The Protestant, however, is not equally disposed to bow with submission to what the Romanists would erect into an absolute oracle. Readily allowing their just praise to the Fathers, but refusing to admit their expositorial infallibility, he sees plainly enough, that, in their attempt to interpret and apply, they are partly right and partly wrong. They are right, where they adhere to the explicit declarations of the prophecy they are wrong, where they give the reins to their own unchastened

As the old Fathers rightly teach, the little horn springs up synchronically with the ten larger horns. Hence, if the ten larger horns sprang up in the fifth and sixth centuries; the little horn must have been springing up, on the Latin platform, during the very same period. Such is the result, which inevitably follows from the Bishop's unguarded concession. If he places the rise of the ten horns in the fifth and sixth centuries; he cannot be allowed, in plain contradiction both to the evident tenor of the prophecy and to the very just arrangement of the old Fathers, fo place the rise of the eleventh synchronical horn in some yet future and undefined period. He would, I think, have shewn more of the wisdom of the serpent, had he stuck close to his predecessor in exposition, Cornelius a Lapide: for Cornelius, aware of what must follow from a concession that the ten larger horns are the ten Gothic kingdoms which partitioned the Western Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries, stoutly maintains, after the old Fathers, the still remote futurity of the ten horns; which enables him also consistently to maintain the still remote futurity of their evident contemporary the little horn.

Bishop Walmesley is abundantly violent and acrimonious and abusive: but, through one unguarded concession wrung from him by the unequivocal attestation of history, the Romish cause has, in his unskilful hands, suffered no small damage.

imagination. They are right, where they say that the man of sin was to be an eleventh Roman king, who should rise and reign synchronically with ten other kings among whom the Empire should be partitioned: but they are wrong, or at least they speak without a shadow of authority, when they gratuitously assure us, that he will be a wicked individual born of the tribe of Dan, and that he will be revealed immediately before the end of the world.

2. It is not my purpose to enter into any formal discussion of the character of the man of sin: that task has already been performed so well and so satisfactorily by Bishop Newton, that it were plainly superfluous to undertake it afresh'. I would rather choose to enter upon the topic in a chronological point of view: for here it is, I apprehend, that my predecessors have mainly failed. Judiciously adopting the identification of the early Fathers, they have circumstantially shewn, beyond the power of confutation, that the man of sin, like the little persecuting Roman horn, is no single individual who will appear immediately before the end of the world, but that he is a succession of individuals who jointly constitute the governing power of the Papacy: yet, while they have been thus successful in circumstantial exposition, they have been less happy in their chronological interpretation of the prophecy; though, without a just

'See Bp. Newton's Dissert. on the Proph. dissert. xxii.

chronological arrangement, we shall never be able to make the prediction of the man of sin and the prediction of the little Roman horn quite satisfac torily quadrate.

St. Paul is very careful in specifying the precise time, when the man of sin is to be revealed.

Something, it appears, was in existence at the period when the Apostle wrote, which so operated as to prevent the revelation of the man of sin: but, when this impediment should be taken away from the midst, then that lawless one should stand forth openly displayed to the whole world.

What the impediment was, St. Paul does not specifically tell us: but it is clear, that he had orally told the Thessalonians, though (for whatever reason) he did not choose to commit the matter to writing; because he reminds them, that he had TOLD them, these things while personally present, and that consequently they KNEW what was the impediment or the withholding power.

(1.) Now it is not easy to believe, that a secret thus communicated would be readily forgotten. Doubtless, by that sort of freemasonry which characterised the primitive Christians, it would soon be spread far and wide throughout the Church.

Accordingly, we find an unanimous persuasion among the Fathers, that the impediment, thus darkly alluded to in the written prophecy, was the Roman Empire: and the reason, which they give why the Apostle did not venture to commit it to paper, is; lest any such open declaration, that the

Eternal Empire was destined to fall and by its overthrow to make room for the man of sin, should, by a jealous government, be construed into an act of treasonable disaffection.

On this interpretation of the impediment, they evidently built their notion, that the man of sin was not to be revealed until immediately before the end of the world. For they had learned from Daniel, that the well-known symbol of the Roman Empire was to be destroyed, when the judgment was set and when the books were opened. This they supposed to be the general consummation of all things and, as the destruction of the Roman Empire was to occur at this very late period, they were thence led to place the revelation of the man of sin immediately before the day of judgment. Yet both they and the Papists after them argued very inaccurately even on their own principles. According to the old tradition of the Church, the impediment to the revelation of the man of sin was the Roman Empire; so that, when the Empire was removed, the man of sin was to be revealed. Hence, according to this tradition, the Empire is removed before the revelation of the man of sin. But, according to Daniel, the chronological order is exactly the reverse. The little horn or the man of sin is revealed before the removal of the Empire and, so far is the little horn from being revealed after the removal of the Empire, that the

1 Dan. vii. 10, 11.

1

little horn and the parent symbol are destroyed synchronically. Hence, if the Empire was to be destroyed at the day of judgment (as the Fathers evidently fancied; for it is this notion alone, which could give even a shadow of plausibility to their crude belief, that the man of sin was to be revealed immediately before the end of the world): it is perfectly clear, that its removal could not make way for the revelation of the man of sin; because the man of sin could not be revealed upon earth after the consummation of all things.

१.

As the Fathers argued thus inconclusively respecting the impediment, so must all other persons do, who believe that impediment to be the Roman Empire as prophetically exhibited by Daniel and St. John. The little Roman horn is confessed by all to be the same character as the man of sin at least, they differ from each other no more, than a community including its government differs from the government of that community. But the little horn is revealed before the destruction of the fourth wild-beast, which is universally allowed to be the symbol of the Roman Empire. Therefore the Roman Empire, as prophetically exhibited by

Dan. vii. 11, 24-26. Yet Jerome, commenting on 2 Thess. ii. 7, says: Donec regnum, quod nunc tenet, de medio auferatur, priusquam Antichristus revelatur. And again, commenting on Jerem. xxv. 26, he says, yet more fully: Eum qui tenet, Romanum Imperium ostendit. Nisi enim hoc destructum fuerit sublatumque de medio, juxta prophetiam Danielis, Antichristus ante non veniet.