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1682) ; of Victorinus, A.D. 270 (MM. Pair. Magna, iii, 136, Col. Agrip. 1618); of Lactantius, A.D. 300 (Div. Inst, vii, 17) ; of Cyril of Jerusalem, A.D. 315 (Catech. xv, 4) ; of Jerome, A.D. 330 (Op. iv, pars i, 209, Pari- siis, 1G93); of Chrysostom, A.D. 347 (Comm. in 11 Thess.) ; of Hilary of Poitiers, A.D. 350 (Comm. in Matt.); of Augustine, A.D. 354 (De Civil. Dei, xx, 19) ; of Ambrose, A. D. 380 (Comm. in Luc). The authors of the Sibylline Oracles, A.D. 150, and of the Apostol- ical Constitutions, Celsus (see Orig. c. Cels. lib. vi), Ephraem Syrus, A.D. 370, Theodoret, A.D. 430, and a few other writers, seem to have regarded the Antichrist as the devil himself, rather than as his minister or an emanation from him. But they may, perhaps, have meant no more than to express the identity of his character and his power with that of Satan. Each of the writers to whom we have referred gives his own judgment with respect to some particulars which may lie expected in the Antichrist, while they all agree in representing him as a person about to come shortly be- fore the glorious and final appearance of Christ, and to be destroyed by His presence. Justin Martyr speaks of him as the man of the apostasy, and dwells chiefly on the persecutions which he would cause. Irenanis describes him as summing up the apostasy in himself; as having his seat at Jerusalem ; as identi- cal with the Apocalyptic Beast (c. 28); as foreshad- owed by the unjust judge; as being the man who 'should come in his own name,' and as belonging to the tribe of Dan (c. 30). Tertullian identifies him with the Beast, and supposes him to be about to arise on the fall of the Roman Empire (De Ees. Cam. e. 25). Origen describes him in Eastern phrase as the child of the devil and the counterpart of Christ. Hippoly- tus understands the Koman Empire to be represented by the Apocalyptic Beast, and the Antichrist by the False Prophet, who would restore the wounded Beast by his craft and by the wisdom of his laws. Cyprian sees him typified in Antiochus Epiphanes (Exhort, ad Mart. c. 11). Victorinus, with several others, misun- standing Paul's expression that the mystery of iniqui- ty was in his day working, supposes that the Anti- christ will be a revivified hero; Lactantius, that lie will be a king of Syria, born of an evil spirit ; Cyril, that he will be a magician, who by his arts will get the mastery of the Boman Empire. Jerome describes him as the son of the devil, sitting in the Church as though he were the Son of God ; Chrysostom as avr'i- Qibc, tiq, sitting in the Temple of God, that is, in all the churches, not merely in the Temple at Jerusalem ; Augustine as the adversary holding power for three and a half years — the Beast, perhaps, representing Sa- tan's empire. The primitive belief may be summed up in the words of Jerome (Comm. on Daniel'): 'Let us say that which all ecclesiastical writers have hand- ed down, viz., that at the end of the world, when the Boman Empire is to be destroyed, there will be ten kings, who will divide the Boman world among them ; and there will arise an eleventh little king, who will subdue three of the ten kings, that is, the king of Egypt, of Africa, and of Ethiopia, as we shall here- after show ; and on these having been slain, the seven other kings will also submit. "And behold," he says, "in the ram were the eyes of a man" — this is that we may not suppose him to be a devil or a da?mon, as some have thought, but a man in whom Satan will dwell utterly and bodily — "and a month speaking great things;" for he is "the man of sin, the son of perdition, who sitteth in the temple of God, making himself as God" ' (Op. iv, 511, Col. Agrip. 1616). In his Comment, on Dan. xi, and in his reply to Algasia's eleventh question, he works out the same view in greater detail, the same line of interpretation contin- ued. Andreas of Cassarea, A.D. 550, explains him to he a king actuated by Satan, who will reunite the old Boman Empire and reign at Jerusalem (//;, Apoc. c. xiii); Aretas, A.D. 650, as a king of the Romans, who E
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will reign over the Saracens in Bagdad (In Apoc. c. xiii)." (Smith, s. v.)