on the other he.ad, repudiates this hypothesis e.s extravagant: "Some persons of extravagant imagine.tion," he observes, "suppose that Nero, having been conveyed to a distant region, i8 still alive; and to him they apply the Sybilline verses ooncernint:r 'the fugitive who slew his own mother, being to come from the uttermost boundarie~ of the earth ; ' as if he wh~ was the first, sha 11 also be the _lRst persecutor, and thus prove the forerunner of Antichrist. But we ought not to bcheve those who, affirming that lhe two prophets, Enoch and Elijah, have been translat_ed into some remote place, that t,hey might attend our Lord when he shall come to the 3udgment, also fe.ncy that Nero is to appear hereafter as the forerunner of the devil, when he shall come to lay waste the earth and overthrow mankind." 1 The opponents of hierarchical power in the Middle Ages regarded the pope as Anti- christ, and consirlered the passage in question as a prediction of the origin and growth of the papal authority. 'l'hus as early as the close of the tenth century (A.D, 991), Arnulph, Bishop of Orleans, declared at the Council of Rheims that if the Roman pontiff was destitute of charity, and puffed up with knowledge, he was Antichrist, This view was entertained by Robert Grostetc the celebrated Bishop of Lincoln, by Savonarola, by the Albigenses, the W aldenses, Wickliffe and the Wickliffites, the Hussites, and all those seers who were in opposition to the Roman hierarchy. Even St. Bernard uses this bold language : "The ministers of Christ are become the servants of Antichrist, and the beast of the Apocalypse has seated himself in the chair of :-\t. Peter." 2 The Rcf,,rmers in general adopted this opinion. Such was the view of Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, Melancthon, Beza, and Bucer, and, amO'\g English Reformers, Cranmer, Hidley, Latimer, Hooper, and Jewell. According to thes.n, the apostasy is the falling away f,om e'l'angclical doctrine to the traclitions of men and the corruptions of popery; the ~'Ian of Sin, or Antichrist, is not, as the Fathers conceh·ed, an individual, but the succes- ,;ion of po1 ,es-series et successio hominum; and the re~training power is the Roman empire, out of whose ruins the papacy arose. The Lutheran Church inserted this opinion as an article in their creed (Articl. Smale., ii. 4). In the dedication of the translators of the Authorized Version to King James, it is a.~sumed that the pope is the Man of Sin; and that monarch is complimented for writing in the defence of the truth, which gave " such a blow unto that Man of Sin as will not be healed." And the assertion that the pope is Antichrist and the Man of Sin forms one of the articles of the Westminster Confession: "There is no other head of the Chnrch but the Lord Jesus Christ; nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that Man of Sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ aud all that is called God" (eh. xxv. 6). The Romanists, on the other hand, were naturally led by opposition to consider the passagb as a prediction of the rise and growth of Protestantism. The apostasy was the falling away from the Romish Church by the doctrines of the Reformation, The Mau of Sin denoted heretics in geueral, but especially Luther, the chief of the Reformers. The restraining influence was the German empire, considered as a continuation of the Roman empire. This, however, was not the general opinion of the Church of Rome; most of their theologians supposed that Antichrist, or the Man of Sin, was an individual whose coming is yet future. The Greek Church was naturally led to regard the prophecy as a prediction of Mohammedanism; the apostasy was the falling away of many Greek and Oriental Ghurches to Mohammedanism ; the man of sin was Mohammed; and the restraining .n.fluence the power of the Homan empire. 3 Some of the Reformers (Melancthon, Bucer, Musculus) considered that there were two Antichrists-one belonging to the Eastern CL 1rch and the other to the Western; the Eastern Antichrist was Mohammed, and the
erroneously snpposed to be alive. (See a roost interesting note on this Nero fable by Aroh- deacon LeA, in the' Speaker's Commentary,' New Testament, vol. iv. p. 759, ete. See a!BO Bleek'1 'Lectures on the Apocalypse,' p. 86, eto.; Diliiterdieck's • Offenbarung Johannis,' p 521, et,i.) 1 Laci!Lutins, ' De Mortibus Persecutorurn,' o. iL 1 Quoted by Bishop Hurd,' On Prophecy,' vol. ii. pp. 28, 29. 1 Innocent Ill. endeavoured to 1tir up a crusade by the declaration that Mohammed wu the Mau of Siu. on. 11, 1-17.] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 66