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Updated: May 4, 2025
There is not a false doctrine in religion, nor an antichristian form of worship, nor a usurped prerogative of the Pope and clergy, which the unrestrained perusal of the Scriptures does not expose. "Hinc illae lacrymae." The dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church are not fools.
You may as well say so of the papacy in Rome, for surely the prelacy of England, which we swore to extirpate, was the very same fabric and model of ecclesiastical regimen, that is in that Antichristian world; yea, such an evil it is that some divines, venerable for their great learning, as well as for their eminent holiness, did conceive sole episcopal jurisdiction to be the very seat of the beast, upon which the fifth angel is now pouring out his vial, which is the reason that the men of that kingdom "gnaw their tongues for pain, and blaspheme the God of heaven."
The church of Scotland did remove festival days in another manner, and bound herself never to receive them by another bond than ever the Monbelgardens did; so that having other bonds lying upon us than other churches have, we are so much the more straightly obliged neither to receive holidays, nor any other antichristian and popish ceremony. Sect. 1.
Unhappily, Scotland was ruled, not by pious Josiahs, but by careless Gallios. The antichristian hierarchy was to be abolished, not because it was an insult to heaven, but because it was felt as a burden on earth; not because it was hateful to the great Head of the Church, but because it was hateful to the people. Was public opinion, then, the test of right and wrong in religion?
"Let no man deceive you, by any means, for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth himself above all that is called God, or is worshipped; so that as God, he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God." The antichristian defection is here evidently intended.
We may have occasion to notice hereafter, that this gross error and antichristian dogma, is yet entertained in relation to divinely organized society under the present New Testament economy! The "voices, thunderings and earthquakes" resulting from the scattering of the coals, are the harbingers and precursors of coming calamities upon Christendom at the sounding of the trumpets.
For example, when in the year 1690, there was a paper of grievances presented to the Assembly by some of those who had been keeping up a witness against the iniquitous courses of the times, and were now expecting that as the fruit of a merciful delivery from tyrannical usurpations, and antichristian persecutions, Reformation should be revived, grievances redressed, judicatories rightly constituted, and duly purged, it was far from receiving a kind and friendly reception and they who presented it left without assistance and help, contrary to the tenor of the Covenant, so that that paper could not be allowed a hearing, let be a redress, and the persons who offered it to their consideration were, to their great sorrow and grief of heart, dismissed without a satisfying answer.
Wherefore it must be supposed, that he who professeth himself a member of a church of Christ, must forthwith, nay before, forsake the antichristian one. The which if he refuseth to do, it is evident he doth not sincerely desire to have fellowship with the saints.
Nor can any sword reach that life of Antichrist that is in these, but the sword of Christ's mouth: Therefore, as all the religious rites and ceremonies of Antichrist are overthrown by his spirit working in his, as Christians; so those antichristian laws will have their soul and their life taken from them also by this spirit of his mouth working in some of his, as magistrates, and no otherwise; for before kings and princes, &c. come to be enlightened about the evils that are in such edicts, by the spirit of the living God, they will let this image of the beast both speak and cause, &c.
For by antichristian darkness, though they might call it light, the true light was darkened, and so the eye made dim, even the eye of the truly godly. Also the Holy Ghost did much withdraw itself from the church, so the doctrines, traditions, and rudiments of the world took more hold there, and spread themselves more formidably over the face of that whole church.
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