Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

subject has undergone since the reformation, the chief mysteries of popery are prudently (in protestant countries) kept out of sight, and its hard and prominent features softened down, and the paint and patches raked off in so great a degree, that the good old woman Jezebel looks no more like the portrait drawn for her in the prophecies, than pope Joan was like a christian bishop, when she was taken in labour in the public streets of Rome, in pontificalibus, and in the middle of a holy procession.*

*The prophecies, in many instances, have wonderfully received even a literal as well as a figurative accomplishment. The history of POPE JOAN is established upon the testimony of so many authors of undoubted credit, many hundred years before LUTHER, that the fact cannot be doubted. This was pope John VIII. the immediate successor of Leo IV. and before Benedict III. and was afterwards called Joan. Her name was Gilberta, born at Mentz in Germany. By dissembling her sex, and making great proficiency in learning, she got into the infallible chair about the year of our Lord 854. She fell in travail in a solemn procession to the Lateran, in the open street, between the theatre Colosseum and St Clement's church; and was there delivered, having been pope above two years. In detestation of this disgraceful accident, the popes ever afterwards declined to pass that way; and, to prevent being so cheated any more, when a pope is elected and seated in Saint Peter's chair, there is a hole made in the bottom, through which the

junior cardinal is to search him, and upon finding all right, the news is joyfully proclaimed to the crowd-mas nobis est dominus, -our lord the pope is a man! From which use, the said seat is called sedes stercoraria, from its near resemblance to a close stool. The papists stoutly deny the whole, and pretend that the use of the sedes stercoraria was only to put the new divinity in mind of his occasions, and that he was still a mortal.-'1 his is the reason given by Platina. If this probation of popes is not still practised, one of their own authors, Johannes Pannonius, thus gives the reason:

Non poterat quisquis reserantes æthera claves

Non exploratis sumere testiculis.

Cur igitur nostro mos hic jam tempore cessat ?
Ante probat sese quilibet esse virum.

No pope of old assum❜d th' unerring keys,
But first he past the test of's rem and re's:

And why not now that search? Because each can
By numerous bastards prove himself a man.

Hist. of Popery, vol. ii. p. 339. Great Babylon is charged, both by the ancient prophets and St John, with whoredom, in allusion to her idolatry and apostacy. from the true God, which figuratively is so called, as God is the husband of the church. "Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts; behold I am against thee, saith the Lord of Hosts, and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame." (alum iii. 4, 5. ) Yet the prophecies often receive also a literal accomplishment, as in the above FACT of a FEMALE POPE, and the adulterous, incestuous, and sodomitical practices of

many of them; and the public encouragement given to the stews at Rome, from which his holiness drew a revenue of 40,000 crowns a-year, by way of taxation. The notoriety of their practices gave occasion to frequent lampoons on the HOLY

FATHERS,

Quid quæris testes, sit mas an fœmina cybo?

respice natorum, pignora certa, gregem. Pontificis PAULI testes ne ROMA requiras ; filia quam genuit, sat docet esse marem.

Hist. of Popery.

SECTION X.

The expectation and dread of the coming of AÑTICHRIST an alarm not wholly groundless, as his actions have testified.-Prophetic Psalms agreeing with the general prophecies of antichrist and the sufferings and restoration of the church.-Popery the present obstacle to the conversion of the jews.-Its fall double,—a gradual melting away by the heat of the gospel Sun,-and a final destruction by an exemplary judgment.

IF, in the time of St Paul, the mystery of iniquity was already working, at the latter period of St John's writing it was perhaps considerably farther advanced, as it seems likely from the several charges given to the seven churches of Asia, and from his epistles, in which he mentions the frequency even then of antichrists, of a similar description in point

of ERROR, though of less power to afflict the church, than he, the antichrist, who was to

come.

The seeds of antichristianism having been sown, and sprouted, and born fruit thus early, Occasions the difficulty of fixing upon any exact date, from whence to compute the 1260 years of the reign of antichrist, or the man of sin. Saint Paul, in this place, addressing himself to his converts, with whom he had held many personal conversations upon the subject, only says thus much-" now you know" what I mean, and" what it is that letteth," or preventeth the immediate activity and despotism of the man of sin, and will continue to prevent it for some considerable time to come. It is a great confirmation of the truth of the current opi→ nion, that it was the strength and stability of the roman empire at that time, (which St Paul meant, and the christians, as he intimates, had a general but secret understanding of,) that they put up public prayers for the preservation of the emperor and empire. And this was done, not only as it is a christian duty to "bless

« ZurückWeiter »