All these things were consummated before the year A.D. 450. From A.D. 378 till now, the Church of Rome has undergone no change; but from A.D. 378 till A.D. 450, it had to struggle with other forms of error and apostasy, all which, save the Egyptian,* it absorbed into itself, and has therefore been enabled to stand forth, uncovered and exposed, in all the filthiness of naked sin, unscreened by the presence of surrounding heresies scarcely less hideous.

The condemnation of Dioscorus removed all opposition to Leo; but it also forfeited the magical support and feigned miracles of the Egyptian priesthood. As the partially initiated Italians died off, they left no successors; for they probably remained ignorant of the natural causes which rendered their magic and mesmerism successful, and could do little without prompters of a higher kind. Nor is there reason to believe that any nominal Christians had been admitted to the higher mysteries, any more than modern Methodists to the secrets of Rosycrucianism. The miracles they supposed the result of prayer to the saints, the apparitions of the Virgin, and their wondrous cures, became few and far between; and their only course was to forge statements of them as still occurring in distant places.

From this time the initiated into the mysteries became, in part, alienated from the Romish Church, and were formed into brotherhoods, still perpetuated in the Carbonari, the Jesuits, and the Order of Mizraim; whilst the Popes of that Church sought to absorb all the ancient sects and symbols into that great mystery of iniquity of which they were the head.

Hence, I do not hesitate to believe the restraining power of the Pontiff to be that which letteth the full manifestation of the hatred to Christ, concealed under Virgin worship, " until he be taken out of the way;" and that the Pontiff Mastai Ferretti is just in the same moral position, although, perhaps, not so consciously demoralised in character, as the Pontiff Nero in the days of Paul. Thus the early Church will be right in assuming that restraining power to be the Roman Pontiff.

I call attention to this fact a fact, I believe, never yet questioned that, in A.D. 450, the Pontificate of the Virgin had obtained uncontested control of the whole Christian world, except Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Britain; that all Christians who presumed to expect the return of our Lord were, in the Eastern Empire, forbidden to hold assemblies, to receive office, or dwell in cities; whilst, under Roman or Western rule, they were liable to death; that none now existed, none moved, none * Now perpetuated in the Jesuit.

murmured, but all men, everywhere, at all times, abandoned the worship of Christ for that of "Cybele," or, as they called her, "The Mother of God." Need we wonder that God sent the Gothic invasion to avenge this? Or can we feel surprised at the fearful characteristics of the second seal? Can we doubt, then, that the reign of Satan, through his earthly viceroy, was now established in Rome-that the Mystery of Iniquity was completely removed from Babylon, and the Apostasy set up in its seat upon the Seven Hills? And if the reign of the Apostasy was then established fully, and only declined afterwards, how can we postpone its commencement till A.D. 533? In what respect was its then comparatively decent Bishop more Antichristian than Damasus, or Celestine, or Leo? We believe, from our very heart, that the Pope is the centre and grand master of the Mystery of Iniquity, and that, as such, he is justly called Antichrist, and his Church Babylon, as the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the earth; but we also feel that he was as much so in A.D. 450 as in 1852.

"Is

But we now come to our second question, which, however, is intimately connected with the first; and ask ourselves, the Pope the only Antichrist?" When Stoddart and Conollyconfined for months at Bokhara, in that awful pit of scorpions and toads, and centipedes, because they scorned to deny their Lord were drawn up, and offered life and liberty if they would but renounce his Eternal Godhead, torture and death if they stood firm, yet preferred torture and death to deliverance I ask, whether the Moslem tyrant, who shewed hatred to the Lord, was not an Antichrist as much as the Pope of Rome? When the Greek Church excommunicates, casts out, plunders, bastinadoes her children, if they seek to learn the law of God, I ask, in what is she better than Rome, who sends the Madiais to the galleys; and when her disciples, to provoke the Croat borderers, curse the name of her Lord,* without priestly censure, are they not apostates? Is German pantheism, with its revels over murdered men like Lichnowsky the gallant or were those wild revellers, who, in Paris, defied the Lord to launch his thunderbolts, whilst drowning women, and arranging Republican marriages by thousands, and arraying themselves in garments made of the flayed skins of the noble maidens they had murdered-were they, I ask, not

* This is a common practice on the Austrian border when Romanists and Greeks quarrel, for the Greeks to denounce our Lord as an impostor, having no idea of any Saviour but " the Virgin," of whose real history they are ignorant. We have been assured of this by a gentleman long resident on the Bosniac frontier.

Antichristian too? Were they not, unconsciously it may be, the truest allies of Popery against the truth of God? Were they not all parts, it may be mutinous parts, of that army of which the devil is sovereign, and the Pope his high priest?"

Yet there are difficulties which embarrass the calm consideration of this important topic. On one side, Mr Digby and his followers produce an unbroken chain of testimonies against Popery from Luther till now, and urge us not to weaken their hands in warfare against Rome by our dissent. Yet is it weakening their hands, if we require them to test their ammunition before engaging in the battle? What if the enemy himself have supplied them with cartridges which he has previously damped? Is it not better that this should be discovered first, and not amidst the din of battle?

On the other hand, great and good men contend that Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, and Luther, received the gifts peculiarly required for their own times, but were not endowed with any supernatural insight into future prophecies which were not near fulfilment; that they were right in believing Rome Babylon, and denouncing the Pope as Antichrist, although their natural anxiety for the return of our Lord compelled them to consider too much of prophecy as already fulfilled; and that they were almost, if not entirely, ignorant that the Greek Church existed at all, except in the persons of a few Turkish slaves-Russia being then unknown, whilst no symptoms of pantheism in Germany were yet perceptible. Hence the divines to whom we refer, argue that we must be guided by facts, not by names, and that no passage of Scripture can be considered as fulfilled, unless the exact facts of the alleged fulfilment agree, without straining, force, or dislocation, to the words of the passages produced. They do not believe that in predictions so short and terse, there is any tautology, anything superfluous, anything which has to be explained away. They are not prepared to allow that promises made to Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonian, were only intended for Persians who are said to have lived ninety years after him. They contend, that were the Pope to abdicate his functions, leaving, as Mazzini proposes, the choice of a new Pontiff to universal native suffrage, Europe would continue as Antichristian as before but that the new Pontiff, as leader of the popular will, would only have greater power to persecute; and they argue, that in what are called Protestant interpretations, the Moslem apostasy is mainly, the Greek and Oriental wholly, left out. Further, they contend, that it is unlikely the predictions delivered by Daniel, the dweller in Shushan in

Persia, and declared by him to concern the whole earth, should relate exclusively to the Roman territory, with the very existence of which he was unacquainted, leaving out the far vaster provinces over which he ruled; and that it is scarcely more probable that St John, writing in Greek, to Greek-speaking men, dwellers in Asia, should record only visions of what would occur to Latin-speaking westerns, dwelling in Europe. Yet all these difficulties are contained in that theory which confines the world of prophecy to the Roman empire, although Daniel expressly declares that all four empires are to be in existence at the time of the end, forming together one vast image of Antichrist at the coming of our Lord. The theory of Rome's universal empire has no foundation, except in the lying frauds of the fathers, who sought to obtain for the Pontiff that power which Julius Cæsar, as "Incarnate Deity," had claimed, but never really acquired, and wished to award the dominion of the Pontiff upon the rights falsely attributed to his heathen predecessors.

Let us, then, calmly compare the different powers of evil spoken of in Scripture, and consider not so much how they agree, as in what they differ. If any two differ irreconcilably, we must not suppose them the same. Between all foes to truth, there must of necessity be many points of resemblance, but we can only distinguish them from each by observing in what particulars they are unlike. The French army at Waterloo was one, yet divided between several kinds of troops, each wholly different in costume, in equipments, and in its mode of attack.

The first description afforded in Scripture of the last foe to God and Christ, is found in the seventh chapter of Daniel. Let us weigh well the purport of each word, for none can be parted with. We will endeavour to avoid repeating anything which has ever been said before on either side the question, and then compare it with the description in chapter eighth.

DAN. VII.

7 After this I saw in the nightvisions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly ; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

8 I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns

DAN. VIII.

8 Therefore the he-goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.

9 And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land.

10 And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars