erally, and with such effect been applied, is a sort of conduct, which will not so readily find an excuse, much less a justification.

3. Lastly, whatever becomes of the truth, or importance of the doctrine, the antiquity of it is not to be disputed. For we are authorized to affirm, on the most certain grounds of history, that a Roman power, commonly called Antichrist, was expected to arise in the latter times, by the primitive Christians; and that the Imperial, was not deemed to be that power, so long as it subsisted. It is, further, unquestionable that not the emperor, but the bishop or church of Rome, was afterwards thought entitled to the name of Antichrist by many persons of that communion, for several successive centuries, previous to the era of the Reformation.

These facts should abate the wonder, at least, which some express at hearing the names of the pope and Antichrist pronounced together. They must surely convince every man, that this language, whatever foundation it may, or may not have, in the prophecies, is not taken up without precedents and authorities: and that the notion, conveyed by it, is not a conceit of yesterday, which sprung out of recent prejudices, and novel interpretations. This, I say, is a conclusion which every man must

draw from the premises, laid down in this discourse: and this, for the present, is the main use I would request you, to make of those premises.

SERMON VIII.

PREJUDICES AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF ANTICHRIST.

1 EP. JOHN ii. 18.

-Ye have heard, that Antichrist shall come. ONE of the principal prejudices against the doctrine of Antichrist, as understood and applied by protestant divines, arises out of a circumstance, which was just touched in the close of my last discourse, and is of importance enough to be now resumed and more particularly considered.

I. It is well known that, when the Reformation was set on foot in the sixteenth century, this great work was every where justified and conducted on the general principle, "That the pope, or at least the church of Rome, was Antichrist."

"Now men of sense, who have looked no farther into the subject, and yet remember, as they

easily may, the bitterness, the policy, the fraud, too commonly observable in the conduct of religious (as of other) parties, easily fall into suspicion, That this cry of Antichrist was only an artifice of the time, or at least an extravagance of it; when the minds of men were intensely heated against each other, and when of course no arms would be refused, that might serve to annoy or distress the enemy.

In these circumstances, it was natural enough, it will be said, for angry men to see that in the prophecies which was not contained in them; or for designing men to feign that which they did not see; in order the more effectually to carry on the cause in which they had embarked, and to seduce the unwary multitude into their quarrel. In short, the passions of the reformed, it is readily presumed, had, some way or other, conjured up this spectre of Antichrist, as a convenient engine, by which they might either gratify their own spleen, or excite that of the people; the prophecies all the while being no further concerned in the question, than as they were wrested for these purposes (as they frequently have been, in like cases) from their true and proper meaning."

To remove this capital prejudice (which, more than any other, hath, perhaps, diverted serious men from giving a due attention to this argument) was