Since it has been our fate to behold with our own eyes the rise of this wonderful power, it will not be uninteresting so inquire in what manner the way was prepared for its developement. As for the principles of Antichrist, they were working even in the apostolic age: but, would we learn the real cause of his ultimate success in propagating so widely his blasphemous opinions, we must turn our eyes to the corruptions of Popery. Daniel places the atheistical tyrant after the era of the Reformation, and consequently after the period of thick intellectual darkness which overspread the Roman world during the middle ages. Here then we are to look for the rise of the monster and history will abundantly point out to us the steps by which he did rise. "When the revival of letters enabled men to see the mass of absurdities, contradictions, and impieties, which were taught by the Church of Rome to be essential parts of Christianity, scepticism was the natural result of this discovery. Reason, just risen from her slumber, seized the truths presented to her view with all the eagerness which novelty could excite. Disgusted with surrounding bigotry and superstition, impatient of control, and dazzled with the light though glimmering which now broke through the darkness of the middle ages, she too seldom distinguished religion from the gross corruptions with which it had been loaded; and, usurping the seat of judgment, she often decided upon subjects not amenable to her tribunal."* As the period of the last days gradually drew nearer, they of the Apostacy, utterly ignorant of the genuine Gospel of Christ, and having refused to embrace the blessed truths of the Reformation, were fully prepared to be carried about by every wind of doctrine, and to be deceived by those false teachers, who privily† brought in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them. Hence they became the easy dupes of Anti * Hist. the Interp. Vol. ii. p. 124. + No precept is so often repeated by Voltaire, as "Strike, but conceal your hand." Secret societies were the main engine of the antichristian conspirators. By means of these the pupils of the Illuminati were almost imperceptibly led from one degree of wickedness to another, till at length they were plunged in all the horrors of undisguised atheism. See Kett's His. the Inter. of Proph. Vol. IL p. 152-194, christ; and were soon led from scepticism even into absolute atheism. In short, as it hath been most justly observed, "to Popery, to the errors and defects of Popery, we cannot but impute, in a great degree, the origin of that revolutionary spirit, which has gone so far towards the subversion of the ancient establishments of religion and civil government. I should be sorry to give pain to any one of the unhappy victims of the French revolution I most truly sympathize with their sufferings; but we must not allow our charity to injure our principles, or to pervert our judgment. The heavy blow, which has been struck at the very existence of Christianity, must be charged, as I said, in a great degree, to many erroneous opinions, and some pernicious institutions of that form of religion, from which the wisdom of our ancestors separated our national church. The maintenance of opinions, unfounded on the authority of the Gospel, and inconsistent with its purity, has given occasion to minds, perhaps naturally averse to religion, to reject the most valuable evidences of Christianity. By the abuses of religion, such minds have been led into all the extravagances of deism and atheism, of revolution and anarchy. They had not the discernment, or the candour, to distinguish between Christianity, and its corruptions. The conspiracy against the religion of Christ, which originated in these delusions, burst on the devoted monarchy of France; and involved that unhappy country in such scenes of blood, rapine, and ungovernable excess, as revolt every principle of justice, every feeling of humanity."* What may in some sense be called the abortive offspring of Popery has been made an instrument in the hands of God to visit the iniquities of its parent. The blood of those, who repented not of the works of their hands, their idolatry, their murders, their sorceries, their spiritual fornication, their pious or rather impious frauds, "has been prodigally shed: and it is very remarkable, that the French anarchists have introduced the horrors of war principally into popish countries; as if those na *Bp. of Durham's Charge, 1801. p. 2, 3. ........... tions, which profess the purity of the protestant religion, were providentially preserved from danger."* Not that all protestant countries have escaped. The mere name of protestantism is of little importance, when its spirit is no more. They, who have apostatized from the religion of their fathers, must expect to partake of the vials of God's wrath. Though Antichrist has reared his head in a popish country, and though he has prevailed most in regions once devoted to the papal superstition, yet the Apostacy was not to be his only stage of action. His principles have tainted numbers even under protestant governments, agreeably to the sure word of prophecy, that the false teachers of the last days should "allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error:" upon which the Apostle remarks, "It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them." II. It will be proper for me now to consider an objection, which may possibly be urged against the foregoing interpretation of the character of the infidel king: The French people have at present thrown aside their atheistical hatred to Christianity, and have once more avowed themselves Papists. 1. To this it might be sufficient to answer, that, although Popery be once more established in France, it is evidently a mere political puppet, as little regarded by the people as by their rulers. The fiat of a convention • Zouch on Prophecy, p. 62, 63. + 2 Peter ii. 1, 18, 21. We may form a tolerable idea of the present state of religion in France by attending to the confessed machinations of the chief of the Illuminati. "All the German schools," says this indefatigable propagator of atheism; "and the benevo lent Society, are at last under our direction-Lately we bave got possession of the Bartholomew Institution for young clergymen, having secured all their supporters. Through this we shall be able to supply Bavaria with fit priests- We must acquire the direction of education, of church management, of the professorial chair, and of the pulpit. We must preach the warmest concern for humanity, and make people indifferent to all other relations. We must gain the reviewers, and the journalists, and the booksellers." (Hist. the Inter. Vol. ii. p. 194, 195.) Accordingly, when Christianity was nominally at least restored in the year 1795 by the repeal of the laws of intoleration, pastoral letters were published by the revolutionary bishops, those meet successors of Judas in the Apostolical college, in which the Gospel is represented as being the original declaration of the rights of man, and in which the union of the throne and the altar is stated to be the most antichristian of political ........ or of an usurper may set up a form of religion; but it is not so easy a matter to eradicate the work of years, to weed out of the minds of the governed those principles of atheism and infidelity which have long been so industriously disseminated among them.* Hopeless indeed must be the task of converting a whole nation, when it is undertaken, as at present, by one who has alternately professed himself an Atheist, a Mohammedun, and a Papist. 2. Perhaps however a more weighty answer than this may be furnished to the objection now under consideration. Humanly speaking, and judging from the existing political appearance of Europe, the concurring prophecies of Daniel and St. John, relative to the duration of the great Apostacy, would not have received their complete accomplishment, had not Antichrist become the or religious institutions. "These bishops were commonly recommended from the great mother club at Paris" (the united club of atheistical Jacobins and German Illuminati, who had now, according to the wily advice of their founder, acquired the whole management of the church, and would doubtless take care to supply France with fit priests,} "to the affiliated societies, and by their means elected. Of course the only qualifi cation, regarded in prelates so chosen, was the orthodoxy, not of their religious, but political creed. Very few indeed of the new rectors and vicars were men of character; and as, after all, many were still wanting for the vacant cures, many of the laity were ordained with little or no inquiry." We may judge what a horde of banditti these republican clergy are, since the constitutional vicar general to the new Bishop of Perigueux has had the grace to acknowledge that even be is ashamed of them. With much truth, I doubt not, he represents them as a set of " vagabonds and libertines, who had not found admittance into civilized society." He seems however for a moment to have forgotten, that such were the fittest subjects for the recommendation of the great mother club at Paris, the very men after Voltaire's and Weishaupt's own hearts. Hist. the Interp. Vol. ii. p. 255, 256, 257. Let an eye-witness, and certainly no prejudiced eye-witness, be heard upon this point. "When I was myself in France," says the late Dr. Priestley, " in the year 1774, I saw sufficient reason to believe, that hardly any person of eminence in Church or State, and especially in a great degree eminent in philosophy or literature (whose opinions in all countries are sooner or later adopted by others), were believers in Christianity; and no person will suppose, that there has been any change in favour of Christianity in the last twenty years. A person, I believe now living, and one of the best informed men in the country, assured me very gravely, that (paying me a compliment) I was the first person he had ever met with, of whose understanding he had any opinion, who pretended to believe Christianity. To this all the company assented. And not only were the philosophers, and other leading men in France, at that time unbelievers in Christianity or Deists, but Atheists denying the being of a God." (Priestley's Fast Sermon, 1794.) The sect, of which Dr. Priestley was so strenuous an advocate, received as whimsical a compliment from Voltaire, as the Doctor himself did from the grave person mentioned by him in the preceding citation. The philosopher of Ferney was willing to tolerate the Socinians, during his war with Christ, "because," says he, "Julian would have favoured them; and I hate what Julian would have hated, and despise what Julian would have despised.” ........... avowed supporter of it. If we cast our eyes over a map of the world, we shall perceive, that protestantism is securely planted in the North of Europe and America, and in most of the numerous colonies of the English ; that the Greek church, under the powerful protection of Russia, occupies all the East and North-East of Europe; and that the southern regions of that continent, with their dependent foreign possessions, alone acknowledge, the supremacy of the Pope. Now it is an undoubted truth, that the whole of those southern regions, with the solitary exception of the Austrian states and those debilitated and dispirited by a long and unsuccessful war, are to all intents and purposes mere provinces of France, trembling at her nod and subservient to all her tyrannical schemes of aggrandisement.* This being the case, where would have been the pupal Apostacy, had France persevered in her profession of atheism; and had she further determined, according to the original plans of the Jacobinical Illuminati, that all her vassals should be atheists likewise? She laboured under no physical inability of overturning the Papacy, and had once actually to all appearance entirely subverted it but her blind fury was restrained by Him, who with equal ease can calm the troubled ocean, and still the madness of the people. The end was not yet: the 1260 years had not expired and the Apostacy had to run that part of its career which was contemporary with the reign of Antichrist. Hence, rather than one jot or one tittle of all God's word should fail, the infidel king has become, by the overruling providence of God, a supporter of the very superstition which he had once laboured to destroy. 3. The last and most conclusive answer however, which may be given to the objection is this. When thoroughly examined, the objection in question will be found in reality to afford an argument for the present mode of interpretation, instead of an argument against it. Unless Antichrist, at some period or another of his existence, had actually leagued himself with the Papacy, the prophecies, which relate to the great events that are a This observation is even more true at present (March 26, 1806), than when it was originally made, |