Not Paul, but Jesus · Jeremy Bentham
SECTION 4.
PAUL'S REMEDY FOR THE DISORDER, AND SALVO FOR HIMSELF.--ANTICHRIST MUST FIRST COME. We have seen the disorder: we had before that seen the causes of it. We now come to the remedy--the remedy provided by the practitioner for a disease of his own creating. Of the shape given to this remedy, the ingenuity will be seen to be truly worthy of the author of the disease. It consists in the announcement made, of an intermediate state of things, of the commencement of which, any more than of the termination, nothing is said: except that it was to take place, antecedently to that originally announced state of things, by the expectation of which the disorder had been produced. Of the _time_ of its commencement, no: except as above, on that point no information is given. But of its _duration_, though no determinate information, yet such a description is given, as suffices for giving his disciples to understand, that in the nature of things, it could not be a short one: and that thus, before the _principal_ state of things took place, there would be a proportionate quantity of time for _preparation_. Satisfied of this, they would see the necessity of conforming themselves to those reiterated "_commands_," with which his prediction had from the first been accomplished; and to which he had so erroneously trusted, when he regarded them as composing a sufficient antidote to the poison he had infused. That the warning thus provided for them would be a very short one, he left them, it will be seen, no great reason to apprehend. A sort of spiritual monster,--a sort of an ape of _Satan_, a rival to the Almighty,--and _that_ by no means a contemptible one--was to enter upon the stage.
What with force and what with fraud, such would be his power,--that the fate of the Almighty would have appeared too precarious, had not the spirits of his partisans been kept up, by the assurance, that when all was over, the Almighty would remain master of the field. The time, originally fixed, by him for the aerial voyage, was too _near_. By the hourly expectation of it, had been produced all those disastrous effects which had ensued. After what had been said, an _adjournment_ presented the only possible remedy. But this adjournment, after what had been said, by what imaginable means could it be produced? One only means was left by the nature of the case. 2 Thess. 2:1-12. "Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,--That ye _be not_ soon shaken in mind, or be _troubled_, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor _by letter as from us,[66] as that the day of Christ is at hand_.--Let no man deceive you by any means; for _that day shall not come, except_[67] there come a falling away first, and _that man of sin be revealed_, the son of perdition;--_Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God_[68]--Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, I told you _these things_[69]--And now ye know what withholdeth, that he might be revealed in his time.--For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.--And _then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord_ shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and _shall destroy with the brightness of his coming_.[70]--Even _him, whose coming is after the working of Satan,[71] with all power and signs and lying wonders_[72]--And 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:[73]--That they all might be _damned, who believed not the truth_,[74] but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
To this rival of his God--God and rival--both of them of his own creation, the creator has not, we see, given any name. By this omission, he has, perhaps, as perhaps he thought to do, rendered the bugbear but the more terrible. The deficiency, such as it is, the Church of England translators of the English official translation of the Bible, have filled up: they have taken it in hand--this bantling of Paul's--and christened it _Antichrist_. "He," Paul, "showeth," say they, "a discovery of _Antichrist_, before the day of the Lord come." Such is the discovery, communicated in the _heading_, prefixed to the second chapter of the second of the two Epistles: and, of the readers of this so abundantly and gratuitously distributed Bible, how few are there, by whom any such distinction as that between the headings and the text is borne in mind! The right reverend divines in question,--were they the first authors of this discovery, or was it ready-made to their hands?--made by that church, from the errors of which their own has been so felicitously purified? To this question, let those look out for, and find, the answer,--in whose eyes the profit is worth the trouble. Not a few are the divines, who have discovered Antichrist sitting in St. Peter's chair, with a triple crown on his head. In the chair of Luther, or in that of Calvin, would the triple monarch be disposed to discover the hobgoblin, if he thought it worth while to look for him. Has he ever, or has he not, made this discovery already?
"Oh, but," says somebody, "_we_ does not here mean _we_ only who are alive at this present writing; it means, _we_ Christians of all ages:--any number of ages _after_ this, as well as this, included. In the designation thus given, neither the individuals he was addressing, nor he himself, were necessarily comprehended." This accordingly, if anything, must be said, or the title of the self-constituted Apostle, to the appellation of _false prophet_, must be admitted. Oh, yes! this may be said, and must be said: but what will it avail him? In no such comprehensive sense did _he_ use it; for, in that sense, it would not have answered his purposes: not even his spiritual and declared purposes, much less his temporal, selfish, and concealed purposes. Why was it that these disciples of his, as well as he, were to be so incessantly upon the watch! I Thess. 5:6, 7, 8. Why, but because "you yourselves," says he, ver. 2, "know perfectly, that the day of the Lord cometh like a thief in the night." Who, on that occasion, could be meant by _we_, but himself and them? In no such comprehensive sense was it understood by _them_: if it had been, no such consequences as we have seen following, could have followed.
After the experience he and they had had, of the mischief produced by the narrow sense put upon the all-important pronoun, would he have continued thus to use it in that same narrow sense, if it had not been his wish that in that same sense it should continue to be understood? Would he have been at all this pains in creating the spiritual monster, for the declared purpose of putting off their expectation of the great day, if, but for this put-off, it would not have come on?[75] In what part of all his preachings can any distinct ground be seen for any such supposition, as that any portion of the field of _time_, beyond that by which his own life was bounded, was ever present to his view? In the field of _place_, yes: in that field his views were of no small amplitude: for in that field it was by his ambition that they were marked out: but in the field of _time_, no symptoms of any the smallest degree of enlargement will anywhere be found. But, on this occasion, suppose other ages, and those others to any extent, included in his views: from their including such future ages, would it follow that they had no application to the age then present?--But, supposing them understood to apply to that age, thereupon in comes the mischief in full force.
Any man that has been reading these Epistles,--let him suppose, in his own breast, any the most anxious desire to raise an expectation, such as that in question: and then let him ask himself, whether it be in the power of that desire to suggest language, that would afford any considerably better promise of giving effect to it. Of the _nature_ of the _disorder_, as well as of the cause of it,--the persons, to whom the world is indebted for the preservation of these remains of the self-constituted Apostle,--have given us, as above, some conception. Of the _effect_ of the _remedy_, it would have been amusing to be informed: unfortunately, this portion of his history is not comprised in the labours of his historiographer.[76]
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.