Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried: but the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand.” “In the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of GOD, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof:” “scoffers walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of His coming?” “despising government, presumptuous. . . self-willed, not afraid to speak evil of dignities.... promising men liberty, while themselves the servants of corruption:” and the like.
2. I just now made mention of the Jews: it may be well then to state what was held in the early Church concerning Antichrist’s connexion with them.
Our LORD foretold that many should come in His name, saying “I am Christ.” It was the judicial punishment of the Jews, as of all unbelievers in one way or another, that having rejected the true Christ, they should take up with a false one; and Antichrist will be the complete and perfect seducer, towards whom all previous ones are approximations, according to the text just quoted, “If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” To the same purport are St. Paul's words after describing Antichrist; “whose coming,” he says, “is . . . with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the Truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause GOD shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believed not the Truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
Hence, considering that Antichrist would pretend to be the Messiah, it was of old the received notion that he was to be of Jewish race and to observe the Jewish rites.
Further, St. Paul says that Antichrist should “sit in the
