Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/114

 of us, they would no doubt have remained with us;" that is, they left the apostolic communion of Christ's holy Catholic Church, and they did so because they would not submit to its authority: "They were not of us;" that is, they would not listen to our teaching. And so it was; the ground was gradually prepared all over the provinces of the East for the advent of him who was destined to set up a new religion in the place of Jesus Christ's religion, that of His Apostolic Church; and this ground was prepared by the gradual and successive undermining of the Catholic faith in those countries by the erroneous teaching of the various heretics. So when Mahomet arose, the men who were the first to aid him in the compilation of his impostures were Jews and Nestorians,—that is, those "who had not believed the truth" of Jesus, and those "who had consented to iniquity;" in other words, those who had refused to embrace the doctrine of the Messiah, and those who had perverted it. And those who flocked to his standard, and embraced his soul-destroying doctrines, were, as he himself assures us, the Christians, both clergy and laity, of the Asiatic provinces, in which he first exercised his diabolical apostleship. If the reader will consult the fifth chapter of the Koran and the