The Papacy Is the Antichrist 1 of 3 (1888) - Part 2 — J.A. Wylie

Welcome to part two of the Papacy is the Antichrist by the Reverend Dr. J .A. Wiley, read by W. J. Moncaro and produced by Stillwaters Revival Books, the home of the extensive Puritan and Reformation CD sets, Geneva Bibles, Rare Reformation, Classic Covenanter and Calvinistic Books, Homeschooling Helps, and other Puritan and Presbyterian resources at great discounts and free by mail and the World Wide Web.

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And now to the message of part two from the Papacy is the Antichrist. We pray that the Lord Jesus Christ will greatly bless you as you listen. Chapter 9 The All-Power of Christ and of Antichrist. We advance to another point in the parallelism between Christ and Antichrist.

Christ’s Power and Antichrist’s Counterfeit Authority

We find in the pretended miracles by which the papacy has sought to persuade the world that it was not the adversary but the friend of Christ. This pretense of miracles was to form a far too prominent feature in the coming Antichrist to be left out in Paul's great portraiture of him.

Whose coming is after the manner of Satan says the Apostle speaking by the Spirit in 2nd Thessalonians 2 9 with all power and signs and lying wonders. The essential characteristic of anti-christianism we have said is its assumption of a character the very opposite of its true character.

It was to be a secret undermining of Christianity under the show of being itself Christianity. A deadly war waged against Christ under the bold assertion that itself is Christ. This necessitated on the part of the papacy a profound study of the mission and character and life of Christ in order to make its imitation as close and perfect as possible and so draw the world away from him and after itself.

It must not be a vague and shadowy resemblance traceable and only a few points. If the world is to be deceived the counterfeit must be skillfully executed the work of a great master and it must be consistently sustained throughout.

Ancient paganism was no lame or despicable counterfeit of the divinely appointed worship at Jerusalem. Ancient paganism however was but a first attempt and it was far from having exhausted the ingenuity and resource of its author.

His subtlety and craft were to be set of working a second time and the result was to be a perfect and finished counterfeit, a masterpiece. Whose coming is after the working of Satan? The two comings here contrasted, we say contrasted for the parallelism is only on the surface, beneath all is contrast and contrariety.

Are the coming of Christ in the mission of his son and the coming of Satan in the mission of Antichrist? God is the author of truth and the manner of his coming is by the propagation of great truths which dispel the darkness around the soul of man and chase the night of error from the world.

Satan is the author of falsehood. He has been a deceiver from the beginning and he comes in the propagation of deceits, chicaneries, lies, errors and delusion which blinding the mind only prepare men for being plunged into still greater errors and delusions.

With all power. Let us mark how like Antichrist was to be to Christ in the particular just noted all power. Antichrist was to come with an assumption of power, an air of majesty as if to say I am the son of the highest.

His look, how lofty, his words, how stout. So had Daniel in the night visions beheld him. He waxed exceeding great, says Daniel, toward the south and toward the east and toward the pleasant land. He stood before the prophet, his feet planted on the earth, his head among the stars, claiming lordship over both worlds.

He waxed great even to the host of heaven and he cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground and stamped upon them. Daniel 8 verse 10. All power, said Christ to his disciples, is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

This power was the eternal gift of the Father to the Son as mediator. This power he wielded from the first moment of his entering on his work of mediation. Though veiling it during the days of his humiliation on earth, this power was in him and showed itself at times in some stupendous act.

The elements of nature were obedient to him. So too were the spirits of darkness and not less the angels of heaven. If need were, he had only prayed to his father and the celestial squadrons would have hastened to his aid.

Satan could gather enough from ancient prophecy and song to show him that such power was to be the attribute of the Messiah. I will make him my firstborn higher than the kings of the earth, so sang David.

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents. The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him.

All nations shall serve him. Such was the glory which the coming Messiah cast before him in prophecy ages before he came. Satan must need send forth his counterfeit Messiah with the mock symbols and attributes of a like power.

Antichrist too cast his shadow before him in prophecy before his actual coming as the triple crown chief of the papacy. Daniel had seen his day afar off. How he contemplated and spoke of him we have already seen.

With a few graphic strokes he paints the whole history of the papacy. He traces it from its insignificant beginnings till it reaches its amazing and portentous height. We see the first sprouting of the little horn.

We see Caesar vacate his seat. We see the Vandal, the Ostrogoth, and the Lungobar plucked up before it. We see it rising by leaps and bounds and now its head is among the stars. We see its stout looks, we hear its great words, and we witness with an awe bordering on terror its truculent deeds.

He tramples on thrones. He roots up nations. He plucks the stars from their orbits. And fine he does all his pleasure and there is none who can withstand his power or say to him, what doest thou? John had a nearer view of the Antichrist in the visions of Patmos.

He too, like Daniel, is struck with his mighty and apparently irresistible power, and he makes this attribute prominent in his portraiture of him. John had known the vast prerogative of the Roman emperors, but here was a measure of power it surpassed that of the old masters of the world and which appeared to the Apostle more than human.

In fact, he expressly calls it the gift of the dragon. The dragon gave him his power, says John. What the dragon gave to the Antichrist was not the power of the old Roman Empire, but his own, that is the dragon's power.

Quote, and they worshiped the dragon which gave power to the beast, that is the temporal and spiritual monarchy which forms the papacy. And they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast?

Who is able to make war with him? And power was given him over all kindreds and tongues and nations. That's Revelation 13 verses 2, 4, and 7. In his intercessory prayer we find Christ saying, Father, glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify thee, as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

The power here said to be given the son over all flesh was not his power as God, that could not be given him, for he possessed it inherently. It was his power as mediator, and the end for which it was given is especially noted, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

That's John 17 verses 1 and 2. In like manner, the power over all kindreds and tongues and nations, which the dragon gave to the deputy whom he sent it to the world, was a gift, and it was given for a draconic end.

And accordingly, no sooner is this power conferred, than we hear a chorus of worship ascending to the dragon from all them that dwell upon the earth, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world.

Revelation 13, 8. An obvious contrast to the company referred to in our Lord's intercessory prayer, them whom thou hast given me. And next, in meet accompaniment of the worship offered by those who had made the dragon their God, is the roar of blasphemy, which is heard rising and swelling to heaven.

There is given the Antichrist a mouth, and the opening of his mouth is as the opening of the doors of the pit. There issue out of it great things and blasphemies. He opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name in his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.

And the scene finds fitting outcome in the proclamation of war against the Saints, which continues to be carried on all through his predicted term of power. Yes, verily prophecy makes no mistakes, and history makes none in interpreting it.

He who hath understanding may read of the visions which are seen on the banks of the river of Uli, and in the isle of Patmos, and the events which have since passed over Europe. Let us now open the roll of Christendom.

The Papacy’s Rise Amid Medieval Chaos

Let us survey its ages from the 5th to the 15th century. We are conscious at first of gazing only at chaos, the crowd of actors, and the conflict of events, but distract and perplex the mind. Europe is a tumbling sea in which the old nations are being engulfed, and new and barbarian races are arriving to take their place.

We can discover neither unity nor progress in the drama. All is tumult and darkness. Let us shut up the roll. But stay. Before putting it away, let us search it again, and it may be we shall find footsteps in these great waters.

The cloud begins to lift in order to appear. The ferment in the minds of men gives birth to a great system as yet without form or name. The materials of which this system not yet constituted is composed are drawn from a great variety of sources.

Ancient paganism, Druidic and Scandinavian superstition, Jewish rabbinicalism, and Oriental philosophy all contribute their share to it. A corrupt church arranges, combines, and concatenates these heterogeneous elements, and stamping them with its own impress presents it to the world as Christianity.

The new worship must have celebrants. A human agency gathers around it, and that agency comes gradually to be summed up and embodied in one great personality. Let us mark this Colossus. His visage grows as the centuries revolve and comes at last to look forth upon us distinct and stout and terrible.

But it is not new. We have seen it before. It is the same that looked forth upon us from the prophecies of Daniel and John. It is the same that shows itself incarnated in the Popes of the Middle Ages.

Let us mark how complete and perfect an incarnation we have of it in Innocent III, in whom the Popedom came to its full growth and showed itself to the world in all its superhuman magnificence and grandeur.

During the terrible pontificate of this man, all that prophecy had spoken of the Antichrist was verified in fullest measure. Its predicted height of arrogance, of blasphemy, and of domination was reached.

While this mighty Pope stood over it, Christendom was still with fear. The stricken kings and nations cowered beneath him. He was God's Vice-Regent and claimed to be obeyed with the instant and profound submission which is due to the Eternal King.

He promulgated the dogma of transubstantiation. He initiated the holy office of the Inquisition. He launched the Crusades against heresy and heretics and dealt his thunderbolts of interdict and excommunication all round Christendom and beyond it, crushing everyone and everything that dared to lift up the heel against his pontifical will.

If this is not the Antichrist, then Antichrist we never can see. For what more can we have of any prophecy than a complete and perfect fulfillment? And this is a complete and perfect fulfillment of the prophecy of the power and pride of Antichrist.

The power of the man of sin will come again before us farther on. Meanwhile, we pass to another point in the parallelism. Chapter 10, Signs and Wonders of Christ and of Antichrist. This was to be a notable characteristic of the Antichrist whose coming, says the Apostle in 2 Thessalonians 2 .9, is with signs and lying wonders.

Signs and Wonders: Christ’s Miracles and Rome’s Claims

These words were fitted to turn the eyes of the early Christians back upon the prophecy of Daniel in which it had been foretold of the Antichrist that he should practice and prosper, Daniel 8 verse 12.

The phrase is suggestive of imposing by delusive arts upon the senses and understandings of men and so gaining an ascendancy over them. Of a like meaning is the phrase which occurs farther on in verse 25 in the same chapter, He shall cause craft to prosper in his hand.

So clearer on this point are the prophecies of John, not yet given that is true, but which were to close the volume of inspiration and be the guide of Christians in the next age in their outlook for the Antichrist.

The claim to work miracles is here set down as one of his notable marks. And he doeth great wonders, says John, speaking of the second beast or ecclesiastical organization of the Antichrist, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and he deceiveth them that dwell in the earth by the means of those miracles which he hath power to do.

It's Revelation 13 verses 18 and 14. This is in full agreement with Paul, who had already warned the primitive church that Antichrist would make his appearance as a miracle worker. Let us reflect how imperative it was on the Antichrist that he should claim the power of working miracles.

Had he come as an open enemy, he would have had no need to pretend to such power. But coming as the substitute and vicar of Christ, he must necessarily in this, as in other points, imitate him whose substance and vicar he professed to be.

The coming of Christ was signalized by mighty signs and wonders. The glory of miracle illustrated every step of his progress through the towns and villages of Galilee and Judea. The ancient prophets had performed miracles, but in none of them was seen the same affluence of miraculous power as in Christ.

As light is in the stars, so was power in the prophets, but as light is in the sun, so was power in Christ. As he passed through the crowds of stricken men, virtue flowed out of him, and to touch the hem of his garment or hear the accents of his voice was to be healed.

Sight was given to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength was infused into the withered limb, reason resumed its office in the brain of the maniac, and the pulse in which fever throbbed and burned became calm and cool.

At his word, or at his touch, even the grave owned his power and opened its doors in obedience to his summons, and gave back its tenant to the world of the living. Such were the signs and wonders that heralded the advent and attested the messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth.

The papacy, as the vice-Christ, has in like manner sought to announce its advent and certify its mission by the performance of signs and wonders. Scarce is there a miracle recorded of the Son of God which the Church of Rome does not profess to have wrought.

She pretends to have opened blind eyes, to have unstopped deaf ears, to have cured fevers, palsies, madness, to have cast out devils, to have driven away pestilence, stayed the ravages of blight, and done things which were too tedious to mention.

Extending so far the sphere of her miraculous operation, she has entered the realms of the grave, and shown that thereto she wields power by pretending to give life to the dead. Certain of her saints have possessed the gift of miracles in an eminent degree, and their lives are one long record of prodigy and wonder.

They have dried up rivers, walked upon the ways of the sea, and stilled tempests. Angels have descended to minister to them, and preternatural stars have shone out to lead them in the dark. In short, the Church of Rome claims to have wielded the same unbounded power over both the visible and the invisible world which Christ did, and to have imitated him in all things.

Well, save the meekness of his spirit, the purity of his doctrine, and the holiness of his life. Porphyry professes, too, to work spiritual wonders. Those divine and saving changes on the heart and soul of man which Christianity accomplishes, and which it is the prerogative of Christianity alone to accomplish.

The Church of Rome professes in baptism to regenerate the soul, and change the eternal destinies of the baptized. By anointing with oil, she fills men with the Holy Ghost. By her sacraments, she replenishes them with grace.

By ordination, she bridges over 18 centuries and joins the priest to Peter. Five words spoken at the altar change the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Two words uttered in the confessional affect the pardon of the penitent, and the viaticum gives assurance to the man setting out on his last journey that he shall find the gates of paradise open to give him entrance among the blessed.

These are mighty wonders. It is thus that the false Christ has carried on the war against the true Christ. But a single term is thrown in which effectually breaks the spell and dissolves the power of these wonders over all who are not willfully subject to their illusion.

The mystery of iniquity was to come with lying wonders, a most essential difference, which it becomes all to know to have a mind not to be deceived to their eternal loss. The miracles of Christ were done in the light of day, in the presence of thousands who could sift them and subject them to infallible tests, and who, having done so, were forced to the conclusion that either the miracle was true or their senses were false.

Of those who saw them done, not a few were the bitter enemies of the person who wrought them, and would have been glad to find that they were cheats, and not slow to proclaim the imposter to the world.

And yet these miracles remained uncontradicted. No one in all the nation of the Jews ventured to deny the truth of any one miracle of Jesus. The farthest that malevolence and slander deemed it prudent to go was to insinuate that the miracle had been wrought by satanic power.

The reply to the accusation given on the spot and at the time was as conclusive as it was dignified, and it has lost none of its force even yet. Can Satan cast out Satan? But let us mark how different it is with the other class of miracles, and how lacking they are in that indubitable evidence that attested the mission of the Son of God.

There's not one of them that could maintain its claim as a veritable fact before a tribunal of unbiased and enlightened judges. Some of these miracles were evidently cheats on those in whose presence they were wrought.

Of late, many startling discoveries have been made of the machinery by which these miracles were done. Many of these wonders were not published to the world till some hundreds of years after they were said to have been wrought.

Their workers would seem to have been unambitious of living fame, seeing they hid their light under a bushel. And some of these miracles are so childish that it is an insult to our understandings to ask us to believe that God ever interposed his power to work such deeds.

Prophecy gave them the right name before they were done. They are lying wonders. The spiritual performances of the Church of Rome are emphatically lying wonders. Baptismal regeneration is a lying wonder.

Sacramental grace is a lying wonder. Priestly power is a lying wonder. The absolution of the confessional is a lying wonder. Transubstantiation is the biggest wonder and the greatest lie of all. An extreme unction is a last and fatal lie.

There is no reality behind any of these things and they are the more to be deplored that they have immediate reference to the eternal world and that millions take their departure to the world fully confiding in these lies for salvation.

Let us mark the parallelism. It is at once a parallel and a contrast. The gospel came amid the effulgence of real miracles which were wrought by God and were divine attestation to the Messiahship of his Son.

Potpourri came amid the murky and elusive glare of false miracles which were wrought by Satan and which were his sign manual bearing witness to all that the system in behalf of which they were done was the mystery of iniquity.

Papal Interdicts as “Fire from Heaven”

Chapter 11. Antichrist Signs and Wonders of Terror. There is another class of wonders that the papacy professes to do and which are of a nature not quite so innocent and harmless as those enumerated above.

Though equally false, they owe the terror they inspired and the suffering they inflicted to the belief that they were true and real. Speaking of the two-horned lamb-like beast of the earth, John says,.

And he doeth great wonders so that he maketh fire to come down out of heaven upon the earth in the sight of men. Revelation 13 verse 13. The prophecy found a striking fulfillment in the papal interdicts and excommunications so frequent in the Middle Ages and not unknown even in our own day.

These demonstrations of pontifical vengeance, it was pretended, were fire out of heaven. The fire of the wrath of God which the Pope had power to evoke, therewith to burn up his enemies. The blinded nations believed that in the voice of the Pope they heard the voice of God and that the fulminations of the Vatican were the thunderings and lightnings of divine wrath.

A papal excommunication was more dreadful in the invasion of thousands of armed men when launched against a kingdom, what dismay, misery, and wailing overspread it. The whole course of life was instantly stopped.

The lights were extinguished at the altar, the church doors were closed, the bells would not be told, marriages were celebrated in the graveyard, and the dead were buried in ditches. Men dared not make merry for a sense of doom weighed upon their spirits.

These terrible edicts pursued men into the other world, and souls arriving from the unhappy realm overhung by the papal curse found the gates of paradise shut and had to wander forlorn till it should please the divinity of the seven hills to lift off his sentence.

Thus did the papacy cause fire to come down from God out of heaven, and men believing it to be real fire were scorched by it. In the days of King John, England lay under interdict for more than six years.

To the mightiest sovereign, even the papal excommunication was a dreadful affair. He shook and trembled on his throne, for his army could give him no protection. It was well indeed if both soldiers and subjects did not unite in carrying out the papal behest by driving him from his kingdom, if some fanatic monk by the more quick dispatch of the dagger did not save them the trouble.

European history furnishes a list of more than 64 emperors and kings deposed by the Popes. In the numbers Henry II of England deposed by Alexander III, King John by Innocent III, Richard and Edward by Boniface IX, Henry VIII by Clement VII, and again by Paul III, Elizabeth by Pius V.

Even King Robert the Bruce had this terrible curse launched against him, but thanks to the caldee elements still strong in Scotland, King Robert and his subjects held the Pope's fulmination but a brutum fulmin, and so it did not harm them.

Almost all the bulls against crowned heads have contained clauses stripping them of their territories and empowering their neighbor kings to invade and seize them, and influenced partly by a desire to serve the Pope and partly by the greed of what was not their own, they have not been slow to act on the papal permission.

As a specimen of the lofty style of these fulminations, the mouth speaking great things, we give the Bull of Excommunication issued by Sixtus V 1585 against the King of Devar and the Prince of Conde whom he calls the Two Sons of Wrath.

It runs thus, The authority given to St. Peter and his successors by the immense power of the eternal King excels all the power of earthly princes. It passes uncontrolled sentence upon them all, and if it find any of them resisting the ordinance of God, it takes a more severe vengeance upon them, casting them down from their throne, however powerful they may be, and tumbling them to the lowest parts of the earth as the ministers of aspiring Lucifer.

We deprive them and their posterity of their dominions forever. By the authority of these presence we absolve and free all persons from their oath of allegiance and from all duty whatever relating to dominion, fealty, and obedience, and we charge and forbid them all from presuming to obey them or any of their admonitions, laws, or commands.".

The Romanists themselves have chosen the very figure of the apocalypse, fire from heaven, to designate the papal excommunications and anathemas. Thus Gregory VII spoke of the Emperor Henry IV when excommunicated as struck with thunder.

To the same effect is the account of the excommunication of the Emperor Frederick by Pope Innocent at the first council of Lyon. Quote, these words of excommunication uttered in the midst of the council struck the hearers with terror as might the flashing thunderbolts.

When with candles lighted and flung down, the Lord Pope and his assistant prelates flashed their lightning fire terribly against the Emperor Frederick, now no longer to be called Emperor. His procurators and friends burst into a bitter wailing and struck the thigh or breast on that day of wrath, of calamity, and of woe.

It was in the days of Gregory VII that the papal heavens began thus to thunder and lightning. The first burst of the tempest continued for nearly 200 years, its fury falling mainly on rebellious kings.

When the kings were subdued, the storm was next directed against heresy and heretics. Since the days of Innocent III till our own revolution of 1688, there were only brief periods of silence in the pontifical firmament.

For five centuries, these thunders rolled almost without intermission or pause. Peel followed peel in rapid succession. The Crusades of the Waldenses, the Hussite campaigns in Bohemia, the wars of Charles V in Germany, the wars of the League in France, the butcheries of Alva in the Low Countries, the Thirty Years' War in the German fatherland, the St. Bartholomew Massacre in France, and the equally bloody massacre of Irish Protestants in 1641.

These are only a few of the more notable thunder bursts which have marked the course of that long tempest of pontifical wrath, which began in the days of Hildebrand in the 11th century and continued its terrible reverberations until 1688.

In Rome's great book of curses, one of the most notable is the Bullum Conae Domini. It is truly an utterance from the mouth speaking great things. Framed since the Reformation, it curses all the various sections of the Protestant Church, giving special prominence to Calvinists and Sanguilians.

Its scope is wide indeed. The world and its inhabitants, so far as they were known to the framers of this bull, are compendiously cursed in it. Its thunders are heard re-echoing far beyond the limits of Christendom, and its lightnings are seen to strike the pirates of barbarous seas as well as the Calvinists of Great Britain.

This bull was wont to be promulgated annually by the Pope in person, attended by a magnificent array of cardinals and priests. The ceremony took place on Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter, and was accompanied by numerous solemnities, fitted to strike the spectators with awe.

It was read from the lost vestibule of the church of the Lateran, amid the firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, the blaring of trumpets, and the blazing of torches. When the curses of the bull had been thundered forth, the torches were extinguished and flung into the great piazza beneath, to signify the outer darkness into which all heretics shall finally be hurled.

Pope Ganganelli, in 1770, forbade the public reading of the bull, but the practice was soon revived, and is still continued at Rome, though not in the same public fashion. But the discontinuance of its open promulgation matters nothing.

It is unrepealed. All heretics are ipso facto under its ban, and the establishment of the papal hierarchy gives it to all Romanists the force of law in the United Kingdom. The papal wrath can at pleasure extend or contract its sphere.

Nothing is so lofty as to be beyond its reach, and nothing is so minute as to be beneath it. It can vent itself in a tempest that covers a whole kingdom, and it can concentrate itself on a single individual.

If it shall be said that the mouth that spoke these great things in the past would not give utterance to them now, nor will ever utter such things in time to come, in other words, that the Roman Church and her popes have renounced all these lofty claims, and no longer challenge supremacy over kings and princes, we have to remind those who make this affirmation that the late pope Pius IX in a great state document to which the seal of infallibility has since been twice appended, gives this assertion the most distinct and explicit contradiction.

In the twenty-third article of the syllabus, Pius IX condemns the proposition that the Roman pontiffs and ecumenical councils have at any time, quote, exceeded the limits of their power or usurped the rights of princes, unquote.

This is a justification ex cathedra of the loftiest claims that ever emanated from the papal chair, and the most tyrannical usurpations ever made by popes on the prerogatives of princes and the liberties of nations.

With the history of the popes before him, he solemnly declares that no one of them ever exceeded the bounds of his power, or as Dr. G. F. Anschulte, professor of canon law at Prague, summing up the teaching of canon law on this point, puts it, quote, We may say with Shakespeare, here's a large mouth indeed that spits forth death and mountains, rocks, and seas.

These characteristics belong to the whole series of symbolic representations of the apostate power in scripture, and thus they establish a perfect identity betwixt the little horn of Daniel, the two-horned lamb-like beast of the apocalypse, the man of sin of Paul, and the antichrist of John.

Chapter 12. The All-Deceivableness of Unrighteousness. The coming of the man of sin was to be with the all-deceivableness of unrighteousness, with finished, perfected, and, till the man of sin appeared, unparalleled craft.

The Papacy as a Counterfeit Church

Let us mark the phrase, it is a very remarkable one. It is used in no other place. It is employed to describe no other system. It describes the great apostasy and it alone. It is not simply deceivableness, nor is it simply unrighteousness.

It is the deceivableness of unrighteousness. Nay, it is the all-deceivableness of unrighteousness. Craft and deceivableness were no unknown things before the papacy entered the world. Priests and statesmen have in every age dealt largely in deceivableness.

But the deceivableness particular to herself is the deceivableness of unrighteousness. Not only is it a craft more subtle and more defined than any with which man operated in former ages, it is a craft of a new order.

It is a system of unrighteousness so set forth as to seem that system of righteousness which God has revealed for the salvation of the world, and by consequence accepted as such by all who, not taught of the Holy Ghost, are deceived and destroyed by it.

Paganism was a system of deceivableness. It was the worship of a false god under the pretense of being the worship of the true god. But popery is a deceivableness on a scale far beyond that of paganism.

The one who is a counterfeit of the religion of the gospel. Popery has a god of its own, him even whom the canon law calls the Lord our God. It has a savior of its own, the church to wit. It has a sacrifice of its own, the mass.

It has a mediator of its own, the priesthood. It has a sanctifier of its own, the sacrament. It has a justification of its own, that even of infused righteousness. It has a pardon of its own, the pardon of the confessional.

And it has in the heavens an infallible, all-prevailing advocate unknown to the gospel, the mother of God. It thus presents to the world a spiritual and saving apparatus for the salvation of men, and yet it neither sanctifies nor saves anyone.

It looks like a church. It professes to have all that a church ought to have, and yet it is not a church. It is a grand deception, the all-deceivableness of unrighteousness. There is another point here that merits our attention.

It relates to the architecture or order of the spiritual house, the church. Popery, from its foundation to its top stone, has imitated that order. That Christ is the Son of God is the cornerstone of the gospel church.

Out of that root the whole gospel springs. It is the rock on which Christ, addressing Peter, said that he would build his church. That the Pope is the vicar of Christ is the cornerstone of the papal church.

Out of that root does the whole of popery spring. On that rock, said Boniface III in the 7th century and Gregory VII, with yet greater emphasis in the 11th, will I build my church. Let us further mark that both churches rest not on a doctrine but on a person.

The church of God rests on a person, even Christ. No one is saved simply by believing a system of truth. The truth is the light that shows the sinner his way to the Savior. He is united to Christ by his faith, which takes hold of the Savior, and by the Spirit who comes to dwell in his heart.

Thus he is a member of the spiritual body. The Bible, ministers, and ordinances are the channels through which the life of the head flows unto the members of the body. Thus are they built up a spiritual house, a holy temple, built on the foundation of prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ himself, the chief cornerstone.

All this is most adroitly counterfeited in the pope's church. It is only in the way of the members of that church resting on Peter, or what is the same thing, on the pope, that they can be saved. Romanists tell us that it is essential to the salvation of every human being that he be subject to the authority of the pope.

Peter, that is, the pope, is the one reservoir of grace. From him it flows down through the grand conduit of apostolical succession to all the members of the church, and thus are they built up a spiritual house, built upon the foundation of traditions, sacraments, priests, bishops, cardinals, the pope himself being the chief cornerstone.

Moreover, the whole policy and actings of the Roman church have been marked by a deceivableness unequaled by any other society or confederacy known to history. Her popes have been the most astute race of rulers the world ever saw.

What a depth of cunning and craft! Where is the cabinet or monarch that can cope with it? Her more than human insight Rome conceals under the guise of artlessness and simplicity. She looks so guileless and so lamb-like that statesmen say we shall have no difficulty in holding our own against diplomats like these.