stroy by the appearing [visibleness-resplendence] of his coming;-[even him] whose coming is according to the working of Satan in all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and in all deceit of unrighteousness towards those who are perishing, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And on that account God sends them the working of deceit to their believing the lie, that all may be condemned who believed not the truth but found pleasure in unrighteousness."

The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is here foreshown as to take place at the destruction of the Man of Sin, is his second personal coming. This is clear, 1. from the word agoria the literal and only sense of which is, coming, advent, becoming present: Christ's coming is, therefore, his personal advent; his becoming personally present in our world. 2. It is shown, also, by the designation of the day it is to take place, as the day of Christ. The day of Christ, is the day of his second coming, when he is to raise his saints and complete their redemption, and to judge and destroy his enemies. Phil. ii. 16; 1 Thess. ii. 19, iii. 13, iv. 14-17; Matt.. xxiv. 4, 30, 31. 3. It is shown to be his second personal coming, by the gathering together of living believers to him. That is to take place at his second coming, and at no other time. He is then to send his angels and gather his elect together from the four winds of heaven. Matt. xxiv. 31. And the believers who are then in life are to be caught up together with the glorified saints, to meet the Lord, and are, thereafter, ever to be with him. 1 Thes. iv. 17. 4. It is expressly defined as a personal and public coming by the expression, "appearing of his coming:" the word sigaveia denoting visibleness, a coming that is manifest to the eye, and of dazzling resplendence therefore; as it is foretold that he is to come in power and great glory. 5. It is shown, also, by the destruction that is then to take place of the Man of Sin; as it is foretold in many passages, that at his second coming he is to destroy the wild beast and false prophet, who are then to be leagued against him. Dan. vii. 9-12; Zech. xiv. 1; Rev. xix. 11-21; 2 Thess. i. 6-10. 6. This is confirmed by the use of the same word ragoudia, coming, to denote the rise and the personal presence of the Man of Sin, and lawless one, in the scene in which he exercises the

impious agency ascribed to him. It cannot be denied, therefore, that Christ's coming, foreshown in the passage, is a personal, public, and visible coming, without in effect denying that the coming, presence, and agency of the Lawless One is a personal and visible one, and thereby converting the actors and events of the prophecy into mere shadows, and rendering it impossible to attach any clear meaning to any of its terms. For if the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition is a mere empty shade, can his assumption of the prerogatives and throne of God be anything more than an equally empty shadow? But as the coming, presence, and action of the Man of Sin and Lawless One are to be a real personal coming, presence, and agency; and his destruction is to be a real destruction; so the coming, presence, and agency of our Lord Jesus Christ are to be a real, personal, visible coming, presence, and agency; and the breath of his mouth and the visibleness of his advent by which he is to consume the lawless one, are to be real, and are to accomplish the real personal destruction of that usurper of his throne. 7. If Christ's coming does not denote his coming in person, it must denote, as those who deny it that meaning affirm, a mere act of providence. But, if the Thessalonians regarded it as denoting a mere act or event of providence that had already befallen them, why should they have been shaken from their mind and troubled by it? How should they have been excited, as by a spirit, or word, or letter, as though from the apostle, to regard it with disquiet and alarm? And how happened it, if that were their construction of the term, that the apostle did not remove their misapprehension by explaining the true nature of the providential occurrence to which they attached so false a meaning? 8. And finally, there is no other coming of our Lord Jesus Christ foreshown, except his second personal coming, of which the apostasy and revelation of the Man of Sin here predicted can have been, or can be antecedents. Nothing can be more indubitable, than that the great apostasy that has taken place in the church, did not occur till ages after this prophecy was uttered: and nothing can be more certain than that no such personage as the Man of Sin and Lawless One here depicted, has yet risen in the church. To assume, therefore, that the coming here foreshown of Christ, was a mere

act of providence, a mere infliction of extraordinary judg ments by the usual agents, famine, pestilence, and the sword, is to assume that no such acts of providence have been exercised since the middle of the first century, and is thence, in effect, not only to deny that the prophecy foreshows Christ's personal coming; but is to convert it into a prediction that he was not for more than eighteen centuries to exercise any sway whatever over the earth, and exhibit him as through that long period abandoning the church as well as the world. It is, in fact, therefore, to justify the lawless one in usurping the name and throne of God. For, if the Most High has abandoned it, as the construction we are opposing implies, why may not the claim of the Man of Sin, that he has no divine superior, be legitimate? Such is the abyss into which those presumptuous interpreters precipitate themselves, who, to escape this announcement, that Christ is to come in person at the destruction of Antichrist, maintain that the advent here foretold is a mere intervention of providence; an advent only of the ordinary second causes by which judgments are inflicted on the nations.

The advent of Christ foreshown here, then, is his second personal coming. And the prophecy is accordingly consistent with itself, and with all the other predictions that relate to his second coming and his destruction of antichrist. That the coming of Christ contemplated by the Thessalonians, was his second personal coming, explains the doubt and agitation into which they were thrown by the report, as from Paul, that he had already come, when neither they were changed to immortal as they had expected at his advent; nor as far as any signals were discerned by them had their friends who had fallen asleep in Christ been raised from the grave. Such a seeming disappointment of their most cherished and confident hopes, must naturally have overwhelmed them with surprise and dismay. It harmonizes the passage with Dan. vii. 9–14; Rev. xix. 4–21; 2 Thess. i. 6-12, and other prophecies, in which it is foreshown that the Lord Jesus is at his second coming to destroy antichrist. And it indicates that the reason that the last great effort of the hostile powers against him is called the battle of the great day of God Almighty is, that it is to be the aim of the Man of Sin in it, to verify his claim, that he

is above all that is called God, or is an object of worship. The question at issue in that conflict will be,-Who is the Supreme God of this world-Jehovah Christ, or the Man of Sin? And the lawless one will contemplate his expected victory over the Hebrews returned to Jerusalem-near which the battle is to take place as a triumph over the Messiah, and an extinction of his claim to the homage of men, and annihilation of his kingdom.

But this coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, was not to take place, until the apostasy should have come, and the Man of Sin should have been revealed. They are called the apostasy and the Man of Sin and son of perdition, because, as the apostle immediately states, he had previously foretold them, and given their characteristics. The apostasy, was the apostasy, not an apostasy, because it had been foreshown as the great apostasy, transcending all other departures from the truth; and as to continue through a long series of ages to the coming of Christ. And the Man of Sin was called the Man of Sin, the son of perdition, and the lawless one, because he had received those designations in the prophecies Paul had before communicated to the Thessalonians in respect to him, and because he was the only human being that was to be guilty of the daring impiety he was to commit.

What then is the apostasy? As an apostasy is a departure from the truth; a rejection of what has been made known. or instituted by God; and a substitution of what is false in its place; the apostasy is undoubtedly the most fundamental and far-reaching rejection of what God has revealed and appointed, and substitution of what is false in its stead, that has taken place in the church; and that is unqeustionably the apostasy of the Romish Church from the most essential institutes and truths of the work of redemption, and adoption of a false system in their place; such as the rejection of Christ's death as the exclusive expiation for sin, and substitution of the mass in its room; the rejection of his righteousness as the sole ground of justification, and intrusion of the merits of creatures in its place; and the denial of his exclusive intercession in behalf of men, and ascription of the office of mediator, and intercessor to saints and angels; the homage of images, and other kindred errors. This is indubitably the

apostasy; as it is far more radical and wide-reaching than any other, has continued through a longer period, and has wrought a greater sum of mischief. The fall of the Greek and other eastern churches from the truth, which took place contemporaneously, and is in a large measure parallel with it, except in respect to the mass, is doubtless included in the apostasy. It had its beginning as early as the third century, and soon after the usurpation of power over Christianity by Constantine, spread through the whole nationalized church, and prevailed alike in the east and the west, with few obstructions, to the Reformation; and prevails still, except in a share of the Protestant communions. This departure from the essential facts and truths of the gospel, and institution of false objects of worship, a false method of redemption, and a false piety, so widely extended, and continuing through so many ages, is undoubtedly the apostasy of this prediction that was to precede Chrit's second coming. To suppose that the apostle had no reference to this; that his glance into the future extended only to some temporary or inferior error of some branch only of the church, is to suppose that the event revealed to him had no proper correspondence to his language; and that the apostasy that was to cast a baleful shadow over the world for fifteen centuries before the revelation of the Man of Sin, and Christ's second coming, instead of being disclosed to him, was hid from his prophetic eye.

What are the relations of the apostasy to the acts of the Man of Sin? Are they the same? Is the apostasy the lawless one's self-deification, and enticement of the crowd to worship him or are they wholly separate and unlike? The impression has very generally prevailed from the time of the Reformation, and still prevails, that they are the same, and are the acts of the Romish hierarchy, and the pope its head. It is undoubtedly however a mistake; as while many of the characteristics of the pope present a resemblance to those of the Man of Sin, the great features of the apostasy which reigns in the Catholic church, differ essentially from the peculiar arrogations of the lawless one.

Thus the pope does not claim an absolute superiority to God; instead, he professes to be his vicegerent, and represents the authority with which he alleges he is invested,