dignitaries remark, the same thing as if it had been said, ke ruleth in the church of Christ.

'There was,' says the bp. of Bristol, some obstacle that hindered his appearance, the apostle speaketh doubtfully whether thing or person.' By this prelate and by most other writers, the Roman empire is conceived to have been this obstacle. But, in the opinion of Mr. Evanson, it was the paganism of the Roman emperors.' This, says he, so long as it is continued, must, in the very nature of things, prevent the civil power of the empire from being exerted to establish and support any nominally Christian church. It is true, this interpretation makes the civil magistrate the chief cause and supporter of the general confirmed apostacy from true Christianity. And it appears to me impossible, that it could have been effected by any other means. Even within the precincts of the Holy See, the Romish superstition is maintained solely by the power the pope possesseth as a civil potentate, not as an ecclesiastic; and within the dominions of other princes, when the authority and influence of the church of Rome extended farthest, it never did nor could enforce obedience to its decrees and ordinances, but under the protection and by the aid of the civil government in each particular country'.'

St. Paul tells the Thessalonians that the COMING of this man of sin would be not only with all power, but with signs and lying wonders. And if it be thought right to understand this circumstance as descriptive of the appearance of the first man, who usurped a spiritual tyranny over the minds of his fellow-citizens, and impiously arrogated to himself the power of ordaining articles of faith and religious doctrine, which are not required of Christians in the gospel, it is most remarkably applicable to the person of Constantine; for his conversion happened when he was at the head of a powerful army, and was pretended to have

been occasioned by the miraculous vision of a crucifix in the clouds, whose celestial inscription promised him victory, upon his adopting the profession signified by that sign or emblem. But, from the application which the Protestants uniformly make of this part of the prophecy to the fabulous legends of the Roman Catholics, I conclude, there is something in the turn of expression of the whole sentence taken together, which is thought more adapted to the pastors of the apostate church, than to the temporal potentate, by whose power the apostacy was to be established. And, even in this sense, your Lordship well knows the prophecy will apply as strongly to the ecclesiastics of the fourth century, as to those of the church of Rome. The pretended miracles of that period are very numerous'.'

The prophecy of the man of sin sitting in the temple of God, and shewing himself there as God, seemed,' says Dr. Cressener, to be in its first formation by the conduct of some of the Roman emperors soon after the advancement of Christianity upon the throne. The very first fruits of the imperial authority in the church, in the days of Constantine, and even before the full end of the Pagan persecution with Licinius, were the depositions and banishments of the Arian bishops.-The Roman councils began also at the same time to be accounted the infallible oracles of God. Constantine says of the council of Nice, that it was inspired by the will of God himself. And that that which seemed good to them was to be taken for nothing less than the mind of God. To pronounce the peremptory curses of the church upon conscientious dissenters in such speculative and abstruse matters as these, and to deprive them of the necessary comforts of this life for it, and thus to over-awe them to take that for the inspired will of God, which they would apprehend to be no more at best than the philosophical exercises of men's wits, did plainly manifest

8 Let. to bp. Hurd. p. 26.

9 Socrates, lib. I. Ep. Constantini ad Ecclesiam Alexandriæ.

a somewhat too assuming spirit in the government of the church in those days1.'

It

Perhaps it will be urged, that the excellence of Constantine's character forbids such an explication of the prophecy as Mr. Evanson has suggested. But the fact is, that a man may, by acts of persecution and the exercise of spiritual tyranny, betray the genuine features of the man of sin, and come fairly within the line of the prophetic description, though his actions should be far from being particularly vicious. Besides, is it not true, that the excellency of this emperor's character is rather problematical"? must,' says Mosheim, be confessed, that the life and actions of this prince were not such as the Christian religion demands from those who profess to believe its sublime doctrines. That he should have taken away the lives of so many of his relations, had not his disposition been cruel, seems scarcely credible. He put to death, says Dr. Lardner, 'Maximian Herculius, his wife's father; Bassianus, husband of his sister Anastasia; Crispus, his own son; Fausta, his wife; Licinius, husband of his sister Constantia; and Licinianus, or Licinius the younger, his nephew,' Crispus, at the time when Constantine deprived him of that life which he had once given him, was 25 years of age; and, says Dr. Lardner, a person of great qualifica tions, who had been serviceable to his father in the wars with the Franks and with Licinius.-Eusebius would have excused this thing, if he had been able; but he saw no other method he could take, but to pass it by in utter silence. The younger Licinius could not then be more than a little above eleven years of age, if so much: he is also spoken of as a hopeful youth".'

10 Judgm. on the Rom. Ch. p. 56.

11 The character of Constantine, says Mr. Gibbon, "has fixed the attention, and divided the opinions, of mankind.' Decl. and Fall of the R. E. vol. III. p. 99.

12 Eccl. Hist. vol. I. p. 262.

13 Lardner's works, 1788, vol. IV, p. 174, 176. think, that Constantine was a believer in Christianity.

There is reason to
But his belief was

Like most other members of the English hierarchy, bp. Newton applies the prophecy under consideration exclusively to the pope of Rome; and describes the man of sin as not having been fully manifested before the eighth century, when Pepin and Charlemagne attacked and defeated the kings of Lombardy on behalf of the pontiffs, and laid the foundation of their independent authority'. But surely the coming of the man of sin cannot be explained of the papal power; because he was already come, and had long been so, before the power of the pontiffs was established or acknowleged in Europe. One should be tempted to suspect, were not the fact known to be otherwise, that there was a wide chasm in ecclesiastical history, and that the bp. of Bristol, and those who coincide with him in sentiment, had never read of the fundamental corruptions, which were incorporated with Christianity between the commencement of the Fourth, and that of the Eighth, century. In truth, the Fourth century was the period, in which almost every kind of spiritual usurpation, and almost every species of superstition, were introduced and encouraged. To those who doubt whether the usurpations and superstitions of that century were tinged with the dark stain of antichristianism, I recommend as worthy of their attention, first the words of our apostle, who de

vain, for it produced not the fruits of virtuous conduct. When a Christian, he behaved far worse than he had before done when a pagan. Mr. Gibbon asserts, and the assertion is not entirely destitute of foundation, that as he gradually advanced in the knowlege of truth, he proportionably declined in the practice of virtue.' vol. III, p. 274. "It is probable,' says archdeacon Paley, that Constantine declared himself on the side of the Christians, because they were the powerful party.' Evid. of Christianity, vol. III. p. 37. Not very different is the language of Dr. Lardner. Speaking of Constantine and Maxentius, he says, of those who were

contending for worldly power and empire, one actually favored and flattered them, and another may be suspected to have joined himself to them, partly from considerations of interest. So greatly had this people increased under external disadvantages of all sorts!' vol. IV. p. 161.

14 See vol. II. p. 380-385.

- 15 This was in the years 754, 755, and 774.

clares, that even in his days the mystery of iniquity was already working; and secondly those of St. John, who says in his first epistle, many false teachers" are gone out into the world, and again a verse or two farther, speaking of the spirit of antichrist, that even now already is it in the world".

The man of sin is represented by St. Paul as not merely domineering in the church of Christ, but domineering there as if he were a God. And which of the established churches of Europe has not assumed claims, and exercised powers, which only omniscience and infallibility would authorise? In some respects, indeed, the protestant hierarchies have violated the rights of conscience and of private judgment in a more indecent manner than the church of Rome herself. The Papists, says archdeacon Blackburne, in the controversies carried on between them and the Protestants, alleged (what indeed was very true) that the most considerable of the points in dispute among THEM had never been decided e cathedra, and so were left open to amicable debate without breach of unity; whereas the doctrines controverted among Protestants were solemnly established in their several confessions, and the confessions themselves ratified by oaths, subscriptions, &c. and the belief of them thereby made an indispensable condition of communion'."

But I will again quote the words of the apostle, who describes the man of sin as a personage, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. The dominion of the man of sin, says Mr. Wakefield in his paraphrase on this passage, 'will not be a political dominion, directed to the civil and secular concerns of the community: his tribunal will not

16 In the common version it is; prophets in Mr. Wakefield's, teachers. 17 IV.1, 3. In ch. ii. of the same epistle he had said (v. 18), even now are there MANY ANTICHRISTS.

18 Confessional, 3d ed. p. 10.