Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/140

126 earth for a thousand years. The figure of this great adver sary in connection with the millennial reign was important for such interpreters. The Alexandrian school, however, whose method of interpretation was less literal and gross, generalised the idea in the manner of him who wrote St John s first epistle, making the principle of error or depar ture from the faith to be personified in antichrist. The great opponent of Christ is an abstraction, a sceptical tendency or principle, not an historical person. The later Jews had also their antichrist or anti-Messiah, whom they furnished with peculiar attributes, and termed Armillus, OI^S-H. The name appears already in the Targum of Jonathan on Isaiah xi. 4, where the godless Armillus is said to be slain with the breath of Messiah s rnouth. In their description he becomes a terrible giant, golden haired, twelve ells in height, as many in breadth, having the width of a span between his deep red eyes. Born in Koine, he will assume to be the Messiah, and obtain many adherents. The first Messiah, Joseph s son, will make war upon him, but be overcome and slain at Jerusalem. After this the second Messiah, David s son, will defeat Armillus with the breath of his mouth, and then God will reassemble the dispersed of Israel, forming them into a united people, Christiana and unbelievers being destroyed. In the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah, published by Laurence, a Jewish-Christian production written in Greek not earlier than the 3d century, the angel Berial, prince of this world, identical with Sammael or Satan, and represent ing antichrist, is said to descend in the last days, in the form of an impious monarch (Nero), the murderer of his mother. The world will believe in him, and sacrifice to him; his prodigies will be displayed in every city and country, and his image set up. After exercising dominion for three years seven months and twenty-seven days, the Lord will come with His angels and drag him down into Gehenna. The writer s description is evidently moulded on that of the apocalyptist. Nor is antichrist unknown to Mohammedan theology, in which he is called al Masih al Dajjal, the false or lying Christ, or simply al Dajjal. He is to be one-eyed, and marked on the forehead with the letters C. F. E., i.e., Cafir, or infidel. Appearing first between Irak and Syria, or, according to others, in Khorasan, he will ride on an ass, followed by 70,000 Jews of Ispahan, and continue on earth forty days, of which one will be equal in length to a year, another to a month, another to a week, and the rest will be common days ; he is to lay waste all places except Mecca, or Medina, which are guarded by angels; but at length he will be slain by Jesus at the gate of Lud, near Joppa, assisted by the Imam Mahedi, after which the Moslem religion will coalesce with the Christian into one. There is a saying that Mohammed foretold several antichrists, as many as thirty, but one of greater note than the rest. During the Middle Ages, and those which immediately followed, current opinion discovered antichrist in heretics and sects. The Apocalypse and second epistle to the Thessa- lonians were supposed to point at false doctrine and its leading representatives. In their zeal against such as did not belong to the same church as their own, ecclesiastics mistook the sense of the passages relating to the dreaded adversary of Christ. Thus Innocent III. (1215) declared the Saracens to be antichrist, and Mohammed the false prophet; and Gregory IX. (1234) pronounced the emperor Frederick II. to be the beast that rose up out of the sea with names of blasphemy on his head (Rev. xiii. 1-6). As the corruption of the Romish Church increased, and tho necessity of reform became more apparent, anti-ecclesiastical thoiight found antichrist in the Papacy; and that again naturally provoked the church to characterise all heretics as the collective antichrist. The strong language of the apostles became a polemic weapon, easily wielded against any adversaiy possessing worldly power inimical to the church s interests, or holding opinions incompatible with traditional orthodoxy. The Church of Rome led the way in misapplying the Apocalypse during her contest with civil powers and heretics; her opponents followed the example in turning the instrument against herself. Anti- christianism could be embodied in the Papacy as well as in Protestantism. It might be in a corrupt church as well as in heretical doctrine outside it. Accordingly, the Waldenses, Wicliffe, Huss, and many others, found antichrist in the Pope. Luther hurled a powerful philippic adversus execrabilem bullam antichristi; and the articles of Schmal- kald embody the same view, affirming : &quot; Der Pabst aber, der alien die Seligkeit abspricht welche ihrn nicht gehor- chen wollen, ist der rechte antichrist.&quot; The history of opinion respecting antichrist, or rather the interpretation of such Scriptures as present the idea, is by no means instructive. Conjectures too often supply the place of sound exegesis. Much error has arisen from mixing up portions of Daniel s vision with those of the Apocalypse, because they refer to different subjects. The apostle borrows characteristic features from Daniel s Anti- ochus Epiphanes to fill out his picture of Nero. The com bination of St Paul s man of sin with St John s antichristian Nero has also led to misapprehension. The idea is vari ously developed according to the mental peculiarities and knowledge of those who entertained it. Vague and general at first, it was afterwards narrowed, somewhat in the manner of the Messianic one. Its different forms show that it was no article of faith, no dogma connected with salvation. Less definite in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, it is tolerably specific in the Revelation. The author of John s first epistle gave it a spiritual width, consistently with the pantheistic direction which he follows with feeble footsteps. In each case, how ever, the writers moved within their own times, their knowledge bounded by the necessary limits of the human intellect, so that their subjective views can hardly be accepted as the emanations of minds projecting them selves into the world s outer history with full intelligence of its details. Limited to the horizon of their age, they did not penetrate into the future with infallible certainty. What they express about antichrist is their development of an idea which sprang out of Jewish soil and does not harmonise well with the gradual progress of Christ s spiritual kingdom. It is not unusual, however, for men living in times of peculiar commotion, when the good are oppressed and vice triumphs, to embody rampant opposi tion to truth and righteousness in a person who concen trates in himself the essence of antichristian hate. If Christ is to conquer gloriously, a mighty adversary is given Him who must be finally and for ever overthrown. Then commences the universal reign of peace and purity under the benign sceptre of the Victor. Over against Christ as King is set a formidable foe, not an abstract principle, the latter being an incongruous or less worthy adversary in the view of many. Yet it is the very individualising of the antichrist idea which removes it from the sphere of actual realisation. Tho extension, indeed, of the divine kingdom will encounter opposition; and the reaction of the 