Prince of princes, polluting and casting down the sanctuary, that is the Church of Christ; taking away the daily sacrifice of prayer and praise, or the sacred ordinances, casting the truth to the ground, and prospering in his iniquity.
Our Saviour Christ and his disciples frequently spoke of false Christs and prophets, declensions from the faith, seducing lies and doctrines of devils: the man of sin and the apostasy of the latter times[1]. The beloved disciple John, in a vision in the isle of Patmos was favoured with a vision of the same Antichristian power, under the similitude of a star fallen from heaven[2], having the key of the bottomless pit, where, in the figurative language of prophecy, Antichrist is described as obscuring the light of the Gospel, and afflicting the earth with a particularity of cir-
