except that of the kings. Also by the seven diademed heads I under- stand the whole body of the emperors perse- cuting the Church under the influence of the seven deadly sins, for we must observe that the dragon, who is described as having these seven diademed heads, is primarily Satan, and it is by these seven capital sins that he governs his impious kingdom over the bodies and souls of men. Then by the ten horns I understand 110 AN INQUIRY INTO THE here not the ten kingdoms into which the Roman empire was ultimately subdivided, but the ten general persecutions of the Primitive Church, which are well compared to ten horns, because they aptly represent those ten furious assaults which Satan gave to the Church, by urging against her the whole physical force of the Roman empire in those ten great persecu- tions. But be this as it may, commentators agree that the dragon in this vision symbol- izes both Satan, in his organization of mankind under seven great monarchies, and in a more special sense the pagan empire of Rome, com- bined and connected as it so closely was with the devil in the persecution of the Church of Christ. And when the text says that " his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth," I understand by that, first, in reference to Satan, that portion of the angels whom he dragged down from heaven to become his accomplices in warring against God along with himself upon the earth by trying to defeat the designs of God upon mankind ; and secondly, in reference to the persecuting action of the pagan Roman em- pire upon the bishops of the Catholic Church, who are elsewhere in the Apocalypse com- pared to stars : " The seven stars are the angels " or bishops " of the seven Churches." PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. Ill (Apocalypse i. 20.) Now it might well be said that the dragon's tail cast a third part of these stars unto the earth, for full one-third of the primitive bishops were levelled in the grave by the sword of martyrdom, urged on by the devil, and unsheathed by the Roman emperors. The vision continues : " And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered ; that when she should be deli- vered, he might devour her son. And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod : and her Son was taken up to God and to His throne." * * Cornelius a Lapide, in his commentary on the Apoca- lypse, writing upon this verse, gives a summary of the dif- ferent interpretations suggested by various eminent Catholic interpreters. He himself holds that the proper and genuine sense of this passage is that the " Man-child " whom " the woman brought forth" represents the children whom the Church bore to Jesus Christ, and who witnessed their faith by suffering martyrdom: "Fortes et electi Dei rapientw per mortem, vel per martyrium in ccdum, ut Deo fruantur itaque evadant os et man us Draco nis." But then it is clear that the expression used of this man-child, that " he shall rule all nations with a rod of iron," is by no means appli- cable to the whole body of the martyrs in its direct sense, for in this it belongs exclusively to Christ, and only by participation can it be applied to the saints "participative tamen competit etiam aliis sanctis." And so St. Ambrose says : " The one man-child is He, whom the Blessed Virgin bore, and that which the Church bringeth forth, for Christ is one body, and as it were one person, with all His mem- 112 AN INQUIRY INTO THE The dragon, standing before the woman about to be delivered of her son, appears to me to signify the efforts of Satan in endea- vouring to destroy the Primitive Church : and by the man-child of the woman, that was destined to rule all nations with an iron rod, I understand the Papacy, ruling over the Christian nations with the spiritual sceptre of St. Peter. And whereas this rod or staff is said to be of "iron," I understand by that term, that the chief seat of the sceptre was destined one day to be in Rome, which we may remember in Nabuchodonosor's statue was symbolized by the iron. Hence David, in the Psalms, foretells of Messiah that He would rule the Gentiles " with a rod of iron." (Psalm ii. 8, 9) "Ask of me and I will give thee the Gentiles for thine inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy posses- sion. Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel" By which last words of the Psalmist I see a reference to the fact foretold to Nabu- bers, that is with the Faithful, as the Apostle saith in his first epistle to the Corinthians xii. 12, 27." " But," continues Cornelius a Lapide, " Alcazar (a very celebrated interpreter) in his method refers this passage to the Primitive Church : hence by the man-child he understands the Roman Church. * Romano enim Ponlifici data est a Christo VIRGA FER- RE A, qua regat omnes gentes Christianismo subditas.'" PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 113 chodonozor, where it was said that the feet of the great statue " were partly of iron and partly of potter's clay" (Dan. ii. 33, 34) : "Thus thou sawest, till a stone was cut out of a mountain without hands : and it struck the statue on the feet thereof that were of iron and cluij, and broke them in pieces." And it was expressly revealed to Nabuchodonozor that this iron and clay signified the fourth empire, which was afterwards revealed to Da- niel as tlu> Roman empire, eventually to be subdivided into ten kingdoms. The Church's man-child is therefore evidently the sovereign pontiff, reigning from Rome over the Gentiles, and thus governing Messiah's spiritual king- dom. And whereas this man-child was said to be " taken up to God and to His throne," that may signify, that when the dragon stood before the woman to devour her child, he was taken up to the throne of God by martyr- dom, for almost all the early popes, during the irreat Roman persecutions, laid down their lives for the testimony of Jesus, and so were taken up to the throne of God. But we shall see later, when this man-child began to rule the nations with his iron rod, that is, with his Roman sceptre, how that event is represented by another symbol. But we must observe here an important 114 AN INQUIRY INTO THE distinction, and it is that which exists between the temporal and the spiritual power vested by Almighty God in the papacy, that is, in the Holy See. The latter, that is the spiritual power, is essential to it, that which it possesses of Divine right, by the institution of Christ Himself; the former (that is the temporal power) is acci- dental and dependent upon circumstances; it has been given to the Holy See for very great and holy purposes, and to reward the great constancy and zeal of so many holy successors of St. Peter, but it is not essential to the papacy. The popes were not always sovereigns of Rome, but they have always been the chief bishops of the Catholic Church, and they alone, amongst all other bishops, have jurisdiction over the whole Church. It is useless here for me to attempt to prove this as a fact from Church history ; it would lead me away from the subject which we are principally treating of here, and would swell this work far beyond the limits I wish to assign to it. But I would refer the reader, who would wish to investigate the truth of my assertion, to the very able treatises of my learned friend, Mr. Allies, " On the See of St. Peter as the Centre of Unity" and " On St. Peter, His Name and Office ;" and still more PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 115 to that masterly work just published by Arch- deacon Robert Wilberforce, "An Inquiry into the Principles of Church Authority." In the works of these two writers all controversy on the subject of the pope has been set at rest for ever. The popes then, from the very infancy of the Church, have always been regarded as the centre of unity and the source of spiritual authority ; and inasmuch as St. Peter fixed the local residence of this authority at Rome, the capital of the Gentile world, it is true that Messiah's kingdom of the Church, gathered as it has been out of all nations, has always been ruled with the rod of iron, virgd ferred, as it is termed in the Vulgate, and we have shown what we conceive to be the meaning of this remarkable term, namely, that it signifies a Roman staff y or an authority emanating from, and holding its chief seat in Rome, which city, with its empire, were figured by the iron portion of Nabuchodonozor's metallic statue. But if we pursue our investigation of the Apocalyptic vision, we find the Prophet thus continuing: "And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, that there they should feed her a thou- sand two hundred and sixty days." The flight of the woman into the wilderness H6 AN INQUIRY INTO THE I conceive to mean the Church's entrance into the world. For the world might well be termed a wilderness, when we consider what was its moral and physical condition before our Saviour's birth : and when the text adds, " where she had a place prepared by God/' it evidently refers again to the fact of the Church having one principal primatial see and source of spiritual authority, in other words the Holy See of Rome; for if Rome be not such, no other see at least has ever made such a claim ; and it is clear from the text that some such primatial seat of spiritual dominion there was to be somewhere. The text continues, "that there they should feed her a thousand two hundred and sixty days." This expression is very significant, and it surely indicates that there would be a very remarkable period in the Church's history, a period during which the Church was to be fed, that is to be specially nourished and enriched ; and that this period was to last for the space of twelve hundred and sixty days ; that is for the very same space of time that was allotted by Daniel, as we have already seen, to the dominion of the little horn, that is of Anti- christ, which we have proved to be the religious system and empire of Mahomet. Now then we may begin to understand why God gave a PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 117 temporal dominion to the popes at Rome, in other words, why He ordained that the Church should be fed, in a place prepared for her, for twelve hundred and sixty days. Mahometanism decreed the extirpation of the Church by fire and sword, and it was to meet this armed heresy that God gave a tem- poral dominion to His Church. And we shall see in the sequel how this temporal dominion of the popes was the only thing that saved Christendom from being overrun by the Ma- hometan armies: so that, humanly speaking, unless God had given temporal dominion to the popes, Christianity would have been rooted out, and Antichrist would have extended his empire not only over the three great provinces of the Macedonian he-goat, but over the universe itself. The Prophet then goes on to describe the conflict between St. Michael and the good angels with the dragon, or Satan, and his evil angels ; and he describes this in order to explain the causes which in the invisible world prepare and bring about the results which we witness here below in this visible world ; that conflict of good and evil, which has continually been at work ever since the fall of our first forefather Adam. He carries us back in this description to the remote period when Lucifer and his 118 AN INQUIRY INTO THE confederate angels first rebelled against God, and were east out of heaven : and he declares that the Almighty Creator effected this by the ministry of the Archangel St. Michael : of which we will just observe how completely this statement coincides with the teaching of the Catholic Church, that God usually acts through the ministry of angels and saints; while it is at variance with the Protestant theory, which completely ignores all such ministry and action on the part of blessed spirits. St. John then goes on to tell us, in the ninth verse, what was the result of Lucifer's ejection from heaven : " He was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him :" and the effect of this he tells by the character he gives of Satan, " who seduceth the whole earth." In these few words the Prophet sums up the history of mankind from the time of Adam, the seduction of the whole earth. For it was, alas ! a total seduction; with the single exception of the Jewish people, all mankind had been seduced into idolatry and every sort of wicked- ness. But in the tenth verse a new and brighter scene dawns upon the world : " And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying : Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ." This PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 119 refers to the coming of our blessed Redeemer, " now is come salvation." And " the kingdom of God" and " the power of His Christ" was first unfolded to mankind by the establishment of His Church, and the effect of that redemption, so proclaimed to mankind, is thus described by St. John : " For the accuser of our brethren is cast out, who accused them before our God day and ni^ht." The accusation of mankind, which had hitherto been so triumphantly pleaded by Satan, was now torn aside by our Lord Jesus Christ, who nailed it to His cross. And the first Christians showed the fruits of this redemption in their lives, for "they over- came him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of the testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death." It was through the merits of our Saviour's passion and death that they obtained forgiveness, as it was through the sacraments, " the word of the testimony," those mysterious forms instituted by Christ, that His precious merits were prin- cipally applied to their souls ; and out of the fulness of their gratitude, and the tender out- pourings of their love, they gave their lives for Jesus, who had redeemed them by the loss of His. How wonderfully and how sublimely was this exhibited by the Christians of the early Church. 120 AN INQUIRY INTO THE Millions and millions laid down their lives to suffer the most cruel deaths in testimony of their faith in Christ : and when the sword of the persecutor was sheathed, millions of other generous Christians renounced the pleasures of this life, and betook themselves to the deserts of Egypt, of Syria, and of Arabia, in order to consecrate themselves to the perpetual and ex- clusive service of Jesus, whom alone they loved, for "they loved not their lives unto death." Well might the Apostle add, in the twelfth verse, " Therefore rejoice, O ye heavens, and ye that dwell therein." For if the angels re- joice over the sinner that doeth penance, what shall not be the joy of these heavenly spirits over the just, who give their lives by martyrdom for the love of Christ, and who consecrate themselves to His love in the most holy monas- tic state, renouncing the world, and the plea- sures of the world. But it was to be expected that this bright vision would soon be troubled ; while the pro- bationary state of man endures, the bright blue sky of God's serene heaven must often and often be clouded over, and storms and tempests must try the shrubs and trees even in God's sacred Eden, the Catholic Church, to prove whether they be truly and firmly rooted in Christ; and so no sooner does St. John be- PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 121 hold the fruits of Divine grace, and the conse- quent joy of angels, but he hears the dismal cry of woe. " Woe to the earth, and to the sea." That is, " Woe to the earth," woe to that beautiful work of God's creation, this planet of ours, which the devil hates because it was to 1)0 the dwelling-place of that great mystery, the Incarnation of the Son of God. And " Woe t/n/o the sea" that is mankind, for, as we have already seen, St. Jerome, following the instruction of the angel, interprets " the sea" to signify mankind tossed about by the Minds of trial and temptation. And why is this woe uttered ? " Because the devil is come down" (Apoc. xii. 12), " having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time." For although to us poor mortals it may seem a long time that Satan has been trying and per- secuting the Church, it is but a short time in the estimation of God, when compared with eternity. And short in the estimation of Satan also, when he compares it with that miserable and never-ending future to which he looks for- ward. For short indeed is the space of two or three thousand years, when compared with countless millions of millions of ages, destined to usher in similar periods for all eternity, world without end. The comparison is almost too fearful to con- 122 AN INQUIRY INTO THE template : we none of us realize it as we ought ; if we did, assuredly we should be ready to endure the worst torments rather than to offend God, and so lose His grace, and our own salvation. But the Prophet tells us, that the feeling which actuated the devil, when he thought of the comparative shortness of this time of trial, was to redouble his fury against God, and to contrive all sorts of mischief against God's work, the Catholic Church. He says, in the thirteenth verse, "And when the dragon saw he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman that brought forth the man-child." This evidently refers to the persecutions of the Primitive Church, which we know continued more or less until the conversion of Constantine the Great. And even after his conversion, the Church has been continually persecuted ; but in the next verse, the Prophet tells us, that at a certain period God gave His Church a special protection against the fury of persecution. "And there were given to the woman two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the desert unto her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time from the face of the serpent." Now, what are these wings of a great eagle ? and when were they specially given unto the woman, that is, the Church ? PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 123 In order to answer the question what they are, the best way is to consider when it is that they are promised, and then to compare the history of the Church with the prediction. This will give us an infallible answer, for the history of the Church is God's own commen- tary upon His own prophecies. Now, wo have already seen that the dominion of the little horn, that is, of Antichrist, was to last for a time, and times, and half a time : in other words, for the very same period as that during which the wings of the eagle are given to the Church. We have shown that the little horn was indisputably Mahomet. The question thru arises, was there, or was there not, coin- cident with the coming of Mahomet, any new privilege conferred upon the Church, as it were to meet the exigencies and difficulties of the times ? What is the answer of history to this question ? Its answer is unmistakeable : there was. And what was it? The answer is equally unmistakeable : the temporal sovereignty of the popes at Rome. So distinct, so unmistakeably clear is this answer of history to the question we have put, that Protestant authors have not hesitated to make it the basis of all their proofs that the pope was, what they erroneously talk of, the western little horn. They have shown, 124 AN INQUIRY INTO THE and truly shown, that the establishment of the pope's sovereignty exactly coincided with the rise of Mahometanism, which, in their theory of prophetic interpretation, they term the eastern little horn. And hence they unani- mously vie with one another in drawing absurd parallels between these two little horns, which of course they are compelled to do, if there be two little horns, seeing that prophecy predi- cates the same things of each. But we have shown that there is but one little horn, namely, that one which Protestant commentators deno- minate the eastern little horn. Consequently, we affirm, that when Scripture declares that the wings of a great eagle were given to the Church, coincidently with the rise of the little horn, that prophecy was fulfilled in that new development of the Church's temporal state, which history informs us actually did take place, coincident with the coming of Mahomet, and the establishment of his apostacy and em- pire. Now, this new development was the establishment of the sovereignty of the popes in the Roman states : we therefore affirm, that the wings of the great eagle signify the tem- poral sovereignty of Rome. The eagle, all men know, was the symbol of Roman sovereignty. The old Romans bore the eagle as their military standard, and no PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 125 one can deny that the Roman eagle is another phrase to express " the Roman power." And the flight of the Roman eagle is used even by profane writers to symbolize the conquests of the Roman armies. When, therefore, the Pro- phet tells us tli at the wings of a great eagle were given to the Church for the very period of the little horn's dominion, and history tells us that the temporal sovereignty of Rome was at that very time given to the popes, we are surely justified in appealing to this great fact as the fulfilment of the prophecy. And as this temporal sovereignty was given to the popes, as the Prophet assures us, " for a time, and times, and half a time," to guard Holy Church " from the face of the serpent," that is, from the great efforts which the devil was to make against her during that remarkable period, and which we find from history to have been chiefly wrought by the instrumentality of Mahomet, and his religious and political empire, so the same text prepares us to expect, what history records, that, in proportion to the growth and decline of Mahometanism, the temporal power of the popes would wax and wane along with it. So that, as in the thirteenth century the Papal power was at its greatest height, that was precisely the period when Mahometanism was most formidable. It is admitted by all 126 AN INQUIRY INTO THE impartial historians, that but for the crusades Christendom must have fallen a victim to the victorious arms of Islamism. Now, who was it that summoned the princes of Christendom to these sacred wars ? The popes ; it was they who, either in person or by their delegates, preached the crusades, and called upon all Christians to take the cross. But we all know that the most effectual argument is example, and the popes, as sovereigns of the Roman states, gave that argument in arming their own people in defence of our holy religion. If they had not been sovereigns of Rome, they might have preached, but their call, humanly speaking, would not have been responded to. As with the growth so with the decline of the temporal power of the popes, history proves its coincidence with that of Mahomet anism. Never did that impious heresy receive a more deadly blow than the one infiicted upon it by the instrumentality of the great pope St. Pius the Fifth. Islamism has never reco- vered from the memorable victory of Lepanto. At the moment the battle was fought, and the victory won, that great pontiff was seen to lift up his eyes to heaven, as he sat by a window in the Vatican palace at Rome, and the tears flowed, and his blessed soul was absorbed in mystic ecstasy. He beheld the glorious Mother PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 127 of God at the right hand of her Divine Son, interceding with Him and through Him for the safety of Christendom and the success of the Christian arms ; and it was given him to understand that the prayer of Mary had pre- vailed. Turning to his attendants, he an- nounced to them a mighty victory over the infidels, worthy of the intercession of the Mo- tlu-r of God. The event justified the pope's assertion, and it was found, when the official intelligence arrived, that it was achieved at the very moment when God opened the eyes of the holy lather to see what was passing in that wonderful instant before the throne of His omnipotence. Yes, in that critical hour St. Michael and his angels were fighting with the dragon, and Mary, the immaculate queen of angels, was bruising his poisonous head. From that hour the Crescent has rapidly waned ; but the wings of the eagle have also lowered their flight ; and we have lived to see the day when the temporal sovereignty of the popes has been all but extinguished. Protestants thought it was actually gone, and they congratulated one another that their old foe the pope was now no more, and they appealed with as much confidence (as Catholics might have done to a miracle) to a fanatical commentary on prophecy, written in the reign 128 AN INQUIRY INTO THE of Queen Anne by one Fleming, a Dutchman, a raving Calvinist, who came over to England from the fens of Holland with William the Third, and who backed up his master's hatred of the pope and Catholicism by fanciful cita- tions of Scripture. Fleming foretold that in 1848 the papacy would be extinguished. Never shall I forget the rapture of the ultra- Protestant party, when in that very year the pope was driven from Rome ; and for the moment it seemed as if the Dutchman had made a lucky guess. But two years sufficed to prove he was a false prophet, in spite of first appearances, and the eagle once more flapped its wings in the face of rampant de- mocracy and infidelity, as it had heretofore so often done in the very teeth of the Maho- metan dragon ; and that the event might be more marked and fixed in men's minds, Pro- vidence decreed that the pope should be re- stored to his temporal sovereignty by the armies of republican and democratic France. Thus, that the Word of God might be fulfilled, a republic overthrew a republic, lest the wings of the eagle should be severed from the mystic woman, who was to be guarded by them " for a time, and times, and half a time. 33 The question may here be put, if it be said " that the wings of the eagle are given to the PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 129 woman for a time, and times, and half a time," does that expression of prophecy, understood as we understand it of the temporal sove- reignty of the popes, necessarily imply on this theory that this temporal sovereignty of the popes will cease at the end of the period de- signated as "a time, and times, and half a time?" Our answer to this question is emphatically that we repudiate any such inference ; and, on the contrary, it is our firmest conviction that the 1260 days, or a time, times, and half a time are ended, the papal power will assume ii still greater development all over the earth. It is not the place here to state our reasons for this conviction, but it is right that we should anticipate a question that would natu- rally occur to the reader, while we just glance at the answer, which further on we shall give more at length. The Prophet tells us, in the fifteenth verse, " And the serpent cast out of his mouth after the woman, water as it were a river, that he might cause her to be carried away by the river." And in the sixteenth verse he continues: " And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the river, which the dragon cast out of his mouth." K 130 AN INQUIRY INTO THE In these two verses, it seems to me that we have a recapitulation, or a more enlarged de- scription, of what was stated in the thirteenth verse ; and that the Prophet refers to the per- secutions raised against the Church by the pagan Roman emperors, which might well be compared to a river, for by their means tor- rents of Christian blood were shed all over the earth; and such was the impetuosity of their fury, that had it not been for the miraculous help of God the Christian faith must have been rooted out from the world. But when the Prophet adds, " and the earth helped the woman, and swallowed up the river," it seems that he refers to the conversion of Constantine, which by placing Christianity on the throne of the Csesars effectually swallowed up the river that had hitherto so violently assailed the Church, and it might truly be said " that the earth helped the woman ; " for from this mo- ment the riches of the earth were poured into the Church's lap. Now did the glowing pro- phecies of the Old Testament begin to receive their accomplishment ; the gold of Ophir, the precious stones of the East, and the frankin- cense of Arabia, were combined in the offering of the converted earth to its Lord and Saviour ; stately churches now began to be erected all over Christendom, so magnificent that they PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 131 rivalled even the Temple of Solomon, and far surpassed the most splendid temples of Pagan- ism. The learned Abbe Fleury, in his " Church History," has given us such a description of the glories of the Church under the Chris- tian Roman emperors, that the reader is quite lost in wonder and admiration. But it was not only in material riches and splendour that the Church shone after Constantine's conver- sion, .she developed her spiritual principles and her inherent sanctity with equal brilliancy. The holy counsels of Jesus Christ were now eagerly embraced, we may say, without ex- aggeration, by countless millions of fervent Christian virgins and youths, whose hearts glowed so brightly with the love of Jesus, that they counted all things else but as dross in comparison of His service, and the continual contemplation of His blessed life and His adorable perfections. When we read the lives of St. Anthony and the other holy fathers of the deserts, we are filled with devotion, and the coldest hearts are kindled with the love of Jesus. Oh ! how great was the fervour, the humility, the devotion, and the mortification of these great servants of God ! Well might the devout author of the " Imitation of Christ" exclaim, when he compared the Christian fer- vour of his own times with that of these golden 132 AN INQUIRY INTO THE days of the Church's first love : " Look upon the lively example of the holy fathers, in whom shone real perfection and the religious life, and thou wilt see how little it is and almost nothing that we do ! Alas ! what is our life, if it be compared with theirs ! Saints and friends of Christ, they served our Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, labour and wea- riness, in watchings and fastings, in prayers and holy meditations, in frequent persecutions and reproaches. Oh ! what a strict and self- renouncing life the holy fathers of the desert led ! what long and grievous temptations did they bear ! how often were they harassed by the enemy ! what frequent and fervent prayers did they offer up to God ! what rigorous absti- nence did they practise ! what great zeal and fervour had they for spiritual progress ! what a valiant conflict did they wage to subdue their imperfections ! what purity and straightfor- wardness of purpose did they keep towards God ! By day they laboured, and a great part of the night they spent in prayer ; and even while they laboured they ceased not to pray in spirit. They spent all their time pro- fitably ; the hours seemed too short to spend with God ; and even their needful refection of the body was forgotten in the great sweetness PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 133 of their contemplations." (Imitation of Christ, b. i. 18.) AVhat a picture is here given us of the first fruits of Christ's grace in converting the barren t of this earth into a garden of spiritual But here below these bright intervals of Divine sunshine are few and transient : and K) tin Prophet at once prepares us for Satan > lie natural issue of his diabolical j and wrath; hence he adds: "And the on was angry against the woman ; and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who 1 the commandments of God, and have tin timony of Jesus Christ. And he stood upon the sand of the sea/' (Apocalypse xii. 17, 18.) We believe that these verses introduce us to the history of Mahometanism, that is, of the Jit tie horn of Daniel, and " the Antichrist" of the New Testament. Satan, enraged at the failure of all his efforts to destroy the Church by the furious persecu- tions of the Roman emperors, still further in- furiated by seeing that river absorbed by the earth in the conversion of those very emperors, and the manifold fruits of sanctity all over the earth, meditates a fresh war upon the seed of the woman, that is, the Church's children; 134 AN INQUIRY INTO THE and so St. John tells us, that this implacable enemy of God and man took his stand " upon the sand of the sea." An able Catholic interpreter (Preuves Incon- testables de VEglise Catholique, chap. v. p. 297), explains this to mean Arabia, for that country might well be termed " the sand of the sea/' both from the vast tracts of sandy desert, of which it is mainly composed, and from the fact of its peninsular form being chiefly sur- rounded by the sea. But I should also inter- pret this expression, according to what we have already seen of St. Jerome's interpretation of the term " sea," to mean the most worthless portion of mankind, for if " the sea" signifies mankind, then the sand of the sea signifies all the scum and cast-off deposit, which the sea throws up upon the beach : and what would this be, but those reprobate outcasts of the Church, whom Mahomet seized upon as his instruments to propagate his mighty heresy? and as the grains of sand are infinite in number, so countless was the multitude of that light and faithless generation, which the hurricane of his impiety drove in clouds over the deserts of Asia and Africa, till the sun of Divine truth was darkened, and God's moon, the Church, was turned into blood, so that in those desolate regions she no longer reflected the rays of her PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 135 Divine Master, but waned beneath the fury of the Mahometan tempest, and the clouds of schism and heresy. The thirteenth chapter at once discloses to us the prophetic history of the two great Ma- hometan beasts or empires. "And I saw," says St. John, "a beast coming up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten diadems, and upon his heads names of blasphemy." Now, who is this beast?* Some interpreters, observing no doubt that there are several points of resemblance between the description of this beast, and that of the great red dragon of the last chapter, which we have already proved to be mankind subdivided into seven monarchies, and, in a secondary sense, the pagan Roman empire, conclude that this beast, and the seven-headed dragon, are the same. But this is evidently a great mistake : there are indeed some points of resemblance in the two descriptions, but there are also differences, and these differences are fatal to their identity. For instance, the red dragon of the twelfth * The learned Father Salmeron, in his interesting " Free- ludiain Apocalypsin," explains this beast, of the thirteenth chapter, of Mahomet and his empire in a dissertation of con- siderable length. (Salmeron, Prcdudia in Apoc. torn. xvi. p. 365.) 136 AN INQUIRY INTO THE chapter is said to have " seven heads, and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems :" whereas the beast that comes up out of the sea in the thirteenth chapter, is said to have " seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten diadems." How, then, can these two beasts be the same? Again, the Prophet assigns a chronological difference to them also. The red dragon, with its seven heads and ten horns, failing in its onslaught on the woman, the devil subsequently takes his stand " on the sand of the sea," as we have already seen. And the Prophet tells us that he saw the result of that, in the coming of a beast " out of the sea." Now, the pagan Roman empire arose long before the date of St. John's vision. Its twelfth emperor, Domitian, was reigning at the time, and what St. John is here describing is evidently posterior not only to Domitian, but to the conversion of Constantine. This beast, then, in the thirteenth chapter, cannot refer to the pagan Roman empire. What is it then ? The learned Anglican, Bishop Newton, suggests another interpretation, which, with much ingenuity, he endeavours to establish. PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 137 (Bishop Newton's Dissertations on the Prophe- cies, chap, xiii. p. 5:26.) Affirming the general identity of the red dragon, and the first beast of the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, whereby he vio- all ju-t rules of prophetic interpretation, lie concludes this beast to be papal Rome. But we have already shown what place papal Rome occupies in prophecy, and especially, in St. John's Apocalypse; we have shown that this place is a place of honour, not of dishonour ; the place of the chief instrument of God in His spiritual sway over the nations, not one of error or blasphemy. How, then, can this beast be papal Rome? Bishop Newton admits (and it would be impossible for him to deny it), that there is a wonderful resemblance, amounting to complete identity, between this beast and another prophetic personage; viz., the little horn of Daniel, or rather what he, on his erro- neous principles of interpretation, would term " the western little horn." Well, then, agree- ing on this point with Bishop Newton, so far as the identity between this beast and Daniel's " little horn" is concerned, and having already shown that there is but one little horn, although mentioned twice, and not two little horns (as Bishop Newton and other Protestant commen- tators have conveniently imagined), and having 138 AN INQUIRY INTO THE already established and demonstrated what and where that little horn is, we say at once, with- out hesitation, that the first of the two beasts described in the thirteenth chapter of the Apo- calypse is unquestionably the same power as Daniel's little horn, that is, the Mahometan empire, as it was at first established by Maho- met and his immediate successors. Let us examine the words of St. John, and compare them with what history records, and we shall find that the prophetic description, and the history of Mahometanism, agree together. St. John tells us that this beast, which we affirm to represent the empire of Mahomet, had " seven heads." By these seven heads, we understand the seven thrones, which were erected in seven different countries, wherein the power and religion of Mahomet were established with the greatest authority. These seven heads or thrones were : 1. That of the Caliphs, the immediate suc- cessors, and principal representatives of the false Prophet Mahomet, whose chief capital or seat of government was first placed at Medina, and then at Bagdad. 2. That of Persia, one of the principal Ma- hometan powers even to this day. 3. That of North Africa, or the empire of PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 139 Morocco, whose sovereign had the title of Mi- ramoulin;* the last who bore it being the cele- brated Muley-Ismael, who played a conspicuous part in the history of the seventeenth century. 4. That of Egypt, under the sway of the mites, who occupy a great position in Ma- hometan history. 5. That of Damascus, in Syria, under espe- cially those remarkable sovereigns, Noradin and Saladin, whose names figure so conspicu- ously in the history of the crusades, and even in our own contemporaneous English annals. <>. The Mogul empire in Hindostan, of the riches and splendour of which the accurate de- scriptions of grave historians sound more like Oriental fiction than a sober reality, although the remains, which exist even at the present day, are satisfactory evidence that they were not exaggerated nor over-coloured. 7. The seventh throne of the beast was the Moorish kingdom of Granada, in Spain, which has undoubtedly left monuments behind it of its power and its magnificence that can never be surpassed. These, then, were the seven heads or thrones of the beast ; these all existed and flourished * This title was derived from the words Emir-al-Mous- lemin, or Prince of the Worshippers of Unity. (See Ency- cloptdie, du xix. siecl. torn. xi. p. 434.) 140 AN INQUIRY INTO THE simultaneously ; and in their respective territo- ries, as well as all around, they spread every- where the terror of the name of Mahomet, and everywhere combated the religion of the cross. But St. John tells us not only that the beast had "seven heads," but it had also "ten horns," and these ten horns were crowned with " diadems." By these ten diademed horns, I understand ten royal dynasties, which we actually find de- scribed in Mahometan history, as having con- tributed, in an especial manner, to uphold and extend the faith and dominion of the little horn over that portion of the earth which God gave into his hand. The learned author of the " Preuves Incontestables de PEglise Catholique deduites de V Apocalypse" (ch. vi. p. 210), has demonstrated these ten horns to represent the ten great dynasties as follow: 1. The Tha- herians; 2. The Soffarides; 3. The Samanides; 4. The Gaznevides; 5. The Bouides; 6. The Tholonides ; 7. The Seljucides ; 8. The Ajou- bites; 9. The Aglabites; 10. The Khouaras- mians." These are the principal dynasties that figure in Mahometan history during the period of what we will now call the Saracenic or first beast. We shall not at present enter into the mi- nutiae of Mahometan history, as it developed PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 141 itself under these dynasties in the several kingdoms subject to the sway of the False Prophet. These details will come in their proper place in a future work, and we shall have occasion to glance at some of them in course of the present treatise; but here our object must rather be as briefly as possible to lay our interpretation of the prophecy be- fore our readers. St. John continues (xiii. 2) : " And the \\liich I saw was like to a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion ; and the dragon gave liim liis own strength and great power." Now in this remarkable description of the Saracenic beast, it seems to me that the Pro- phet has given us a symbolical clue to ascer- tain where his power would chiefly be esta- blished. He describes the beast as made up of a strange conglomeration of three other beasts ; he had the mouth of a lion, the body of a leopard, and the feet of a bear. Now it is impossible to read this description and not to remember Daniel's vision of the four beasts, which represented the four great monarchies. And if we turn to it, we shall find that the first Apocalyptic beast of St. John is com- pounded of the three first of the four beasts of Daniel. 142 AN INQUIRY INTO THE The lion or lioness represented the Assyrian or Babylonian empire ; the bear, the Medo- Persian ; and the leopard, the Greek empire of Alexander the Great. Now it is a fact, fully borne out by history, that it was precisely of the provinces formerly subject to these very empires that the Sara- cenic empire was composed ; and, what is more remarkable still, those provinces bore a rela- tion to the Mahometan empire completely analogous to the position assigned to each of these three beasts in the Saracenic beast. Thus his mouth is said to be that of a lion. Now in every animal the expression of the will is manifested by its voice or mouth, so that in a symbolical beast the mouth would represent the seat of the voice that governed its move- ments, and that expressed its will ; in other words, it would represent its principal seat of government. Now what was this in the Sara- cenic empire? It was Bagdad, that is, the chief city of the Caliphs, situated in the pro- vince of Babylon, which was the capital of the old Assyrian empire symbolized in Daniel by the lion. In other words, its mouth was that of a lion, that is, its seat of government was in the chief province of the old Assyrian empire. Moreover, as this empire was not only a political but a religious power, and as its PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 143 founder pretended to be God's greatest pro- phet, or the utterer of God's revealed will, the term mouth is aptly used by the Prophet to designate this most striking characteristic of the Saracenic empire. And the Assyrian or Babylonian qualification here given to the mouth of the beast aptly describes the geo- graphical position not only of its seat of govern- ment, but also of the birthplace of Mahomet, its founder, which was in the province of Hejaz, of which the capital was Mecca, one of the most notable provinces of the old Babylonian empire. But the Prophet continues. He describes the body of the beast as being that of a leo- pard. What can this mean, but that the main body of the Saracenic empire consisted of the provinces that had formerly composed the em- pire of the Macedonian leopard ? Now history tells us what countries were subdued by Alex- ander the Great, and history informs us that it was precisely this very territory that formed the main body of the Saracenic empire. Alex- ander devoured the territory of Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, even to the Indus ; and it was precisely in the same territory that the Saracenic empire extended its dominion ; in other words, to use the sym- bolical language of St. John and of Daniel, this beast had the body of a leopard. 144 AN INQUIRY INTO THE But St. John gives us one more character- istic : it had the feet of a bear. Now we have already seen, in our remarks on Daniel's pro- phecies, that the bear symbolized the Medo- Persian empire ; I therefore conclude that the territory of that empire had the same analo- gous relation to the Saracenic empire as the feet of a bear would hold to St. John's sym- bolical beast. Now in every animal the feet are the main instrument to effect its loco- motion ; and this is precisely the relation which the provinces of the Medo-Persian bear held to the Saracenic empire. Persia was, as we have already seen, the first kingdom to embrace Mahometanism, and it has been at all times from its Caucasian provinces that the chief strength of Mahometanism has issued forth. In other words, it had the feet of a bear. Besides all which, we may add what St. Jerome remarks of the four beasts of Daniel, that they represented the physical and moral characteristics of the peoples they sym- bolized. Hence, when it is said by St. John of the Saracenic beast that it had the head of a lion, the body of a leopard, and the feet of a bear, we are at once reminded of the loud and presumptuous language, the unfeeling cruelty, and the grasping ambition that have ever cha- racterised the Mahometan system, and that PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 145 were so remarkably conspicuous in Saracenic history. The Apostle continues, " and the dragon him liis own strength and great power." AY hat can he more characteristic of Mahome- tanism than this prophecy ? If ever there was an empire of which this was eminently true, it surely was the great Mahometan Saracenic empire. The dragon had given a portion of his strength and power to the other great em- j>iiv>, hut as they all possessed it in common, and none of them had it in any superior degree ovrr the rest, it could hardly be a character- istic distinction of any one of them in parti- cular. I 'lit here in the case of this Apocalyptic beast, it is given as a most special character- istic. that it was to be emphatically the seat of Satan's power. Now either Mahometanism came from the devil, or it did not ; if it did, then in that case it was a political and religious m, endowed with vast power and terri- torial strength, raised up for the special pur- pose of warfare with Christianity and the true religion of God. That this was the special mission of Mahometanism is what it asserted of itself, and what has been fully borne out by its history from the beginning up to the pre- sent day. Assuming, then, the truth of Chris- tianity and the falsehood of Mahometanism, no L 146 AN INQUIRY INTO THE one can deny that it literally fulfils this portion of the sacred text ; for no one can deny (ad- mitting this premise) either its power or its strength on the one hand, or that Satan, not God, was the object in whose behalf all that power and strength were wielded. Besides, no other empire was ever of its own nature so essentially antagonistic to Christ. The pagan- ism of the old heathen empires was antecedent to the coming of the Messiah ; and though it naturally came into collision with the progress of His kingdom, still we cannot say of it what we must say of Mahometanism, that it was devised and constituted for the main purpose of opposing the Church of God. The force of this argument has appeared so cogent to learned Protestants, that Bishop Newlon, in his cele- brated treatise on the Prophecies, uses it as an overwhelming proof that this beast repre- sents papal Rome, the latter power being in his opinion that of the great Antichrist. We agree with him and with the holy fathers in interpreting this symbolical beast of Anti- christ ; but we differ from him altogether in his estimate as to who Antichrist was; and differing from him in this, and believing as we do that Antichrist is no other than Mahomet, we come to the conclusion that this first beast of the Apocalypse represents the Mahometan PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 147 Saracenic empire, and not what Bishop Newton erroneously interpreted it, papal Rome. The Prophet continues, " And I saw one of his heads, as it were slain to death : and his death's wound was healed." Bishop Newton and other Protestant com- mentators see in this text, following up their erroneous hypothesis concerning this beast, the <1( struction of the imperial power of old Rome in the person of its last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus. But that destruction was not the destruction of a form of govern- ment merely, but of the Roman empire itself. It was the destruction of the Roman beast, as a single empire, and not alone of one of the heads of that empire. That this was so his- tory proves : from that time the Roman empire as such ceases, and the ten kingdoms, of which the Byzantine Greek empire was of course one, take its place. To say the contrary is to deny history. No man in his senses would call European history subsequent to that date " Roman history," but it is equally true that no man in his senses either could or does term European history before that date by any other name than that of Roman history. And why ? because before that date Europe and the Ro- man empire were synonymous, whereas after it Europe was subdivided into independent king- L2 148 AN INQUIRY INTO THE doms or polities. It is from that date that English, French, German, Spanish, and the other national histories, of what is called modern Europe, commence. The destruction of imperial Rome was there- fore not the destruction of any head of any beast, but the destruction of the imperial beast itself; and consequently cannot (on that ground alone) be represented, as Bishop Newton thinks, by the deadly wound of one of the heads of the Apocalyptic beast in question : not to add that the falsehood of this conclusion has already been proved by anticipation, when we showed that this beast could not represent the Roman empire at all. What then is the head referred to? We have already demonstrated the beast to signify the Mahometan Saracenic empire; we, there- fore, without hesitation, express our conviction that his head, thus wounded to death, sym- bolized the extinction of the dynasty of the caliphs, which took place under Motassem, the fifty-sixth successor of Mahomet. So that, as we shall presently see, St. John describes a second beast coming up out of the earth, which evidently is but a development of the consequences resulting from the healing of the deadly wound inflicted on the principal head of the first beast. PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 149 Now the throne of the caliphs was extin- guished by the Tartar Turks, led on by the great grandson of the famous Zingis Khan : and at the time when these Tartar hordes over- threw the caliph they professed paganism, and not Mahometanism. Those who would wish for fuller details of this portion of Mahometan history, if they have not time to refer to the larger histories, should by all means read the admirable lectures "on the Turks/' published lately by that eminent writer, Father Newman, the superior of the Oratorians in England. It appears from contemporary history that those, who witnessed the extinction of the caliphate by their Tartar conquerors, fully cal- culated on the utter destruction of Maho- metanism. They saw the principal head of the Mahometan beast wounded to death, and they saw the Mahometan empire in its prin- cipal head, the caliphate, overthrown ; but what was their wonder, what the horror in all Christian lands, when they saw that the deadly wound was healed, and that though the prin- cipal head of the Mahometan power had been destroyed, the natural effect of that event did not ensue ! But what does this healing refer to ? I will say no more of Bishop Newton's theories, but I answer at once, it signified the conversion of 150 AN INQUIRY INTO THE the Tartars and Turks to Mahometanism, and the consequent establishment of the power of the Turkish sultans on the ruins of the caliphate. From the moment the Turkish sultans assumed the Mahometan turban, they constituted them- selves the heads of the Mahometan religion, and were accepted as such by all true Maho- metans. And when the Prophet continues, " All the earth was in admiration of the beast/' he does but express in prophetic language what history records, that the Mahometan power became still more formidable in the eyes of all men; for the term, which in our version is here rendered by the word " admiration," would be more correctly translated by another, viz., " amazement :" that being rather the meaning of the Greek term, used by the Apostle, " iQavnaaQr\" And so it is rendered in the Anglican version, " all the world wondered after the beast." And well might it wonder, for the Maho- metan empire was dead, and was alive again ! And well might the consequence be what St. John describes as ensuing thereon, " And they adored the dragon, which gave power to the beast : saying who is like unto the beast, and who shall be able to fight with him ? " Stricken with terror, the nations of Chris- tendom fell before the beast one after the PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 151 other, the victims of his rapacious ambition : and though for a season his rapid progress was checked by the crusades, it was but a mo- mentary pause in that fearful career of con- quest; for while to these holy expeditions, replete as they are with poetic and chivalrous interest, we may trace the ultimate safety and independence of Latin Christendom, they sig- nally failed in their immediate object, and the ill success that attended them, did but force the whole world to cry out, as the Prophet foretold it would do, "Who is like unto the !)rast, and who shall be able to fight against him?" Nor were the terrors of Christendom groundless, for as St. John goes on, borrowing almost the very words of Daniel in his previous description of the little horn, " There was given unto him " (Apocalypse, xiii. 5) " a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies: and power was given unto him to do " (that is to carry on his career) " two and forty months" That is, the whole duration of Mahometan blasphemy shall be for the space of forty-two months; we have already seen in another pro- phecy that it was to last for the prophetic space of 1260 days, and if you reduce these forty-two months to days, according to the duration of Mahometan months, it also makes the exact number of 1260 days, or, as we have 152 AN INQUIRY INTO THE already shown, taking a day for a year, 1260 years. But St. John goes on : " And he opened his mouth unto blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His Name, and His Tabernacle, and them that dwell in Heaven." This de- scription exactly agrees with what we have already seen in a former chapter was foretold by Daniel of the little horn : and it perfectly agrees with the religious character of Maho- metanism. If Christianity be the religion of God, and God be what Christianity reveals Him to be, One God in Three Persons, then does Mahometanism emphatically " open its mouth in blasphemies against God, to blas- pheme His Name" viz., that of the adorable Trinity. And if the sacred humanity of J esus be, what Christianity reveals it to us, the very Tabernacle of the Godhead, then did Mahomet blaspheme "the Tabernacle of God:" and if the Christian Church be indeed, what the Gospel declares it to be, the Kingdom of Heaven, then did Mahomet blaspheme also them that dwelt in heaven, for assuredly he blasphemed against the Church, and against the Church's children, that is against them " that dwell " in the mystic " heaven" Verse 7. " And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them. And power was given him over every PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 153 tribe, and people, and tongue, and nation. And all that dwell upon the earth adored him/ whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, which was slain from the be- ginning of the world/' This portion of St. John's prophecy, agreeing as it does in the most remarkable manner, and even in its very phraseology with Daniel's prediction of the little horn, foretells what portion of mankind would be the chief objects of Mahometan ag- gression, and of Mahometan subjugation. He was to make war upon the saints, as his prin- cipal object, that is, upon the Christians, for in Scripture, and especially in the Apostolic Epistles, the term " saints" is frequently applied to the Christians, that is, to the members of God's true Church, and with reason, for all the members of the Church are made saints or holy in baptism; and though, unhappily, too many fall from their baptismal inuocency, yet they all possess, in the sacrament of penance, and the other means of grace, the means of reco- vering their sanctity, so that they may well be termed by the Apostle " saints," not only from the sanctification that has been bestowed upon them through the grace of the sacraments, but also because they are indeed " saints" in com- parison and in relation to the world without ; that world, of which Scripture tells us " that it 154 AN INQUIRY INTO THE lieth in wickedness/' Now, it was emphatically upon "the saints/' namely, the children of God's Church, that Mahometanism made war, and it was given unto him, the Apostle tells us, to overcome them, although the subsequent verse tells us, that this power was to be limited, and that the conquests of the beast were to be confined to those whose names were not written in the book of life of the Lamb. In other words, Mahometanism was to make war with Christianity, was to gain great victories over the Christians, but was only to conquer the reprobate Christians whose names were not written in the book of life of the Lamb, and those that dwelt on the earthy namely, the heathen nations, as contradistinguished from those that dwell in heaven, whom we have already shown to symbolize the children of the Church. Now, if St. John had written the history, instead of the prophecy, of Maho- metanism, it is impossible that he could more accurately have described the characteristic features of its aggressions, or of its conquests. But the Apostle suddenly halts in his de- scription of Mahometan impiety and success, and he cries out, in the well-known words of his beloved Lord and Master, "If any man have an ear, let him hear." In such words as these did Jesus Christ usher in whatever He PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 155 would most urgently commit to the considera- tion of His disciples, and in these same words does His favourite disciple call our attention to the future destruction (for it was then future, although it be passed now) of the Mahometan Saracenic empire. Verse 10. "He that shall lead into captivity shall go into captivity : he that shall kill by the sword, shall be killed by the sword/' And so it was, the heathen Turks bore down with resistless force and countless multitudes upon the empire of Mahomet, led his hosts into captivity, and slaughtered them by the sword. St. John then adds, " Here is the patience and the faith of the saints;" as much as to say, that the events that are to ensue upon these victories of the Turkish hordes will give ample scope to the Christian nations to exercise the virtues of patience and faith. The next verse (llth) ushers into our vir\v the second Mahometan beast in these words : " And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns, like unto a lamb, and he spake as a dragon/' Let me here pause for a moment to reply to an objection that the reader may possibly sug- gest. Why, he may ask, do you call this second beast a Mahometan beast at all ? Is not this a gratuitous assumption ? I answer, certainly not ; I have already shown my grounds for be- 156 AN INQUIRY INTO THE lieving that the first beast signified the Maho- metan Saracenic empire, and if I am right in that supposition, it necessarily follows that the second beast must symbolize the Mahometan empire, that succeeded the Saracenic, from the very terms employed by St. John in the next verse (12) : " And he executed all the power of the former beast in his sight, and he caused the earth, and them that dwell therein, to adore the first beast, whose wound unto death was healed." Is it possible that the Prophet could use lan- guage more forcible to describe that which Turkish history records the Turkish power to have done. If the destruction of the Saracenic empire threatened death to the Mahometan system upheld by it, assuredly that deadly wound was healed by the establishment of the Mahometan Turkish empire. But let us exa- mine a little more closely some of the predi- cated characteristics of this second beast. It came up out of the earth. The first beast had arisen from the sea, that is, symbolically from "the sea," as the symbol of mankind tossed about by the winds of corrupt nature, and the revolutionary upheavings of the restless multitude, which is the interpretation St. Jerome gives to this prophetic image : and lite- rally from the sea, inasmuch as it sprung from the pestilent shores of the great Asiatic Ocean, PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 157 the arid sands of Arabia. But this beast springs from the earth, that is, literally from the great continent, of which Europe, Asia, and Africa are but conventional and nominal divi- sions, constituting, as they do, that one only portion of habitable earth which, in the days of the Evangelist, was known to exist, and which was called by the great civilized nation, that ruled mankind in his day, the " Orbis terra- rum" or, as the Apostle emphatically phrases it, "the earth;" and it sprang mystically from < arth y inasmuch as it represented all that evil and enmity to God of which this fallen and mi regenerate earth has ever been the mother; that earth, of which God declared to our first parent Adam, after his fall, "Cursed is the earth in thy work."* True religion is from above, descending from the Father of Lights, I) ut it is from the earth that all false religion springs. From the earth came paganism ; and when God by His only Son had once more en- lightened mankind, and brought many nations to the belief of His Divine truth, Satan raised up in the person of Mahomet, and by his agency, a new system of error to combat God's truth ; a system compounded of fragments of revelation, so as to deceive the unwary, and of the grossest impiety, so as to lead men to per- * Genesis iii. 17. 158 AN INQUIRY INTO THE dition. Such a system might truly be said to spring from " the earth;" it was, as St. Paul elsewhere expresses it, " of the earth, earthy" And the Turkish empire, rising on the ruins of the former Mahometan empire, that of the Saracens, and fulfilling all the designs of its predecessor, accurately fulfilled the prediction of St. John in its mystic meaning ; it sprang from the earth, 110 wholesome well of living waters, but a bitter and death-distributing fountain, destined for many centuries to over- flow and destroy some of the fairest provinces of God's Holy Church. And this beast " had two horns, like unto the horns of a lamb. 93 It is impossible to read this description of the second beast, and not to remember the pastoral origin of the Ottoman Turks, springing, as they did, from the steppes of Scythian Tartary, with their vast flocks of sheep, and all the habits of a nomad pastoral people. Let the reader turn to Father New- man's lectures on " The Turks/' and he will see how appropriate a symbol of the Ottomans was " the horns of a lamb." Now, observe this beast " had two horns, like unto the horns of a lamb." The strength of every beast, as St. Jerome has observed, lies in its horns, and in its other weapons of defence; and the strength of the Ottoman Turks, in their origin, lay in PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 159 the multitude of their flocks and herds : what apter symbol of a pastoral people could be de- \ iM-d than the two horns of a ram ? If sports- men hang up in their halls the horns and skins of the animals they have slain in the chase, well might the horns of a ram symbolize the 11 and the character of a shepherd people, like the Ottomans, dwelling in tents, adminis- tering summary justice in the gate of a move- able camp, of which ''the Sublime Porte" of modern Turkey hands on the memory and the tradition. But there is something else that these two horns of the ram remind us of; can we forget another Caucasian people and empire, which Daniel had seen under a similar image ? The second of Daniel's four beasts was beheld by the Hebrew Prophet under the symbolical image of a ram with two horns : for the Medes and Persians, like their successors, the Ottoman Turks, were a pastoral people, and the angel declared to Daniel, that those two ram's horns signiiied t hose two nations. Is there not, then, a strong analogy between the two horns of the Medo-Persian beast of Daniel, and the Turks and Tartars of the second Apocalyptic beast of the blessed Apostle John ? Can we forget the achievements of the Turkish tribes from the days of Othman, on the one hand, and of the Tartars, from those of Tiinour and Zingis Khan, 160 AN INQUIRY INTO THE on the other? The former overflowing with their irresistible hordes the west of Asia, the north of Africa, and the fairest European pro- vinces of the Greek empire : the latter carrying their triumphant sword along with the Koran of Mahomet, across the Himalayas into the very heart of the Indies. Truly this second beast had two horns, and these horns were like the horns of a ram, for the flocks and herds of Tartary gave them their heraldic device, and symbolized the profession and the habits of their ancestors. But this beast " spake as a dragon" (Apoc. xiii. 2.) His language, his doctrine, came from below, from the great dragon of the abyss; the same dragon that in the twelfth chapter of this same Apocalypse we have already seen arming the Roman empire against "the woman and her seed ; " and when the Roman empire became Christian, and so the very " earth " helped the woman, he, this implaca- ble dragon, conjured up Mahomet and his first empire out of the sea ; so now does he speak through the voracious throat of the two- homed Turco-Tartar beast uttering his dragon cries, terrible to be heard, and bearing the message of death to myriads of the human race. St. John continues his description : " And PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 161 he executed all the power of the former beast in his sight ; " that is, whatever had been done by the Saracens is now repeated over again by the Turks and Tartars. " And he caused the earth, and them that dwell therein, to adore the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed;" that is, he caused the children of perdition, symbolized by " the earth, and them that dwell therein" to adore, that is, to venerate and accept the religious in of the first beast, that is, the religion and political system of Mahomet, whereby tin- deadly wound occasioned by the destruc- tion of the Saracenic empire, that is, of the first Apocalyptic beast, was healed. In Scrip- ture the term wpomntvu*, or to adore or wor- ship, is not exclusively confined, as it is by our modern English, to the expression of Di- vine worship, but it signifies that homage and reverence \\hich men are wont to give to any form or semblance of authority, whether true or false. Hence, in the passage before us, it need not mean any Divine worship paid to Mahomet, or still less to the Sultans who re- presented him, for all such Divine worship is expressly disclaimed by Mahometans, and therefore not to be charged upon them, but it signifies the allegiance, spiritual and temporal, which they pay to the false system of that M 162 AN INQUIRY INTO THE great impostor, and to the polity established by him. In this sense, obviously the sense implied by the Apostle, did the second beast force all the children of perdition to adore the former beast, and in this sense his deadly wound was healed. But let us follow the description of St. John : "And he wrought great wonders, so that he made also fire to come down from heaven unto the earth in the sight of men" From these words it appears that this beast was to astonish mankind by his wonderful achievements, and amongst the rest by one which the Prophet describes as " making fire to come down from heaven unto the earth in the sight of men" Now, bearing in mind that the language of prophecy in general, and especially of the Apo- calypse, is conveyed to us under hieroglyphical symbols, we must not suppose that this second Mahometan power was literally to bring down fire from heaven, any more than that it was to be a literal beast with two literal horns ; but though the language of prophecy is veiled under symbols, it never is used at random, and never fails to carry along with it some very real, definite, and appropriate meaning. We say, then, without hesitation, that the figure here used by St. John is a most appro- priate one to express a most remarkable cha- PROPHECIES CONCERNING ANTICHRIST. 163 racteristic of Turkish warfare, one which at the time constituted a striking difference be- tween the Turkish armies and those against whom they directed tlicir victorious force. We refer to the use of firearms, which were first employed on an extensive scale and with apal- IHIL; success by the Turks. When we reflect upon this remarkable fact, and the effect pro- dneed upon the minds of men by the heavy guns and enormous cannon used by the Otto- man Turks with such deadly effect, we can hardly CODCeive a more appropriate symbol than the one used by the Apostle, "that the beast wrought great wonders, so that he m