up and subdivided, than a most extraordinary person arose in Arabia of the name of Mahomet, a person of obscure origin and of but little consideration in the beginning, and this person pretended that he was sent by God as the last and the greatest of His prophets, and that his mission was to overthrow the Christian religion, to found another religion on its ruins, and also to found a universal empire, to which lie was to subdue the whole human race, forcing them, under pain of temporal death and everlasting condemnation, to embrace his new religion and submit to his dominion. Within an astonishingly short period after the first promulgation of this new religion and the foundation of the temporal sovereignty connected with it, we find that either Mahomet or his immediate successors had subdued the greater part of the East and of Africa, had established his infamous apostasy in the fairest dioceses of the Eastern and African Churches, and had filled all Christendom with terror. St. Jerome had written the different passages we have cited between the years 331 and 422 of the Christian era; in 47C the Roman empire was extinguished by the deposition of its last Western emperor, who bore the ominous name of Romulus Augustulus ; out of the political chaos there had arisen a number of new states, amongst which the emperor of Constantinople for a long while held a sort of primatial dignity; and in 612 Mahomet commenced the publication of his Koran. That this was the revelation of the Man of Sin foretold by St. Paul we shall now proceed to show: we have already shown how the fundamental doctrine of the Koran fulfilled St. John the Evangelist's prediction of the fundamental teaching of the great Antichrist, it remains for us to show how the conduct of Mahomet agreed with St. Paul's prophetic description of the Man of Sin, as given in his second epistle to the Thessalonians.
The Roman empire had been broken up, the whole Christian Church was looking forwards (as the testimonies we have already cited from the holy fathers sufficiently prove) with terror and anxiety to the predicted appearance of the Man of Sin, when in the year 609 a fearful sign was sent by the Almighty to warn Christendom, and especially Eastern Christendom, of the visita-
ion that impended. The powers of darkness were let loose; and as Satan had furiously raged against Christ in His passion and death, so now he directed his fury against the image of Christ crucified, and against the true cross, which the holy Empress St. Helena had discovered and deposited in a costly shrine at Jerusalem. In the year 609, as the bishops and clergy in divers cities of the province of Galatia were making solemn processions, preceded by the holy cross, all at once a great prodigy was beheld. The crosses reeled to and fro, and no human force could keep them steady; an evil feeling seized upon men, and all felt conscious that a new power of wickedness was coming upon the earth. The account of this awful sign is given at length in the history of St. Theodore Siceotes, one of the most illustrious saints of the Greek Church. (Ba,YomiAnnales, torn. viii. pp. 203-205.) At that time the most blessed Saint Thomas was patriarch of Constantinople. The intelligence which the bishops forwarded to him of the prodigy, which had been witnessed by vast numbers in so many places, greatly alarmed the holy father. In his distress, he wrote to the man of God, St. Theodore Siceotes, bidding him come to Constantinople, that he might consult him. The patriarch then asked him, as the king of Babylon had formerly asked Daniel the Prophet to interpret his dream, what this sign meant. The man of God seemed unwilling to answer the question; but on the patriarch conjuring him for the love of God to do so, St. Theodore bursting into a flood of tears, thus addressed him: " Most holy father, it seemed to me that I ought not too much to grieve you, for it is not well that you should know the meaning of these things; but since it is commanded by you that I should explain the mystery, be it known unto you that this movement of the crosses foretokens unto us great and numberless calamities.
Myriads of Christians will shortly abandon our most holy religion; on all sides the barbarians will attack the territory of the faithful; there will be such bloodshed as hath not been seen before, with great destruction and seditions all over the earth. The churches will be abandoned, and the ruin of God's worship and of the empire approacheth. Know, moreover, that the coming of THE ADVERSARY is at hand." No sooner did the holy patriarch hear these words, than he melted into tears, and falling on his knees, he besought the man of God to intercede with the Lord, that He would take him out of this world before these horrible calamities came upon the Church. The saint replied, that rather he would pray to God to preserve his holiness for the good of his flock, and of so many churches over which he presided. Shortly after this, the Persians, having
recisely what all analogy would have led us to expect for the work of Antichrist? In other words, if Mahomet be not Antichrist, be not the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, it is not possible that any heretic can ever arise who would more literally fulfil the predictions of God's word concerning that awful personage than has been done by Mahomet. The more we look into the Mahometan system, the more clearly does this fact manifest itself. The doctrine of Christ had taught men all justice, to abstain from even the thought of evil, to live a holy, pure life. " Be ye perfect," said our Lord, " as your Heavenly Father is perfect." But what was the doctrine of Mahomet? In the fortieth year of his age, he shut himself up in the caverns of Mount Hera, not far from the city of Mecca; there he remained for six entire months, from time to time he made his wife, his children, and his servants visit him, and he entertained them with strange accounts of nocturnal visions and apparitions, with which he declared that he was favoured. At length, on the twenty-third night of the month of Ramadan, he beheld, as he assured his wife, the following vision. A voice called him by his name, a bright light from heaven illumined the whole country, and the Alcoran, the last Kevelation of God to men, descended from heaven, complete in all its parts. It was borne, said he, on the hands of the Archangel Gabriel, and such was the splendour and brilliancy of the messenger, that it was more than the eyes of Mahomet could bear, so he besought him in future to appear in human form. This Gabriel promised that he would do, having saluted Mahomet as " the Prophet of God." After which he commanded him to read through the Koran, which he had no sooner done, than Gabriel carried it back to heaven, promising to bring it back again, as it should be needed, chapter by chapter.
Now, can we imagine any description that more perfectly agrees with the words of St. Paul in his second Epistle to the Thessalonians, where, describing the revelation of the Man of Sin, he says: " Whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power, and signs, and lying wonders? Who was it that personated the Angel Gabriel, but Satan himself, of whom the same St. Paul declares, that he is wont " to transform himself into an angel of light 1 " Then Mahomet came " in all power" with the power of the sword and of armies. Christ came meek and lowly, and when one of His disciples drew the sword, He rebuked him and said, " Put back thy sword into the scabbard, for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword: " and having said this He healed the wound of His mortal enemy. Christ came to minister unto the meanest of His followers, saying,
" My kingdom is not of this world: " He had indeed a kingdom, but it was not a kingdom of flesh and blood, but of holiness, of peace, and of love. But the kingdom of Mahomet was one of earthly power (in all power): it was a kingdom of luxury and sensuality, in which it was permitted to men to indulge to the full in all the sins of the flesh, and in which he promised the same sensual enjoyments even in the life to come. Then the Man of Sin was to come, "in signs, and lying wonders" And could there be greater signs, than what God had given to His Church of the near coming of this Son of Perdition? Could there be a more striking sign, than the miraculous shaking of the crosses, which St. Theodore Siceotes explained to St. Thomas, the Patriarch of Constantinople, " as the sign of the immediate coming of the adversary "? Could there be a greater sign of the revelation of this Man of Sin, than the miraculous shaking of the cross? The cross of Christ trembled at the coming of Mahomet, and well might it seem to tremble, for Mahomet was its bitterest foe. The cross had redeemed the world, and the Koran of Mahomet was to undo the redemption of the cross. For three hours our Lord Jesus had hung in mortal agony on the cross, giving birth to the children of His adoption, and purchasing the souls of His elect; setting them, moreover, an example of crucifixion to the world, and of a renunciation of all our corrupt passions and lusts; but Mahomet came to level the cross, and to preach sensuality, to set up the power of this world, and to procure the ruin of countless millions of human souls, for whom the Lord Jesus had shed His precious blood. Well might the cross tremble! well might such a sign usher in the coming of Christ's arch-enemy, of Antichrist, and well might the revelation of Al Coran synchronize with the capture of Jerusalem, and the carrying away of the true cross into the land of the infidel Persians, that very people who were destined to become one of the first conquests of the Mahometan apostasy! Oh! these indeed were signs, such as amply verified the prediction of the blessed Apostle St. Paul. Nor were these the only signs : l St. Paul had given another, the removal and destruction of the Roman empire, and all the fathers of the Church, with 1 Amongst other signs, that marked the coming in of the Mahometan empire, we may mention what the Byzantine historian Cedrenus relates as having occurred at the death of the False Prophet: the apparition in the heavens, during thirty days, of a vast comet in the shape of a sword, which was interpreted as a sign of the scourge that impended over Christendom. " Merd 64 ye rbv 66.va.rov TOV QeyXdrov Movxoifyter tybv-rj KO.TO. /j.e"rr}fjt,pplav avrfyp
6 \ey6fjifvos doidTijs, TrpoMvtiuv rty rQtv 'Apd/Jwy tiriKpfoeiav fyetve d" tirl fy^paj rpiOLKovra, diarelvuv airb fiea^plas "0$ tipKTOv.
ty 8t "t0oet5ifr." " Georgii Cedreni Historiarum Comp. torn. i. p. 745.
one consenting voice, had proclaimed that this would be the sign of Antichrist's coming. The Eoman empire fell, and the empire of Mahomet was revealed. The kingdom of Christ waxed weak, torn by the internal strife of heresy and schism, and the cross was seen to shake and to tremble. It only remained for the " Son of Perdition " to inaugurate his accursed " apostasy " by the "lying wonders" foretold by St. Paul. And here we see unfolded to us these very lying wonders, in all the force of their " seductive iniquity." Was it not a wonder, when Satan appeared in the garb of Gabriel to the impious Mahomet?1 when he ushered in to his vision the blasphemous and impious Koran? when he shook the rocks of Mount Hera, and terrified even the heart of Mahomet himself, accustomed, as he said he was, to such nocturnal visions? Was this event, pregnant with the spiritual and temporal destruction of countless millions of men, not to be called as St. Paul foretold of it, a " wonder" and " a lying wonder" seeing that it was invented by Satan to usher in the most false and lying system of impiety that had ever been palmed upon the credulity of fallen man? Yes, Mahomet came " in lying wonders" and he deceived mankind more than any impostor or deceiver that had ever preceded him. It has been sometimes urged by commentators, who did not admit that Mahomet was the Antichrist of prophecy, that whereas it was foretold in God's Word that Antichrist should perform great wonders, by which he was to deceive mankind, Mahomet did not pretend to the gift of miracles. It is true that Mahomet did not pretend to the gift of miracles, if by miracles be understood the power of healing diseases, of raising the dead to life, or such other miracles as have always been wrought in the Church of God: and Mahomet was right in not pretending to such a gift, inasmuch as he had none such, and, had he pretended to it, his imposture would quickly have been found out: but he did lay claim to wonderful and supernatural communications with God, and these were assuredly to be called " lying wonders," as St. Paul had termed them. They were surely wonders in every sense of the term, and they were " lying " wonders, because they were false, vile impostures, and diabolical deceits.
On one memorable occasion2 in the year 621 A.D., Mahomet pretended that the Angel Gabriel brought him a miraculous beast, called El-Borac, on which he mounted and ascended to the seventh heaven, where he conversed face to face with God, and was proclaimed greater than all the prophets and all the angels of God! When he entered the first heaven Adam came and 1 See Abb6 Rohrbacher's tenth volume of Ecclesiastical History.
2 See Vie de Mahomet, Koran, Kasimirski.
NTICHRIST made obeisance to him, and recommended himself to his prayers! God's Word tells us that all the ancient fathers of the Old Testament had been delivered from the prison, in which they were detained, by the preaching of Messiah in person (1 Peter, iii. 1 9), who, as the Church teaches us, applied to their souls the merits of his precious death, and then transported them to Paradise, " leading captivity captive," as David had foretold in the Psalms. But all this is denied by the impious Mahomet, who, on the contrary, pretends that Adam came and recommended himself to his prayers! as if the prayers of Mahomet would prove more efficacious than the merits of the God-Man! In one of these heavens he tells us he saw Issa or Jesus, but he does not say in which. Now is it possible to conceive blasphemous falsehood beyond all this? At least, unless we believe the word of Mahomet, and embrace Islamism, we must come to this conclusion. I will not dwell upon the other lying wonders which Mahomet relates of this journey to the seventh heaven; the miraculous [censored], which was several thousand miles high, and which crowed so loud as to be heard by the whole universe; or the colossal angel he met in the third heaven, whose height was equal to one hundred and forty thousand years of the swiftest travelling! or the other ridiculous fables he recounts of this prodigious journey; but I will only add, in conclusion, that, when he reached the seventh heaven, Gabriel was not allowed to accompany him further, but Mahomet, holier than the highest angel, climbed the tree Sedra, and so ascended through a boundless ocean of light to the very throne of God Himself, on the steps of which he beheld these words: " la, Allah ilia Allah, va
Mohammed rasoul Allah; " the meaning of which is, " There is no God, but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet." He was no sooner admitted to the presence of the Most High, than God, placing one hand on his breast, and the other on his shoulder, revealed to him all Truth, and declared to him that he was the most perfect of all creatures, and that he should be honoured and raised above all other men, and that he should be the Redeemer of all those that believed in him, that he should know all languages, and that the spoils of all he conquered in war should belong to him alone. He then ordered him to prescribe fifty prayers a day to his followers, but on the remonstrance of Mahomet He reduced the number to five.
After which Mahomet returned to the earth, and recounted to his deluded disciples the Satanic vision, with which Lucifer had deceived his proud and presumptuous mind. Could blasphemy, falsehood, and folly go beyond this ?
This was the man, who was destined to be the chief opponent
n another, and a still more literal sense, did Mahomet also fulfil this prophecy, when Jerusalem was taken by his general the Caliph Omar, and when on the site of Solomon's Temple, which, above all others, is pre-eminently styled in Scripture " the Temple of God," he impiously pretended to restore that sacred edifice, and did in fact defile that most holy spot by erecting thereon one of his principal mosques: thus placing, as Daniel the Prophet and our blessed Lord had foretold, "the abomination of desolation in the Holy Place," and on that sacred ground proclaiming himself the highest and holiest of all creatures, the greatest of the prophets, and, as he reported of himself in his nocturnal journey to the seventh heaven, " the Saviour of all who should believe in him." And it is a remarkable fact connected with the taking of Jerusalem by the Caliph Omar, that Saint Sophronius, who was patriarch of that city at the time, expressly declared that he saw in that event the fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel concerning the "Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place" " (Daniel, xi. 31.)
Cedrenus, the learned Byzantine annalist, attests this fact as follows: " " EicreA"bv Sc Ov/xapos "ts Trjv ayiav TroAii/
(Tiv ^jji"j)L"o-p,"VO"s e/o/3V7rwyu,"j/ots, VTTOKpuriv re , rbv Naov ""^rei riovlovSatwv, ov (pKoSofMTja-e 2oAo/AWi",
vvrjrripiOV TroiTjcrcu TTJS avrov /^Aaax^/ua?. TOVTOV ISatv 2a"""po-
vtos ""jyrj' CTT uA?7#eias TOVTO carrw TO /38eAuy//,a T^S e/^/xaxrecos IOTWS cv TOTTW aytw. " (Cedreni Hist. Comp. torn. i. p. 746.) And in a subsequent chapter the same author mentions a remarkable fact,
that when Omar commenced his famous mosque on the site of Solomon's Temple, the building, in spite of all his efforts, continually fell down, and on the Caliph inquiring of the Jews the reason of this prodigy, the latter informed him it was because of the cross which the Christians had erected upon their church on the Mount of Olives, whereupon Omar ordered that cross, and many others also, to be demolished." " (Cedreni Hist. Comp.
torn. i. p. 754.)
What was this, but " to sit in the temple of God, showing himself, as if he were God" as if he were that, which none but Christ, who is " God of God and very God of very God," is and can be? In fine, if Mahomet has not fulfilled the Apostle's prediction, both in the spirit and the letter, we know not how it could be fulfilled.
But we now come to a further description of the Man of Sin in this remarkable prophecy of St. Paul (2 Thess. xi. 9, 10), " whose coming is ..
in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish: because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe a lie."
If ever a system was based
on the seduction of iniquity, it surely was that of Mahomet. Look
at the morality which he practised, which he taught his disciples to practise, and it will not be difficult to understand what the Apostle means by " seduction of iniquity," when addressed to the corrupt nature of fallen man. The very paradise he promised to his deluded followers, is a place of debauchery, a sink of " iniquity" Whole troops of beautiful houris are provided to gratify the everlasting and insatiable lust of the Mahometan elect, and that there may be no stint, no progeny ever follows this unbridled concubinage: it is an everlasting enjoyment of the basest pleasures, without the end or the sanction of marriage: pleasures which, as mankind now tastes them, are essentially allied with the debasements of original sin, and which the pure religion of Jesus had restricted to the single use of marriage, while it taught men to forego them altogether, if they would seek perfectly to please their Heavenly Creator, by imitating here on earth the purity and the innocence of angels. Jesus Christ had restored woman to her original rank in the scale of God's creation; Mahomet degraded her again into the mere instrument of passion, and the slave of man. Our Lord had made marriage the holiest and the happiest union of man and wife, to be for ever consecrated to each other, with no thought of another to inspire jealousy or divide their love, and this union He pronounced indissoluble, except by death. Mahomet restored polygamy, and consecrated divorce. Thus, instead of
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