the appearance of the coming of Jesus Christ. — That evil is not only most widely extended, ver. 4, 10, 12, but also very long continued ; and although it rises up by various degrees, yet it is also continuous from its first beginnings (staminibus, threads in weaving the web) even to its end. Now already, says the apostle, the mystery of iniquity is working. It already wrought in the time of the apostles, but more after their death, most of all after the death of the men who were the contemporaries and immediate successors of the apostles (i.e. the apostolic fathers). They do not arrive at the best and wisest conclusion, who enter tain the opinion, that the ideal and rule of the Church lie in the ancient practice (the antiquity) of some of the earliest ages, rather than in the truth itself, seeing that those ages merely re buke the greater declension of posterity [and do not, by the fact of their antiquity, establish their own complete coincidence with the truth].
V. There ivas also a check in the time of Paul, and that check then, and not till then, ceases to exist in the way, when the evil breaks out in all its force. — He who now holdeth (the evil) back [" letteth," Old Engl.], says Paul, until he be taken out of the way. Hence it is evident, that the restraining check was not the preaching of the Gospel, either universal or apostolical. The check remained even after the time of the apostles, who finished their course long before the check ceased to act as a check ; but the preaching of the Gospel is never wholly taken from among men [" out of the way"].
VI. The evil is described first in the abstract, then in the con crete. — The mystery of iniquity is said to be now already work ing ; but after an interval, that Iniquitous one ( Wicked) himself1 shall be revealed. The event turned out corresponding with this order. Not dissimilar is the fact, that in ver. 3, previously, the appellation given is first apostasy, then the Man of Sin. In preaching of Christ, it was said first, in the abstract, the kingdom of heaven is at hand ; then Christ Himself, with His glory, was more openly manifested. So, on the opposite side, the testi mony is similarly framed concerning [the coining] evil. The
ver. 8, the embodiment and incarnation of the previous ED.