A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

ANTHOLOGIUM. (In Latin, Florilegium.) The title of a book in the Greek Church, divided into twelve months, containing the offices sung throughout the whole year, on the festivals of our Saviour, the Virgin Mary, and other remarkable saints. It is in two volumes; the first contains six months, from the first day of September to the last day of February; the second comprehends the other six months. It is observable from this book that the Greek Church celebrates Easter at the same time with the Church of England, notwithstanding that they differ from us in the lunar cycle.—Broughton.

ANTHROPOLATRÆ. (Man-worshippers.) A name of abuse given to churchmen by the Apollinarians, because they maintained that Christ, whom both admitted to be the object of the Christian’s worship, was a perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. This the Apollinarians denied. It was always the way with heretics to apply to churchmen terms of reproach, while they assumed to themselves distinctive appellations of honour: thus the Manichees, for instance, while they called themselves the elect, the blessed, and the pure, gave to the churchmen the name of simple ones. It is not less a sign of a sectarian spirit to assume a distinctive name of honour, than to impose on the Church a name of reproach, for both tend to divided communion in spirit or in fact. There is this good, however, to be gathered from these slanderous and vain-glorious arts of heretics; that their terms of reproach serve to indicate some true doctrine of the Church: as, for instance, that of Anthropolatræ determines the opinion of Catholics touching Christ’s human nature; while the names of distinction which heretics themselves assume, usually serve to throw light on the history of their own error.

ANTHROPOMORPHITES. Heretics who were so called because they maintained that God had a human shape. They are mentioned by Eusebius as the opponents of Origen, and their accusation of Origen implies their own heresy. “Whereas,” they said, “the sacred Scriptures testify that God has eyes, ears, hands, and feet, as men have, the partisans of Dioscorus, being followers of Origen, introduce the blasphemous dogma that God has not a body.” The Anthropomorphite error was common among the monks of Egypt about the end of the fourth century. Dioscorus was a leader of the opposite party.

ANTICHRIST. The man of sin, who is to precede the second advent of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ. “Little children,” saith St. John, “ye have heard that Antichrist shall come.” And St. Paul, in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, describes him: “That day (the day of our Lord’s second advent) shall not come except 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. 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; even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish.”

Under the image of a horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things; that made war with the saints, and prevailed against them till the Ancient of days came; and under the image of a little horn, which attacked the very heavens, and trod down and trampled on the state, Daniel is supposed to predict Antichrist.

St. John in the Apocalypse describes Antichrist as a beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit, and maketh war upon the saints; as a beast rising out of the sea, with two horns and two crowns upon his horns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. In another place, he speaks of the number of the beast, and says, it is six hundred threescore and six.

It is not the purpose of this dictionary to state the various ways in which this prophecy has been understood. We therefore pass on to say, that Antichrist is to lay the foundation of his empire in Babylon, i. e. (as many have supposed,) in Rome, and he is to be destroyed by the second coming of our Lord.

ANTINOMIANS. The Antinomians derive their name from ἀντὶ, against, νόμος, law, their distinguishing tenet being, that the law is not a rule of life to believers under the gospel. The founder of the Antinomian heresy was John Agricola, a Saxon divine, a contemporary, a countryman, and at first a disciple, of Luther. He was of a restless temper, and wrote against Melancthon; and having obtained a professorship at Wittemberg, he first taught Antinomianism there, about the year 1535. The Papists, in their disputes with the Protestants of that day, carried the merit of good works to an extravagant length; and this induced some of their opponents, as is too often the case, to run into the opposite extreme. The doctrine of Agricola was in itself obscure, and perhaps represented worse than it really was by Luther, who wrote with acrimony against him, and first styled him and his followers Antinomians—perhaps thereby “intending,” as Dr. Hey conjectures, “to disgrace the notions of Agricola, and make even him ashamed of them.” Agricola stood in his own defence, and complained that opinions were imputed to him which he did not hold.

About the same time, Nicholas Amsdorf, bishop of Naumburg in Saxony, fell under the same odious name and imputation, and seems to have been treated more unfairly than even Agricola himself. The bishop died at Magdeburg in 1541, and some say that his followers were called for a time Amsdorfians, after his name.

This sect sprung up among the Presbyterians in England, during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, who was himself an Antinomian of the worst sort. The supporters of the Popish doctrines deducing a considerable portion of the arguments on which they rested their defence from the doctrines of the old law, Agricola, in the height of his zeal for reformation, was encouraged by the success of his master, Luther, to attack the very foundation of their arguments, and to deny that any part of the Old Testament was intended as a rule of faith or practice to the disciples of Christ.