SECTION 4.
PAUL'S REMEDY FOR THE DISORDER, AND SALVO FOR HIMSELF.—ANTICHRIST MUST FIRST COME.
We have seen the disorder: we had before that seen the causes of it. We now come to the remedy—the remedy provided by the practitioner for a disease of his own creating. Of the shape given to this remedy, the ingenuity will be seen to be truly worthy of the author of the disease. It consists in the announcement made, of an intermediate state of things, of the commencement of which, any more than of the termination, nothing is said: except that it was to take place, antecedently to that originally announced state of things, by the expectation of which the disorder had been produced. Of the time of its commencement, no: except as above, on that point no information is given. But of its duration, though no determinate information, yet such a description is given, as suffices for giving his disciples to understand, that in the nature of things, it could not be a short one: and that thus, before the principal state of things took place, there would be a proportionate quantity of time for preparation. Satisfied of this, they would see the necessity of conforming themselves to those reiterated "commands," with which his prediction had from the first been accomplished; and to which he had so erroneously trusted, when he regarded them as composing a sufficient antidote to the poison he had infused. That the warning thus provided for them would be a very short one, he left them, it will be seen, no great reason to apprehend. A sort of spiritual monster,—a sort of an ape of Satan, a rival to the Almighty,—and that by no means a contemptible one—was to enter upon the stage.
What with force and what with fraud, such would be his power,—that the fate of the Almighty would have appeared too precarious, had not the spirits of his partisans been kept up, by the assurance, that when all was over, the Almighty would remain master of the field.
The time, originally fixed, by him for the aerial voyage, was too near. By the hourly expectation of it, had been produced all those disastrous effects which had ensued. After what had been said, an adjournment presented the only possible remedy. But this adjournment, after what had been said, by what imaginable means could it be produced? One only means was left by the nature of the case.
2 Thess. 2:1-12. "Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,—That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us,[66] as that the day of Christ is at hand.—Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except[67] there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;—Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God[68]—Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, I told you these things[69]—And now ye know what withholdeth, that he might be revealed in his time.—For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.—And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.[70]—Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan,[71] with all power and signs and lying wonders[72]—And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.—And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:[73]—That they all might be damned, who believed not the truth,[74] but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
To this rival of his God—God and rival—both of them of his own creation, the creator has not, we see, given any name. By this omission, he has, perhaps, as perhaps he thought to do, rendered the bugbear but the more terrible. The deficiency, such as it is, the Church of England translators of the English official translation of the Bible, have filled up: they have taken it in hand—this bantling of Paul's—and christened it Antichrist. "He," Paul, "showeth," say they, "a discovery of Antichrist, before the day of the Lord come." Such is the discovery, communicated in the heading, prefixed to the second chapter of the second of the two Epistles: and, of the readers of this so abundantly and gratuitously distributed Bible, how few are there, by whom any such distinction as that between the headings and the text is borne in mind! The right reverend divines in question,—were they the first authors of this discovery, or was it ready-made to their hands?—made by that church, from the errors of which their own has been so felicitously purified? To this question, let those look out for, and find, the answer,—in whose eyes the profit is worth the trouble.