Refuting the celebrated Arminian Preterist Dutch scholar, Hugo Grotius, who denied the classic New Testament passages on Antichrist, contrary to the united opinion of the Reformed Churches.
By French Reformed Theologian, Pastor, Protestant Apologist and Professor of Theology, Samuel Maresius, (d. 1673)
First Ever Translation
Preface
A treatise has recently appeared at Amsterdam on the more notable passages of the New Testament concerning the Antichrist, which all Christians — and especially the Reformed and Protestants — have understood to mean the Roman Pontiff, whose yoke they therefore justly judge ought to be shaken off. This little book, however, twists all those things, partly to Caligula and Simon Magus, partly to Bar Kokhba and Domitian, partly to Apollonius and Trajan: so that the ancients are thought to have been mad in excessively fearing that great Antichrist who would arise in the Church after the fall of the Empire. Moreover, the Protestants are accused of slandering the Roman Bishop, who judged that communion with him ought to be denounced as Antichristian and idolatrous.
The author’s name is not prefixed; this Apelles [4th century Greek painter also] wished, after publishing this his picture and others of the same kind, to lurk and pry into the judgments of passers-by. Learned indeed and well-read he will be acknowledged by all, according to the Arabic proverb Docte, doctos errare (Learned men, learned men err). Rumor assigns him to be the illustrious and most eminent man Hugo Grotius, shining as much with praise for learning as with the luster of the embassy he now performs to the King of France in the name of the Crown of Sweden.
I see very many arguments to the contrary: for it is hardly credible that he would so basely flatter the Roman Pontiff, as one who has not ceased to be called Evangelical and Protestant, who was born and educated in that Republic to which the office of princes and magistrates is most persuasive among other things to pull down the kingdom of Antichrist (Belgic Confession, art. 36), and who directs all his generous undertakings under the auspices of the most High and Invincible Prince of Orange, who is now Minister of that Kingdom, in which — as with all the others who have yielded to Roman communion — it is most firmly believed that the Roman Pontiff is Antichrist, so that that thrice-great Gustavus (the name appears) in the memoirs of German liberty chiefly undertook his vindications with this argument, that he would bitterly resent being dragged by force back under the yoke of Antichrist, which they had cast off. [………………..]
But when the Roman Bishop, having established a monarchy for himself in the Christian world, arrogates to himself supremacy over all churches and pastors; becomes so inflated as to call himself God (Can. Satis Dist. 96. Lib. 1. Sacrar. Cerem. cap. de Benedict. ensis); and wishes to be adored [worshiped]; (Lateran Council last session 1.3.9.10) claims for himself all power in heaven and on earth, disposes of ecclesiastical matters at will; composes articles of faith, would have the authority of Scripture depend on him and interpret it at his pleasure; practices the trafficking of souls, liberates those bound by vows and oaths, institutes new worships of God; and as to civil things, tramples on the lawful authority of magistrates, giving, taking away, and transferring kingdoms: We believe and assert that he is truly that very and genuine Antichrist, the son of perdition, 2 Thess. 2:3, foretold in God’s word. Zech. 11:16,17; 1 John 4:3; Rev. 13:11, etc. The purple-clad harlot, Revelation 17:1; sitting on seven mountains in the great city, Revelation 17:9; holding sway as king over the kings of the earth, Revelation 17:18 — and we await until God, as He promised and has already begun, shatter and defeat him by the breath of His mouth and finally wipe him out by the brightness of His coming. 2 Thess. 2:8.
REFUTATION OF THE ANNOTATIONS
On the Second Chapter of Second Thessalonians
[N. B. Modern Preterists agree with Grotius that the fulfillment of the Man of Sin in 2 Thess. 2 was NOT the Pope, but rather someone who lived no later than the 1st century: e.g., Titus or Nero.]
According to the order of time, [Grotius claims] the second [epistle] to the Thessalonians preceded the first, and was written in the second year of Gaius Caligula, before Paul had come to Thessalonica. The commentator takes for granted, gratuitously and as the most certain foundation, that his recent commentaries are based on these predictions of Paul. But it is easy to show that the second is indeed [later], and addressed to an already established Church, and not written until after Paul had come to Thessalonica; therefore, the commentator himself admitting it, [it is] after the time of Gaius [Caligula], yea, after the ninth year of Claudius, who succeeded him; whence it must necessarily follow that the earlier words of this prophecy are by no means to be understood according to his interpretation, nor the later ones of Simon Magus, whom the commentator rejects as belonging to the second year of Claudius; unless he decides that Paul here only predicted past events — that he was speaking of a seducer, not of a teacher of the Gentiles, a charlatan, not an Apostle. [N. B. Today it is the general opinion of scholars that both epistles were written from Corinth, the first in 50-51 AD, the second shortly thereafter. Emperor Claudius ruled from 41 AD to 54 AD; Caligula ruled from 37 AD to 41 AD.]
That the second is indeed [later] is clear from chapter 2:2, μητέ διὰ λόγου, μήτε διὰ ἐπιστολῆς, ὡς δ᾽ ἡμῶν, nor by word, nor by epistle, as from us: For those who were persuading the Thessalonians that the end of the world was imminent commended that opinion as Pauline, relying on the testimony of the earlier Epistle to them, chapter 4:15–17, where the Apostle seemed to say that on the final day of the resurrection he himself and the others then living would be alive and found among the survivors. Thus, the unlearned and unstable, unskilled and wavering, used to corrupt Paul’s Epistles, especially on this subject, and to draw out a more recent meaning; 2 Pet. 3:16.
The same is evident from 2 Thess. 2:15: Hold fast the traditions which ye have been taught “whether by word,” ἴτε διὰ ἐπιστολῆς ἡμῶν, “or by our epistle;” whence the commentator there: “You have the rule of doctrine, the discourses which we delivered to you — which we preached to you when present and wrote to you when absent.”
That it was likewise written to a Church already gathered to Christ, not to certain private exiles there, as the Commentator [Grotius] imagines, is clear from chapter 1:1, where Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, as in the other [epistle], greet the Church of the Thessalonians.
Nor does the Commentator’s argument have any force, “that the Apostle here commanded not to excommunicate men who did not live according to the rule, which was a just assembly, as in the previous letter to the Corinthians, but to avoid them, which is the right of individuals.” For individual duties are also prescribed to persons in the Apostolic Epistles, even in those addressed to rightful assemblies. Moreover that passage in chapter 3:14–15, “If anyone does not obey our word, note that man by letter, and do not associate with him,” ἵνα ἐντραπῇ, inflicts ecclesiastical censure the more because it adds, “do not treat him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother,” ναθελεῖτε ὡς ἀδελφὸν: for it is clear from 1 Thess. 5:14 that this corruption was of a rightful assembly, where concerning those who live disorderly there is nothing more than that, ναθελεῖτε τοὺς ἀτάκτους.
Thus in the first letter to the Corinthians, (where the rod of censure is to be tightened on the unruly) Paul commands that the incestuous, who has been reported to him by others, be excommunicated, and he enjoins on the Corinthians, chap. 5:9-11, that they should not mix with fornicators. Thus, much is said to Timothy and Titus, who were Bishops, about avoiding tumults and heretics. 1 Tim. 5:20; 2 Tim. 3:5,10,15; Tit. 3:9.
Finally, that this Epistle was not written until after Paul had departed from Thessalonica (and he did not come there until after the Council of Jerusalem, celebrated in the seventeenth year of his conversion, at least the ninth year of Claudius, as Baronius judges, or, as seems more plausible to us, still later) is established by many arguments. First, it is addressed to a Christian Church, and there was no Christian church at Thessalonica before Paul had gathered it by his preaching: anyone may infer this from Acts 16:9… [N. B. Thessalonica was the capital of Macedonia, located in modern-day Greece]… for if many Christians had already been known to Paul there he would all the more have wished to visit them, and would not have needed the angelic admonition who invited him to Macedonia in a Macedonian guise; but especially from Acts 17:1–4, where it is related how Paul reasoned at Thessalonica for three Sabbaths in the synagogue of the Jews about Christ, converting a few from the circumcision and many from the uncircumcision; and how the Bereans were nobler than the Thessalonian Jews in that they received the word with all eagerness of mind (v. 11).
Therefore, it is not even plausible what is imagined here, that Christians driven out of Judea by persecution first came into Syria; thence, urged by the same storm, having crossed the sea, they reached Macedonia; for if Thessalonica already had many Christians from the circumcision familiar and known to Paul, why did the Apostle not return to them, or teach in the synagogue of the Jews? Would the Thessalonian Jews have tolerated these Christians of the circumcision in their synagogue before Paul’s arrival? Therefore, they would rather have risen up against him than against those, before he had come there. Were those Christians who had settled at Thessalonica, if one trusts the Commentator, hiding their Evangelical Mystery from their fellow townsmen in that city long before Paul came there, or pretending not to be Christians so that the Jews there would be the first to hear Paul preaching about it? What is more, it is evident from 1 Thess. 2:14 and 1:9 that the Church of the Thessalonians was formed chiefly from Gentiles, not from Jews who had fled there: there the faithful Thessalonians are said to have suffered the same things from their own countrymen as the Jewish Church from the Jews; here, however, converted from idols to the true God.
Moreover, Paul himself plainly testifies that he had already been to Thessalonica before he wrote this Epistle, 2 Thess. 2:5: “Do you not remember that when I was still with you I used to say these things to you?” The Commentator invents that these words were spoken by Paul to the Thessalonians while they were still wandering in Syria and before they had crossed over into Macedonia; but we have already shown this is far from the truth. The passages cited do not support the commentator: Acts 8:4 and 18:18. For if the dispersion mentioned earlier occurred while Paul was still raging against the Church, he cannot be thought to have committed these matters concerning the Mystery of iniquity to Christians dispersed by him, not yet himself a Christian at that time. His journey into Syria, of which the other passage speaks, followed some years later his Thessalonian preaching and the writing of both letters to the Thessalonians.
For he remained at Corinth for a year and a half, Acts 18:11. After Silas and Timothy had returned from Macedonia—those who had already been sent to the Thessalonians before the first letter to them, 1 Thess. 3:2,6—Paul came to Corinth from Athens, Acts 18:1, and to Athens from Macedonia, Acts 17:14–15. Therefore, when he resolved to sail to Syria and took Aquila and Priscilla with him, Acts 18:18, there must have been a large interval of time between Paul’s preaching at Thessalonica and his departure for Syria, so that the Commentator could not make that [letter] much earlier without manifest anachronism and the inexcusable fault of supineness in handling the sacred writings.
Not only does Paul testify there that his letter to the Thessalonians followed his discourses at Thessalonica, but in the same chapter 2:15 he declares that he had already established the Church there before by word and by epistle; καὶ διὰ λόγου καὶ διὰ ἐπιστολῆς. And in 3:8–10 he reminds the Thessalonians that, while staying among them, he labored night and day so as not to be a burden to anyone, and he warned that anyone who would not work should not eat, being unworthy of food. That Paul both did and said these things in the city of Thessalonica is evident from 1 Thess. 2:9 and 4:6,11, where the same matters appear: the Commentator, however, admits that this [second letter] was written only after Paul’s return from Macedonia.
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Grotius Misinterprets the Coming of Christ
In the first verse, 2 Thess. 2:1, παρουσίας (‘the coming’) of Christ is interpreted by Grotius as the coming of God to a particular judgment on the Jews and the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem — which is a false reading. For although that judgment, like every other, Christ will also execute (John 5:22), παρουσίας τοῦ Κυρίου [‘the coming of the Lord’] signifies, as it generally and almost constantly does with the Apostles, the return of Christ for the universal judgment: as Matthew 24:3, “What will be the sign of your parousia – of your coming – and of the end of the world?” And there, verses 36–37, “Of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, but the Father alone. As it was in the days of Noah, so will be the parousia of the Son of Man.” Thus, Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:23 the resurrection of those who are Christ’s at his parousia, at his coming. Thus, it is not used in another sense in 1 Thess. 2:19, 3:13, 4:15, 5:23; James 5:7–8; 2 Pet. 3:4; 1 John 2:28. Only once does it appear in another sense, regarding the first coming of Christ in the flesh, 2 Peter 1:16.
The passage from Luke 19:12 & 15, praised by the Commentator, does not contain the word παρεσίας [‘coming’], but the verb ἐπανελθεῖν [‘returned’] and since that passage is a parable specifically fitting its subject matter, it should not be made to produce a metaphorical and figurative parousia of Christ elsewhere. Moreover, those Christians did not eagerly await that particular judgment on the Jews, as they feared in some way the return of Christ at the time would result in the universal judgment, when they would be spectators of the ruin of the universe. Instead, they used their prayers “for the delay of the end,” as found among the ancients, as noted in Tertullian’s writings. The Apostle, therefore, seeks to free Christians from this anxiety, and at the same time to shut the mouths of the profane who scoffed that the final return of Christ would never occur; whence that phrase in Peter 2 Pet. 3:4. “Where is the promise of his parousia?” for he wished to speak of that as certainly future, following a completion of His prophecies, yet not so near as some imagined.
It is a very strong argument to regard this place in that way [i.e., joining Christ’s coming to our gathering to Him] because τῇ παρεσίᾳ κυρίς [‘the coming of the Lord’] is joined with ἡμῶν ἐπισυναγώγη ἐπ᾿ αὐτὸν; our gathering to him; of which truth the Commentator on Matthew 24:31 and Mark 15:27 [sic: Mark 13:27] does not deny that the resurrection of the saints is indicated. For to suppose that ἐπισυναγώγη could mean the unrestricted ability of Christians everywhere to meet after the Jews were destroyed in the time of Titus and Vespasian is foreign to the style of Scripture and contrary to historical truth: for even if Vespasian and Titus decreed nothing harsher against Christians, yet Domitian, Titus’s brother, severely persecuted them, and they experienced especially grievous persecutions after Jerusalem was overthrown — under Hadrian, Trajan, the Antonines, Severus, Maximinus, Decius, Diocletian — and this full and secure liberty of meeting did not come to Christians before Constantine’s conversion. Therefore, in no way could that gathering into Christ, taken in any sense, be joined to the destruction of the Jews.
What if, therefore, the Greek word ὑπὲρ [2 Thess 2:1] most do not understand as the Commentator states, but rather “through,” or “by means of,” as if Paul were testifying to the Thessalonians that through the coming of Christ the gathering to himself will occur; for where the corpse will be, there the vultures will gather, so that they are not easily terrified or moved. Thus, the Vulgate interpreter, Erasmus, and others. [N. B. Latin Vulgate: Rogamus autem vos fratres per adventum Domini nostri Iesu Christi et nostrae congregationis in ipsum.]
Verse 2: μήτε δι’ ἐπιστολῆς, ὡς δὲ ἡμῶν; [“not by a letter, as if from us.”] The Commentator, with most, refers this to the pseudepigraphic letters which forgers ascribed to the Apostles; but as stated above we also noted that some understood from Paul that an imminent coming of Christ was predicted which the Thessalonians gleaned from that very earlier letter of his to them.
In the same place, ἡμέραν χρίς, “the day of Christ,” Grotius interpreted as the day of the destruction of Jerusalem, but falsely, because he notes both here and elsewhere the day of the universal judgment was not so near as some suspected — he shows this from the fact that the Antichrist would have to appear and be vanquished beforehand. It is in that sense “the day of the Lord” is treated: 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Thess. 1:10; 2 Tim. 1:12, 18; 4:8, which prophecies of the Sibyls did not extend beyond their own times. Nor, indeed, did Gaius himself, after he obtained the Empire, keep his nature so long concealed that the full disclosure of his very bad mind was long to be awaited; for about him it was immediately decided: “He was neither a better slave nor a worse master,” as Suetonius says in ch. 10 — so much so that he seemed to have been produced by the nature of things only to show what extreme vices could do in extreme fortune. Thus, Seneca of him, “De Consolatione ad Albinum.” [N. B. This letter was written by Augustine. Seneca wrote three Consolation letters, but this was not one of them.] This may be connected with what the Commentator cites from Lysias below, ὀλίγον χρόνον θύναιτ’ ἄντις πλάσαθαι τὸν τρόπον τὸν αὐτος: “No one hides his nature for long. For swiftly the fates return to their own nature.” Indeed, when these things were written by Paul in the second year of his own [reign], according to the Commentator’s view, Gaius had already shown sufficiently what he was; for although he did not complete a full four years in the empire, yet he spent three whole years in crimes of various kinds, as Sextus Aurelius Victor eloquently asserts “in himself,”—it is necessary that his wicked disposition had been laid bare before the first year of his reign was complete; although perhaps he began to harass the Jews only in the following year.
[N. B. Grotius made a poor attempt to label Caligula the “man of sin” who was not revealed immediately to the world.]
Grotius, indeed, marks the man of sin as conspicuously wicked, but this man is not at all to be equated with Caligula, to whom none of these traits wholly apply. Elagabalus, Domitian, Nero, and even Tiberius, whom Caligula succeeded — none were inferior to Caligula in depravity, though Tiberius’ malice was less because it was more concealed; and even more detestable in him is that he named Gaius, whom he knew would be the worst, as his successor, so as thereby to obscure the memory of his own crimes and leave the people yearning for him.
That the Commentator says that the Apostle speaks covertly about the Emperor, as about Nero in 2 Tim. 4:17, arises from his false hypothesis. Then ‘lion’ here, [i.e., “the lion’s mouth”], meaning that not all interpret Nero, but that some interpret the lion as the Devil, as Ambrose does; but suppose it is taken literally, for perhaps at that time some rumor had spread that Paul was to be thrown to lions and beasts, which was a very frequent punishment of Christians? Paul did not call Nero a lion in order to speak more secretly, but rather more emphatically, especially because he could not be sated with the blood of Christians and raged against them with every kind of torture; “To the dying,” says Tacitus, Annals 15, “were added mockeries, so that, clothed in the hides of wild beasts, they perished to the howling of dogs; many were fixed to crosses or burned with fire; most were reserved for that end so that, when the day had failed, they might be kept for use as a nocturnal light.”
That Gaius was, as the Commentator observes, conspicuously criminal, and on that account also destined by God for a conspicuous destruction, nevertheless, it does not follow that he could be called κατ᾿ ἐξαίρετον, ὁ ὑὸς τῆς ἀπολείας, that son of perdition who is mentioned here. For he who is decorated with this epithet should not only draw destruction on himself, but also be a guide and forerunner in leading others to destruction; as is observed of Judas the betrayer in Acts 1:16 and John 18:3, who is marked by this epithet as a type and forerunner of the Antichrist. Nor, as the Commentator supposes, does בן מות “son of death” in 2 Sam. 12:15 mean the same. For everyone who is guilty of death by the judgment of the magistrate is not, with respect to God and the Church, a son of perdition: the former term properly denotes the offense or the obligation to punishment; the latter denotes vices and crimes.
Would not these things far more readily suit him who has brought so great a defection into the Church from the purity of the faith, especially in what concerns foods and marriages, of which Paul speaks in 1 Tim. 4? And who, even if he “leads innumerable peoples in droves to the first captivity of Hell with him to be beaten forever with many stripes,” would be subject to no reproof, as Canon Law speaks concerning the Roman Pontiff: Canon, Si Papa. dist. 40. How many, then, who have held that seat were worse than the Caligulas and Neros? Let the complaint of Baronius himself regarding the tenth Christian century be considered, and the testimony of Genebrard concerning nearly fifty pontiffs succeeding one another in that century, who “fell from the virtue of their predecessors — Apostatic, rather than Apostolic.” These monsters and portents are spoken of by Platina about Benedict IV no less than Suetonius about Gaius: Mantuanus also laments “the Romulean strongholds and pontifical roofs, a sewer of crimes.” Marcellus II himself [d. 1555], judged that [compared to St. Onuphrius] no pontiff could be saved. I spare naming each one.
But that which the Commentator mentions as most foul about Caius — “Remember that everything is lawful for me and for all” — falls far short of that fullness of power in spirituals and temporals which the Roman Pontiff, that man called Spiritual, if it please the gods, arrogates to himself, who judges all and is judged by none. The flatterers and admirers of that See could not but know that they have written things about their pontiffs more shameful than Suetonius or Tacitus or Philo ever wrote about Gaius, from which the distinguishing mark of the sons of perdition (γνώρισματω) can be drawn far more certainly than those which he assigns to Gaius.
Verse 4: ὁ ἀντικείμενο — the one placed against — signifies Satan and an adversary, and in any way one opposed to another; hence, when Aristotle describes the kinds of opposites in the Categories: Aντικείσθαι λέγεται ἕτερον, ἑτέρῳ τετραχῶς, “to be placed opposite is said one to another in four ways,” — nor do we deny that the name aptly suits, especially as the Commentator asserts, him who not once or by mistake but by perpetual and determined design opposes God, being fitly likened to this Devil to whom the name Satan is given. But we further maintain that τὸν ἀντικείμενον is the Antichrist, whom the rumor among Christians, chiefly from this passage of Paul in the time of John, the last of the Apostles, had spread as to certainly come into the world; 1 John 2:18 — who was to overcome the impiety of Gaius, of the Antiochians, and of all the impious, the firstborn of the Devil.
Nor should we omit the scholars’ observation that ἀντιχρίςον [“antichrist, one opposed to or acting in place of Christ; the adversary who sets himself up as a false Christ or Christ’s substitute”] is said to be called ἀντικείμενον because he would make himself the Vicar of Christ, the Legate of him; he would be ἀντίστροφος [“antistrophos, a counter-turner; one acting in opposition or as a rival or substitute in place of another; contrary in disposition or role; one who opposes or reverses”] and ἀντιτάλαντος [“antitalantos, a counter-balance or one bearing a corresponding portion; a rival or opponent holding an equivalent or rival position”] and would be said to sit ἀντίχρίσε κεῖθη [“to be placed in the stead of Christ” or “to sit in the place (seat) of Christ.”] “in the place of Christ in the Church.” To Aristotle certain things are said to ἀντικεῖσθαι ὡς τὰ eós: “to be opposed relatively;” and ἀντίθε in Homer often denotes “one who is as if another god.”
But moreover, the Roman Pontiff opposes God far more steadily and more harmfully than Gaius or Antiochus, while under the pretext of his vicariate and imaginary impeccability he reshapes the sacred laws of God and the constitutions of Scripture at will, the Ordinary Gloss, Can. Lector. dist. 34, declaring that he even dispenses against an Apostle — to say nothing of the taking away of the chalice against Christ’s command, Matt. 26:27. The erection and adoration of images against the second commandment; the use of foreign tongues in the sacred rites against the Apostle, 1 Cor. 14; the necessity of celibacy; the prohibition of reading the Scriptures; the sanctioning of unwritten Traditions; and six hundred such matters in which the Titanic opposition of that See to God appears — worse in that it does not proceed merely from empty pride, as in Gaius, but is defended and carried out as consonant with reason and under the pretext of Piety; just as Judas, that earlier son of perdition, betrayed Christ with a kiss, and Pilate’s soldiers knelt to him and mocked him — so true is the Arab proverb that is oft repeated here: “Every evil is done in the name of the Lord.”
The Commentator rightly judges that phrase kai ὑπεραιρόμενος ἐπὶ πάντα λεγόμενον θεὸν ἢ σέβασμα — “exalting himself above everything called God or object of worship,” taken from Daniel 11:36, which the ancients unanimously considered to refer to Antiochus as a type of the Antichrist. But although Gaius may in some respects be compared with Antiochus, Antiochus’ impiety was by far greater. For Gaius seems chiefly to have scorned the false gods of the Gentiles and exalted himself above his idols, and in that regard all those things which the author here so diligently criticizes apply; and certainly, had he stopped there, apart from empty arrogance he would not have committed anything very blameworthy: for the worst of men is better than the greatest of idols, and a living dog is preferable to a dead lion. Antiochus, on the other hand, commanded they abolish the worship of the true God, as then legally established, and his temple profaned (1 Maccabees 1:43ff.), yea, he wished that all the peoples of Asia should wholly abandon their own sacred rites and consent to a certain common idolatrous cult — which we never read that Gaius did.
How much more fitting therefore does that suit the Roman Pontiff, who exalts himself above the true God — yea, even above the very word — while he suspends the authority of Scripture to his own, and makes himself the universal Bishop, head and foundation of the Church, the norm of faith, the supreme and infallible judge of questions of faith; he boasts that he can even dispense in things that are of Divine law, as Catholic theologian Alphonsus Mendoza asserts (Schol. 5, p. 330). He sanctions superstitious and idolatrous worship, raging with fire and sword against those who will not admit it or who would withdraw from it.
Secondly, [he exalts himself] above princes and magistrates, even the Caesars themselves, the world’s objects of reverence — for the Greeks call ‘Augustus’ σεβάσματα [“things regarded with worship”] who are often called gods in Scripture (Ps. 82:6; John 10:34) — since he arrogates to himself the right to appoint and depose them at will, to absolve their subjects from the oath of fidelity, and to transfer their kingdoms at pleasure into other hands. The matter is evident to all.
Thirdly, [he exalts himself] above every σέβασμα and numen, and whatever is proposed among the Papists to be worshipped and adored: the apotheosis of the saints so called, and the Sacred Ceremonial, and other Pontifical Writings (not canonical, not publicly worshipped) depend on his nod, and, as Tertullian says, (Apologetics, cap. 5) “unless a man pleases God, God will not be God” — indeed those saints are regarded as tutelary gods [i.e., “spirits that protect”], and are called “gods by participation” by Bellarmine: Alphonsus Mendoza, above p. 333, declares the Pontiff to be greater in authority and power than the saints who are in heaven. Images, relics, and what is commonly called the Body of the Lord, the people’s σεβάσματα, require his declaration and consecration, or depend on him, that it may be adored. In the more solemn pomp, according to the Roman Ceremonial, from which it is imposed what is the most august numen to the people — namely the consecrated Host — he himself, as if more worthy, is borne aloft on the shoulders of men and follows.
Thus, [the Roman Pope is] greater than any man, who can have God at hand wherever he wishes, and sees kings and Caesars kneeling and kissing his feet. Gaius assigned the insignia of the gods to himself and would have changed the image of Jupiter Olympus into his own likeness: but this one [the Roman Pope] arrogates to himself the attributes of the true God; and he who has compared the customary image of God the Father with that of his own habit will easily detect that either the Pontiff’s dress is an ornament of the Deity, or the insignia of God belong to the Pontiff as Vice-God, that is, ἀντιθεός, as Paul V permitted himself to be called — namely, “he has a divided rule with Jove.” [N. B. Jove aka Jupiter was the chief god of the ancient Romans.] This brief notice will suffice as much as the elucidation of these words by the Apostle required. For I have no mind to run rashly through the controversy about the Antichrist with the Pontiffs themselves.
The Temple of God in which the Antichrist was to sit the Commentator takes to be the Jerusalem Temple, into which Gaius planned to bring his statue under the name of Jupiter, best and greatest; and he asserts that by that plan Gaius showed himself most contemptuous toward the true God and caused the greatest sorrow and fear to Jews and Christians, though the matter ended without result. But here a mistake is variously made: for Paul prophesies not what that man of sin was to intend and devise in his mind, but what he would actually do; therefore since Gaius’s statue was not brought into that Temple, he should not be judged to have sat in it, even though he contemplated doing so.
Then it would have been absurdly said that Gaius, acting at Rome, sat in the Jerusalem Temple because his statue was erected and placed there; for the Greek N. T. manuscripts have αὐτόν, “him,” as sitting in the Temple; and when the Commentator changes that into ἑαυτόν, and interprets τὸ καθίστη, not as “to sit,” but as “to place,” as if this man ought to place himself in the Temple, he not only opposes all the interpreters and deserts the authority of all the manuscripts in order to force his sense on Scripture rather than to follow its genuine meaning, but he also errs grievously for a learned man in not observing that τὸ καθίζειν, ἀ καθίζω, which is “to place” (as in 1 Cor. 6:4 where the related ικαθίζω has the same sense), differs from καθίζομαι, which properly is “to sit”: thus Christ in John 4:6 ἐκαθέζετο ἐπὶ τῇ πηγῇ “sat by the well”; and in John 20:12 two angels were seen ἐν λευκαῖς καθεζομένοι, “sitting in white.” Which is harsher to say: that he placed himself in the Temple; or that he ordered his statue to be placed there by others?
Nor is it credible that Christians felt any grief or fear at the prospect of Gaius’s machinations and the scheme to profane the Jerusalem Temple; for they knew that the abomination of desolation was to be set up in the Temple, according to Daniel and Christ, and that it would soon be razed — indeed they eagerly awaited that, as the Commentator wished; they knew too that, after the veil was torn, it was no longer properly God’s Temple, its doors thrown further open, and those sleep-inducing voices heard there: “Let us go hence,” by which the ruin of it was signified as soon to come, and that the Levitical worship to which it had been dedicated was no longer lawful or pleasing to God. If it was sometimes frequented by the Apostles and Christians of the circumcision, that was only either before the Gentiles were summoned to share in the Gospel (as in Acts 2:46; 3:1; 5:42), or for the sake of avoiding offence to the Jews (as in Acts 18:18; 21:23–24) — not because they regarded those ceremonies as still relevant, but in order to bury the synagogue with more honour. They also knew that the Temple, so long as it stood devoted to Levitical worship and Mosaic ceremonies was the greatest hindrance to evangelical truth.
Nothing, therefore, neither the profanation nor the overthrow of that Temple stood in the way of the Christian religion, although Severus Sulpicius is praised by the Commentator for having formed a plan to overturn the religion of the Jews and Christians: Tertullian, (Apologetics, cap. 6), shows that Vespasian bore no hostility to Christians beyond the force of the Jews as belligerents; indeed, Orosius, (book 7, chap. 5), declares that Gaius Caligula, a most scandalous man, seemed to all the pious truly worthy to be punished by the Romans as a blasphemer and persecutor of the Jews.
Although at that time the pagans did not yet fully know what distinction there was between Jews and Christians (hence, Suetonius in Claudius, ch. 25: “Claudius expelled the Jews constantly making disturbances at Rome at the instigation of Christ”; for the Jews were often tumultuous against the Christians on account of the name of Christ, so that I would rather imagine some instigator of Jewish sedition than any Christ), yet the Christians strove to distinguish themselves from them in all things, as pertains to ch. 21 of Tertullian’s Apologetics, nor did they count the afflictions and calamities of the Jews as their own. Here, indeed, it is strange that the Commentator should so grandly speak of that Temple and would mourn its destruction together with the Jews.
But the point at issue is that this place must by no means be understood of the Temple in Jerusalem, but of the Church of God, which throughout the New Testament is called variously “the house,” that is, “the temple of God” or “of the Lord:” Eph. 2:21; Rev. 11:19; 1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16. Theophylactus: “Not the temple which is in Jerusalem, but churches generally and every divine temple.” Jerome, Question 11 to Algasia: “He will sit in the temple of God, either in Jerusalem, as some think, or in the Church, as we consider more truly.” Hilary, therefore, warns that the Arians vainly glory in the walls of temples within which the Antichrist was to sit; whence Gregory, (book 4, epistle 38): “A king full of pride is near, and it is also a kind of sacrilege that an army of priests is being prepared for him.”
Augustine, Book 20 of The City of God, ch. 19, thinks it is more correct to say “he will sit in the temple of God,” as the Greeks have it, namely εἰς ναὸν θεῖ, “as if he himself,” he says, “were the Temple of God which is the Church, as we say, he sits among friends, that is, as a friend;” and unless I am mistaken, this is most in accord with the mind of the Apostle; and although εἰς δικον [“into the house”] is said in Mark 2:1 for ἐν δικῳ, [“in the house”], it does not follow that the Apostle spoke in the same way here: what the commentator adds, καθίζειν τίνα εἰς τὸ θρόνον, “to place someone on the throne,” sounds well and plain, yet it does not overturn Augustine’s opinion because καθίζειν, as I said above, is one thing, which signifies movement to a place, another is καθίστη, which denotes rest in a place.
To sit in the Church of God is, however, proper to the Roman Pontiffs, each of whom is said to have sat so long as he remained in that dignity, which even by antonomasia is called the “Holy See.” Indeed, they sit with their own [people] in the Church of God, for they always claim it, and they transfer to themselves its name, privileges, office, and authority. Nay, our adversaries even narrow it down to such a cliche as “Say, O Church,” likewise, “The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth,” and the like to the Pope, so that they think he alone sustains the duties and person of the whole Church. “By the name Church,” says Jesuit theologian Martin Becanus, “we can first understand the Pope, who is the head of the Church.” And Bellarmine wants this command “Say to the Church” to be fulfilled by the Pope when he speaks to himself. This, moreover, is a common saying among canonists in the praises of the Pope that they make in the council general.
Proving himself to be a god, the commentator rightly renders, “displaying himself as God by words and deeds.” Yet although Gaius wished to be thought greater than a man and to be worshiped like a divinity — not to mention other princes, the same mad folly in Alexander, Antigonus and the like, and among Caesars — this was neither entirely new nor wholly unheard of. For honors of a divine nature had already been bestowed even while Augustus still lived, as Virgil attests in Eclogue 1:
O Meliboeus, God has made this leisure for us; for God always seeks me, a god, as his altar, often the tender lamb from our sheepfolds stains it.
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Verse 5: “Do you remember that when I was with you I used to say these things to you,” not, as the commentator interprets, when the Apostle was among those in Syria; but, as shown above, when having set out into Macedonia he had proclaimed the Gospel of God at Thessalonica among them.
Verse 6: Τὸ ἀποκαλυφθῆναι αὐτόν [“that he be revealed”], is not, as the commentator insists, to lay bare a previously hidden evil nature, but to emerge, be made manifest, to come forth from darkness into light, and thus, for Antichrist to appear so that he is recognized by the pious as such; just as Christ is said to be revealed when He is made known to men through the light of the Gospel.
Verse 7: Τὸ γὰρ μυσήριον ἤδη ενεργεῖτας τῆς ἀνομίας; “For the mystery of iniquity is already at work,” the Commentator says, and not wrongly, except that he applies it to the secret counsels of Helicon and other fools with Gaius, whereas instead the Apostle means that even then Satan was secretly, through his emissaries — heretics and idolaters — preparing a way at Rome for its pride and character, vices which were creeping in among Christians, those very contentions of which he speaks in 1 Corinthians 3:4, and the zeal for preeminence displayed in Diotrephes, mentioned in 3 John 9, to pave a path for his intended designs.
Very aptly the Mystery of Iniquity is called by Paul the coming empire of the Antichrist, whose web even in the Apostles’ time Satan was beginning to weave (for ἐνεργεῖται [“is working”] must be taken entirely passively); first because it is set over against the Mystery of Godliness mentioned in 1 Timothy 3:16, and secondly because it was to be established much more by secret craft under outward appearances than by open warfare; whence also, to make it the more clear that the passage treats not of Gaius but of the Antichrist — the purpled Harlot — the very name Mystery is said to be inscribed on her forehead, Revelation 17:5.
Is there anyone who can explain and repeat all the mysteries of the Roman religion, with its manifold ceremonies and the counsels by which the Pontiff strives to increase and preserve his dignity — to which Congregation, commonly called the Propagation of the Faith, still applies today? Nor is it without divine providence what the most illustrious Scaliger relates, that the name Mystery was once inscribed on the papal tiara down to the time of Julius, who caused his name to be placed there in its place, in adamantine letters.
But the commentator objects, “Paul shows both what would happen and what was already being planned in secret, revealed to him by God, and that he does not speak of things about to happen to himself and others to whom he wrote;” yet there is no evidence to prove that Paul meant that, nor would he have been a Prophet if he had merely foretold what was already happening. He, therefore, notes both that that Mystery of Iniquity was then being sown and that it would come forth in due season into a harvest which would require the ripening of many more ages; faithful people ought not, therefore, to be disturbed as if the Day of the Lord were at hand and Christ were about to appear at the doors.
Chrysostom presses here, “Sermon 2 on Alms,” whom he rightly says perceived that these words refer to some Emperor, except that in vain he wrongly takes Nero for Gaius. Indeed, Theophylactus also understands Nero in this passage, but as a type and figure of the Antichrist (as the sacred Mysteries are commonly called by the Fathers); but with this distinction: that the Antichrist will act more secretly than Nero, and not manifestly as he did, but in a disguised manner; although Theophylactus, or his interpreter, has reversed that opinion. It is also clear from Theodoret on this passage that there were those who said, “Nero was called the Mystery of Iniquity, as the artificer of impiety.” Indeed, many of the ancients were convinced that Nero himself would be the Antichrist and that he was preserved for use, either to be kept alive somewhere, having his fatal wound healed, or to rise from the dead. Augustine mentions this opinion in book 20, The City of God, chapter 19. The Sibylline Oracles also predicted this in book 5. Severus Sulpicius believed it for himself, book 2 of his History, and S. Martin writes the same opinion in his Life; but none of the ancients dreamed that Gaius is meant here, nor did they fail to understand Paul as speaking of the Antichrist.
V. 7: Μόνον ὁ καtέχων ἄρtι, ἕως ἐκ μέσou γένητai, [“only the who restrains must restrain until one comes forth from the midst]; Latin: Tantum ut qui tenet nunc teneat, donec de medio fiat [“Only the one who now holds should hold on, until it is taken out of the way.”] Almost all commentators agree that these passages intimate Paul’s view that the Empire, which flourished in his time, would continue for a while longer and afterwards from its ruins the Mystery of Iniquity would openly burst forth. Thus, Augustine (The City of God, bk. 20, ch. 19), Tertullian (De Resurrectione, ch. 24), Jerome (to Algasius), Chrysostom and Theophylactus on this place; hence Tertullian (Apologetics, ch. 32): “We also have the greater need to pray for emperors, indeed, for the whole state of the Empire and for Roman affairs, because we know that the greatest force threatening the whole world and that very hinge of the age which menaces terrible afflictions is being delayed by the provision of the Roman Empire. Therefore, we do not wish to test it, and while we pray, we favor the prolongation of Roman durability.” In my judgment some have been more constrained to refer that to the Apostles: after whose sacred band, as I will speak with Eusebius quoting Egesippus, having been removed by manifold slaughter, various corrupt and putrid humours began to accumulate in the body of the Church, which at last broke forth into apostasy and the gangrene of Antichristianism. Now, indeed, the authority of that one whom all the Reformed regard as the Antichrist increased only from the shipwreck and ruin of the Empire, as anyone of moderate prudence and not wholly ignorant of former events can plainly perceive.
The Commentator, therefore, erroneously draws that clause. “The evil will not be deferred longer,” he says, “than until Lucius Vitellius, who now holds Syria and Judea with it, departs thence and receives a successor.” For he thinks that, out of fear of Vitellius, Gaius dared do nothing new in Judea. But it is clear from Josephus (Antiquities, book 18, ch. 2) that Caligula’s first impulse to place a statue of himself in the Temple at Jerusalem came from Caligula himself after the embassy of Philo and the Alexandrians to him, incited by the accusations of Appion, who bore with it ill, that he was despised by the Jews alone, and immediately ordered Petronius, whom Vitellius was sending as his successor, to carry out the matter. Therefore, the Commentator was wrong to suppose that he had long been maturing this plan, nor did he fear Vitellius, by whom Petronius was sent while still acting in Syria with this command to place the statue in the Temple.
But who would have feared Vitellius here, when Suetonius, speaking of him in the Life of his son, ch. 2, says thus: “The same man of wondrous flattering genius was the first to establish that Gaius Caesar be adored as a god.” Therefore, would he, who first bestowed divine honors upon Gaius — nay, who received the praise “unwavering piety toward the Prince” from the Senate (ibid., ch. 3) — have neglected to carry out the Emperor’s orders in Judea, which particularly concerned that Emperor’s cult and majesty?
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Verse 8: What remains from this chapter the commentator interprets of Simon Magus, after changing the persons in the tale, although no one besides him has yet seen twin suns in that sky; all the contextual readings demonstrate that the later things are to be understood about the same person of whom the earlier things speak. Καὶ τότε (“and then”) refers not, as he thinks, to Gaius’ revealed plans to erect a statue of himself in the Temple, after which, after some interval of time, namely under Claudius’ successor, that great impostor Simon Magus ought to have appeared, but rather manifestly to that which immediately preceded it, to the disclosure of him who then held the son of perdition being delayed: by the removal from the midst, that is, by the abolition of the Roman Empire, after which Antichrist was to be revealed openly, as events confirmed. For what today is called “Empire” is to the ancients of the Romans only a ghost, and has nothing of it except the name: Erycius Puteanus, intending to comprise an Epitome of Barbarian History in six books, avers in the title of his work that he will relate the “setting” and ruin of the Roman Empire for that reason; Machiavelli, in the first book of his Florentine History dedicated to Clement VII, asserts plainly that the empire was utterly overthrown, and that from its diminution and disasters grew the dignity and authority of the Pontiffs. Baronius himself, under the year of Christ 476, note 1, remarks that no western consul had given the empire, which, shaken by frequent convulsions, “was already tottering toward the next fall” (which he describes more fully a little later).
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Verse 8 (cont.): Apokalyphthēsetai, “will be revealed.” The same word used above about the man of sin [v. 3] shows that the same person is meant here; Paul had asked what was hindering his ἀποκάλυψις or manifestation: now he opens when it will be, namely when the Roman Empire is overthrown. Besides, Simon Magus had already been uncovered and revealed when Paul wrote this epistle; he had already fallen from the faith immediately after the apostles Peter and John had departed from Samaria, and so— as is clear from the history of Acts— even before Paul himself was converted to the faith. The Commentator, therefore, mocks the Apostle, when he introduces as predictions to come that had already occurred and were well known to the churches. And since I have shown this epistle to have been written by Paul years after the Council of Jerusalem—which, according to Baronius’ chronology, fell in the ninth year of Claudius, and Paul’s conversion in the seventeenth—who could, having read that letter, have understood as future what he here treats as having happened in the second year of Claudius? [N. B. The Council of Jerusalem is understood of having taken place in AD 48-50; Paul’s 2nd epistle to the Thessalonians, AD 51; Claudius reigned from 41 CE – 54 CE; Paul’s date of conversion, 33-36 AD.]
Ὁ ἄνομος, “that lawless one,” is undoubtedly the same person as the man of sin, the son of perdition, whose arts and reign he called the mystery of lawlessness [μυστήριον ἀνομίας]. And truly the lawless one who sets himself above the law, to be judged by no one though he judges all, and who places himself above God’s law and word, and who approves and teaches crimes: I bear witness to the art of lying with impunity devised by recent papal theologians, contrived through equivocations and mental reservations; the dogma that no faith may be kept with heretics, which that recent writer in these provinces—Franciscus Dusseldorpius of Lyons—having the approval of the Apostolic Vicar seeks even to establish between spouses; the tribunal of the Inquisition, the privileges of harlots, and a tax law for brothels; the lawful murders of princes whom he himself shall have excommunicated, even by any private person; dispensations in degrees of consanguinity forbidden by the law of God, and six hundred of the like: I testify to Gregory XIII lauding Lanius of Paris with the highest praises; I testify to Sixtus V comparing the foul parricide of Henry III, King of the French, to the work of our Redemption; I testify to all those whose crimes have been so graphically brought to light in the records of histories in this See.
A mystery of depravity, not unlike the crimes of the Sodomites, who are also called ἄνομοι (lawless), 2 Peter 2:8, which the Commentator reports were found among the disciples of Simon from ancient times, and were more abundant among those who are the colonists of the purple harlot and the citizens of that Babylon, which is spiritually called Egypt and Sodom (Rev. 11:8). Hence the illustrious Scaliger interprets the mother of πορνῶν (harlots) in Revelation 17:5 as “the mother of Catamites.” How much filthiness of this sort the harsh law of celibacy has brought about is well known; likewise, what those lovers and bulls of the most powerful harlots were like, who in the tenth century, according to Baronius, occupied this See with the greatest licentiousness. And the following are no better, as Peter Damian, Pelagius Álvares, Nicholas of Clemangis, Petrarch, and others testify at length in their complaints about the corrupt condition of that Church. Note the encomiums of Sodomy published in verses by Giovanni Casa, the Italian archbishop; note the monstrous lives of Paul II, Alexander VI, Innocent VIII and the like; indeed, Sixtus IV granted permission to some to practice sodomy during three summer months of the year, as Dutch scholar Wessel Gansfort relates in On Indulgences. Nor without reason the Mantuan monk:
“The holy field of the jester, the venerable brothel serves, honored temples to the gods, to be devoted to divine Ganymedes.”
But let these matters be treated more fully by others. I return to the Commentator who reports that a statue set up to Simon as a god was described, according to Justin, Irenaeus and others. Nonsense: to the Greek Justin, little versed in Roman customs and matters, the dedicatory inscription on that altar, Semoni Sanco Deo, [To Semo Sancus the God] was easily ascribed to the first author of that consecration and apotheosis, so that he thought it meant ‘to Simon the Holy God.’ A learned man above the common crowd might have gathered its meaning from Ovid in the Fasti:
I used to invoke the Nones, Sancus, I would call upon Fidionus, Is it Semo the Father, or Sancus you will be to me.
Verse 8 (cont.) Ον ὁκύριos ἀναλώσει τῷ πνεύματι το σόματοs αὐτε: The Commentator renders this, “Whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the spirit of his mouth,” and insists that Simon the Magus was thus dispersed by Peter’s mouth, his fiery chariots blown apart so that the act is reckoned the work of the spirit of Christ, since the Apostles are the mouths of Christ. But nothing in this place proves anything about Simon Magus, nor is this dispersal of the magician by Peter so certain that the Commentator should have buttressed it with his new notes here. That the Apostle Peter descended into combat with Simon, to determine which of them would perform the greater miracles, that Nero saw the dispute and was judge, that the magician flying through the air and glittering toward the heavens was brought down by Peter’s prayers, that his sash and one leg were broken and from this wound he soon died — let the Jew Apella believe that Caesar of the miracle set up shabby altars and cushions and made fetters and a prison for the victorious Peter together with all Rome as witness. The explainers of this fable agree so little among themselves that they scarcely deserve any credit: even Ambrose, or whoever is the author of the letters attributed to Ambrose, in the passage cited by the Commentator, in chap. 7 of Romans, speaks very doubtfully about this matter: “Nor if a power has been exercised by anyone, as it is SAID to have been done by Simon Magus, who is SAID to have soared into the air so as to become a scandal to the people of Christ, should our faith be diminished.” [ N. B. There are several Renaissance paintings which depict Peter in battle with a flying Simon Magis: Fall of Simon Magis & The Death of Simon Magis, taken from the apocryphal Acts of Peter.]
Not first in Rome, but already three times at Caesarea, if one is to believe Clement of Rome, Peter had struck down and driven off Simon with the sword of the divine word; but the verb which the Apostle Paul uses in verse 8 does not mean “to kill” (ἀνελεῖν), but to wear away and consume, ἀναλίσκειν, and that gradually, without violence and step by step. Hence, in Aristophanes, according to Suidas, “it signifies to expend, to make outlays,” by which you may see that possessions are worn away little by little. “The spirit of the Lord’s mouth” denotes that word itself, powerful and most effective, at first proclaimed by the Apostles, but afterwards to be used in subduing Antichrist as the mightiest instrument. This is clear from Isaiah 11:4; Revelation 1:16, 11:5, in the latter of which place it is intimated in what way Christ will overcome and destroy the man of sin by the sword and the spirit of his mouth, namely, because from the mouths of his witnesses “fire” issues — such is the nature and efficacy of the Divine word, which is said to “feed upon their enemies.”
Here, therefore, Paul, intending to console the Church against the tyranny of Antichrist, shows by what manner he is finally to be destroyed and abolished. For just as he was to arise gradually and by various degrees reach the height of his impiety, so he was to be gradually diminished and worn away, the Evangelical truth being restored to its whole and the witnesses of Christ as it were miraculously raised from the dead. Nor did the prophecy fail in its outcome: how much the powers of Antichrist have been weakened in these last times by the preaching of the divine word, how great a ruin the papal empire has suffered from the Reformation and continues to suffer day by day, is very well known, and Bellarmine, in many places, laments it (see Preface in Vol. 1 of his Controversies).
Thus, moreover, by what step God will proceed from the beginning, until at last he utterly and completely abolishes the fatal remnants of miserable tyranny, by the epiphany of his own presence (τῇ ὁπιφανείας τῆς παρεσίας αὐτε.) The Commentator thinks this must be the understood exegesis, which is wrong, since the Apostle here means that the powers of Antichrist will already be cut down and broken by the preaching of the Gospel, and utterly crushed by the final return of Christ for Judgment. What Christ’s presence is we have already shown above: the epiphany of the presence does not denote just any act of God’s judgment, as he supposes — otherwise one might equally say that Ananias and Sapphira were killed in Acts 5 “by the spirit and the body of the Lord and by the epiphany of his presence,” and that Simon Magus, about whom Paul has nothing special here, was so punished — but [it signifies] the manifest lordly presence, the most illustrious and splendid coming of the Lord, and the shining glory of that second advent which we await, in which “unto those who eagerly await him he shall appear unto salvation” (Heb. 9:28).
Excellently Suidas [explains] οπιφαίνεσθαι as “to appear from above,” and υποφαίνεται as “to appear from below.” For οπιφάνεια signifies an apparition of the Divinity made from heaven even to profane writers, as Casaubon noted (Exercitation 2 on Baronius, n. 11). Likewise 2 Maccabees 3:24, where God is said to have made a great οπιφανεία or manifestation of the spirits and of all his power — that is, to have displayed an immense apparition of angels and of all his might, by which Heliodorus and those who came with him to plunder the temple treasury were struck and terrified and had to withdraw. If the Commentator had attended to this, he would not have praised the old interpreter there who rendered it “he made apparent his evidence of showing,” a very inept rendering as Casaubon also observes. Hence Christ’s incarnation and birth are called θεοφάνεια and οπιφάνεια throughout the Fathers; οπιφάνεια, says Suidas, is also “the economy of our Savior in the flesh.” Many passages of Scripture point this way: Titus 2:11; 2 Timothy 1:10. Οπιφάνεια likewise is the name given to Christ’s second coming, when he will come to judge the living and the dead (2 Timothy 4:1; Titus 2:13) — not in another sense here that does not concern the incarnation, especially when compared with 2 Thessalonians 1:9–10, where the ungodly are said to suffer everlasting punishment “from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power when he shall come to be glorified in his saints on that day.”
Verse 9: These things concerning the punishments that await the lawless one [i.e., the Wicked]: Paul returns to his signs and deeds; and παρουσία is presence; for just as the παρουσία is attributed to Christ for salvation, so the Antichrist’s (presence) is for the ruin of others: that presence has various degrees noted by our theologians. It cannot be referred to Simon’s arrival when he came to Rome, as the Commentator supposes, because already in Syria his arts had been laid bare more than enough.
But it is future in actual operation, κατ᾿ ἐνεργείαν[“by effectual operation”], according to the efficacy of Satan; and it is no wonder, for by his arts even then in the Apostles’ time the Mystery of Iniquity had its origin; τὸ γὰρ μυστήριον ἤδη ἐνεργεῖ τῆς ἀνομίας — “for the Mystery of Iniquity was already at work” [v. 7], whence it is clear that the ἐνεργεία of Satan pertains to the Mystery of Iniquity, and the Commentator is mistaken who draws this apostolic passage to Simon, when he earlier applies it to Caligula, with whom there was never any real connection to Simon.
Nor should whatever the ancients have about Simon’s and his disciples’ magical arts be dragged into this; for the ενεργεία of Satan appears much more broadly, as is clear from Ephes. 11.2, where mention is made of the Devil τοῦ πνεύματος νῦν ἐνεργοῦντος ἐν τοῖς υἱοῖς τῆς ἀπειθείας — “of the spirit now working in the children of disobedience.” I would dare to say that that energy of Satan exercised against the Church was more harmful and pestilential in establishing the Tyranny and Idolatry of the Pontifical system than all the magical disciplines which Simon professed. That very Simony, which took its name from Simon, is nowhere more vivid than in this [Holy] See.
“Rome gnaws the hands she cannot bite which it hates.”
We could enumerate very many who have obtained that dignity through mere simony, so much so that an Italian writer of the book entitled The Roman Papacy, chapter 10 toward the end, asserts concerning Pope Sixtus V that he was chosen by simony, that he fell away, that by the decree of Julius II — who himself, wearied by his own simoniacal error, on the simoniacal election of the Pontiff introduced a new law, which afterward Andreas Gambarus, his intimate, elucidated with a commentary, whom he wrote to Julius, and in the preface thus addresses him, “I rejoice, Holy Father, that you forbid with such horror the simony which you committed in your election,” etc. If one were obliged to attribute these things necessarily to Satan’s ἐνεργεία as introducing magical arts, this could easily be refuted. For examples are not lacking. To pass over the Exorcism Chants, which I have shown by certain public disputes to be magical; and whatever learned Doctor Voetius most eruditely argued about the magic of the Church of Rome in Desperate Cause of the Papacy, let one now inquire into the lives of Sylvester II, Benedict IX, John XIII, Gregory VII, Alexander VI, Paul III, and the like.
Verse 9 (cont.): “with all power and signs and lying wonders.” From this it is clear that Gaius cannot be made to fit this apostolic text, since he never became famous by any signs or miracles; nevertheless, this ἄνομος is no other than the man of sin and son of perdition previously named by the Apostle. If the Commentator wished to adapt this to some Caesar, why did he not rather choose Adrian or Vespasian, who seemed to enjoy the glory of miracles? But what need was there to introduce Gaius into the scene, when with equal ease and equal felicity of invention he could have applied the whole prophecy of Paul to one Simon Magus? For he also made himself notable by miracles and prodigies, which Gaius lacked; and when he is used as a proper name, as is here desired, ὁ ἄνομος was likewise that man of sin, the son of perdition; ὁ ἀντικείμενος — he who meditated this iniquity, that the mystery should be worshipped and be regarded as God in Rome, as is taken from the Recognitions of Clement; who at last presumed to exalt himself above every name and divinity, asserting, as Irenaeus reports (Book 1, ch. 20), that he had appeared to the Jews as a son, to the Samaritans as a father, to the other Gentiles as the Paraclete; indeed, things Caius never dreamed — that his wife Helena was the first Intelligence by whom angels were once created; moreover, after his death he is said to have followed temples and altars, and the Commentator even attempts to persuade others to believe this, whether he himself does or not; yet Caius neither hoped for nor obtained such solicitude after his death. If the Commentator nevertheless judged it shameful to interpret this whole prophecy of Simon Magus — feeling that his deceits were insufficient to the Mystery of Iniquity and the tyranny in the Church that he who sits in the temple of God would exercise — why does he, when treating the later passage that pertains to the same matter, as if with a twisted neck, strive to drag it over to Simon?
Grotius, indeed, interprets the false signs correctly as those things employed to lead men into error; but it is also true that these signs are for the most part lies and artfully devised to deceive the people: such are the miracles in both kinds, by which truly the Antichrist promotes his doctrines and his authority by craft rather than by force, and even now as he declines, strives to support his dominion, so that his merchants of miracles reckon the glory of miracles among the marks of the Church. Although Bellarmine in De Notis Ecclesiae, ch. 14, declares the prodigies of the Antichrist to be rather pure delusions of demons and wondrous rather than true miracles, yet Catholic polemicist Thomas Stapleton in A Manual of Moral Instruction, Sunday after Pentecost, asserts that those will also be ‘true miracles’ with respect to supernatural acts, but lies with respect to their use, because they serve a lie.
It is not the purpose of my undertaking either to prove that the miracles trumpeted by the Papists are ordained to support the gravest errors, especially the most hideous idolatry and particularly bread-worship, nor to impute those falsehoods—which would be very easy—to most of them. Let the testimony of Lyra in Daniel 14 [Bel and the Dragon] suffice for the hurried reader: “Sometimes the greatest deception of the people occurs in the Church, with miracles feigned by priests and their adherents for temporal gain.”
Furthermore the Commentator need not have so anxiously recounted some of Simon’s errors, since he omitted others even graver: that the most sacred things were sprinkled with male seed and menstrual blood; the Pythagorean metempsychosis; the worship and cult of angels, which still flourishes under the Roman Pontiff; the worship under Jovis (for he wished also to be called ‘Barbelo,’ a word that in Syriac seems to sound Belis son) and Selena or Helena as his mistress to be adored under the images of Minerva; the denial of the divine authority of the Old Testament and the truth of Christ’s passions, etc., of which Eusebius, Epiphanius, Augustine and others relate at length. What the Commentator has reported, however, suffices to refute the calumny cast upon the Reformed that they are kin to the Simonians, while they ascribe salvation to the mere grace of God in Christ, trusting in no merits of their works: for Simon, praised by the Commentator out of Irenaeus, assigned his own grace and faith in himself—what Scripture attributes to the grace of God and the vivifying faith of Christ. Nor do we promise salvation to those living wickedly by mere knowledge of God, as those do in Justin, but we require a living faith unto that end, which works by charity and other holy virtues: “For,” as Bernard rightly says, “good works are a way to the kingdom, though not the cause of reigning.” If the recent writer had weighed this, having handled his theme of faith and works, he would not have published his work so rashly.
Verse 10: The rest of the things that remain scarcely pertain to the cause of the Antichrist. Απάτη ἀδικίας, [‘the deception of wickedness’], the seduction of iniquity, is an iniquitous seduction and toward iniquity, that is, error and sin: for the son of perdition at first was not to establish his authority by force and arms, but chiefly by seduction and deceit; Paul said πάσῃ ἀπάτην [‘with all deceit’]on account of manifold deceptions, not of Simon, as the Commentator wishes, but of the Antichrist and his ministers: Cornelius à Lapide reports the deceit as sixfold: Affability in winning over men’s good will; simulated Holiness; Wisdom and eloquence; Promises and largesses; Signs and prodigies; Terrors and tortures. Others may weave together catalogs of those noxious arts: As God, in promoting our salvation, is given manifold wisdom, Eph. 3:10, so manifold also ought the craft of man’s sin to be in ensnaring others to perdition.
The Commentator renders ὁι ἀπολλυμλύες [‘the perishing ones’] correctly as those who would not believe the Gospel and therefore, are doomed to perish, John 3:18, although πολλυμλύοι [‘the many destroyed ones’] in general are all long since inscribed for this judgment, Jude v. 4. For the ὁι ἀπολλυμλύοι [‘the perishing ones’] are opposed to the elect, whom Christ testifies cannot be seduced by the wonders of false prophets and pseudo-Christs, Matt. 24:24. From this I also infer that this passage pertains to destruction, and therefore, according to the Commentator’s hypothesis not to Simon Magus: for the effectual seduction is properly in the ἀπολλυμλύοι, who is for that reason called Abaddon and the destroyer, Rev. 9:11.
According to those words, insofar as they refer to the fact that ‘they did not receive the love of the truth,’ I agree with the Commentator that it is the just retribution of God; yet I deny that ἀγάπην τῆς ἀληθείας [“love of the truth”], as he wishes, denotes the supreme gift of God of sending His Gospel to them. It rather signifies the love and zeal for the truth, by which, if men were guided, they would not be led into falsehood. Thus, Ambrose and Theophylactus understand Christ, who is at once Charity and Truth. The gloss of the Commentator expressed in these words — “And note first that God’s purpose is to do good to those to whom the saving word is proclaimed, but by the fault of men another purpose succeeds” — is to be taken with a grain of salt, to speak very mildly. Truly, the direct and proper end of Evangelical truth is the benefit and salvation of the men to whom it is proposed; and, accidentally, by their own vice, it may turn to their ruin. Yet to ascribe to God a change of purpose and counsel, as if by the unforeseen stubbornness of men, is plain Socinianism and alien to his immutability and constancy, Rom. 9:11; Jas. 1:17. Nor is there doubt that by a hidden judgment of God it sometimes happens that the torch of Truth is even offered to those whom God foreknew sufficiently would not admit the truth, and so for their greater condemnation, as is clearly evident from the example of Pharaoh, Rom. 9:17.
Εἰς τὸ σωθῆναι ἀυτῶς, “That they might be saved.” Here again the Commentator lays bare his mind and the spirit of Remonstrantism, though little to his purpose concerning the Antichrist, unless it is to make the syncretism of his society with the Papists more apparent: “For they,” he says, “could also be saved by the Gospel, God working with serious intent in it.” [I respond:]Where there is a serious pursuit of the truth, there is the way to salvation; but the lost (οἱ ἀπολλυμέναι), that is the reprobate, cannot by that means, by such persons, and, as they say, in a compound sense, obtain salvation; nor do men have in an outward proclamation of the Truth anything by which they can be saved; since an illumination of the mind inwardly and a saving faith are required, which is the free gift of God, and not of all, but only of the Elect. Ephes. 1:18, 2:9; 2 Thess. 3.2; Titus 1:1; Acts 13:48.
Although the nature of the Gospel in itself is ordered to the salvation of men, provided they believe, Rom. 1:16. And God seriously requires both conversion and the obedience of faith from those to whom it is announced, Rom. 1:5; yet God does not open the hearts of all who externally hear the Gospel so that they believe, as He did in Lydia the purple seller, Acts 16:14, nor does He will the salvation of all to whom it is announced in the same degree and manner. Toward some the Gospel has only a preceptive relation [i.e., of required duty], whence it turns to their ruin; for toward the lost it is, “a smell of death unto death,” 2 Cor. 2:15–16. Toward others, it is “an aroma of life.” It has also an effectual relation, because God works faith by it in those who are His; 2 Tim. 2:19; John 8:47. God seriously intends the salvation of both through the Gospel, but of the former conditionally, of the latter absolutely.
Verse 11: Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο πέμψει αὐτοῖς ὁ Θεός: “And therefore God will send them.” The Commentator rightly notes that this is done by God’s permission and direction; but he should have added that God often avenges former sins by later ones, as in Rom. 1:28. Augustine pursues this with various examples (Contra Julian, book 5, cap. 3). He also rightly joined permission with direction, because in such hidden and righteous judgments God does not act merely negatively and idly, but also positively and with purpose; hence Augustine in the Enchiridion, chap. 100: “For the great works of the Lord are wrought into all His wills, so that by a wonderful and ineffable manner nothing is done contrary to His will, even that which is done against His will, because it would not be done unless He permitted it; and He certainly does not permit unwillingly, but willingly; nor would the good permit evil to be done unless the Almighty could also make good come out of evil.”
Ενέργειαν πλάνης, which the Commentator interprets as “the most efficient deceits,” but the Apostle rather denotes their efficacy: that word ἐνέργεια again refers to the Mystery of iniquity, of which he had said before that it was already working (ἤδη ἐνεργεῖται).
Εἰς τὸ πιστεύσωσι αὐτῷ τῷ ψεύδει, “That they might believe the lie:” The Commentator rightly considers here God avenging the stubbornness of those who withdraw the light; yet they cannot ascribe their errors to God who withdraws the lamp and denies it to them. And the notion that God changes His judgment afterward toward the contumacious, as if He repented, has already been refuted.
Verse 12: ἵνα κριθῶσι πάντες οἱ μὴ πιστεύοντες τῇ ἀληθείᾳ: “That all who do not believe the truth may be judged.” To be judged here does not mean, as the Commentator asserts, to be convinced of their malice — that they prefer the delusions of seducers to the true miracles of the Apostles — but simply to suffer punishment and just retribution for their unbelief.
Ἀλλʼ οὐδοκίᾳζοντες ἐν τῇ ἀδικίᾳ: “To delight in unrighteousness” does not simply mean, as he thinks, “to take pleasure in the enticements of bodily desires,” but to assent to the doctrines of falsehood and to embrace and retain those things that are more acceptable to the flesh and to human wisdom and more convenient for increasing or preserving one’s fortunes and possessions: a fact well known to those in communion with the Papacy, so that many, though conscience resists, still to this day adopt the patronage of even the most desperate causes of Antichrist. END
REFUTATION OF THE ANNOTATIONS
On 1 John chapter 2, verse 18 and following
Verse 18: Εσχάτη ὥρα ἔσται, “it is the last hour;” the Carthusian, Cajetan, and others interpret this as similar to “the very last.” The Commentator, Grotius, however, thinks it refers to the destruction of the Jews, that the end of that people and of the Temple was imminent; and he therefore connects the passage with Acts 2:17, mentioned above, and Matthew 24:14. But to overturn this interpretation it is enough to have observed that John did not write this Epistle until after Jerusalem had been overthrown. [……………….] It is most certain that he lived to be the last of the Apostles and was an eyewitness of the destruction of the Jews, and some gather this from John 21:22. All assert that he wrote only in extreme old age, with perhaps the one exception of Salmeron […………………] The gloss (Glossa ordinaria) asserts that both the Gospel and the Epistles were written after his return from exile; and since Domitian, successor of Titus, compelled him to exile, it is necessary that all this writing be later than the destruction of Jerusalem. The end concerning which Matthew 24:14 speaks.
Jerome, Origen and others understand it as “the end of the world,” not of Jerusalem; since I have briefly passed over the passage as to the Commentator’s sense, which is that of Chrysostom, Theophylact and many others, among whom not a few are of the Papal party. This suffices to overturn Bellarmine’s first demonstration, which is Nicholas Sander’s fifth, by which he wishes to prove the Antichrist has not yet come (see book 3, de Rom. Pont. chap. 4). But the “last hour” that already was in John’s time embraces the whole course of time from the age of the Apostles up to the consummation of the world; whence Augustine, book 3, de Doctrina Christiana, chap. 36, after citing this place of John, adds, “Therefore, the time itself in which the Gospel is preached, until the Lord is revealed, is an hour in which these things must be kept because the revelation of the Lord itself pertains to the same hour in which the day of judgment will be completed.” Nor otherwise did Paul say ὕστερος καιρός, “the latter times,” in 1 Tim. 4:1. For that defection from the faith which he there predicts to Timothy, of those who would forbid marriage and prescribe abstinence from certain foods, cannot, on the Commentator’s hypothesis especially, nor can it be understood, as other silent arguments show, of Simon Magus, who long before, in the second year of Claudius, had been overcome by Peter and did not suffer that fate prior to the overthrow of Jerusalem, as experience demonstrates. The same sense is in 2 Tim. 3:1. Thus, although the Book of Revelation contains predictions of the most notable events in the Church of Christ up to the consummation of the age, and although John would not have received them save after the capture of Jerusalem, nevertheless the things predicted are said to be shortly to occur and to be the near in time (Rev. 1:1,3). Nothing is more customary for the Prophets than to call the time of the Messiah “last,” because it is the last age of the world, the last law, the religion and Church of Christ, to which no other will succeed, as the Jesuit Cornelius à Lapide rightly notes on 2 Tim. 3 and in the cited places Acts 2 and 1 John 2; whence it is plain that those err who babble that the Antichrist will appear only at the very end of the age.
Καὶ καθὼς ἠκούσατε, “and as you have heard.” Bold, indeed, is the Commentator: “Not from the Pauline Epistles,” he says, “which when John wrote this, either had not been written, or had not been published by the Churches, but from the Lord himself, Matt. 24:24, and from the Apostles who often inculcated the Lord’s words to Christians.” Is that how you challenge a scholar? It has already been said that John lived and wrote last of all the Apostles; he is also thought to have compiled the Canon of the New Testament, gathering together the other Gospels and Epistles, to which he finally added his own. The Commentator suggests that Paul, in his early letters to the Thessalonians, implied Jerusalem’s destruction was not imminent, while others believed otherwise. He also notes that John refers to “the last hour,” despite the Pauline Epistles likely not yet being written or distributed. Inventing such things, he ought to have better remembered his own assertions: at the time of the approaching destruction of the temple and city, not only were the Epistles of Paul written and circulated, but he himself, removed by Nero, had already received the crown of martyrdom. The Commentator notes that many early scholars, including Augustine, believed James and other epistles were written to counter claims that faith alone secures salvation. He points out that these letters, such as James and Peter, argue for the necessity of good works, using Abraham as an example. He must either lack memory, or clarity and conscience, who at the same time produces propositions so mutually contradictory.
Therefore Paul’s Epistles were doubtless already written and circulated through the Churches, specifically the second to the Thessalonians when John put his mind to writing, nor had any rumor more certainly spread through the Churches about an Antichrist to come from elsewhere: for the sayings that exist in Matt. 24:24 pertain rather in general to pseudo-Christs and false prophets than specifically to the Antichrist. Jerome, Chrysostom and Theophylact think that verse 22 finishes what belonged to the ruin and overthrow of the Jews, while verse 23 begins what belongs to the Antichrist and the calamities of the Church. And certainly not trivial is the teaching known today about the Antichrist, that we are told Christ is here or there, sometimes in the desert, as if the monastic and eremitic life were most holy, sometimes ἐν Ταμείοις, that is, not so much in cupboards as in ciboria [i.e., receptacles in which the reserved transubstantiated Eucharists are stored] in which the divine power of universal remedy is enclosed and carried about; for ταμεῖον properly signifies a cupboard or storeroom of food, as appears in Isocrates “On the Demon.” And Plutarch (Sympos. 5) likewise uses ταμίας as a store-boat.
ὅτι ὁ Ἀντίχριστος ἔρχεται, “that the Antichrist is coming.” The commentator wishes those called ἀντιχρίσες in this Epistle to be those who are false Christs (ψευδόχριστοι), to come after the overthrow of Jerusalem: “for no one opposes Christ more than he who falsely calls himself Christ, just as no one opposes a king more directly than he who assumes the royal name for himself; among them, however, one is to arise singularly eminent, which the Spirit indicated to the Apostles.” But he seeks to make this one Bar Kokhba, who rebelled under Hadrian with his followers, since among ψευδόχριστοι “none was more conspicuous in his following, more insensitive to Christians, more harmful in outcome.” But here, as many peaks, so many faults.
First, it is not true that those who falsely arrogate the name of Christ are properly called Antichrists by John. For these are lesser Antichrists which the Apostle says already existed in his time. In fact, no interpreter hitherto has understood them to be heretics who professed the name of Christ in word only; rather they understood it in general terms, just as he who does not have the Spirit of Christ is not of Christ, so, too, he who is not for Christ is against Christ. Whoever, whether layman or canon or monk, who lives contrary to righteousness, attacks the glory of his order and blasphemes what is good, is considered an Antichrist, a minister of Satan, says the Benedictine monk, Rabanus, in his treatise on the Antichrist, as well as Jerome: he is an adversary of Christ and an Antichrist to whom the precepts of Christ are displeasing.
Second, although no one opposes a king more directly than he who assumes the royal name for himself, yet more often he opposes the king more harmfully who, abusing his name, undermines his authority and tramples on his edicts and oppresses his subjects. Therefore, the Antichrist should not have been an open enemy of Christ to be the most harmful adversary; nor was it lacking among the ancients to say that Jews and Gentiles are worse heretics, as a living dog surpasses a dead lion. Indeed, he ought secretly to advance his Mystery here, and sit in the very temple of God, and assume to himself the horns of a lamb, and perform everything under the pretext of piety.
But if this consideration should deter the Commentator from believing that the Roman pontiff is therefore not the Antichrist because he does not openly arrogate the name of Christ to himself, but rather professes himself the Vicar and Minister of Christ, let him observe Boniface VIII in the decretal “Extra” on majorities and obedience, chap. “Unam sanctam,” boldly applying to himself many passages of Sacred Scripture fitting only to Christ; let him hear the Sicilian legates acclaiming the Pontiff, “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nostri;” [“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us]; and in the Lateran Council let him see Leo X called “a lion of the tribe of Judah;” let him go to Claudio of Seissel, Archbishop of Turin, who asserts that the Pontiff is not only the Vicar of Christ but “Christ himself;” let him read Bellarmine who maintains the same Bridegroom and Head of the Church even “separated from Christ.” Many similar examples could be added.
Third, it is false that Bar Kokhba was that outstanding imposter whom the Apostle describes as the Antichrist in the highest degree because none of the marks by which the Antichrist is described in Scripture can fit him. He did not fall away from Christ, whom he had never professed; nor did he carry out his enterprise by mystery rather than by armed force; nor did he sit in the temple of God; nor did he profess himself God; nor was he distinguished by any clear signs or miracles. It would have been easier for the Commentator to transfer that description to Moses of Crete, who doubtless arrogated to himself the saying of Deut. 18:15 and wished to imitate Moses’ miracles in the passage of the sea. Bar Kokhba’s following was far below the number of those whom the Roman Antichrist afterwards led away; also far harsher, severer, and more long-lasting was this tyrant’s oppression of true Christians.
I add that that exceptional Antichrist would not be a single, solitary man; for such plentiful and great things are attributed to him in Scripture that the lifetime of one man would by no means suffice to accomplish them; but he is indefinitely one who is to occupy the seat of pestilence and to play the person of the Ecumenical Bishop and Head of the whole Church. Just as the priesthood under the law was one, in which many persons succeeded one another, so, too, monarchies have one royal head [yet are a dynasty]. Finally, in the sense in which opponents contend that there is one visible Head of the Church to whom the things said and promised to Peter pertain, although many succeed one another in that dignity, in the same sense we assert there is one Antichrist; for the same quality is always transferred, by legal representation, to many who succeed one another in order.
Καὶ νῦν Ἀντίχριστοι πολλοὶ γεγόνασι: “And now many Antichrists have arisen.” The commentator wishes to regard this as referring to the pseudo‑Christs who rose up before the ruin of Jerusalem, such as Judas of Galilee, Theudas, that Egyptian mentioned in Acts [5:26] and Josephus, Simon Magus and Dositheos. But we have already warned that these [3 Epistles] were not written by John before the destruction of the Jews; moreover, the name “Antichrists” is commonly appropriate to all heretics, although it is certain that those he names were, in their kind, Antichrists. See Hilary of Poitiers, book 3, Against Auxentius. I am surprised at the Commentator, who understands those Antichrists already existing in John’s time to be the pseudo‑Christs who preceded the overthrow of the Temple, forgetful of what he had said earlier — that John’s Antichrists are those pseudo‑Christs whom Christ had foretold would come after the destruction of Jerusalem: thus he fights with himself everywhere, and truth cannot be otherwise opposed.
ὅθεν γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἐχάτη ώρα ἔι, “even now we know that it is the last hour.” From the rise of pseudo‑Christs and heretics John inferred not that the destruction of the Jews was imminent — what has that to do with the Christians, what with the Parthians, to whom he wrote? — and, as I have warned, that destruction had already passed; but that the calamities and trials of the last times were beginning (whose era can be most fitly reckoned from the overthrow of the Temple): and although the most grievous of these would occur under the notable Antichrist, of whom Paul in his Epistles, indeed perhaps even John in his Apocalypse, had already written, yet those things that came from these lesser Antichrists were neither slight nor to be despised. It is therefore necessary for the faithful to have perseverance, patience and faith against them, no less than against that very conspicuous impostor when he should be revealed. Thus, to warn the faithful against their defection and scandals, he adds:
Verse 19: Ἐξ ἡμῶν ἐξῆλθον, ἀλλʼ οὐκ ἦσαν ἐξ ἡμῶν: “They went out from us, but they were not of us,” etc. Simon Magus and similar heretics did, indeed, “assume the name of Christ,” as the Commentator rightly says, “but they soon departed from the Christian fold,” that is, they abandoned the unity of the Church. The phrase “but they were not of us” does not mean, as he takes it, that they had already sent repudiation of their wicked machinations into the Christian flock, but rather that they truly were by no means genuine and native members of the Church, even if for a time they were held to be such; many sheep outside, many wolves within; and “not all who are of Israel are therefore Israel” (Rom. 9:6). See Augustine on this place of John, tract 3 on this Epistle and On Correction and Grace, ch. 9. By the most certain argument he says of such apostates that they were not of us because they plainly did not remain with us: for, as Augustine says in tract 100 on John, “to believe truly is to believe in the manner that one ought to believe — steadfastly, firmly, securely.” True love never perishes; “those whom true love held,” says Seneca, “will hold;” Truly says Boethius: “He who fell was not of a stable nature. A falling star is not a star; it is a comet.” By their departure it becomes manifest what they were inwardly, and the evangelical net is shown to catch every kind of fish, and many profess Christianity outwardly who are nevertheless nothing less than true Christians. For not all have faith,” as the Commentator rightly observes; it is better to cast out and purge these bad humors than to allow them to remain and burden the body of the Church. Let them fly away as much as they will — the lighter chaff of faith, by whatever blast of temptation — the purer mass of wheat will be stored in the Lord’s granaries, says Tertullian, On the Prescription of Heretics, ch. 3.
Verse 22: Τίς ἐστὶν ὁψεύτης, “who is the liar, if not he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?” Correctly the commentator says: “no sort of impostor is more impudent or more dangerous than those who deny that Jesus is the Messiah.” But since God, Father and Son, can be denied in two ways, either directly and openly or covertly and indirectly, it is not required that every Antichrist deny both modes; one of the two ways suffices, as is said, “to have denied the faith and be worse than an unbeliever,” who does not care for his own household (1 Tim. 5:8), and “to deny God by works,” who, living impiously, professes to know him (Titus 1:16). By this argument John proves the heresiarchs of his age to be Antichrists, although some of them had not plainly and fully renounced the Christian name.
The commentator will perhaps not deny (although here and in another small work on faith and works I observe many seeds of Socinianism and Photinianism) that the Socinians and modern Photinians are Antichrists in that they deny the Father and the Son, namely, when they deny the eternal divinity and consubstantiality of the Son with the Father; and rightly Augustine on this place of John: “let us not attend to words, but to deeds.” Also: “The greatest liar is the Antichrist who confesses Jesus Christ with his mouth and denies him by his deeds.” Also: “Whatever is contrary to the word of God is Antichrist.” Therefore when the Roman Pontiff seizes to himself the threefold office of Christ, transfers Christ’s authority to himself, burdens Christ’s Gospel with his own traditions, and weighs down Redemption with his indulgences, masses, purgatory, merits, etc., though he may still profess with his mouth that Jesus is the Christ — as must necessarily be the case for that great ἀντίχριστος [Antichrist] who would sit in the temple of God — nevertheless, he must be judged to have denied both him and the Father by his deeds and works.
REFUTATION OF THE ANNOTATIONS
On the fourth chapter of the same Epistle
Verse 1: ἀγαπητοί, μὴ παντὶ πνεύματι πιστεύετε: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit.” Although the name “spirit” might sometimes be understood to mean prophecy, whether true or false, as the Commentator decides, yet the Apostle’s admonition must be extended to any kind of doctrine, although in that passage nothing is about predictions of the future, according to Paul’s admonition, “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). The touchstone in this testing is the word of God. Moreover, just as in Scripture prophets are sometimes called who bear a public office of teaching in the Church, even if they are not extraordinarily inspired about future things, so, too, false prophets may be called such who sow corrupt doctrines, namely all heretics, as well as those who vend public teaching like peddlers. If the Commentator thought John was pointing out some very eminent and singular false prophet, he did not bring to mind either Mani or Montanus or the impostor Mahomet—who is called by his followers, by antonomasia, a Prophet of God.
Verse 2: Εἰς σάρκα ἐλήλυθε, “who has come in the flesh.” The commentator notes, “to have come in the flesh” is the same as “to have come with flesh,” that is, to have come in a humble state, not with royal pomp and arms, as the Jews imagine their Messiah. But truly this is the gloss of the Socinians, who deny that this phrase signifies that the Son of God was incarnate and assumed our nature into the unity of His person. The same exposition of the commentator is found in Volkelius the Socinian, Book 5 of De Vera Religione ch. 11, and likewise in Ostorrodus and others of that flock. Yet since it is said John 1:14 “The Word became flesh”; 1 Tim. 3:16 “God manifested in the flesh”; Heb. 2:14, 16 “Christ partook of flesh and blood” and took not on angels but “the seed of Abraham”; 1 Pet. 2:18 “put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit”; Heb. 10:20 “for us through the veil, that is, his own flesh, a designated way into the Sanctuary” — I do not see why it can be denied that in this language “Christ came in the flesh” denotes the truth of human nature and its assumption.
I indeed admit that sometimes by the name “flesh” infirmities are meant which Christ assumed together with the flesh; to which pertain the passages 2 Cor. 4:11 and Gal. 4:13, praised by the Commentator; but in many places of Sacred Scripture the name “flesh” is understood to mean human nature itself, no sound person will deny, as in Gen. 6:12–13; Isa. 40:5; Joel 2:28; Rom. 3:20 and elsewhere. [………………..]
Verse 3: Καὶ τῶγρἔςι ὁ ἀντιχρίστος; This is the genius, “this is the spirit of the Antichrist,” which you may easily recognize in the Roman Pontiff — judge seriously how much he detracts from the flesh of Christ; how much he undermines the truth of that very flesh by his dogma of Transubstantiation, by the claim that Christ is locally circumscribed and by the notion that there are many places (polytopeia) of the Body of Christ [and many at the same time.] But perhaps this characteristic will displease the Commentator all the more, because among his Socinians — whose young men he used in composing this commentary — he also brands and burns in a mark of Antichrist, in that they deny both the Mystery of the Incarnation and the ascension of Christ in that flesh in which He came to redeem men.
If anyone, nevertheless, prefers that interpretation of Christ’s flesh which our Commentator holds, the Antichristian spirit may nonetheless fittingly correspond to the Pontiff accordingly: for he, swollen with insolent pride and exalted above every name and divinity, trampling the necks of kings with haughty foot like that of Alexander III, yet calls himself the Vicar and Legate of Christ — by that very fact, not only forgetting, but becoming an enemy of the humility, the cross, the meekness and simplicity of Christ, he denies by his works that Christ came in the flesh, since he so detests the lowly condition from which Christ was raised, and he is twice, through disguises, entirely at odds with it.
Καὶ νῦν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἔςιν ἤδη, “and now is already in the world;” namely, in the sense in which the Mystery of iniquity was already at work in Paul’s time; “Not according to a person,” says Cardinal Cajetan here, “but according to the likeness of a Spirit:” for all the ancient heretics paved the way for the Antichrist, whose whole doctrine is nothing else than a patchwork of old heresies. John used ἔρχεται [“is coming”] here to indicate the future, on account of “the certainty of prophecy,” says the same Cajetan, although, as both here and in chapter 2, as Erasmus prefers, that form can be used for the future tense. But what if it be said that already in the Apostles’ time the Antichrist was in the world, not with respect to that son of perdition of whom Paul speaks, who by name ought to be called the Antichrist antonomastically, and who, after the decline of the Roman empire, would for a very long time press the Church with his tyranny; but either in general of those whom he had already mentioned earlier as being then in the world, or particularly of some contemporary arch-heretic of his own age (against whom at that time the faithful would need no less vigilance and constancy than against that great Antichrist who was to be revealed in his season); namely Ebion, or Cerinthus; concerning one of whom it is reported that having been seen by him in the bath he said, “let us hasten out, lest the bath fall and we perish with it on account of his impiety.” For Epiphanius wishes that to be said of Ebion, Eusebius and others of Cerinthus. Certainly, the bishops of Asia, having requested John, caused him to write his Gospel against Cerinthus and other heretics, and especially against the rising doctrine of the Ebionites, of whom Jerome abundantly testifies in “On Illustrious Men.” But that those heretics whom John insinuates were forerunners of Bar Kokhba in his seditious designs, or that he drew their doctrines into his cause, or adapted them to the promotion of his own authority, cannot be said with sound reason, nor does the Commentator offer any statement for saying it; for all Bar Kokhba’s advances were made, not among Christians, or among those who had formerly in any way bore the name of Christ, but only among the Jews, open enemies of the Christian name. Therefore, this Bar Kokhba, that is the son of falsehood (for thus he was called by the event, having previously called himself son of a star, perhaps with an allusion to that star to come from Jacob of which Balaam had remembered, Num. 24:17), was neither in potentiality nor in actuality in the time of John, for he finally emerged under Hadrian, long after John’s death, in the year of our Lord 130, as Baronius notes. Therefore, nothing that John says here about the Antichrist can in any way be applied to him [despite the Commentator’s belief].
REFUTATION OF THE ANNOTATIONS
On Chapter 13 of the Apocalypse
Verse 1: Καὶ εἶδον ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης θηρίον ἀναβαῖνον, “and I saw a beast rising out of the sea.” The Commentator says, “Beast here is idolatry, raging like a wild beast.” Absurdly, and with no example from Holy Scripture — for with Daniel, whose style our John imitates in these revelations — beasts rising out of the sea denote kingdoms and empires, the Holy Spirit Himself interpreting, Dan. 7:3, 17. Nor is there any doubt that this beast of John is Daniel’s fourth, terrible and great, which, like this one, has ten horns, Dan. 7:7; and just as Daniel’s ten horns are ten kings, v. 24, so, too, John’s has ten diadems placed on its horns. Therefore, not idolatry in the abstract, but the Roman Empire is meant here, commonly called the fourth monarchy, which was for a time held even by Christian emperors. It is said to ascend “out of the sea,” which is common to all the mystical beasts in Daniel, that is, to come forth into the world and be stirred up among the multitude of peoples by various waves and storms of seditions and wars; Rev. 17:15; Ps. 46:4; and elsewhere frequently; “So shall he come up out of the earth,” Isaiah 53:2, is the same as to come forth and be born. If, however, the Commentator prefers, he notes the power of the beast derives from the obedience of the peoples gathered under him; which is basically the same thing, so I do not wish to be contentious about it.
ἔχον κέρατα δέκα. “having ten horns.” I have already said, “the ten horns are ten kings;” but these are not the many idolatrous subjects under authority of the Roman Empire, as the Commentator wishes, who enumerates Armenia, Thrace, Galatia, Judea, Arabia, etc. That these were subject to and tributary to the Roman Empire later cannot be denied. Yet one who is subject and pays tribute does not truly wear a diadem, which is the insignia of supreme rule, nor can he properly be called a king, except loosely and equivocally. Nor were all the petty rulers the Commentator lists servants of idolatry under the Roman Empire, for that cannot be said of Herod and his successors in the kingdom of Judea who were thoroughly given to the law and religion of the Hebrews; nor of that king of Edessa, Abgar, mentioned by Eusebius in book 1, chapter 13, who is said to have embraced the faith of Christ while our Savior still lived on earth and to have had correspondence with him by letters; so much so that among the treasures of the Elichmann Library I see an Arabic manuscript letter of our Savior to the king of Edessa cited — whether it is the same as that which Eusebius reports, those who examine it will determine.
Idolatry did not first emerge into the world when those ten kings mentioned by the Commentator were subject to the Roman Empire. Indeed, the proclamation of the Gospel had already made great inroads before some of them submitted to the Roman yoke: Trajan first subdued the Arabs around the year of Christ 108, as Baronius notes, whence his surname Arabicus. Therefore, let these ten horns be understood much more easily of the provinces subject to the Roman Empire, into which the Romans — whose senators, as they seemed to Pyrrhus’s legate Cynaethus, were as many kings — absolutely held supreme authority and, as it were, the diadem. That there were at least ten of these no one will deny. Scripture often uses a finite number for the indefinite, as in Gen. 31:7, 41; 1 Sam. 1:8; Job 19:3; Eccles. 7:19. Yet these ten were chiefly: Italy, Hispania, Gaul, Germania, Hungary and Bulgaria, Asia Minor, Greece, Syria and Assyria, Egypt, Africa; to which islands attached to the continent and lesser provinces may be added as appendages.
Καὶ κεφαλὰς ἑπτὰ, “and seven heads.” Truly “heads” have two meanings, as the commentator has observed; we join both here. First we think the seven hills of the city of Rome are meant, for this is the city of seven hills whose mention occurs in Apocalypse 17:9 — whence “the sacred seven-hilled” (city) is commemorated by Suetonius in Domitian, ch. 4, and so called, testifies Varro, “from those seven hills on which the city is situated” — and then the seven forms of political government which the Roman Commonwealth underwent, as interpreted by James, the most wise King of Great Britain. These are Regal, Consular, Tribunician, Decemviral, Dictatorial, Imperial, and that of Odoacer, who held and governed Rome in a manner different from the others. Therefore, in Apocalypse 17:10 five of these seven heads are said to be fallen, the sixth to be, and the seventh to come and abide for a little while. For at the time of John the first five prior forms of government had already ceased; the Imperial, which is the sixth, obtained; which afterward would be taken away, but would endure only a short time, by the authority of Odoacer, king of the Heruli, who extinguished that imperial dignity born in the Augustus in the little Augustus — who being deposed, as Baronius notes under the year 476 n. 1, “the Western Empire utterly collapsed and devolved to the barbarian.” How different Odoacer’s rule was from the imperial may be gathered even from Cassiodorus’ words in the Chronicle: “He assumed the name of king Odoacer, although he used neither purple nor royal insignia.”
But when the Commentator thinks that the hills instead signify the seats of that idolatry — that is, not Phrygia, not Egypt, not Greece, but chiefly the Roman seat and origin — he wrongly distinguishes Roman idolatry from the Greek, Egyptian, and Phrygian, since Rome long received the various religions and superstitions of all peoples and set up foreign gods in triumph with their images and altars. The Romans invoked the gods of besieged cities by a magic spell, promising them a more august worship in Rome if they would desert their foes and deign to transfer themselves into Roman parts. Nor were the laws against admitting foreign rites so strictly observed that Egyptian vanities did not flow into Rome; as Lucan, quoted by the Commentator later, testifies,
“We received your Isis into our sacred rites, half- dogs and wailing cymbals call forth lamentation, and you, weeping, attest that man to be Osiris.”
It is also clear from Josephus, Antiquities 18.4, the rites of Isis were publicly celebrated at Rome in the time of Tiberius, who delivered up her Mystics to the cross because of the accusation concerning Paul, made by Decius, pretending to be Anubis [ancient Egyptian god associated with death, embalming, and the afterlife, depicted as a man with the head of a jackal] by their art. Nor do learned men doubt that the origin of Roman idolatry must in large part be traced back not to some other place, but to Greece, Phrygia, and Syria.
Ονομα βλασφημίας, “Name of Blasphemy,” the Commentator rightly interprets this, as does Jerome in his eleventh question to Algasia, as that epithet of impious Rome by which the city was called eternal. Indeed, she was even called a goddess, as Martial:
“Goddess of lands and of peoples, Rome, to whom nothing equals, and nothing is second.”
The Smyrnaeans are also praised by Tacitus (Annals 4) for having erected a temple to the city of Rome. The Caesars and Emperors took for themselves names of blasphemy, who were called Divine, Gods, Augusti Eternal. To this pertains the saying of Prosper of Aquitaine in his “On the Time of Half a Year,” ch. 7: “When the temporal is called eternal, certainly the name is blasphemy; when mortals, albeit kings, are called divine, or they call upon you as suppliants to your Divinity, to your Altars, to your Perpetuity, and other things that vanity, not truth, has handed down, they are equally accursed: for these things are due to the eternal God.” The reader should notice how the Commentator gradually abandons his intent and here does not wish to mean idolatry, but Rome itself.
Verse. 2: Καὶ τὸ θηρίον ὁ εἶδον ἦν ὅμοιον παρδάλει, “and the beast which I saw was like a leopard.” I do not deny, as the Commentator chiefly assumes, that those beasts are taken in the description of the beast whose instruments the Romans used in the punishment of Christians, so that it might be clearer to John and all Christians that the Roman Empire is meant here, and at the same time more distinctly explain what sort of beast the fourth in Daniel is, which is described as terrible and dreadful with iron teeth, by which it crushed all things and trampled the rest under its feet, Dan. 7:7.
It is said to be like a leopard, not so much because of the variety of religions and gods, as the Commentator supposes, but rather because of the craftiness of its rule and the swiftness of its victories, by which the Empire attained that pinnacle of glory; just as in Daniel for the same reason Alexander is signified by a leopard, to whom some ancient writers therefore attributed lightning. Caesar’s famous Veni, vidi, vici [“I came, I saw, I conquered”] is well known, and as after his victory in the Second Punic War “the peoples of Africa, Macedonia, Greece, Syria, and all the rest immediately followed, as if by a sort of surge and torrent of fortune,” as Roman historian Lucius Florus says in book 2, ch. 7. To this are added the bear’s feet and the lion’s teeth, because of the outpoured, dreadfully horrid human blood, and the immense riches from the spoils of the provinces piled up on all sides.
Lactantius nowhere interprets this Beast differently from the Commentator in the passage cited (lib. 5, ch. 11), although he considers this ferocity particularly in its persecution of Christians; “That is the true beast,” he says, “by whose single command black blood is poured everywhere, cruel mourning everywhere, dread and manifold images of death; no one can duly describe the enormity of that beast, which reclining in one place, nevertheless rages with iron teeth throughout the whole world.” Nor is it surprising that it is said the Dragon, that is the Devil, gave great power to this Beast: for he is “the Prince of this world,” John 16:11, who gives the kingdoms of the earth to whom he will, Luke 4:6. Hence, the Romans gave back to Satan all the glory for their greatness through idol worship, Symmachus bearing witness: “This worship has reduced the world to my laws; these sacred rites drove Hannibal from the ramparts, and the Senones from the Capitoline.”
Verse 3: Καὶ εἶδον μίαν ἐκ ἢ κεφαλῶν αὐπε, ὡςἐσφαγμλύω, “And I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain to death.” The commentator interprets this verse of the Capitoline, which was taken as an omen of the fall of the empire when it was set on fire; and its restoration by Vespasian was a wonder and amazement to all the peoples subject to the empire, so that they suspected Rome to be rising again and devoted to immortality from that. Certainly rightly, and in my judgment more fittingly than those who refer this wound to the slaughter of Julius Caesar, whose authority in his successor Augustus was in some sense reborn; it might also be drawn to the death of Nero, whose wound in Domitian — who is called Nero’s portion by Tertullian — seemed to be healed as if covered by a scar. Some ancient writers, notably Severus Sulpicius and the author of the Sibylline Verses, understood Nero as having been wounded and thought dead, but later to return and be resurrected. But the Commentator’s opinion is the clearer — that these seven heads denote the seven hills of Rome; and that on the Capitoline was the omen of enduring rule and the seat of majesty.
Verse 4: Καὶ προσεκιύηστων τῷ θηρίῳ, “and they worshipped the beast.” Hence, it is plainly wrong for the Commentator to call this Beast “Idolatry”; for an idol is indeed worshipped, but not “idolatry”: and since John distinguishes the worship of the Beast from the worship of the Dragon who had given power to the Beast, it is better by this to understand a superstition-driven cult offered to the multitude of the Roman gods; for the worship of idols is actually worship directed to the Devil (1 Corinthians 10:20–21), which, by that word, the Commentator judges it denotes the religious worship rendered by idolaters to the Empire itself, to the City, and to the Caesars, as I have already noted above.
Verse 5: Καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτος σόμα λαλῶν μεγάλα καὶ βλασφημίαν, “and to it was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies.” A similar speech is found in Antiochus, as the Commentator rightly notes, Dan. 7:8, 11, 20. To speak greatly does not only mean to cast blasphemies into heaven, but also to speak proudly and haughtily, whether by praising oneself or even by gloating over vanquished enemies; which appropriately suits Rome in triumph, as everyone sees. Yet the Commentator could not apply this to the gods of others despised by the Romans, whom, as I said above, they indiscriminately worshipped: long before the Capitol was rebuilt that law of the Twelve Tables was in force — “Let no one have separate gods, nor new ones” — nor foreigners, unless publicly admitted, to be privately worshipped. We have already noted examples of this Beast’s blasphemies, from which the Caesars, even after becoming Christians, did not entirely desist. They seem chiefly to have taken strength under Domitian; whence Martial, concerning Domitian’s edict in accordance with the Lex Roscia, speaks thus,
“The edict of our Lord and of our God,
By which the seats are made more certain,” etc.
That Domitian took care to be called Lord and God is attested by Suetonius, chap. 13, Of his Life.
Verse 5 (cont.): Καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῷ ἐξεσία ποιῆςαι μῆνας τεοσαράκοντα δύο, “and to him was given authority to act for forty-two months.” For, as the Commentator well notes, the Greek ποιεῖν χρόνον Τίναι means “to last;” and wrongly some manuscripts add the word πόλεμον, “war.” This space of forty-two months should not be taken to denote a particular persecution of Domitian against the Christians, but rather the duration of the Empire: for besides that, it is absurd to interpret it of Domitian the persecutor — which the Commentator had formerly clearly understood as Roman idolatry — it is so far from certain that the persecution of Domitian, however brief it may have been, lasted that precise period of time, namely three years and a half, that there is no reliable testimony for it. Baronius begins it in the year 93 and does not end it before Domitian’s death, but assigns it to the year 98. Moreover, why would John have mentioned this persecution rather than far graver ones under Trajan, Diocletian, and others? Or those already past, such as the Neronian persecutions? With which the Domitian persecution is in no way comparable, as Tertullian’s words also testify (Apolog. cap. 5): “Domitian tried to play the part of Nero in persecution, but because he was easily restrained as a man, he restored even those whom he had banished.” See also Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 3, chapter 15.
Nor must the times of Antiochus (Dan. 7:25) be recalled here, which were typical of the persecution by Antichrist, not Domitian. As the Apocalypse (11:2–3) defines the calamities of the Church under the Antichrist, according to the type of Antiochus’ cruelty, by the space of 42 months — that is, as explained there, 1,260 days — so likewise for the same reason the flight and hiding of the Church in the desert are concluded by the same period (Apocalypse 12:6, 14). For Satan, in the year 1,260 from the Ascension of Christ, having sought to drown the woman with his mouth, sent forth Boniface VIII and his decretals, in which he shamelessly and blasphemously surpassed all his predecessors; thus here the same duration is ascribed to the Roman Empire, in order to make it clearer that the tyranny of the Antichrist would endure as long as that Empire itself had endured. Therefore, these months are not to be taken literally but prophetically, as in Apocalypse 9:5, understanding days for years; which is not unfamiliar in Scripture, cf. Num. 14:34 and Ezek. 4:6. Thus the weeks in Daniel 9:24 are not days but years.
We therefore rightly understand here the duration of the Empire, according to which it was granted to the Beast, even after the wound which most thought lethal had been received and healed, to complete and finish the time set and fixed for it by Divine Providence, namely 1,260 years. The prophet preferred to say months rather than days or years, so that that short space of 42 months opposed the blasphemous title by which Rome was called Eternal. Nor is anything more certain than this calculation: Christmas, according to Baronius in his apparatus, falls in the 42nd year of Augustus; the founding of the City is 751 according to Cappelli, 754 by another reckoning. Odoacer’s death is in the year of the Lord 493; if you add to these the 16 or 13 preceding years of Theodoric the King of the Goths, who treacherously removed Odoacer, the last head of that earlier Beast, and occupied himself during all that time in ordering his new Italian republic, you will have precisely the same number of years, 1,260. Although it is not necessary to add those sixteen or thirteen, because the prophetic completion did not require that the forty-two months be filled exactly; jurists and the Talmudists themselves use the rule that an incomplete year, month, or day is accounted as whole — hence the ancients assigned ten months to a pregnant woman.
“The mother endured long ten months of grief.”
Indeed, with Odoacer’s departure the majesty of that City and of the Empire in the West utterly perished; and Rome from then on was nothing other than Fortune’s ball, exposed to various plunderings, the most famous of which followed shortly after under Totila until at last by those very stages it passed entirely into the sway and power of the Pontiffs.
Verses 6 & 7: Καὶ ἤνοιξε τὸ ςόμα ὐπε, “and he opened his mouth,” etc. When these things are spoken of the Beast in general, they are not to be restricted by the Commentator to one Domitian but are to be extended to the blasphemies and insults against God and his saints, and the dreadful persecutions of the Church by the Roman Empire, until some peace was obtained by the conversion of Constantine.
What follows is harsher: καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῷ ἐξουσία ἐπὶ πᾶσαν φυλήν, καὶ γλῶσσαν, καὶ ἔθνος; “power was given to him over every tribe and tongue and nation;” which the Commentator interprets as if “by the example of the Emperor and the Roman people,” nearly all peoples are said to be drawn so that they both more shamelessly practiced idolatry and used every kind of cunning against Christians. Scholars argue that although someone’s example may influence others to do wrong, it does not mean those others inherit power; Domitian’s notorious reputation for arrogance and tyranny made his example unlikely to inspire or empower imitation. Therefore, [contrary to Grotius] John speaks of Rome and the Roman Empire, which seemed to extend over the whole world (πᾶσαν οἰκουμένην), and to include the East on the right and the West on the left; whence πᾶσαν τιὼ οἰκουμένην [“the whole inhabited world”] is described. Augustus is said to have ordered this, Luke 2:1. And the Councils that gathered from all the Churches under Roman rule were called Ecumenical.
Verse 8: It belongs to the same thread that the following words, καὶ συσκινήσουσιν αὐτῷ πάντες οἱ κατοικοῦντες ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, “and all who dwell on the earth will worship him,” the Commentator says the intention is to signify that they will imitate that custom. However, worshipping the Beast and bestowing Roman honors as predicted, even during times of severe persecution of God’s saints, does not mean them adopting idolatrous customs.
What remains here about the Book of Life ought not to be part of this investigation. I know that most learned commentators agree that the Lamb’s Book of Life is to be understood as written from the foundation of the world — not that the Lamb is said to have been slain from the world’s thrown-down foundations — yet I do not see why Christ might not also be said to have been slain from the foundation of the world, not only by divine decree, as it is said προεγνώσεν πρόκαταβολῆς κόσμου (1 Pet. i.20), but also from the efficacy of his merit and death applied to all the elect and believers by true and saving faith from the world’s creation; for various passages of Scripture pertain to this, Heb. 13:8; 1 Cor. 10:3; John 8:56.
My view is supported not only by the Vulgate version but also by that preposition ἀπὸ which says that the thing was made from the foundations of the world — that is, after they were cast; not before they were cast — which in the passages of Peter cited by the Commentator, and in Ephesians 1:4 and 2 Timothy 1:9, belongs to predestination.
If, however, anyone wishes stubbornly to understand the Book of Life as written from the origin of the world, let him observe first, from a similar example, Revelation 17:8, that this Book of Life is called the Lamb’s book, whereby the Divinity and Eternity are in this way asserted. For it is not enough to make the claim that Christ was destined to be head of the saints from eternity, as the Commentator asserts: for a book is said to be someone’s in particular only if it was written by him and pertains to him, not merely if it bears his name in the first place. Hence, this fact will be sufficient proof against the Socinians’ error — for Christ was Head and Saviour of all the saints from the world’s origin, and therefore, His satisfaction, by whose power all those τετέλεσται [“made perfect”] Hebrews 11:40, also belonged to the faithful of the Old Testament.
Secondly, this book is not, as the Commentator imagines, “by a likeness taken from well-ordered cities, where from the beginning of the city’s founding there exist perpetual monuments that contain the names of the citizens.” For besides the fact that scarcely any example of such a city could be produced, unless perhaps in More’s Utopia, or Campanella’s City of the Sun, or Plato’s Atlantis, according to this metaphor it would be necessary that, just as in those cities the writing of names is to be understood according to the succession of times and births, so God would daily continue the writing of this book: “And already full to the margin of the book, written also on the back and Orestes not yet finished;” that whatever Book of Life is written from eternity, and as Tyconius has it (Hom. 10), “signed from the origin of the world.” Wherefore it would be necessary to say the Book of Life is written ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου [“ from the foundation of the world”] that God from eternity had fixed therein with adamantine and indelible letters the names of all those who in Christ and through Christ were to obtain eternal salvation: hence their names are said to be “written in heaven,” Luke 10:20. And the Commentator wished Christ “slain from the foundation of the world” to be the same as “slain before the foundation of the world,” that is, from eternity. The book is said to be written from the very foundations of the world, not that its writing began with the cradle of the world, but that God immediately from the beginning of creation prepared the kingdom of heaven for His elect, Matthew 25:34. There are various places of Scripture in which the Book of Life signifies nothing else than a catalogue arranged from eternity of the elect unto life, although sometimes the name means something else, as many follow Sixtus of Siena in Biblioteca sancta, book 2. But since election is from eternity, as Scripture teaches everywhere, this catalogue cannot be said to be founded in time. Thus, μυστηρίον is said τὸ κεκρυμμένον ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων ἐν τῷ θεῷ — “the mystery hidden from the ages in God,” Ephesians 3:9, that is, ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων [“from the ages”].
Thirdly, it is most rightly gathered from this book of Life written from eternity, whatever the Commentator argues to the contrary, that predestination to life is purely gratuitous, not supported by any foreseen justice, faith, or merits. We do not say that God’s decree is to save men “without any condition, without regard to any act or quality,” as he cavils with an excessively foul sophism almost worn out by use; but that this decree of God to preserve and grant certain men to him unto that end — to faith and sanctification, as necessary and ordained means to attain salvation — rests solely on God’s grace and most free will, with no foreseeing of any good that is beforehand in them, because all their good flows from him; Romans 9:11,12; 11:5; 8:28; Ephesians 1:4; and many other places. And just as in Acts 13:48 “as many as were ordained to eternal life,” are said to have believed, so here, by contrast, all those who were not written in the book of life are said to have worshipped the beast.
To the passages which the Commentator produces from Clement of Rome and Chrysostom I could respond, and even, as Augustine says, before the rise of Pelagius the Fathers have spoken in these matters, and with Augustine’s words in his treatise, On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 23: “This predestination, which is now defended against new heretics with new solicitude, the Church of Christ never lacked.” Pseudo-Clement contains many other forgeries; nor is the simple antithesis that our names are written in heaven by our diligence, while demons are cast out by the power of God is to be uncritically admitted; since even in the casting out of demons, piety, fastings and prayers are needed, as Christ himself testifies, Matthew 17:21. Although if “to be written in heaven” is the same as to be in the memory of God and in His burning grace, as Theophylact interprets, Clement’s opinion does no harm to ours; for we acknowledge that only by the practice of Christian virtues, faith and charity, are we agreeable and acceptable to God. This may also be accommodated to the saying of Jacchiades in Daniel, which the Commentator praises. For if these men cannot bend the heavenly ones, they will move Acheron; and those things in which orthodox authors do not find sufficiently firm props against Pelagianism they do not blush to seek from the foul pits of the Rabbis, introducing Jewish and Pharisaic arrogance into the temple of evangelical grace. Since the Book of Life is manifold, as Sixtus of Siena observes, one may be inscribed in the Book of Life unto righteousness by election, another unto righteousness by sanctification; hence the mention in the plural of the books to be opened on the Day of Judgment, Daniel 7:10; Revelation 20:12.
Just as by His free election God from eternity inscribed the names of some in His book, to whom faith and eternal life were to be given through Christ — against whom in Jude are opposed οἱ πάλαι προγεγραμμένοι εἰς τοῦτο τὸ κρίμα, “already long ago prescribed unto this judgment” — so he likewise inscribes the holy actions and sufferings of those same ones unto life in the Book of His Providence, so that their memory may never be lost; Psalm 51:9; 139:16.
In the same sense Chrysostom, cited by the Commentator there, may be said to interpret those written in the book in Daniel 12:1 worthy as deserving of salvation because only those will be worthy of salvation whose faith and works will have vigor in the memory of God. How then, are the elect who, in the prior sense written in the book of life, worthy of salvation? For the whole source and origin of that dignity is from the free and most liberal election of God, as truly and rightly the same Chrysostom, cited that saying of the Apostle — “Who then makes you to differ?” — “Homily 12 on 1 Corinthians, says: Therefore, what you received, you have; not this only or that only, but whatever you have. For these things are not your merits, but the gifts of God.” Perhaps this subject runs on more at length than was fitting for the question about the Antichrist; yet the excessive zeal of the Commentator in his Pelagianism, offering it to readers on every occasion, has driven me to this.
Verse 9: Εἴτις εἰχμαλωσίαν συνάγει, “Whoever leads into captivity will go into captivity.” This is correctly interpreted of Rome being plundered by the Goths and Vandals; but the following verse, “if anyone perish by the sword,” is wrongly applied to Domitian alone, both because it would absurdly join the slaughter of Domitian with the Gothic disaster that followed long after Domitian [Visigoth sack of Rome: 410 AD; death of Domitian: 96 AD], and because that expression is a general threat aimed at all tyrants and persecutors, which in many other cases has met its fulfilment.
Verse 11: Καὶ εἶδον ἄλλο θηρίον, “And I saw another beast.” The Commentator interprets this second beast as “Sorcery”; its origin is private, not public, whence it is said to rise out of the earth. Its two horns like those of a lamb—chastity and abstinence—are virtues highly commended to Christians, by which the Magi made themselves venerable; he especially identifies Apollonius of Tyana as denoted here. But in thus confining the whole prophecy of this head to Domitian and Apollonius, just as before when he had Paul’s prediction concerning Cæsar and Simon merely a prophet’s report of things already done and did not extend those prophecies beyond their age, whether this is to mock God and Scripture let wise Christians judge.
Moreover, it is certain that magical arts were nowhere less influential than in the Roman world, especially at the time John was writing. For although later Julian the Apostate tried to restore them, yet apart from laws previously enacted against magicians (Digest and the Leges Corneliae de sicariis, from Nero’s time) the hollowness of those arts had become so notorious that they were universally execrated, as Pliny shows (Natural History, book 30, ch. 1–2). Indeed, I would venture to say that they were more tolerated in the East and more prevalent among the Jews themselves than ever among the Romans. How can the Commentator attribute the efficacy and practice of magic to Domitian Caesar and his persecutions of Christians, when it is certain that Domitian expelled all philosophers from the City and the whole of Italy—under whose name Chaldeans and Magi were included (Suetonius, Life of Domitian, ch. 10)? And Apollonius is said to have been treated very harshly and cruelly, as Philostratus himself relates (Life of Apollonius, book 8): who certainly would not have escaped the punishment he deserved, had he not been an impostor practicing demonic legerdemain to deceive the Emperor’s eyes.
Finally, since sorcery at that time—after the Capitol had of course been restored—had not first appeared but rather began to be scorned and diminished, this second Beast can in no way be understood as concerning sorcery or the sorcerer Apollonius. Nor do all concede that Apollonius was a Magus: Justin Martyr (Dialogue 24, to Trypho) seems to count him among natural philosophers and magi; Jerome, in his Letter to Paul on all divine history (book/chapter 1), speaks of the matter doubtfully: “Apollonius,” he says, “whether that Magus, as the common people call him, or a Philosopher, as the Pythagoreans relate, went into Persia,” etc. Not long ago learned men produced an apology freeing the man Apollonius from this charge of sorcery; yet I would rather agree with Eusebius, who demonstrates this quite clearly against Hierocles; as well as the things told of him by Philostratus, if true, could have been accomplished only by the ministry and aid of demons.
Whatever else may be said, far more appropriately and in closer accord with the mind of the Reformed prophets is to understand the second Beast not as the armed and ὑπερασπίσω (defender) Antichrist, as the Papists maintain who take the first Beast to be the Antichrist, but as the Roman Pontiff himself — indeed, the Antichrist or the son of perdition. Bernard in Epistle 125 regards it thus: “That beast of the Apocalypse to whom was given a mouth speaking blasphemies and to make war with the saints occupies Peter’s chair, like a lion ready for prey.” This other Beast is said to rise not out of the sea as the first did, but out of the earth, partly because the Pontiffs were to come to that authority with little noise and by chiefly secret intrigues, partly because the beginnings of that dignity were humble and lowly, and partly because most of those who were to attain that authority were sons of the soil and of low estate: Sixtus V was born to a ploughman father, Benedict XII to a miller, Urban IV to a shoemaker; many were so obscure that their names and homeland are not known because of the ignobility of their birth. Not undeservedly is a dung‑laden seat used as a metaphor to shadow this thing, since in truth this second Beast rose up out of dust and dung, which is applied at pontifical inauguration. If that phrase “to rise out of the earth” has anything to do with sorcery and necromantic arts by which the dead are raised and spirits are summoned (for it is harder to refer this to a private rather than a public origin of sorcery, since the first discoverers of it were not private men but princes and magnates, like Cham and Zoroaster; and princes have always cultivated it more than private persons — how great the authority of the Magi among the Persians is known to all; nor was anyone admitted to the Jewish Sanhedrin, if one believes the Talmudists, who did not know magical arts to a turn), it is certain, as we warned above, that these also in no way were wanting to this second Beast.
I will not deny that those two horns can be called abstinence and chastity; for they pertain to celibacy laws and prohibitions of foods, though granted by God, by which these [unbiblical precepts] were most of all bound to flourish, 1 Tim. 4:3. Although they can equally well signify a double sword, or that twofold Empire in the world, Temporal and Spiritual, which, under the name of the Lamb and as his Vicar, the Pope usurps to himself: nor could the Mystery of iniquity be drawn forth except under the name of the Lamb, that is, of Christ, and under the pretext of piety. A bad man is never more wicked and more harmful than when he pretends and feigns to be good and upright; the crocodile is never more to be feared than when it imitates the human voice; most harmful are the wolves when they are disguised in the fleece of sheep.
Verse 11 (cont.): Καὶ ἐλάλει ὡς δράκων, “and he spoke as a Dragon;” It is certain that both the Magi in general and Apollonius by name worshipped the Devil, but this phrase denotes grandiloquence, insolent boasting, and poisonous doctrine, as Spanish Jesuit Francisco Ribera very fittingly says at this place: “He therefore spoke like a Dragon, although the lamb appeared outwardly one simulating holiness and meekness, within he was a Dragon in cruelty and poison, and thus with his words, as with a certain deadly poison, he was killing the souls of men.” I could cite many dragon-like utterances of the Antichrist here, such as that of Pope Syricius [d.399] about honest married people, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God”; that of Alexander III against Frederick, pressing his neck with a proud foot, “you will walk upon the asp and the basilisk”; that of Julius II, going forth to battle and casting away the keys of Peter into the Tiber, “Because the key of Saint Peter has no longer any power, let now the sword of Saint Paul prevail”; that of Leo X to Cardinal Bembo when he proposed something from the Gospel, “How much that tale about Christ has profited us and our company is known enough to all ages”; like those of Boniface VIII and Gregory VII arrogating all law over kings and princes; like the many impious, proud, and contemptuous-of-Christ general dogmas of the Roman Pontiff, who is wont to boast of fullness of power, the authority to give or deny kingdoms to whomsoever he wishes, which the Demon assigns to himself in the temptation of Christ, and to boast that every divine and human right is enclosed in the treasury of his breast. Indeed, there came out of Italy a most foul book, as if published before the very eyes of that Pope, “on the three impostors, Moses, Christ, and Muhammad,” which the Italian monk Campanella attributes to Poggio Florentine and which Bocaccio of the same nation similarly breathes impiety into; which I note in passing because some from the Roman clergy in these provinces have dared to assign that most foul writing to the Reformers under the name of Frank Duysseldorf.
Verse 12: Καὶ τὴν ἐξεσίαν τοῦ πρώτo θηρίο πᾶσων ποιεῖ ἐνώπιον αὐτo, “and he exercised all the authority of the first beast in his sight.” The Commentator miserably distorts this passage to mean sacrifices celebrated by the Magi in honor of idols; for although προσκυνῆσαι ἐνώπιον τινός, [“to worship before him”] as in Luke 4:7, may be the same as the Latin word “adorare,” [“worship”], yet to make or exercise another’s authority before him cannot be simply referred to his worship and honor. And what more absurd than to interpret τὴν ἐξουσίαν τοῦ πρώτου θηρίου πᾶσιν ποιεῖν [“to exercise all the authority of the first beast”] as celebrating idolatrous sacrifices? For the first Beast was not idolatry, but rather, as we have shown, the Roman Empire; nor was the force and authority of idolatry situated in sacrifices, but in that efficacy of error of which Paul spoke earlier [2 Thess. 2:10]; nor were the Magi’s rites the same when idolatry was public; they had their secret and more horrid sacrifices, which Pliny calls prodigious rites. Apollonius, Pythagorean by name, rejected all bloody sacrifices and yet counted himself to participate in their religion, as appears from Philostratus, book 1. I do not know whether the Commentator wished to support his interpretation with the argument that Greek ποιῶν and the Latin ‘facere’ are sometimes the same as ‘sacrificare;’ but this sense will only hold for a subject matter that could be so understood, which here it does not, for the context is not even about sacrifices.
It remains, then, that we should understand this about the Roman Pontiff, the true Antichrist, who, rising from very small and obscure beginnings gradually usurped to himself all the authority of the prior beast, that is, of the Roman Empire, which he now brazenly wields and exercises — not only over those who are called Caesars and Roman Emperors by name, but also against them, which could be shown at length with the strongest and most numerous arguments. One example will suffice: Humanist Stoic Justus Lipsius, who writes in his Admirable Preface that whatever remains of the Empire is held and exercised by the Pope as by a Roman dictator, which he rightly collects from the purple tributes of the College of Cardinals, from legations to foreign powers, and from the submissions of princes and kings to that see: “To us,” he says, “it is evident that this very Rome,” namely the present Rome under the Pontiff, “and the Sacred Empire in it, have been and are as an anchor to long-tossed Europe.” Indeed he has seized for himself all the insignia of emperors, the purple cloak (of which Ambrose said to Theodosius, “The purple makes an emperor, not a priest”); the purple shoes; the worship, the title, and adoration; the kissing of the feet; revenue from prostitutes; the law of depositions; the supreme pontificate — and what not?
Verse 12 (cont.): Καὶ ποιεῖ τὸν γῆν (“And he caused the earth”) etc. “and caused the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” Although Apollonius at last became famous after the Capitol was restored, as the Commentator falsely notes, yet neither he nor his Sorcery directly brought any hindrance to the Gospel (unless perhaps by his tricks he caused some to slander Christ and the Apostles as having used sorcery in their miracles), nor did he add any weight to pagan idolatry; for among the more sensible he was held in contempt and derision as an impostor; Domitian especially had his hair and beard shamefully shaved off him; far less should he be judged to have been responsible for the people honoring the Roman Empire than before, since in that whole age no one was more arrogant toward the Caesars, as Eusebius also observed “in Hierocles.”
That too is false, that Apollonius became known only at the time when the Capitol was restored. For Philostratus, book 4, testifies that he came to Rome under Nero, that he was consul Telesinus and that long before his fame and name had circulated among men. Baronius assigns the consulship of Telesinus to the year of Christ 68, in Nero’s twelfth. Indeed, Philostratus himself, book 5, relates how he was sought by Vespasian in Egypt and humbly entreated to make him king; which altogether preceded both Vespasian’s empire and the restoration of the Capitol through him.
How much more truly, then, are these things said of the Roman Antichrist; who, having snatched to himself the dignity of the Empire, made it so that his own honor and the former glory of Rome remained and were worshiped in him, and the prior Beast was suspected and venerated everywhere as if revived in his authority, and as if the restoration of the Capitol had not in vain portended that city’s eternity—since that restoration, as a prior institution made from a human head, promised him in its place “the head of things and the summit of the Empire”; see Livy book 5. Add to this that since pagan idol worship has openly been reborn in Pontifical rites, and the same practice proceeds under changed names, as even unwilling Pontiffs sometimes confess, who trace the origin of their Gods, Images, Festivals, pompous Sacred Processions, Ambarvalia, Rites, and all their observances back to pagan wicked zeal, the [Papal] Antichrist is rightly judged to cause that the prior Beast [the pagan Roman Empire] which the Commentator interpreted as Idolatry, be admired and worshiped by all over whom he [the Papal Antichrist] presides.
Verse 13: Καὶ ποιεῖ σημεῖα μεγάλας, “and he did great signs:” This certainly indicates the Antichrist, and the same one Paul mentions, 2 Thess. 2:9, here acting against the Holy Spirit; of his miracles more is said there. That the bringing down of fire from heaven is attributed to Apollonius by the Commentator because a lightning bolt is said to have fallen at his birth (Philostratus, book 1), and because the image of Achilles, having been roused by him, departed after their finished conversation emitting a moderate flash, as Philostratus relates in book 4, does not hold water. And besides, faith should not be rashly given to that most mendacious Philostratus who everywhere indulges in rhetoric and whom Eusebius accused of open vanity, certainly such things cannot be ascribed to the nascent Apollonius; and however many others in former times are reported by historians to have been born amid thunder and lightning as an omen of future life, no sane person therefore would say that they brought down fire from heaven in the sight of men. The later event, however, happened secretly with all witnesses, not by Apollonius himself but by a demon summoned, and is known only from the impostor’s own account.
These miracles and prodigies are truly conspicuous in the Roman Antichrist, who once terrified the whole world with the brutish lightnings of his excommunications, whose ministers and officers, in our Fathers’ memory, avenged neglected indulgences or reliquaries by sending down the sacred fire of St. Anthony from heaven upon them; to say nothing of what exists in Benno’s writings about Gregory VII, that he struck sparks of fire from his sleeves by magical arts.
This moreover in verse 14 is said to be done ἐνώπιον τοῦ θηρίου [“before the beast”], in the earlier stated sense of exercising all that authority in its presence; although, according to the Commentator’s interpretation, all these Pontifical miracles — such as Lipsius carefully examined in his accounts of her Sicilian and Hallesian shrines — aim at the honor and worship of that very beast revived through the Pontiff and the pontificate.
There was therefore no need for the Commentator to so diligently collect all the miracles attributed to Apollonius; for they do not belong here and are far beneath the lies of miracles upon which the Antichrist boasts. Wherefore, while I readily concede to the Commentator that the pseudo-prophet mentioned in Revelation 16:13, 19:20, 20:10 does not differ from this second Beast — for in those places the mouth of the Beast and of the pseudo-prophet are taken for the same thing — I deny that this passage should be understood of Apollonius: it rather suits the Roman Pontiff, out of whose mouth, that is by whose institution and command, those impure spirits came forth — monks and Jesuits and the like swarm who chant nothing but wars and slaughter. Nor is it strange that he should be called both Beast and pseudo-prophet, since the one name designates his authority, the other his seduction.
Verse 14: Λέγων τοῖς κατοικῶσι ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς εἰκόνα ποιῆσαι τῷ θηρίῳ; “saying to those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast:” The commentator’s version here is strange indeed, or rather a perversion of this prophecy, since he wishes to signify that Apollonius preached to men that he had made an image of the Beast by raising up the likeness of Achilles. But first, all interpreters up to now have rendered that verb not as declarative but as imperative; and certainly, what follows about life being given to that image necessarily leads us to this. John’s reference to the image of the Beast does not relate to Achilles, whose rites Apollonius revived among pagans. Achilles is not considered the Beast, nor does sorcery or idolatry involving him fit the description, especially within the Roman Empire, where Romans, descended from Trojans, did not worship Achilles.
But did not the Roman Antichrist plainly persuade the peoples of Europe to fashion an image of the collapsed Empire, under his authority, to himself and his hierarchy, the empire having been transferred? Nor do I doubt that the splendor and dignity of that city and what the restored Capitol seemed to portend — the healing of the wound which the Beast had received by fire — were a great inducement to the Italians and Romans to set the Pope in the place he now holds, and that the omen of the restoration counted as a sign of the perpetual duration of his Church, as Bellarmine reckoned; therefore, lest they seem to lack fatal solicitude about Rome, they preferred at least to have the image of the prior Beast in the Papacy rather than to be entirely without an Empire.
And I wonder how it is the Commentator now abandons his earlier interpretation of the wound of the Beast, understanding it as the wound inflicted on idolatry by the sword of the Gospel, concerning which it had been said that the Roman Empire would not have revived except for sorcery. But neither sorcery nor Apollonius are found to have contributed anything to the support of idolatry; nor does this wound seem other than what has often been described before. And that which is called the wound of the sword does not prove the sword to be interpreted as a mystical word of God, or the dagger by which Caesar or Nero fell, but indicates that the wound of the prior Beast in the burning of the Capitol was due to the sword, that is, to the fighting of the Vitellians and the Flavians. But that wound and its healing, as regards the Capitol, portended the ruin of the Empire from divisions and wars, and a sort of resurrection of it in papal authority: and just as the Capitol was restored by Vespasian, plunderer of temples and destroyer of Judea, so the Empire, having collapsed into internecine strife, was restored by the Pontiff, the sacrilegious plunderer of the temple of God, rich with the spoils of the Church, when he transferred all its wealth to himself.
Verse 15: Καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῷ δοῦναι πνεῦμα τῇ εἰκόνι τῷ θηρίς, “and it was granted to him to give life to the Image of the Beast,” etc. The Commentator wishes the image of Achilles — called the image of the Beast because it would serve to promote idolatry — to have been summoned by necromantic arts from his tomb; but that to it was given by Apollonius a spirit and the power to speak because it was done with God permitting, so that that apparition might seem to live and converse with him. I have already said that this feat is ascribed to Apollonius done secretly away from everyone, not even admitting his faithful Damis; so that the matter cannot be taken as something certain and of indubitable truth. Besides, it would be very absurd to call the phantom of Achilles the Image of the Beast, that is, of idolatry, as something that would serve to recommend idolatry; for an image or a likeness takes its name not from the use to which it is put but from whom it represents. I do not think it can be denied that images of the cross and crucifixes are assigned to idolatrous worship among the Pontiffs, Gretser asserting “the cross of the Lord is to be worshiped with latria,” which is the lemma of chapter 49 of book 1, On the Cross; and there he says this opinion is common among his people. Shall these likenesses therefore be called “images of the beast”? Nor is this beast idolatry, but the Roman Empire, as I have often warned.
But if Apollonius, by magical incantations, summoned this phantom of Achilles — that is, a demon appearing under that likeness — and is to be held to have given it spirit and caused the image to speak, the same would have to be said of the Pythoness who, in Saul’s day, summoned the spirit of Samuel, and of all those who by necromantic art raise evil spirits; and since this has not been so uncommon among the pagans, and is even still performed daily in our times by seers, it is far more probable that this passage does not point to that.
I add that if this phantom of Achilles really was an evil spirit (if it appeared), who then would say or think that an impure spirit had received spirit and life from a man? Far greater things occurred daily among the pagans than to deserve great weight for the preservation of idolatry; it has been reported more than once that trees and statues spoke; and there are those who judge that the teraphim of the Hebrews were talking images.
None of the sources cited by the Commentator show that Apollonius was worshipped as a god. Vopiscus praises Apollonius and describes an apparition, but doesn’t claim he received divine honours; Lactantius also notes few, if any, people worshipped him. The passage cited by the Commentator actually suggests caution in declaring divinity based on extraordinary deeds, contrasting such belief with Jesus. Lastly, Justinus (or the author of Questions to the Orthodox) argues that Christ ended certain prophecies, referring to Apollonius as a ‘demon’s effigy’ and noting attempts to have him considered a god.
Since this interpretation is burdened with so many blemishes, the more common view among the Reformers is to be retained, namely that by divine providence it was granted to the Pontiff to give life to the Image of the former Beast raised in him — that is, to lend effectiveness and authority to his hierarchical domination — and at the same time to be able to speak, that is, to enact laws, promulgate diplomas, decrees and edicts, and thus to attain a kind of dictatorial authority not unlike that; miracles and various prodigies also served this end, especially images either sweating, or sending forth blood, or even speaking as if they were alive and animated. Examples are obvious to anyone, if one gives as much credit to fables as the Commentator does to Philostratus: it is well known what the image of the crucifix said to Thomas, “Good and well have you written of me, Thomas, what reward will you receive?” The drama concerning the image of Christ’s passion, falsely attributed to Athanasius by the Iconoclasts, is also well known; not to mention the magical image of Sylvester II made of bronze which answered inquiries in doubtful matters; more happily than the consecrated host of Gregory VII which because of stubborn silence was thrown into the fire. This impossible thirteenth task will be undertaken with the labor of Diagoras akin to Hercules.
Verse15 (cont.): καὶ ποιεῖ ἵνα ὅσοι ἐὰν μὴ προσκυνήσωσιν τῇ εἰκόνι τοῦ θηρίου ἀποκτανθῶσιν, “and cause that whoever does not worship the image of the beast be killed;” again our man twists the course and turns the sails: for here he wants image to be taken for any likeness, the singular for the plural. But who does not see from the preceding clause and the whole context that the same image of the former beast is meant; and therefore that that phantom of Achilles, which he previously interpreted, is not this one, since we read nowhere of Achilles being worshiped either attempted by Apollonius or enacted by the Roman emperors?
The claim that Apollonius was close to Trajan as he was to Nerva, and urged persecution of Christians, is speculation rather than fact. If his friendship with Nerva ensured favor with Trajan, why not mention any loss of Nerva’s favor after Domitian? It’s unlikely Apollonius lived into Trajan’s era, given he was already distinguished in Nero’s time; Trajan’s persecution began much later. Even if Apollonius were influential, there’s no evidence he inspired the persecution—especially since Nerva, his friend, ended earlier persecutions and recalled exiles.
Finally, although Trajan’s persecution was long-lasting, it was nevertheless slow and mild, owing to the Emperor’s generally commendable disposition. For, as is clear from his rescript to Pliny, he ordered Christians be punished if they were denounced and convicted, but he did not want them to be actively sought out. The severity described here — that all who did not worship the image of the beast should be killed — is far harsher and must therefore be applied elsewhere, namely to the punishments and slaughters which the Roman Pontiff took care to inflict on all who would not acknowledge his authority and submit to him; so much so that those crucifixions, commonly undertaken against infidels, were often inverted when used against them.
Verse 16: Χαράγματα ἐπὶ τῆς χεῖρος, etc., “marks on the hand and forehead.” Our author applies these to religious fraternities of nobles, knights, plebeians, freedmen, and slaves, which were called “hetairiae” [“a fraternity”] and claims they used these marks, obtaining them through sorcery, each of which had its own distinctive mark. But were there not fraternities and sacred colleges in Rome before Apollonius and his sorcery arose? I appeal to the colleges of augurs and priests and soothsayers; I appeal to Gaius the jurist, Institutes 4 of the Digest on collegia corporealium: “Comrades are those who are of the same college, which the Greeks call ἑταιρία” [“association”]; I appeal to Plutarch in his Numa, assigning to him the origin of those colleges and societies.
Historical records mention groups such as the Pythagoreans, Cynics, and Stoics facing persecution or exile. Philo’s description of people branding themselves with heated irons suggests these practices predate Apollonius and his associated magic. Philo does not specify branding on the forehead, and it remains unclear whether this was literal or metaphorical, possibly referring to a deep commitment to idolatry or rites involving physical marking. Some sources, like Celsus and Josephus, discuss procedures to reverse circumcision, and Epiphanius links this to renouncing Jewish heritage. Additionally, in Alexandria, some Jews who converted to idol worship were branded by royal decree as Bacchus’ followers, an event preceding Apollonius’s time.
But whatever the marks of the sacred confraternities may be, it is enough to have observed that those fraternities were not instituted by Apollonius, since they are much older than him, nor — as the Commentator supposes — should they be understood here, nor were their marks burned on the forehead; for that inscription on the forehead, as Seneca says, was disgraceful and had the nature of a punishment. Hence in Athenaeus book 6, Diphylus, speaking of one who dressed his hair as if he had consecrated it to a god, says διὰ τετό γε, ἀλλ’ ἐσιγμένος πρὸς μετώπε, παραπέτασμα αὐτὴν ἔχει: “Not for that reason, but so that he may hide the mark that is burned on his forehead.”
So that this passage may be better understood, it must be presupposed that those marks (χαράγματα) of the Beast were on the right hands and foreheads, alluding indeed to an ancient usage by which those who were given the name of soldier were marked with a stigma on the skin, as the Commentator has well observed: whence Vegetius, book 2, chap. 5: “Soldiers about to fight are marked by punctures in the skin;” and Aëtius, cited by Lipsius, book 5, On the Roman Military: “They call stigmata those things inscribed on the face or another part of the body, such as the hands of soldiers;” and also on the arm or some other limb destined for public works, as water workers and builders in the Code titled, On Aqueducts and On Builders. But we also read of brands burned on the forehead of slaves and captives, not only as a disgrace and punishment, as was done in Sicily to Athenian captives, to whom the mark of a horse was burned on the forehead, according to Plutarch in Nicias; and on both sides between the Samians and Athenians, of whom the Samians are said to have impressed on the forehead of the latter a ‘samza,’ that is, a kind of ship, while the Samians had a little owl — to return to the examples — yet also consequently for distinction, so that slaves might be recognized from the mark of their masters, impressed on the forehead; hence slaves were called ‘inscribed’ or ‘lettered’.
The Antichrist, therefore, would effect that all, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free would receive his marks; excepting those who belong to God and those who refuse to bow to Baal, (for I prefer to understand that χάραγμα [‘mark’] collectively and in the plural, although I do not dare, with the Commentator, to read χάραγματα [‘marks’] against the authority of all Greek and Latin exemplars;) that is, that they would subject themselves to him as by a military oath and voluntary servitude, to be submitted to and promoted by his authority, by profession and by deed. Hence, that persuasion belongs here, concerning the necessity of salvation to be subject to the Roman Pontiff and to swear to his words: which is the object of the profession of the Roman faith issued by Pius IV, by which all are absolutely bound to vow and promise solemn obedience to the Roman Pontiff.
They are said to receive these marks on the right hand and on the forehead because of the fidelity by which they bind themselves to the Pontiff, and the glory which they seek from his public profession of sacred things; namely, laying up their own glory in their shame (Phil. 3:19). Thus, Pliny reports (book 22, ch. 1) that the Dacians and Sarmatians were accustomed to inscribing their bodies so that they might appear more handsome; and Artemidorus (Oneirocritica, book 1) says that freeborn Thracian boys are said to be stigmatized slaves among the Getae. For the forehead is the seat of modesty; and we are said to wear on the forehead those things of which we are not ashamed; wherefore the servants of God are said by the same metaphor to be marked on the forehead (Ezek. 9:4; Rev. 7:3; Rev. 14:1), namely, that those who openly profess the truth are not ashamed of the Gospel itself (Rom. 1:16). Hence Paul boasts that he bears on his body the marks of Christ (Gal. 6:17). Thus, Thomas [Aquinas] himself determined that the Character [mark] of the Beast can be understood as the profession of illicit worship (Summa, Part III, Q. 63, art. 3).
If, however, we seek here also certain external and sensible marks, they will be readily available: to this pertains the sign of the cross by which the Papists are to be distinguished from the Reformed, which they are accustomed to make with the right hand on the forehead. Jesuit Francisco Ribera himself, following Ansbert and Primasius, proves the opinion that the character [mark] of the Antichrist will include the whole name of Christ in abridgment, not without the figure of a cross, thus a Christogram. To this pertain the chrism of Confirmation on the forehead, which all must receive (cf. De Consecrat., dist. 5 C.) as well as clerical tonsure; the anointing on the head and right hand of the sacrificers [i.e., priests who perform the sacrifice of the Mass], by which an indelible character, so called among the Papists themselves, is imprinted on them. For without chrism and tonsure, no commerce with the Beast can be had, no sacred office exercised, no benefice possessed. But if the Commentator prefers to understand fraternities and associations here by certain distinguishing marks, such exist under the Antichrist of every kind and color; Papism has its sacred soldiers: its monks of almost endless orders; its brotherhoods and manifold sodalities, distinguished by their special marks, some even bearing rings and armlets on the right hand by which the members profess themselves slaves of the Blessed Virgin; and indeed, scarcely any Pontiff exists who is not a member of some sacred sodality, so that to have given no [new] name would cast suspicion of heresy.
Verse 17: and ἵνα μή τις δύνηται ἀγοράσαι ἢ πωλῆσαι etc., “and that no one may buy or sell unless he has the character [mark], or the name of the Beast, or the number of his name;” The Commentator wrongly understands the earlier Beast here; since John is speaking of the character [mark] which the second Beast gives to all, it is necessary that its character [mark], and therefore also its name and number, be understood here. This passage does not refer to the prohibitions placed on Christians involving death by water and fire. Historically, individuals who had not registered with certain religious groups were not subject to legal exclusion, as interpreted by the Commentator regarding these signs. Nor will one find anywhere that proscription expressed by a denial of the power to buy or sell. But this statement notes, as I have warned, that in the Roman court all commerce in benefices, yea and any other whatever, is interdicted to those who do not have the token of the Pontiff.
Thus, by the Bull commonly called In Coena Domini [the Lord’s Supper], all Catholics are excommunicated who have any commerce with heretics whether in arms or matters pertaining to war; Also, how difficult it is for the Reformed to trade in Spain and Italy because of the severity of the Inquisition is well known. Bertold of Constanz, concerning Matilda of England, wife of William, reports that she made all England tributary to the Pope, and did not permit anyone in her dominion to buy or sell anything whom she knew to be less obedient to the Apostolic See. That most learned Venetian theologian, commonly called Father Paolo, in his Italian treatise on the Inquisition, chapter 26, recounts how not only Clement V and John XXII interdicted all monetary commerce with the East under the gravest penalties, but also how Clement VIII in the year 1595 prohibited all Italians, for the sake of trade, from going to those places in which the public exercise of the Roman religion was not practiced, without the license of the Inquisitors, who yearly demand that those who have received it send solemn testimony that they persevere in the sacred pontifical rites by a purgatorial confession and reception of the Eucharist in the Roman manner. Whether this is not to bear the mark of the Beast in relation to buying and selling, let everyone judge. Bellarmine objects that the Jews in Rome trade freely; but they too must be marked with their own special token by the Pope’s command. What of the fact that the Pontiffs punish them with exiles, proscription, excommunications (indeed some Pontiffs sometimes pronounce the sentence of “aquâ et igni interdicto” [i.e., death by burning and drowning] on one who is excommunicated — a phrase Lipsius both noted and criticized in Cardinal Bembo’s works); and finally, with the gravest punishments, whom they declare heretics because they refuse to come under their subjection?
Verse18: ὧδε ἡ σοφία ἐστίν, “here is wisdom;” Indeed that is said especially where some thing, person, or time is circumscribed by those marks which are not vague but certain and defined, as a testimony of divine Providence; and moreover, this number 666 ought to be computed in the Greek manner, by which this book was written; yet we cannot prove that the Commentator in the name of Trajan seeks this number, and thereby intends to denote the time when idolatry, having been grievously wounded, recovered strength, then by open force, then by the interdiction of commerce with Christians, and by all dignities restored. However, this number which mystically embraces the name and the time of the Beast does not pertain to the first, but to the second Beast, as the whole series of the context shows.
Secondly, the Commentator is inconsistent with himself, having earlier said that the wound of the earlier Beast was healed by the restoration of the Capitol; but this event does not fall in the time of Trajan but of Vespasian. Thus, formerly he wished the strength and weight of idolatry to have been restored by Sorcery and Apollonius, which here he asserts were restored by Trajan’s persecution. Thirdly, it is not true that idolatry, previously broken, regained strength under Trajan; on the contrary it was the more languishing the greater the number of Christians everywhere, so that the blood of the martyrs became the seedbed of the Church.
Third, I do not see why the number of the Beast should be sought in the name of Trajan, since many other Caesars have held the Roman empire and some were worse than Trajan and more harmful to the Church — although I do not believe that Gregory’s prayers freed his soul from hell. Why, then, would the Holy Spirit choose to highlight a persecution of the Church involving those ten renowned persecutions in Church history rather than referring to a different persecution?
I confess that in collecting the numbers of names from letters one can play variously in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; nor would it be so strange if the Commentator could have found such a thing in the name Ulpius or Trajan; yet he did not succeed. For the final letter which is ‘sigma’ should not be confused with ‘stigma’ the mark of the senary number [i.e., the number 6] among the Greeks, to which the passages cited from the Canon of Hippolytus and other royal manuscripts pertain.
[N. B. The final sigma is a Greek letter equivalent to our letter ‘s’ found at the end of a word. It has no numerical value, while the stigma has a value of 6. They are similar in appearance and thus cause much confusion.]
For although the Greek ‘sigma’ retains a resemblance at the end to that senary mark, ‘stigma,’ which many think to be sigma and tau together, nevertheless, in arithmetic it will always count as two hundred, most certainly, whether it occurs in the middle of a name or at its end. Grotius knows what the most noble French scholar Claudius Salmasius, that phoenix of our age, whom he consulted before on this matter, answered him; and if he had held to that judgment he would have sought this number [666] elsewhere than in Ulpius; for in expressing the true value of the final sigma it will fall out of his calculation and, instead of 666, will yield 860………It is a transmitted and long-observed fact that the name Νειλος that is, ‘Nilus,’ makes the number of the days of the year, namely 365; hence that sigma at the end is worth 200, not 6 as he here imagines in οὔλπιος [Ulpius]. The same force obtains in the word εὐάντας, which Irenaeus notes as 666, and likewise in the name Ἰησοῦς [Jesus] which the author of the Sibylline Verses expressed by the number 888.
[N. B.] To calculate the numerical value of Ἰησοῦς:
- ι (iota) has a value of 10
- η (eta) has a value of 8
- σ (sigma) has a value of 200
- ο (omicron) has a value of 70
- υ (upsilon) has a value of 400
- ς (final sigma) has a value of 200
Whether the senary number today is written by us as the final sigma, let others see; it more nearly corresponds to our cipher for five [5]: the mark of the senary more nearly resembles the ordinary sigma, although that similarity of our modern ciphers, not at all adopted from the Greeks, does nothing to the matter. Add that, since that mark ς serves to signify both the number and the senary and the ninetieth, as observed by Hadrian Amerotius, the Commentator could put forward no reason why it should denote that one rather than this one, even if it were granted to him that this mark were the same as the final sigma, which nevertheless is false. If the Commentator means a specific person rather than a vague one, why does he identify Trajan by the number from the letters of the praenomen Ulpius? [i.e., Marcus Ulpius Trajan]. Ulpius was a common praenomen and could have belonged to someone else as well as to Trajan.
But here, since the time when the second Beast most clearly became known and manifested should be indicated, and its primary and most commonly used name — you can understand it more conveniently by the Greek word which expresses the Latin language — λατεινος [‘Latin’] — which adds up to the number 666.
[N. B.] Greek Letters and Their Numerical Values
| Letter (Greek) | Letter (Latin) | Numeric Value |
| Λ (Lambda) | L | 30 |
| Α (Alpha) | A | 1 |
| Τ (Tau) | T | 300 |
| Ε (Epsilon) | E | 5 |
| Ι (Iota) | I | 10 |
| Ν (Nu) | N | 50 |
| Ο (Omicron) | O | 70 |
| Σ (Final Sigma) | S | 200 |
Calculation
Add the values for each letter in λατεινος:
- Λ = 30
- Α = 1
- Τ = 300
- Ε = 5
- Ι = 10
- Ν = 50
- Ο = 70
- Σ = 200
Sum:
30+1+300+5+10+50+70+200=666
Thus, λατεινος sums precisely to 666 in Greek gematria.
Are not the witnesses who testify, whom the Commentator also praises, Irenaeus and Arethas, most learned who certainly judged that the final sigma should not be taken for six, as he himself in the name Ούλπιος thought, but for two hundred? Now the Roman Pope is truly Latin, who holds the remains and ancient seat of the Latin Empire, and permits public worship to be carried out in no language other than Latin; nor are his diplomas and decrees issued in any other. Moreover, Antichrist began chiefly to come into light around the year of Christ 666, which is of course when Boniface III obtained for Phocas the title of Universal Bishop, which Gregory I set as the primary sign of Antichrist. For from that time the Pontiffs always advanced, until at length the measure of the Mystery of iniquity was fulfilled. There are other learned men who do not differ greatly from our view, who think here are to be understood the numerical marks of the Latins or Romans used in the age of John which when joined together are said to make up the same number 666. [N. B. John Foxe discovered the Latin noun for “Roman,” Romanus, adds up to 666 when translated into the Hebrew language.]
It is not surprising if the ancients were blind in designating the Antichrist, nor if the present Pontiffs do not recognize him: for those men could only speak doubtfully about matters still obscure and largely yet to come; these present Pontiffs, carried away by their own certainties, do not wish to see a thing laid openly before them. And just as the Jews would not recognize Christ present because they had imagined other things concerning the promised Messiah, so most in our day, deceived by excusable hallucinations of the ancient Fathers, do not acknowledge the Antichrist set before their eyes because they have dreamed other things about him while awake.
Nevertheless, the Ancients did not rest on a vain conjecture but on a sure foundation when they thought the passages of Paul and John, explained above, referred to the same thing in designating the Antichrist. If the Talmudists imagine something similar to what the Ancients imagined about the Antichrist, that he was expected at the end of the world, they perhaps received it from Christians — the little horn of Daniel 7:20 understood as the man of sin; just as we confess to the Commentator Christians have here wrongly adopted certain particulars from the Jews, notably the return of Elijah. Although the Antichrist as portrayed by adversaries is sought in vain, still the Apostles’ testimonies are undoubtedly to be understood of the Antichrist who is already made known; nor could the Commentator be drawn elsewhere except by the base zeal of flattering the Roman Pontiff and those who strive to uphold his faction and to restore it where it has fallen.
REFUTATION OF THE ANNOTATIONS
On Chapter 17 of the Apocalypse
A few short notes remain to be cleared up concerning some of Grotius’ comments on chapter 17 of the same book.
Verse 9: The woman sitting on seven mountains clearly signifies Rome; and the Pontiffs themselves do not disagree. But she is described to John not as she was under the Emperors, except briefly and so far as the connection between the Empire and the Papacy was to be, but rather as she will be under the Antichrist. This could be shown at length both from the testimony of the Pontiffs themselves and from the adornment of that woman — purple robe, gilded chalice — in which she offers to the kings of the earth the poison of her abominations, with the word Mysterium written on her forehead; for that Mystery of iniquity clearly regards her multiplicity of fornication and idolatry and the like: but it is enough for us to follow the Commentator’s footsteps.
Verse 10: ἐ βασιλεῖς ἑπτὰ εἰσὶν “And there are seven kings.” Grotius imagines John driven into exile under Claudius; these things were seen under Vespasian; of these seven kings or emperors the five earlier ones who were no longer living were Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius; the sixth Vespasian; the seventh to come afterward, and not to remain long, would be Titus, who reigned only two years and two months; then Domitian would follow. But sheer nonsense: for if Caesars were meant here, why, pray, should the first of those seven heads on which the woman sits be Claudius when before him Caligula, Tiberius, Augustus, Julius Caesar had preceded? In fact, Suetonius makes the lives of twelve Caesars end with Domitian. By what testimony will he prove that John’s exile began in the time of Claudius, contrary to the unanimous testimony of historians who unanimously assign it to Domitian? [N. B. Today’s Preterists insist John was exiled to Patmos during the reign of Nero, before the fall of Jerusalem. Nero followed Claudius as Emperor.] Irenaeus bears witness that the Apocalypse itself was not written by John except at the end of his exile under Domitian (lib. 5). Jerome in “On Illustrious Men” places that event in the 14th year of Domitian. The Commentator himself earlier wished chapter 11 of the Apocalypse to have been written after the Capitol had been restored by Vespasian and Apollonius reinstated. [N. B. The restoration of the Capitol began in AD 70].
Why then does he pretend the revelations contained in chapter 17 reverse the order of things that in truth had preceded or are said to have preceded? Who were the most ancient Christians to the Commentator in this question, if not Irenaeus, Arethas, Victorinus, Eusebius, and Jerome, who all ascribe John’s banishment to Domitian?
But by what stretch can his argument refer to the time of Claudius? Because, he says, Claudius had expelled the Jews from the city, as appears in Acts 18:2, by which name Christians were also included, so it is probable that the provincial governors did the same thing, and thus John was expelled from Ephesus. Nonsense. For first, he will hardly persuade himself that Christians were included under the name of Jews in Claudius’s edict if he believes Tertullian that Tiberius sought to bring Christians to the danger of capital punishment at the instigation of their accusers; then we read indeed that the Jews were expelled from the city by Claudius, but not that they were expelled from the whole Empire; nor is the action likely, since they themselves belonged to the Empire. Besides, how could Aquila and Priscilla have safely remained at Corinth and Ephesus after that edict, Acts 18? If John was banished from Ephesus by the provincial governor for being a Jew, yet Jews continued holding synagogues in Macedonia, Asia, and Greece (including Ephesus, per Acts 17:10–17; 18:8, 19; 19:8), why would the governor exile John more harshly than Claudius, who expelled Jews from Rome but did not exile them?
Some claim Peter went to Rome in Claudius’ second year and left in the ninth, with the Jerusalem Council occurring then. However, Galatians 2:9 shows John was present at that council with Peter and James. If John had been exiled in Ephesus when Peter left Rome, he couldn’t have met with Peter in Jerusalem to welcome Paul and Barnabas. Paul, not John, founded the church of the Ephesians. This is supported by Paul’s principle of not building on another’s foundation and confirmed in Acts 19:9, which describes how Paul separated disciples from the synagogue and taught them in the school of Tyrannus. Since the event at Ephesus occurred after the Council of Jerusalem and during Claudius’s reign, John was not present at Ephesus before these events and was not exiled from there by Claudius’s decree. He himself also, remembering his exile, plainly testifies in Revelation 1:9 that he was in Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ; which he certainly could not have said if he had undergone that exile as a Jew rather than as a Christian.
Therefore these seven kings, which are the heads of the purple Beast, must, as we have already warned at chapter 13, do not signify the seven Caesars enumerated by the Commentator, who had ended their days at the time this revelation was received under Domitian, but seven political forms of government, five of which had already passed; the sixth at that time belonged to the Caesars or Emperors; the seventh, to be of brief duration under Odovacer, was in due time to follow.
Verse 11: ἐ το θηρίον, “And the Beast,” etc. The Commentator understands this Beast as Domitian, on account of his fierce disposition most like Nero, who is also [metaphorically?] called a Lion (1 Timothy 4:17). Grotius says that, in the absence of his father, Vespasian, in Egypt, he had exercised all the force of domination at Rome; and that when John wrote these things he was not such because reduced to private status by his father he feigned modesty and even applied himself to poetic studies. All this, to speak very mildly, is utterly absurd. For aside from the fact that these things were written and seen after Vespasian and Titus while under Domitian himself, as I said, why should Domitian rather than Nero, or Claudius, or Vitellius, be called θηρίον, beast, since they too displayed no lesser atrocities? Shall anyone be said to “have been and not to be,” because he previously exercised authority of the empire in a meagre fashion and later, when the full right to resume it was to be recovered, abstained for a time? Besides, why should Nero be called a Lion on account of cruelty by Paul, though that is not so certain as above seemed, and therefore should this Beast be Domitian? What has Paul’s metaphor to do with a prophetic vision? This Beast then is not idolatry, not magic, not Trajan as the fisherman seems to suspect, not Domitian, but the Roman Empire. For as is held in verse 8 John is said to have considered it in a certain sense as having been and no longer being and yet still being; namely, because here Rome is contemplated under the empire of its Antichrist and Roman Pontiff, under which it is no longer the same as of old, a merely political empire, and yet the same in imitation and likeness, since the second Beast shaped an image of the first, as above, and set it before the peoples to be worshiped.
Therefore this Beast is said to be the eighth of the kings, and consequently as if the eighth head of the former, because the Roman Pontiff, whose triple crown is called Il Regno [‘the Kingdom’] by the Italians, and who by some is called King of Italy, introduced into Rome an eighth form of government plainly dissimilar to the seven earlier ones. In this context, ὀγδό [‘eighth] refers to the eighth among the seven, not because Domitian—one of the seven—was Vespasian’s son, but rather because the papal authority functions within the earlier Beast with a status comparable to that of any of the previous seven. Additionally, due to the support and privileges granted by Emperors who had adopted Christianity, the position of the pontiffs has attained significant prominence.
Verse 12: & τὰ δέκα κέρατα ἃ εἶδες δέκα βασιλεῖς εἰσὶν, “And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings” etc. Here again the Commentator invents dreams for himself; he declares the ten kings to have been the Goths and their allied peoples, who at that time had not yet received kingdoms within the bounds of the Roman Empire but were later to rule within the Empire’s limits with Roman permission, and who would reign for a short time — that alliance with the Romans was not to be long-lasting. But first, if this Beast, with whom those ten kings were to accept its domination, is Domitian, as the Commentator had already interpreted, the Goths and their federates cannot be those kings, since the first treaty of the Goths with the Romans was concluded only in the time of Maximian, as he himself notes from 6th century Roman historian, Jordanes. [N. B. Maximian was Roman Emperor from 286 – 305.]
Moreover, these peoples or kings cannot be said ever to have been horns or arms of Roman power, as our interpreter holds, since they were not admitted into the communion of the Empire until after various defeats inflicted upon the Empire, so that, ruling within the boundaries of the Empire, they did not reign with the Caesars as Tatius did once with Romulus, but in a certain way opposed them and at last overthrew all their authority. They would be strange horns of Roman power, by which its power was not promoted but rather removed and destroyed. Far from giving up their power and strength to the Empire in unanimous accord to fight for it, they in fact never applied their forces except against the Empire itself — against it and for its ruin [cf. Verse 16].
What then? As in chapter 13 the ten horns of the earlier Beast denoted the ten principal provinces of the Roman Empire, a definite number standing for an indeterminate one [i.e., synecdoche] so these ten kings denote those who in those provinces, the Empire having now been overthrown, were to acquire royal authority together with the Roman Pontiff and to enter into a very close league with him; not for a short time, as this man wishes, but at one time, as the Vulgate interpreter rightly says: as if John were saying, Almost at the same time when the Roman Pontiff begins to establish his authority in that same Empire after its overthrow, there will arise out of its former provinces various kingdoms which will render every obedience to the Roman See, will share their counsels with it, and will depend on its nod, and will devote all their forces, to defend, strengthen, and promote it, by an extreme zeal for religion. [cf. Verse 13]. In short, he who is still ignorant of the effects and fulfillment of this prophecy must be a stranger to history.
Moreover, I do not see by what reasoning the Northern peoples — Goths, Vandals, Gepids, Lombards, Heruli, Burgundians, Huns, Franks, Anglo-Saxons — are to be accounted as those of one mind; for even if they are perhaps called federates by Procopius, certainly these treaties were concluded only after the ruin of the Empire or toward that end, and not so that they ever conspired together, jointly or separately, to conserve the dignity of the Empire. Nor does the number fit here; for the Ostrogoths and Visigoths did not at first form two peoples, and more might be added, as the Rugi, Turcilingi, Alans, Thuringians, and many other barbarian nations, some of which Paul the Deacon names in the History of the Lombards, book 1, chapter 1.
Verse 14: Οὗτοι μετὰ Ἀρνίου πολεμήσουσιν, “these will fight with the Lamb,” etc. Not that the peoples the Commentator lists served pagan emperors in implementing their edicts against Christians — for most of them did not enter into a pact with the Romans until after the Emperors had already become Christians and peace was restored to the Churches, as anyone knows — but that these kingdoms, arising as one consequence of the Empire’s ruin together with the papal dignity, were to serve the authority of the Pontiff so that their kings, depending on the Pope’s nod, would become pious and faithful Christians who would afflict others with various persecutions; such as the Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards, Picards, and Reformed are recorded to have been driven everywhere by princely authority that favored the Roman See — until those Kings, overcome by the Lamb and subdued by the patience of the innocent, ceased their persecution; some even publicly restoring those they had wronged, sending a message to the Pope, which we now see having been done in England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, the United Netherlands, and many other places of Europe, and which we hope will be continued by most others.
What the Commentator has here, that the saints will be overcome with the Lamb — “by their patience, which is the only kind of conquering becoming Christ and Christians of that sort” — should be taken with a grain of salt. For to omit other matters that would demand a longer discussion, such as the justice of arms of our allied Belgians in defending the freedom of consciences and securing and propagating the true religion; and that Christians then dwelling in the City and dispersed throughout the Empire ought to have resisted Gothic plunderings and invasions, which our author wrongly thinks are here portended, and, if possible, wrested victory from the enemies — it is not believable that Christians in that public calamity betrayed themselves and the Empire,
“— And if any could be defended by Pergamum’s right hand or had been defended by that defense.”
It suffices to cite Grotius himself, book 2 of The Law of War and Peace, chapter 15, §12, who declares that all Christians are bound to enter into leagues against the enemies of Christianity and to contribute men and money to that common cause according to their ability. But such measures would not be lawful for Christians of the sort described if patience alone were permitted as their only mode of victory.
I briefly pass over the remark that the pious are here said first to be called, then elected, then faithful; from which he concludes that first one is to be called, then elected, and last to persevere [verse 14]. For we are taught [by Scripture] that calling is made from election, and that this [saving] faith follows from it (Rom. 8:29; 2 Tim. 1:9; Acts 13:48). Although sometimes the calling is more widely extended than the election, insofar as it is only signified externally (Matt. 20:16; 22:14), yet it corresponds to it insofar as it is understood as efficacious and intrinsic (Rom. 9:11–12; 11:29; John 6:37, 44). Nor does it follow, if the pious are named ‘called’ before elected that election is temporally posterior to calling; for election is from eternity, calling is in time. But mention is made of election after calling, as in 2 Pet. 1:10, that by this we may obtain the sense and certainty of it. Faith is added as what befalls us according to election, and we are called to it from God’s election, from whom we obtain mercy that we may be faithful (1 Cor. 7:25). As to why he wished the faithful to be denominated by perseverance, he will see in this and in his treatise on faith and works with the Remonstrants, among whom his name is professed, who also assert that one may properly be called a believer and faithful who nevertheless falls away from his faith and does not persevere to the end. But these matters belong to another place.
Verse 16: ἐ τὰ δέκα κέρατα ἃ εἶδες “and the ten horns which thou sawest” etc. It seems the Commentator read “καὶ τὸ θηρίον,” [“and the beast”] for which he thinks “κατὰ τὸ θηρίον” [“against the beast”] should be put in its place, whereas the most corrected manuscripts, almost all, notably Stephanus’, have the other reading. He says the hatred of the harlot and her ruin then befell when those allied peoples and kings began to become enemies of the Empire. This is wrong; for the kings were not made nor the kingdoms established until after the Empire was overthrown, which was that which Tertullian declared: “the secession of the Roman Empire into ten kings destined to subjoin the Antichrist;” for together with this latter Beast they seized the Kingdom.
And it is wonderful that the Commentator, who seemed to reject that opinion of Tertullian, should turn it to this passage at the head of chapter 13. Near the end of page 46 he twists it here: nor indeed could that secession, which he thinks occurred through the Goths, first have begun under Honorius, as he wishes; for much earlier, namely in the year of Christ 254, they had begun to break into the Empire; against whom Decius, betrayed by Trebonianus Gallus, fell in battle. And when Honorius was ruling, idolatrous paganism had in many places been abolished, all its temples overthrown, as Baronius notes under the year 399, n. 9. How, then, could Rome at that time, or the Roman Empire almost everywhere Christian, retain the name of harlot and fornicator?
Therefore the hatred of that harlot, which arose from the ten kings together with [hatred for] the Beast, must be much later than that secession, and must pertain to the gradual ruin of the Roman Pontiff, carried out by those same kings who had earlier seemed to favor him so much; which will be begun in part and, God willing, will be accomplished, so that Rome at last remains stripped of all authority, fully deprived of her resources, and robbed of those provinces and kingdoms that formerly served as fiefs of the Church and patrimony of Peter, as England once did, and were subject to her.
This prophecy about the city’s burning does not refer to Totila’s partial destruction of Rome, nor to the Gothic sack; rather, it points to the ultimate downfall of the Roman Pontificate—depicted in Revelation as Babylon for its corruption and errors. The saints are called to rejoice over this final ruin (Rev. 18:20), which is distinct from previous calamities where Christians themselves suffered. Unlike earlier devastations, this prophesied judgment involves the saints’ participation as retribution for wrongs done to them by Babylon, not by outside invaders like the Goths. Additionally, significant later events, such as the sacking under Duke Bourbon, suggest ongoing stages in this foretold decline.
Verse 17: ὁ γὰρ θεὸς, “For God” etc. This is rightly rejected by God who avenges false worship as well as the cruelty with which the Romans had abused Christians. But since Rome was already Christian in Totila’s time, having fully adopted the true God and converted its pagan temples, is it just that this now-innocent Christian city be punished for past persecutions by some citizens and for maybe a few secret idolaters, as the Commentator suggests? — men among whom our author counts supporters of divine-war justice who fear it’s wrong to say Adam’s sin is passed to and punished in his descendants?
I certainly believe that without divine agency the sack of the city by the Goths and the ruin of the Empire brought on by other peoples were not done without cause, for the whole fabric was already collapsing; yet I am persuaded that there was a sufficiently abundant harvest of personal and public vices in the Empire and the City to provoke Divine wrath, even without any prior effusion of Christian blood there, so that Totila’s devastation was a warning to Rome of the greater evils it had to expect unless it should relent from its pride, and checked that headlong rush that was tending toward Antichristianism, to which Paul’s words in Rom. 11:22 also point. But truly and properly the vengeance will be upon false worship and the persecution of the innocent: that destruction foretold here as to be inflicted on Rome, because divine Vengeance will take her in flagrante delicto [“in the act of committing the crime”], remitting nothing of her insolence and idolatry, when He shall cast the Beast and the False Prophet headlong into Hell.
But they will act by special divine providence, not merely with God’s permission, as the Commentator rightly observes, but also by His ordaining and suggesting these counsels to them (for He turns the hearts of kings like the channels of water, Prov. 21:1), and thus His judgments will be executed by them. Whether they do all this out of zeal for piety and hatred of idolatry and Pontifical tyranny, or whether some will serve their own affairs and the ambition innate to the minds of great men, God knows. Most importantly, it was not without Divine agency that these gave their kingdom, that is force and authority, to the Beast to fight for it against the saints, ἄχρι τελεσθῆ τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ Θεοῦ [“until the words of God are fulfilled] — (so I read in the better manuscripts; although the Commentator’s reading returns here, ἄχρι τελεθήσονται οἱ λόγοι τοῦ Θεοῦ [“until the words of God shall be accomplished”]) — i.e., for as long as God had ordained, and until precisely those things which He had decreed either to effect or to permit under the tyranny of the Antichrist were completed; thus, by Divine will, the time appointed for her desolation is determined to take place by those very men themselves. However, some of the kings who committed fornication with the Harlot will still cling obstinately to her and will bewail her ruin (Rev. 18:9).
Verse 18: ἐ ἡ γυνὴ ἣν εἶδες ἔστινἡ πόλις ἡ μεγάλη, “the woman whom thou sawest is the great city.” The Commentator rightly repeats that this city is Rome, which is also called Babylon in the following chapter. Truly great, not only in the extent of its walls, but in authority, pride, and haughtiness; whence the City is even today by excellence so called by its own, who confine the world with that City so that they think nothing truly Catholic which is not Roman.
“Hac tantum inter alias caput extulit Urbes, Quantum lenta solent inter Viburna Cupressi.” (Among cities she raised her head above the others as the cypress often rises sluggishly above the viburnum.)
It is also said ἔχουσα βασιλείαν ἐπὶ ὡς βασιλέας τῆς γῆς, “having dominion over the kings of the earth,” which not only suited ancient Rome, which had kings serving as tributary to it, but also this [Papal] one, which arrogates to itself dominion over all the kings of the earth, and which often exercised that dominion in fact, from Hildebrandine and Bonifacean theology; nor otherwise does it appear to be taught or believed in the city, as is shown in the writings of the Italian Jesuit Antonio Santarelli, which not so long ago was published there and publicly burned by the hand of the Lutetian magistrate; it is shown by Bellarmine’s controversies; it is shown by the common opinion of all canonists and theologians of the true Roman Communion. How far the Pontiff once exercised authority in England, how he claims it to reach to Sicily, no one is ignorant: that he transferred the kingdom of Navarre from its rightful lord to the Spaniard; that the Spaniard defends his right to both Indies by the title of the pontifical donation; that the Roman see has often subjected various kingdoms of Europe by interdict, and first granted them to the first occupier against rightful kings — all this is well known: so manifest is it that this City truly harbors that son of perdition who, according to Paul, exalts himself above every deity and dares to apply prophecies to himself (Jer. 27:8; Dan. 7:27; Isaiah 49:23). “A nation and kingdom that will not serve him I will punish with the sword and with pestilence upon that nation, saith the Lord; and the Lord gave him power and a kingdom, and all the people shall serve him, and his power is an everlasting power which shall not be taken away; and his kingdom shall not be destroyed. And the kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and the queens thy nursing mothers; with thy dust they shall lick the ground with their face.”
On the back is that proud effigy of Paul V, prefixed to many books printed at Rome and Bologna and dedicated to him (as the copy of that illustrious Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, who took care to add the Mystery of Iniquity to perpetuate the memory of the matter, shows); with this inscription: “To Paulo V, Vice-God, unconquered monarch of the Christian Commonwealth, and most ardent conserver of Pontifical Omnipotence:”
PaV……………5
Lo…………….50
V. ……………..5
V……………….5
I………………..1
Ce……………100
Deo………….500
666
And cleverly observed in those words “Paulo V, Vice-God,” that fatal number 666 arises from the numeral letters.
Finally, since the Commentator here concludes with this woman — or rather the [alleged] city of God — in the third verse of this chapter, whether the name [singular] inscribed is Blasphemy, or rather, as the Greek copies have it in the plural, the “names of Blasphemy,” this does not so much regard the fact that the old Rome was called the “eternal city,” for it is said the “name of Blasphemy” of the earlier Beast, [the old Rome] from chapter 13:1 is singular, to which the passages of Jerome and Prosper, praised by the Commentator, pertain, rather than the fact that the new Rome [papal Rome], with greater arrogance — of which that very effigy and inscription of Paul V give us a splendid specimen — claims for itself a right over the heavens and the nether regions, a privilege of perpetuity and infallibility, vindicates for its Pope the fullness of power and attributes and names both divine. Therefore, Jesuit Ribera asserts that what was formerly done by the Roman emperors — blaspheming the true God, persecuting the righteous, and calling themselves gods — will later be fulfilled under the Antichrist. However, this ought rather to be confessed right now; so that no further fulfillment of that prophecy should be expected, nor should it be so rejected as irrelevant to past times (which relevancy the learned man here has rashly attempted), as if it had nothing to do with the times in which we live and the wretched captivity of the Church under the Roman Pontiff, though so obvious before our very eyes. May God, the Best and Greatest, grant that we likewise may see the ultimate destruction of this feral Empire, already much declining.
Indeed, come Lord Jesus.
AMEN.
END