power, concentrated in an individual ruler, who will be utterly "destroyed at the coming of the Lord, and at the same time the belief may be maintained that the Antichrist described by Daniel and St. Paul is not a man, but an institution or organized power such as a kingdom or the papacy.
The third position assumed by Bellarmin is that the Anti- christ is still future. In this way he endeavours to make it plain that the papacy is not Antichrist. But, as just said, even if an Antichrist, and even the Antichrist kclt «£ox»7v, is yet to come, that would not prove that the papacy is not the power predicted by the Apostle as the Man of Sin, and the mystical Babylon as pre- dicted in the Apocalypse.
Bellarmin says that the Holy Spirit gives us six signs of Anti- christ, from which it is plain that he has not yet appeared. Two of these signs precede his coming, the universal proclamation of the Gospel, and the utter destruction of the Roman Empire ; two are to attend it, namely, the preaching of Enoch and Elias, and persecutions so severe as to cause the cessation of all public wor- ship of God ; and two are to follow his appearance ; his utter destruction after three years and a half ; and the end of the world. The passages on which he relies to prove that Enoch and Elias are to come and oppose themselves to Antichrist, and to preserve the elect, are Malachi iv., Ecclesiasticus xliv. and xlviii., Matthew xvii. 11 (Jesus said, " Elias truly shall first come and restore all things "), and Revelation xi. 3, where the appearance of the two witnesses, who were to prophesy two thousand two hundred and sixty days, is foretold. As modern evangelical interpreters agree with Bellarmin in so many other points, so they agree with him in teaching that there is to be a second appearance of Elias, before the second advent of Christ. Luthardt understands Matthew xvii. 11 as predicting such reappearance of the Old Testament prophet. He was to be one, and Moses the other of the two wit- nesses spoken of in Revelation xi. 3. Of course, says Luthardt, Elias and Moses are to reappear in the sense in which Elias appeared in the person of John the Baptist.1
Fourthly, according to Bellarmin, Antichrist is to be a Jew, and probably of the tribe of Dan. He is to claim to be the Mes- siah, and this claim is to be recognized by the Jews. In virtue of his Messiahship he sets himself against Christ, and puts him- self in his place, and arrogates the reverence, the obedience, the universal dominion and the absolute authority, which rightfully
1 Luthardt, Lehre von den letzten Dingen, p. 46. vol. in. 53
834 PART IV. Ch. III. —THE SECOND ADVENT.
belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. The seat of his dominion is to be Jerusalem. In the Temple restored in that city, he is to take his seat as God, and exalt himself above all that is called God. He is called " the little horn," because the Jews are compara- tively a small nation. But he is to subdue one kingdom after another until his dominion as a worldly sovereign becomes abso- lutely universal. The authority urged for this view is princi- pally that of the fathers, many of whom taught that Antichrist was to be a Jew of the tribe of Dan. Appeal was made by those fathers as by their followers to Genesis xlix. 17, where it is said, " Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse-heels, so that his rider shall fall backward." And also to Revelation vii., because in the enumeration of the tribes from which the hundred and forty and four thousand were sealed, the name of Dan is omitted. Bellarmin argues that Anti- christ is to be a Jew from John v. 43 : "I am come in my Father's name and ye (Jews) receive me not : if another shall come in his own name, him ye (Jews) will receive." That is, will receive as the Messiah ; but the Jews, as Bellarmin argues, would never receive as the Messiah any one who was not himself a Jew. The principal Scriptural ground of the opinion that Antichrist is to be a Jew is founded on Revelation xi. 8, where the seat of his dominion is said to be the great city " where also our Lord was crucified." In answer to this argument it may be said, first, that admitting that the literal Jerusalem is to be the seat of the kingdom of Antichrist, it does not follow that either he or his kingdom is to be Jewish. Many interpreters hold that the Jews, instead of being the supporters of Antichrist, are to be the principal objects of his malice, and that it is by persecuting and oppressing them that he is to get possession of their holy city and profane their temple far more atrociously than it was profaned by Antiochus Epiphanes. And secondly, interpreters so different as Hengstenberg and Mr. David N. Lord, agree in understanding the predictions in Revelation xi. to refer not to the literal Jerusalem and its Temple, but to that of which they were the symbols. The New Jerusalem is the symbol of the purified and glorified Church ; the city where our Lord was crucified, the symbol of the worldly and nationalized Church.1
i Mr. Lord says: "The place where Christ was crucified, was an open elevated space without the walls of Jerusalem, and on one of the principal entrances to the city. The street where the dead body of the witnesses is to be placed, represents parts therefore of the ten kingdoms, bearing a relation of conspicuity and importance to the apostate hierarchies, like that which the great entrance to Jerusalem that passed along by the foot of Calvary bore to that city ; — parts of those kingdoms from which those hierarchies largely