ANTICHRIST.
The Kali Age--Satan sifting Simon--Satan as Angel of
Light--Epithets of Antichrist--The Cæsars--Nero--Sacraments
imitated by Pagans--Satanic signs and wonders--Jerome
on Antichrist--Armillus--Al Dajjail--Luther on
Mohammed--'Mawmet'--Satan 'God's ape'--Mediæval notions--Witches
Sabbath--An Infernal Trinity--Serpent of Sins--Antichrist
Popes--Luther as Antichrist--Modern notions of Antichrist.
In the 'Padma Purana' it is recorded that when King Vena embraced
heretical doctrine and abjured the temples and sacrifices, the people
following him, seven powerful Rishis, high priests, visited him
and entreated him to return to their faith. They said, 'These acts,
O king, which thou art performing, are not of our holy traditions,
nor fit for our religion, but are such as shall be performed by
mankind at the entrance of Kali, the last and sinful age, when thy
new faith shall be received by all, and the service of the gods be
utterly relinquished.' King Vena, being thus in advance of his time,
was burned on the sacred grass, while a mantra was performed for him.
This theory of Kali is curious as indicating a final triumph of the
enemies of the gods. In the Scandinavian theory of 'Ragnarok,' the
Twilight of the gods, there also seems to have been included no hope
of the future victory of the existing gods. In the Parsí faith we
first meet with the belief in a general catastrophe followed by the
supremacy and universal sway of good. This faith characterised the
later Hebrew prophecies, and is the spirit of Paul's brave saying,
'When all things shall be subjected unto him, then also shall the
Son himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that
God may be all in all.'
When, however, theology and metaphysics advanced and modelled this
fiery lava of prophetic and apostolic ages into dogmatic shapes,
evil was accorded an equal duration with good. The conflict between
Christ and his foes was not to end with the conversion or destruction
of his foes, but his final coming as monarch of the world was to
witness the chaining up of the Archfiend in the Pit.
Christ's own idea of Satan, assuming certain reported expressions to
have been really uttered by him, must have been that which regarded
him as a Tempter to evil, whose object was to test the reality of
faith. 'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked you for himself, that he
might sift you as the wheat; but I made supplication for thee, that
thy faith fail not; and when once thou hast returned, confirm thy
brethren. And he said unto him, Lord, I am ready to go with thee,
both into prison and into death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter,
a cock will not crow this day till thou wilt thrice deny that thou
knowest me.' [130] Such a sentiment could not convey to Jewish ears
a degraded notion of Satan, except as being a nocturnal spirit who
must cease his work at cock-crow. It is an adaptation of what Jehovah
himself was said to do, in the prophecy of Amos. 'I will not utterly
destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord.... I will sift the house
of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve,
yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.' [131]
Paul, too, appears to have had some such conception of Satan, since he
speaks of an evil-doer as delivered up to Satan 'for the destruction
of the flesh that the spirit may be saved.' [132] There is, however,
in another passage an indication of the distinctness with which Paul
and his friends had conceived a fresh adaptation of Satan as obstacle
of their work. 'For such,' he says, 'are false apostles, deceitful
workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no
marvel: for Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. It is
no great thing therefore if his ministers also transform themselves
as ministers of righteousness; whose end will be according to their
works.' [133] It may be noted here that Paul does not think of Satan
himself as transforming himself to a minister of righteousness, but of
Satan's ministers as doing so. It is one of a number of phrases in the
New Testament which reveal the working of a new movement towards an
expression of its own. Real and far-reaching religious revolutions in
history are distinguished from mere sectarian modifications, which they
sum up in nothing more than in their new phraseology. When Jehovah,
Messias, and Satan are gradually supplanted by Father, Christ, and
Antichrist (or Man of Sin, False Christ, Withholder (katechon), False
Prophet, Son of Perdition, Mystery of Iniquity, Lawless One), it is
plain that new elements are present, and new emergencies. These varied
phrases just quoted could not, indeed, crystallise for a long time into
any single name for the new Obstacle to the new life, for during the
same time the new life itself was too living, too various, to harden
in any definite shape or be marked with any special name. The only New
Testament writer who uses the word Antichrist is the so-called Apostle
John; and it is interesting to remark that it is by him connected
with a dogmatic statement of the nature of Christ and definition of
heresy. 'Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
is of God; and every spirit that confesses not Jesus is not of God:
and this is the spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that
it comes; and now it is in the world already.' [134] This language,
characteristic of the middle and close of the second century, [135]
is in strong contrast with Paul's utterance in the first century,
describing the Man of Sin (or of lawlessness, the son of perdition),
as one 'who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God,
or that is worshipped; so that he sat in the temple of God, showing
himself that he is God.' [136] Christ has not yet begun to supplant
God; to Paul he is the Son of God confronting the Son of Destruction,
the divine man opposed by the man of sin. When the nature of Christ
becomes the basis of a dogma, the man of sin is at once defined as
the opponent of that dogma.
As this dogma struggled on to its consummation and victory, it
necessarily took the form of a triumph over the Cæsars, who were
proclaiming themselves gods, and demanding worship as such. The writer
of the second Epistle bearing Peter's name saw those christians who
yielded to such authority typified in Balaam, the erring prophet who
was opposed by the angel; [137] the writer of the Gospel of John saw
the traitor Judas as the 'son of perdition,' [138] representing Jesus
as praying that the rest of his disciples might be kept 'out of the
evil one;' and many similar expressions disclose the fact that, towards
the close of the second century, and throughout the third, the chief
obstacle of those who were just beginning to be called 'Christians'
was the temptation offered by Rome to the christians themselves to
betray their sect. It was still a danger to name the very imperial
gods who successively set themselves up to be worshipped at Rome,
but the pointing of the phrases is unmistakable long before the last
of the pagan emperors held the stirrup for the first christian Pontiff
to mount his horse.
Nero had answered to the portrait of 'the son of perdition sitting
in the temple of God' perfectly. He aspired to the title 'King
of the Jews.' He solemnly assumed the name of Jupiter. He had his
temples and his priests, and shared divine honours with his mistress
Poppæa. Yet, when Nero and his glory had perished under those phials
of wrath described in the Apocalypse, a more exact image of the
insidious 'False Christ' appeared in Vespasian. His alleged miracles
('lying wonders'), and the reported prediction of his greatness
by a prophet on Mount Carmel, his oppression of the Jews, who had
to contribute the annual double drachma to support the temples and
gods which Vespasian had restored, altogether made this decorous and
popular emperor a more formidable enemy than the 'Beast' Nero whom
he succeeded. The virtues and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius still
increased the danger. Political conditions favoured all those who
were inclined to compromise, and to mingle the popular pagan and the
Jewish festivals, symbols, and ceremonies. In apocalyptic metaphor,
Vespasian and Aurelius are the two horns of the Lamb who spake like
the Dragon, i.e., Nero (Rev. xiii. 11).
The beginnings of that mongrel of superstitions which at last gained
the name of Christianity were in the liberation, by decay of parts
and particles, of all those systems which Julius Cæsar had caged
together for mutual destruction. 'With new thrones rise new altars,'
says Byron's Sardanapalus; but it is still more true that, with new
thrones all altars crumble a little. At an early period the differences
between the believers in Christ and those they called idolaters
were mainly in name; and, with the increase of Gentile converts,
the adoption of the symbolism and practices of the old religions was
so universal that the quarrel was about originality. 'The Devil,'
says Tertullian, 'whose business it is to pervert the truth, mimics
the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments in the mysteries of
idols. He himself baptizes some, that is to say, his believers and
followers: he promises forgiveness of sins from the sacred fount,
and thus initiates them into the religion of Mithras; he thus marks
on the forehead his own soldiers: he then celebrates the oblation of
bread; he brings in the symbol of resurrection, and wins the crown
with the sword.' [139]
What masses of fantastic nonsense it was possible to cram into
one brain was shown in the time of Nero, the brain being that of
Simon the Magician. Simon was, after all, a representative man;
he reappears in christian Gnosticism, and Peter, who denounced him,
reappears also in the phrenzy of Montanism. Take the followers of
this Sorcerer worshipping his image in the likeness of Jupiter,
the Moon, and Minerva; and Montanus with his wild women Priscilla
and Maximilla going about claiming to be inspired by the Holy Ghost
to re-establish Syrian orthodoxy and asceticism; and we have fair
specimens of the parties that glared at each other, and apostrophised
each other as children of Belial. They competed with each other by
pretended miracles. They both claimed the name of Christ, and all the
approved symbols and sacraments. The triumph of one party turned the
other into Antichrist.
Thus in process of time, as one hydra-head fell only to be followed
by another, there was defined a Spirit common to and working through
them all--a new devil, whose special office was hostility to Christ,
and whose operations were through those who claimed to be christians
as well as through open enemies.
As usual, when the phrases, born of real struggles, had lost their
meaning, they were handed up to the theologians to be made into
perpetual dogmas. Out of an immeasurable mass of theories and
speculations, we may regard the following passage from Jerome as
showing what had become the prevailing belief at the beginning of
the fifth century. 'Let us say that which all ecclesiastical writers
have handed down, viz., that at the end of the world, when the Roman
Empire is to be destroyed, there will be ten kings, who will divide
the Roman world among them; and there will arise an eleventh little
king who will subdue three of the ten kings, that is, the king of
Egypt, of Africa, and of Ethiopia; and on these having been slain,
the seven other kings will submit.' 'And behold,' he says, 'in the
ram were the eyes of a man'--this is that we may not suppose him to
be a devil or a dæmon, as some have thought, but a man in whom Satan
will dwell utterly and bodily--'and a mouth speaking great things;'
for he is the 'man of sin, the son of perdition, who sitteth in the
temple of God making himself as God.' [140]
The 'Little Horn' of Daniel has proved a cornucopia of Antichrists. Not
only the christians but the Jews and the mussulmans have definite
beliefs on the subject. The rabbinical name for Antichrist is Armillus,
a word found in the Targum (Isa. xi. 4): 'By the word of his mouth
the wicked Armillus shall die.' There will be twelve signs of the
Messiah's coming--appearance of three apostate kings, terrible heat of
the sun, dew of blood, healing dew, the sun darkened for thirty days,
universal power of Rome with affliction for Jews, and the appearance
of the first Messias (Joseph's tribe), Nehemiah. The next and seventh
sign will be the appearance of Armillus, born of a marble statue in a
church at Rome. The Romans will accept him as their god, and the whole
world be subject to him. Nehemiah alone will refuse to worship him,
and for this will be slain, and the Jews suffer terrible things. The
eighth sign will be the appearance of the angel Michael with three
blasts of his trumpet--which shall call forth Elias, the forerunner,
and the true Messias (Ben David), and bring on the war with Armillus
who shall perish, and all christians with him. The ten tribes shall
be gathered into Paradise. Messias shall wed the fairest daughter of
their race, and when he dies his sons shall succeed him, and reign
in unbroken line over a beatified Israel.
The mussulman modification of the notion of Antichrist is very
remarkable. They call him Al Dajjail, that is, the impostor. They say
that Mohammed told his follower Tamisri Al-Dari, that at the end of
the world Antichrist would enter Jerusalem seated on an ass; but that
Jesus will then make his second coming to encounter him. The Beast of
the Apocalypse will aid Antichrist, but Jesus will be joined by Imam
Mahadi, who has never died; together they will subdue Antichrist,
and thereafter the mussulmans and christians will for ever be united
in one religion. The Jews, however, will regard Antichrist as their
expected Messias. Antichrist will be blind of one eye, and deaf of
one ear. 'Unbeliever' will be written on his forehead. In that day
the sun will rise in the west. [141]
The christians poorly requited this amicable theory of the mussulmans
by very extensively identifying Mohammed as Antichrist, at one
period. From that period came the English word mawmet (idol),
and mummery (idolatry), both of which, probably, are derived from
the name of the Arabian Prophet. Daniel's 'Little Horn' betokens,
according to Martin Luther, Mohammed. 'But what are the Little Horn's
Eyes? The Little Horn's Eyes,' says he, 'mean Mohammed's Alkoran,
or Law, wherewith he ruleth. In the which Law there is nought but
sheer human reason (eitel menschliche Vernunft).' ... 'For his Law,'
he reiterates, 'teaches nothing but that which human understanding and
reason may well like.' ... Wherefore 'Christ will come upon him with
fire and brimstone.' When he wrote this--in his 'army sermon' against
the Turks--in 1529, he had never seen a Koran. 'Brother Richard's'
(Predigerordens) Confutatio Alcoran, dated 1300, formed the exclusive
basis of his argument. But in Lent of 1540, he relates, a Latin
translation, though a very unsatisfactory one, fell into his hands,
and once more he returned to Brother Richard, and did his Refutation
into German, supplementing his version with brief but racy notes. This
Brother Richard had, according to his own account, gone in quest of
knowledge to 'Babylon, that beautiful city of the Saracens,' and at
Babylon he had learnt Arabic and been inured in the evil ways of the
Saracens. When he had safely returned to his native land he set about
combating the same. And this is his exordium:--'At the time of the
Emperor Heraclius there arose a man, yea, a Devil, and a first-born
child of Satan, ... who wallowed in ... and he was dealing in the Black
Art, and his name it was Machumet.' ... This work Luther made known to
his countrymen by translating and commenting, prefacing, and rounding
it off by an epilogue. True, his notes amount to little more but an
occasional 'Oh fie, for shame, you horrid Devil, you damned Mahomet,'
or 'O Satan, Satan, you shall pay for that,' or, 'That's it, Devils,
Saracens, Turks, it's all the same,' or, 'Here the Devil smells a rat,'
or briefly, 'O Pfui Dich, Teufel!' except when he modestly, with a
query, suggests whether those Assassins, who, according to his text,
are regularly educated to go out into the world in order to kill and
slay all Worldly Powers, may not, perchance, be the Gypsies or the
'Tattern' (Tartars); or when he breaks down with a 'Hic nescio quid
dicat translator.' His epilogue, however, is devoted to a special
disquisition as to whether Mohammed or the Pope be worse. And in the
twenty-second chapter of this disquisition he has arrived at the
final conclusion that, after all, the Pope is worse, and that he,
and not Mohammed, is the real 'Endechrist.' 'Wohlen,' he winds up,
'God grant us his grace, and punish both the Pope and Mohammed,
together with their devils. I have done my part as a true prophet
and teacher. Those who won't listen may leave it alone.' In similar
strains speaks the learned and gentle Melancthon. In an introductory
epistle to a reprint of that same Latin Koran which displeased Luther
so much, he finds fault with Mohammed, or rather, to use his own
words, he thinks that 'Mohammed is inspired by Satan,' because he
'does not explain what sin is,' and further, since he 'showeth not the
reason of human misery.' He agrees with Luther about the Little Horn:
though in another treatise he is rather inclined to see in Mohammed
both Gog and Magog. And 'Mohammed's sect,' he says, 'is altogether
made up (conflata) of blasphemy, robbery, and shameful lusts.' Nor
does it matter in the least what the Koran is all about. 'Even if
there were anything less scurrilous in the book, it need not concern
us any more than the portents of the Egyptians, who invoked snakes
and cats.... Were it not that partly this Mohammedan pest, and partly
the Pope's idolatry, have long been leading us straight to wreck and
ruin--may God have mercy upon some of us!' [142]
'Mawmet' was used by Wicliffe for idol in his translation of the
New Testament, Acts vii. 41, 'And they made a calf in those days and
offered a sacrifice to the Mawmet' (idol). The word, though otherwise
derived by some, is probably a corruption of Mohammed. In the 'Mappa
Mundi' of the thirteenth century we find the representation of the
golden calf in the promontory of Sinai, with the superscription 'Mahum'
for Mohammed, whose name under various corruptions, such as Mahound,
Mawmet, &c., became a general byword in the mediæval languages for an
idol. In a missionary hymn of Wesley's Mohammed is apostrophised as--
That Arab thief, as Satan bold,
Who quite destroyed Thy Asian fold;
and the Almighty is adjured to--
The Unitarian fiend expel,
And chase his doctrine back to Hell.
In these days, when the very mention of the Devil raises a smile,
we can hardly realise the solemnity with which his work was once
viewed. When Goethe represents Mephistopheles as undertaking to
teach Faust's class in theology and dwells on his orthodoxy, it
is the refrain of the faith of many generations. The Devil was not
'God's Ape,' as Tertullian called him, in any comical way; not only
was his ceremonial believed to be modelled on that of God, but his
inspiration of his followers was believed to be quite as potent and
earnest. Tertullian was constrained to write in this strain--'Blush,
my Roman fellow-soldiers, even if ye are not to be judged by Christ,
but by any soldier of Mithras, who when he is undergoing initiation
in the cave, the very camp of the Powers of Darkness, when the wreath
is offered him (a sword being placed between as if in semblance of
martyrdom), and then about to be set on his head, he is warned to
put forth his hand and push the wreath away, transferring it to,
perchance, his shoulder, saying at the same time, My only crown is
Mithras. And thenceforth he never wears a wreath; and this is a mark
he has for a test, whenever tried as to his initiation, for he is
immediately proved to be a soldier of Mithras if he throws down the
wreath offered him, saying his crown is in his god. Let us therefore
acknowledge the craft of the Devil, who mimics certain things of
those that be divine, in order that he may confound and judge us by
the faith of his own followers.'
This was written before the exaltation of Christianity under
Constantine. When the age of the martyrdom of the so-called pagans
came on, these formulæ became real, and the christians were still
more confounded by finding that the worshippers of the Devil,
as they thought them, could yield up their lives in many parts of
Europe as bravely for their faith as any christian had ever done. The
'Prince of this world' became thus an unmeaning phrase except for
the heretics. Christ had become the Prince of this world; and he was
opposed by religious devotees as earnest as any who had suffered under
Nero. The relation of the Opposition to the Devil was yet more closely
defined when it claimed the christian name for its schism or heresy,
and when it carried its loyalty to the Adversary of the Church to the
extent of suffering martyrdom. 'Tell me, holy father,' said Evervinus
to St. Bernard, concerning the Albigenses, 'how is this? They entered
to the stake and bore the torment of the fire not only with patience,
but with joy and gladness. I wish your explanation, how these members
of the Devil could persist in their heresy with a courage and constancy
scarcely to be found in the most religious of the faith of Christ?'
Under these circumstances the personification of Antichrist had
a natural but still wonderful development. He was to be born of a
virgin, in Babylon, to be educated at Bethsaida and Chorazin, and to
make a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, proclaiming himself the Son of
God. In the interview at Messina (1202) between Richard I. and the
Abbot Joachim of Floris, the king said, 'I thought that Antichrist
would be born at Antioch or in Babylon, and of the tribe of Dan,
and would reign in the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, and would
walk in that land in which Christ walked, and would reign in it for
three years and a half, and would dispute against Elijah and Enoch,
and would kill them, and would afterwards die; and that after his
death God would give sixty days of repentance, in which those might
repent which should have erred from the way of truth, and have been
seduced by the preaching of Antichrist and his false prophets.'
This belief was reflected in Western Europe in the belief that the
congregation of Witches assembled on their Sabbath (an institution
then included among paganisms) to celebrate grand mass to the Devil,
and that all the primitive temples were raised in honour of Satan. In
the Russian Church the correspondence between the good and evil powers,
following their primitive faith in the conflict between Byelbog and
Tchernibog (white god and black god), went to the curious extent of
picturing in hell a sort of infernal Trinity. The Father throned in
Heaven with the Son between his knees and the Dove beside or beneath
him, was replied to by a majestic Satan in hell, holding his Son
(Judas) on his knees, and the Serpent acting as counteragent of
the Dove. This singular arrangement may still be seen in many of
the pictures which cover the walls of the oldest Russian churches
(Fig. 9). The infernal god is not without a solemn majesty answering
to that of his great antagonist above. The Serpent of Sins proceeds
from the diabolical Father and Son, passing from beneath their throne
through one of the two mouths of Hell, and then winds upward, hungrily
opening its jaws near the terrible Balances where souls are weighed
(Fig. 10). Along its hideous length are seated at regular intervals
nine winged devils, representing probably antagonists of the nine
Sephiroth or Æons of the Gnostic theology. Each is armed with a hook
whereby the souls weighed and found wanting may be dragged. The
sins which these devils represent are labelled, generally on
rings around the serpent, and increase in heinousness towards the
head. It is a curious fact that the Sin nearest the head is marked
'Unmercifulness.' Strange and unconscious sarcasm on an Omnipotent
Deity under whose sway exists this elaboration of a scheme of sins
and tortures precisely corresponding to the scheme of virtues and joys!
Truly said the Epistle of John, there be many Antichrists. If this
was true before the word Christianity had been formed, or the system
it names, what was the case afterwards? For centuries we find vast
systems denouncing each other as Antichrist. And ultimately, as a
subtle hardly-conscious heresy spread abroad, the great excommunicator
of antichrists itself, Rome, acquired that title, which it has
never shaken off since. The See of Rome did not first receive that
appellation from Protestants, but from its own chiefs. Gregory himself
(A.C. 590) started the idea by declaring that any man who held even
the shadow of such power as the Popes arrogated to themselves after
his time would be the forerunner of Antichrist. Arnulphus, Bishop
of Orleans, in an invective against John XV. at Rheims (A.C. 991),
intimated that a Pope destitute of charity was Antichrist. But the
stigma was at length fixed (twelfth century) by Amalrich of Bena
('Quia Papa esset Antichristus et Roma Babylon et ipse sedit in
Monte Oliveti, i.e., in pinguedine potestatis'); and also by the
Abbot Joachim (A.C. 1202). The theory of Richard I., as stated to
Joachim concerning Antichrist, has already been quoted. It was in the
presence of the Archbishops of Rouen and Auxerre, and the Bishop of
Bayonne, and represented their opinion and the common belief of the
time. But Joachim said the Second Apocalyptic Beast represented some
great prelate who will be like Simon Magus, and, as it were, universal
Pontiff, and that very Antichrist of whom St. Paul speaks. Hildebrand
was the first Pope to whom this ugly label was affixed, but the
career of Alexander VI. (Roderic Borgia) made it for ever irremovable
for the Protestant mind. There is in the British Museum a volume of
caricatures, dated 1545, in which occurs an ingenious representation
of Alexander VI. The Pope is first seen in his ceremonial robes; but
a leaf being raised, another figure is joined to the lower part of the
former, and there appears the papal devil, the cross in his hand being
changed to a pitchfork (Fig. 11). Attached to it is an explanation in
German giving the legend of the Pope's death. He was poisoned (1503)
by the cup he had prepared for another man. It was afterwards said
that he had secured the papacy by aid of the Devil. Having asked
how long he would reign, the Devil returned an equivocal answer;
and though Alexander understood that it was to be fifteen years, it
proved to be only eleven. When in 1520 Pope Leo X. issued his formal
bull against Luther, the reformer termed it 'the execrable bull of
Antichrist.' An Italian poem of the time having represented Luther
as the offspring of Megæra, the Germans returned the invective in a
form more likely to impress the popular mind; namely, in a caricature
(Fig. 12), representing the said Fury as nursing the Pope. This
caricature is also of date 1545, and with it were others showing
Alecto and Tisiphone acting in other capacities for the papal babe.
The Lutherans had made the discovery that the number of the Apocalyptic
Beast, 666, put into Hebrew numeral letters, contained the words
Aberin Kadescha Papa (our holy father the Pope). The downfall of this
Antichrist was a favourite theme of pulpit eloquence, and also with
artists. A very spirited pamphlet was printed (1521), and illustrated
with designs by Luther's friend Lucas Cranach. It was entitled
Passional Christi und Antichristi. The fall of the papal Antichrist
(Fig. 13), has for its companion one of Christ washing the feet of
his disciples.
But the Catholics could also make discoveries; and among many other
things they found that the word 'Luther' in Hebrew numerals also made
the number of the Beast. It was remembered that one of the earliest
predictions concerning Antichrist was that he would travesty the birth
of Christ from a virgin by being born of a nun by a Bishop. Luther's
marriage with the nun Catharine von Bora came sufficiently near the
prediction to be welcomed by his enemies. The source of his inspiration
as understood by Catholics is cleverly indicated in a caricature of
the period (Fig. 14).
The theory that the Papacy represents Antichrist has so long been the
solemn belief of rebels against its authority, that it has become a
vulgarised article of Protestant faith. On the other hand, Catholics
appear to take a political and prospective view of Antichrist. Cardinal
Manning, in his pastoral following the election of Leo XIII., said:
'A tide of revolution has swept over all countries. Every people
in Europe is inwardly divided against itself, and the old society
of Christendom, with its laws, its sanctities, and its stability,
is giving way before the popular will, which has no law, or rather
which claims to be a law to itself. This is at least the forerunning
sign of the Lawless One, who in his own time shall be revealed.'
Throughout the endless exchange of epithets, it has been made clear
that Antichrist is the reductio ad absurdum of the notion of a personal
Devil. From the day when the word was first coined, it has assumed
every variety of shape, has fitted with equal precision the most
contrarious things and persons; and the need of such a novel form
at one point or another in the progress of controversy is a satire
on the inadequacy of Satan and his ancient ministers. Bygone Devils
cannot represent new animosities. The ascent of every ecclesiastical
or theological system is traceable in massacres and martyrdoms; each
of these, whether on one side or the other, helps to develop a new
devil. The story of Antichrist shows devils in the making. Meantime,
to eyes that see how every system so built up must sacrifice a
virtue at every stage of its ascent, it will be sufficiently clear
that every powerful Church is Adversary of the religion it claims to
represent. Buddhism is Antibuddha; Islam is Antimohammed; Christianity
is Antichrist.