discussed with the measure of fulness which the subject justly requires. II. These defects it is my present object to remedy. That the word AПOCTATHC is really the name in question, I was fully persuaded, in my own mind, even at the time when I published my Sacred Calendar of Prophecy. But, at present, my conviction is such, as to amount to a sort of moral certainty. Nor can this impression be deemed irrational, when I state: that the very difficulties, which occurred to me, tended only, when thoroughly sifted, to establish, with the greater firmness, the original position. III. The subject is both curious and important: curious, in the discussion; important, in the consequence which it involves. 1. Commentators have too frequently gone to work after a manner, which can scarcely fail of exciting distrust and suspicion. (1.) Often, little regarding, or even misap. prehending, the palmary fact, that, Let the precise name be what it may, it is a name descriptive of the Secular Roman Empire; they have pitched upon some individual or some object disagreeable to them: and have then endeavoured to find a plausibly appropriate name, which, in its arithmetical letters, should comprehend the specified number 666. The natural consequence of this crude system, a system common alike to Papists and to Protestants, has been: that names of the most opposite tendency have been confidently brought forward on no better argumentative or probative ground, than that, when arithmetically computed, they contained the number required. (2.) Yet the Apostle himself affords no reason for the sneer, which such a loose mode of proceedure is doubtless not unlikely to provoke. So far from making the production of a cer the actuality of the name is to be determined; a test, in truth, had it ever been nakedly propounded, which in itself would absolutely have been no test: St. John lays down not fewer than five distinct notes, by the combination of which a test of such a highly complex nature. is produced, that it is morally impossible for more than a single name to correspond with it. Whence, if we find a name, which really does correspond with this complicated quintuple test, and which at the same time characteristically describes the theological condition of the Secular Roman Empire from first to last; we are morally sure, that we have detected the name beheld by the Apostle for, through the intervention of such a process, all that charge of vagueness and ambiguity, which is often alleged against inquiries of this description, will, on abundantly reasonable principles, be effectually removed. 2. The subject, however, is no less awfully important, than it is intellectually curious. If RECAPITULATED APOSTASY, as Ireneus denominates it, be the branded theological character of the Secular Roman Empire, in its divided state as well as in its undivided state, from its commencement even down to its termination, under its nominally christian polities as well as under its avowedly pagan polities: I do not perceive, how the conclusion can be escaped; that That corrupt form of Christianity, which has long been upheld and patronised by the potent Western Bishop of Rome, though it had been germinating in the East from certainly as early a period as the fourth century, is no better than a gross APOSTASY or DEPARTURE from the sincerity of the genuine Gospel. Such a conclusion, particularly when viewed in connection with the well known prophecies, that A great apostasy in the Church must needs be expected, and that That apostasy would be eminently marked by a prohibition of marriage form to the old pagan practice of subordinately worshipping the souls of illustrious dead men canonised or (as the Greeks called them) Demons or Hero-gods: such a conclusion may well administer a salutary caution to those, who, in the present age of sickly liberalism, vainly fancying that Popery is no longer what once it was, are tempted to make shipwreck of their faith by listening to the artful insinuation of well disguised plausibilities'. Popery, whatever vizard the theological Proteus may wear, and however dexterously it may seek its advancement by pandering to the wild licentiousness of democratic faction, is still, in the judgment of Holy Writ, a form OF RECAPITULATED ROMAN APOSTASY. 1 See 2 Thess. ii. 3-12. 1 Tim. iv. 1-3. Rev. ix. 20. March 1, 1833. |