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/68

 how then could Christ command the nations to submit to a teaching, which after three or four centuries was to become idolatrous and blasphemous? and yet assuredly He places no limit to the commission He gave, but on the contrary promised to be with it "always, even to the end of the world." In a word Christ declares "the gates of hell shall never prevail against His Church:" the Protestant theory asserts, that the gates of hell have prevailed against it: for if idolatrous teaching be not a gate of hell, we know not what can deserve to be so called. Now all this has been triumphantly shown over and over again by Catholic writers.

Whoever wrote with greater power on this subject, than the great and pious Cardinal Bellarmine? and if the Protestant student of prophecy would turn to the voluminous commentaries of that able interpreter of Scripture Cornelius à Lapide, or to those of the learned Salmeron, who has literally exhausted the subject, they would see how very weak are the grounds for their own interpretation, how contradictory it is to the whole tenor of Scripture, how it is founded on mere assumptions, on gross misrepresentations of historical facts, or on a still grosser misunderstanding of Catholic usages and doctrines, or on an illogical