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POPERY 
 
 THE 
 
 PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 
 
 A SEKMON 
 
 Before the G-eneral Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. 
 At Baltimore, May 25 th, 1848. 
 
 ALEXANDER T. McGILL, D. D. 
 
 Professor in Westorii Tliuol. Seminary. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 PRESBYTEPtlAX BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 
 
 1848. 
 
EXTRACT FROM MINUTES OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 
 
 Resolved 1. That the thanks of the Assembly be, and 
 they hereby are, tendered to the Rev. Dr. McGill, for his 
 Sermon on Popery, delivered before them last night, and a 
 copy be requested for publication. 
 
 Resolved 2. That said sermon be committed to the Board 
 of Publication with the request that they send a copy to 
 every minister in our connexion, and to every session des- 
 titute of the stated means of grace. — Printed Minutes^ 
 [1848] page 33. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them 
 that perish ; because they received not the love of the 
 truth, that they might he saved. — 2 Thess. ii. 10. 
 
 Scepticism and credulity are sisters, however 
 unlike they may be in appearance. There 
 is a debility of understanding in the man 
 who fails to believe, upon sufficient evidence, 
 which will always subject him to the power 
 of delusion. The father of British infidelity, 
 Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, while hesitating 
 about the publication of his book, which as- 
 sailed the foundations of Christianity, prayed 
 for some sign from God, that might direct 
 him in the matter : and then, standing..at*his 
 window, and looking earnestly at the heavens, 
 he saw, he says, " an opening from whence 
 there came a bright light" towards himself; 
 
4 POPERY, THE 
 
 and this determined him, as a token of divine 
 approbation, to publish that book. The same 
 individual, that could reject the overwhelm- 
 ing evidence of Christianity itself, could fol- 
 low, at the same time, the phantasy of his 
 own imagination, with all the devotion of a 
 besotted credulity. 
 
 AVhat is true of an individual, in this re- 
 spect, may be true of a system, a generation, 
 an age. Take the age of Porphyry, for in- 
 stance, on the threshold of the era at which 
 history w^ill lead us to start with the subject 
 before us ; an age extending from Ammo- 
 nius Saccas to Julian the Apostate. The 
 great school to which these ancient infidels 
 belonged, the New Platonic, was distinguish- 
 ed, alike, for bitter hostility against the gos- 
 pel, and for the most anile, extravagant, and 
 frivolous superstition. Its entire aim was to 
 find, for all the superstitions of all ages, a 
 philosophical basis ; and thus to perpetuate, 
 as essentially true and reasonable, the most 
 absurd and debasing systems of pagan delu- 
 sion that ever existed. That school was 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 5 
 
 never abolished. Strangely, it found asylum 
 in the very Church, whose nursing fathers, 
 from Theodosius to Justinian, pursued it with 
 exterminating edicts. And the main features 
 of the wicked and mysterious one, described 
 in our text, are precisely its great character- 
 istics : unbelief and superstition combined — 
 believing without love, and believing without 
 limit — believing too little, and believing too 
 much, in mingled deformity — a proud rejec- 
 tion of the simple truth, and a mean cre- 
 dulity, a deceivableness of unrighteousness, 
 which mav be carried to all extremes of 
 damning error. 
 
 But there is one terrible peculiarity in this 
 baptized perpetuation of a system which Por- 
 phyry and Julian bequeathed to the Church ; 
 one that is exceedingly hard to be defined or 
 expressed, though abundantly urged in the 
 passage before us ; and that is the curse of 
 reprobation, judicial abandonment from God. 
 The Spirit of God restrained the working of 
 this school, and similar evils, until the gos- 
 pel should be proclaimed through all accessi- 
 
6 POPERY, THE 
 
 ble parts of the earth ; and was then taken 
 out of the way, in sovereign displeasure, for 
 the lack of faith and love, with which it was 
 reasonable its glad tidings should have been 
 received. Cast off from the presence and 
 Spirit of God, in vengeful dereliction, the 
 rejectors of the gospel became ^' those that 
 perish," and an easy prey to an anti-Chris- 
 tian tendency, which had been working from 
 the days of the apostles, and indeed from the 
 days of apostate Adam himself — to stagger 
 at divine truth, and lean on human lies. 
 
 We assume the interpretation of this 
 chapter, that identifies the great apostasy it 
 describes with Popery, which we define to 
 be a false church, distinguished for impos- 
 ing an excess of belief, that results from the 
 w^ant of sound faith, and is incompatible with 
 the exercise of such a faith. And were we 
 to assume it as no more than hypothesis, in 
 the investigation of any clause of the whole 
 connexion, yet, would we be compelled, 
 from all the sources of history, observation, 
 and the Bible, to see, at last, that we can 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 7 
 
 find even the critic's cool consistency, in 
 nothing but the lineaments of spiritual 
 Rome. 
 
 Like every other prophecy of Scripture, 
 it was not understood precisely before the 
 time of its fulfilment came ; except for the 
 practical use, which the prophet designed — 
 to relieve the Church from the impression 
 that the day of judgment was at hand — to 
 deter believers from giving heed to seducing 
 spirits, or false teachers, who were already 
 abroad — and to endear the ultimate consola- 
 tion, which arises from the discriminating 
 and eternal love of God, in the decree of 
 election. Beyond this service of these awful 
 lines, the most eminent fathers, from Tertul- 
 lian to Augustine, frankly confessed their in- 
 ability of comprehension. And the maudlin 
 piety of Popish commentators, would fain 
 persuade us now, that we should not be wiser 
 than the ancient fathers ; that it is equally 
 incomprehensible at present ; that the fulfil- 
 ment is yet in the future; and, of course, 
 that the splendid contribution of Protestant 
 
8 POPEKy, THE 
 
 faith, to the evidences of Christianity, in the 
 demonstration, that this grand prediction is 
 abeadj turned to actual history, is worse 
 than spurious. 
 
 Here, too, we have Protestant unity, and 
 Papal distraction. Scarcely a shadow of 
 variation is traceable in the commentary 
 of all evangelical expositors ; while the varia- 
 tions of Popish conjecture have been endless- 
 ly diversified. The only point on which 
 there seems to be a general agreement 
 among them, is, that this anti-Christian 
 power must be that of an individual man, on 
 a momentary errand of vengeance, in the 
 providence of God ; and not, as we interpret, 
 according to familiar use in every language, 
 a succession of individuals representing a 
 system. But, to look no further than our 
 text, we ask, what individual man has ever 
 yet been found in history, or what individual 
 enemy of Christ and his Church, can be at 
 all imagined, who could erect dominion in 
 a way so complicate and on a basis so impal- 
 pable, as these words suggest? His way is 
 
PUXISHMENT OF UXBELIEF. 9 
 
 a train, like that of the old serpent himself; 
 stealthy as time, versatile as change, and 
 inveterate as the heresy of human nature. 
 His legitimate subjects are the perishing, the 
 reprobate ; who are left with a curse, to the 
 strong working of error, in the corruptions 
 of their own nature: because they received 
 not the love of the truth, that they might be 
 saved. The great fact, which lies at the 
 foundation of his power, is the most inscru- 
 table of all facts, submitted to the observa- 
 tion of men — the judicial dereliction of men's 
 souls : and consequently no particular his- 
 tory can be made out of such a fact : all par- 
 ticular judgments sent on any church, are 
 sent to reclaim her, before she is finally cast 
 away. No chronicle of one man, or of one 
 epoch, or one age, can comprehend the case 
 before us ; nothing but an empire of delu- 
 sion, which requires many ages to develope 
 its causes, and progress, and effects. And 
 when we read that it began its working, 
 even in the days of the Apostles, when 
 decay was manifest in every visible power 
 
 2 
 
10 POPERY, THE 
 
 on the face of the earth ; that it was re- 
 strained for a season, when no existing pro- 
 clivity of man was restrained, but his apos- 
 tasy from the truth of the gospel ; that it 
 would be revealed at length, in such a form, 
 as would require no more than a pentecostal 
 visitation of the Lord Jesus Christ, to destroy 
 and consume it ; that it would come with 
 miracles of falsehood, which Mohammed 
 never attempted ; and with a blended exer- 
 cise of power and deceit, which no other in- 
 dividual scourge of mankind has ever exhib- 
 ited ; and that its yoke would be fixed, not 
 merely on disparaged thrones, and dese- 
 crated temples, and trampled liberties of 
 men, but on their hardened hearts, for dis- 
 relish of the truth, at its first promulgation 
 and primitive diffusion — can we forbear to 
 affirm, that, if Popery be not the subject 
 here, the Bible has one prediction that can 
 never be fulfilled, and history a lapse of 
 1800 years that can never be explained? 
 
 The proposition, then, which we present 
 from these words is, that Popery is an or- 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 11 
 
 ganized form of Gfod's judicial wrath uioon 
 the unbelief of men. 
 
 It is not imported in this proposition, that 
 all individuals, who are visibly embraced in 
 the system, are reprobate, or even unbeliev- 
 ing men : for, as a pious individual may be 
 left in the hands of Satan himself, for a time, 
 to be deceived and debased by his wiles ; so 
 may there be pious individuals, left all their 
 lives, to the delusions of this wicked one, 
 whose coming is after the working of Satan. 
 As there may be reprobate men in the bosom 
 of the true Church itself, who are living in 
 judicial abandonment of God, so may there 
 be elected men in the bosom of an organized 
 antipathy to the true Church, who are living 
 in covenanted fellowship with the Father of 
 mercies. It is one thinsc to be the victim of 
 its power, through accident of birth and pre- 
 judice, and another thing to be the subtile 
 and prepense apologist to men for its abomi- 
 nations. 
 
 Nor is it imported in this proposition, that 
 all reprobate men have feelings of affinity 
 
12 POPERY, THE 
 
 with Popish dehision. Many such have been, 
 and still are, ferocious opposers of Popery, 
 in name and form ; some of them are nomi- 
 nal Protestants ; many of them open infidels ; 
 and just as Babylon of old was swallowed 
 up by another oppressor, as the dream and 
 drama of persecuting power, in past history, 
 was one continual succession of diverse ma- 
 terials, gold and silver, and brass, and iron, 
 so may there be, after this golden head of 
 spiritual despotism, other forms of anti-christ- 
 ian hostility, such as infidelity, fanaticism, 
 and corruption of morals ; which may be wil- 
 ling, for a season, to join the Church herself, 
 in giving Romanism up to her final doom. 
 We mean, that thus far in the career of the 
 gospel, its ''day of vengeance" has been the 
 day of Popery; its chief retributions upon 
 unbelief, have been embodied in this form of 
 evil : and all the good that may be found ad- 
 hering to Popery, is accidental, as much as 
 is the evil, which may be found adhering to 
 the true Church of Christ. Its nature is an- 
 tagonism to his kingdom. Its existence is a 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 13 
 
 creature of his wrath, permitted in his own 
 absence to revenge the quarrel of his gospel, 
 on the enmity and unbelief of human nature. 
 I. The names, which are given throughout 
 the context, show the truth of this proposi- 
 tion : — " That man of sin" — ^' the son of per- 
 dition" — 'Hhe mystery of iniquity" — "that 
 wicked," or lawless one — not to notice the 
 minuter description, of arrogance, blasphemy, 
 and infernal power and craft of falsehood. 
 Can we read all these denominations, and 
 ponder on the use of them in Scripture, and 
 not believe that the Antichrist portrayed, is 
 unmingled opposition to the kingdom and 
 truth of the Lord Jesus Christ; an incor- 
 porated castaway ; a contrariety, which is in- 
 finitely worse than corruption, merely, of a 
 real but revolted church of the living God? 
 Shall we not believe, with Jonathan Edwards, 
 in his annotations here, that, "as Chris- 
 tianity, or the scheme for setting up the 
 kingdom of God, and advancing his glory 
 and the salvation of men, is called the mys- 
 tery of godliness; so anti-christianism, or 
 
 2* 
 
14 POPERY, THE 
 
 the scheme for setting up the kingdom of the 
 devil, and accomplishing the destruction of 
 men by Ayitiehrist^ is called the mystery of 
 iniquity? * * * Here is fulfilled what was 
 shadowed forth of old, by the murder of Cain, 
 and his city in the land of Nod, and by the 
 building of the tower of Babel, and by the 
 city of Babylon, and by the mighty Nimrod, 
 and Belus, or Bel, and by the city of Sodom, 
 by Egypt, and Pharaoh ; and the great things 
 that were done in Egypt, in the time of 
 Moses and Aaron, are types of what is done 
 by and to the church of Rome. * * * Here 
 is the antitype of proud Nebuchadnezzar, and 
 Belshazzar, and Haman. Here is the anti- 
 type of the city and king of Tyrus, and of 
 Antiochus Epiphanes ; and here is the chief 
 fulfilment of the ancient prophecies of Daniel 
 and other prophets that relate to the king- 
 dom of iniquity, and also of most of such 
 prophecies in the New Testament. On the 
 same account the anti-christian church is 
 called Mystery, Babylon the Great." 
 
 II. We see the truth of our proposition, 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 15 
 
 when we consider the cause of liis coming — 
 the want of faith and love in those that had 
 the knowledge of divine truth; an enmity 
 and obstinacy of unbelief, which provoked 
 the Spirit of God, to leave them consigned 
 to certain perdition; ''because they received 
 not the love of the truth that they might be 
 saved:" of such his kingdom is composed. 
 These are the original, the real, the ultimate 
 subjects. Popery is born when piety dies. 
 Its acceptable time is after the day of salva- 
 tion; just when it becomes too late, in the 
 process of the heart's induration. It comes in 
 the night; not of ignorance, nor barbarism, 
 nor social disorder ; but the night of spiritual 
 death, which followed the primitive preaching 
 of the everlasting gospel. It comes, not to 
 seduce, so much as succeed, a living Chris- 
 tianity; not like a heresy, which taints the 
 food of the soul, or mingles a feverish life, 
 with the healthy pulsations of religion; but, 
 like an art of the catacombs, it comes to em- 
 balm the dead, the dead letter of religion, 
 dead symbols, and dead saints, with all the 
 
16 POPERY, THE 
 
 odours of sanctity; and then to seal them up, 
 in a sepulchre, for ever. 
 
 The man of sin was the product of his 
 age. An age, that had been privileged, to 
 see so wide a diffusion of the gospel ; to see 
 the miracles which attested, and the trans- 
 formations which adorned it; the progress, 
 the power, the glory of its cause, in the 
 season of virgin purity and beauty, could not 
 be forsaken of God, without some dire de- 
 vice of man to attempt another mediation; 
 could not be cast down to hell, without em- 
 bracing a monster, w^hose coming would be 
 after the working of Satan. It would have 
 made a Papacy, without a Victor, a Stephen, 
 or a Constantino; without a council at Sar- 
 dica, or even a bishopric at Rome. We are 
 told, that great imperfections among the 
 early converts from Judaism and Paganism, 
 laid the foundation of Popery : undue regard 
 for things indifferent in themselves ; promo- 
 ting truth and duty, by artifice and fraud; 
 the notion of mystery, transferred to the sa- 
 craments; the notion of priest, transferred 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 17 
 
 to the elders; excessive veneration for mar- 
 tyrs, ascetic separation from the world and 
 its relations; ambitious contention for pre- 
 eminence ; these, and many similar elements, 
 are said to have been the material on which 
 this mystery of iniquity was working, for the 
 erection of his power, long before it was fully 
 revealed. But these all are common weeds 
 of our nature that never prevail, in ''a gar- 
 den enclosed" — thorns and briers, that never 
 grow up to destroy, until the ground is 
 thrown out by the husbandman, and "is 
 nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be 
 burned." 
 
 III. The manner of his coming, shows 
 with equal force, the cursed antagonism of 
 his nature — "Whose coming is after the 
 working of Satan, with all power and signs 
 and lying wonders, and with all deceiv- 
 ableness of unrighteousness in them that 
 perish." Can there be conceived one ele- 
 ment of grace in this utter and intense 
 abomination? Sincerity is the lone vestige 
 of godliness, in a true believer, when every 
 
18 POPERY, THE 
 
 tiling else is sunk from our sight, in ignor- 
 ance and error. AYith all his imperfections, 
 he is an earnest and honest man. So, it 
 must be with a church, that has the smallest 
 claim, to be considered a true church of 
 Christ. There is a bottom of integrity, 
 somewhere, on which we can rely. But here 
 is a system, fraught with a spirit of false- 
 hood, which is absolutely without a limit, 
 save the honesty and impotency of hell itself. 
 Where shall we begin, or end, the cata- 
 logue of his unrighteous deceit? There are 
 the convicted forgeries, on which his wealth 
 and outward estate are founded ; such as the 
 grant of Constantino, and the decretals of 
 Isidore; proved to be forgeries, even by 
 papal historians, before the great Reforma- 
 tion, and acknowledged to be such ever since : 
 not to speak of many a minor fraud, in 
 snatching his fortune, advancing his throne ; 
 such as a letter from St. Peter in heaven, 
 through Stephen of Rome, to Pepin of 
 France, exhorting him to rescue the Pope, 
 from the hands of the Lombard. There are 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 19 
 
 the pretended miracles, with which he im- 
 posed the worship of images, on the reluc- 
 tant empire even of the Franks ; their weep- 
 ing and sweating, and moving, and speaking, 
 to persuade a scrupulous world, to bow with 
 reverence before them : his legends of fable, 
 to establish the worship of saints, and relics, 
 and bones, beyond all power of speech to 
 number, and much more describe, in their 
 falsehood and folly: his pitiful lies in be- 
 half of the wafer-god, which he has palmed 
 on the faithful, instead of the one sacrifice of 
 Christ, ever since the days of Gregory I. 
 — how it has actually bled at the altar, in 
 the hands of the priest — how it turned to a 
 boy, in a beehive, and made the adoring bees 
 build it a shrine with their wax — how it made 
 a company of asses fall on their knees, as it 
 passed ; and a hungry mule turn from the 
 oats to adore it ; and a ravenous dog turn 
 on the nose of his master, an infidel Jew, for 
 throwing it down, with the crumbs, to be 
 eaten : his afi'ectation of superior holiness, in 
 abstaining from meat, and forbidding to 
 
20 POPERY, THE 
 
 marry, and the whole bondage of fear, to 
 which his religious are consigned, in viola- 
 tion of the first principles of Christian piety : 
 his claim to exclusive solemnity of worship, 
 in the pomp of processions, and glare of 
 habiliments, and show of pantomime action, 
 that impose so much on the sense of the 
 multitude : his pretence to infallibility, and 
 power of the keys, and prevalence with God, 
 visions, and revelations, and miracles, per- 
 formed at his pleasure: and, above all, the 
 pretension, that he has all the truth which 
 we possess, and much more besides : so, that 
 his votaries are safe, heretics themselves 
 being judges ; when he cannot but know, that 
 the immense extent of his adding, has buried 
 the truth, mountain deep, from the eye and 
 heart of the people — can we believe, that 
 such unfathomable depths of deceit, so un- 
 righteous in the wilful invention, and so un- 
 righteous in the debasing effects, may be 
 predicated of a body, that has Christ in it, 
 to any degree ; and not rather, a body which 
 his wrath has entailed, as a monument and 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 21 
 
 minister of judicial abandonment ? " He 
 hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their 
 heart, that they should not see with their 
 eyes, nor understand with their heart, and 
 be converted, and I should heal them." 
 Take from his thraldom, as many as you 
 please to call " a remnant according to the 
 election of grace;" he himself is false as 
 Sodom, and equally doomed, without re- 
 demption, to an awful and perpetual end. 
 
 IV. The manner of continuance. — As the 
 man of sin came on at the first, so he has 
 continued till this day ; with one remarkable 
 difference, which essentially indicates a re- 
 probate mind — malign exertion to resist 
 the truth, to pall it with perpetual night, 
 and quench with blood its resurrection. It 
 is a mistake to allow, that Augustine's the- 
 ology, was ever the standard of divinity, at 
 papal Rome ; any more than the epistles 
 general of Peter, were the model of ency- 
 clical letters, among his pretended succes- 
 sors. Thougli, for many a reason, which 
 cannot now be stated, that eminent father 
 
 3 
 
22 POPERY, THE 
 
 had vast authority of a nominal kind in 
 papal dominions, it were easy to prove, that 
 his evangelical system of doctrine, was al- 
 ways at war with the heart and hand of this 
 reprobate power. And, though he succeeded, 
 by the force of ancient formulas, and the in- 
 fluence of African Synods, to convert a Pela- 
 gian Pope, so far as to obtain a formal con- 
 demnation of Pelagius himself, yet, his views 
 of divine grace were impugned by almost all 
 the monks, and most of the clergy, during 
 his OAvn life ; and, in less than twenty years 
 after his death, the Semi-pelagian Vincent 
 of Lerins, gave a cast to Western Catho- 
 licism, which it has ever retained. The in- 
 numerable Summas of stupidity, compiled 
 from Augustine, through subsequent ages, 
 utterly failed to embody the life of his sys- 
 tem. And one thing is certain, that, after 
 the man of sin was fully revealed, the name 
 of Augustine lived to be sainted, for his 
 arrogant dogmas respecting the church; but 
 the scheme of faith he had written, was 
 doomed, as often as it dared to appear. 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 23 
 
 How was it persecuted in the person of Got- 
 teschalc — tangled in the chicanery of School- 
 men — tortured in the disputes of Dominicans 
 — slurred in the Council of Trent — burned 
 in the book of Jansenius ! And, let the 
 myriad martyrdoms over all Western Eu- 
 rope — let the massacres of France, the In- 
 quisition of Spain, the murders of Ireland — 
 let the plots of England, the wars of Ger- 
 many, the butcheries of Savoy, attest, how 
 atrociously hated have been the doctrines of 
 grace, wherever they have risen in spite of 
 her frown ! What, then, can we see in the 
 church of Rome, like a '' pillar and ground 
 of the truth?" What do we not see, like "a 
 pillar of salt;" or rather, like the gates of 
 hell, ever raging to prevail against it ? 
 
 V. The place of his continuance. — The 
 region of primitive preaching in Christian 
 Europe, is almost exactly the map of his be- 
 nighted territory, until this very day: Italy, 
 Spain, France, Portugal, and portions of 
 Germany. Every country, which claims the 
 honour of apostolic planting, with any 
 
24 POPERY, THE 
 
 colour of historic probability, inherits, pre- 
 eminently, the curse of apostolic reprobation. 
 The purer the light, originally shed, the 
 longer the darkness, which has followed its 
 forfeiture. Better than all the le2;ends of 
 Spanish tradition, that claim the bones of an 
 Apostle, in St. James of Compostella; better 
 than all the whimsies of Parisian antiquity, 
 which claim Dionysius the Areopagite, in the 
 story of their own St. Denys — better pre- 
 sumption, by far, for both these vaunted 
 claims, is the fact of judicial dereliction ; 
 that these ancient and beautiful lands, have 
 been given, so long, to the misery of Popish 
 delusions: for the depth and durability of 
 the curse, that ushered Popery into being, 
 are just in proportion to the original purity 
 of the truth, and power of its demonstration, 
 with which any country was favoured. 
 
 Later evangelical countries of Europe, 
 where a corrupted Christianity did little 
 more than baptize the Paganism it came to 
 supplant, have all been, more or less, re- 
 deemed from the power of Romanism, and 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 25 
 
 blessed with the light of the Reformation, 
 established among them ; such as England, 
 Holland, Saxonj, Prussia, Denmark, &c. 
 There, little or no gospel truth had been 
 known, before the Reformation had dawned ; 
 and there little or no reprobation from God, 
 had infused its terrible death, into the slum- 
 bers from which the people awaked. Just as 
 we descend the stages of Popery, towards the 
 Council of Trent, we find its conquests less 
 durable, its overspreading delusions less in- 
 frangible. And ever since that epoch of 
 finished apostasy, how transient have been 
 the triumphs it achieves ! how quickly all its 
 missions are blasted ! how soon overthrown, 
 in Africa, and India, and China, and Japan ! 
 There, it has had no commission, from the 
 wrath of a rejected Saviour, to execute; and 
 consequently, no power to establish its yoke. 
 And, as if the instinct of reprobation were 
 taught by this experience, as if the sagacity 
 of Rome had fully discovered the damning 
 destiny in missions, to which the wrath of a 
 righteous heaven has consigned her energies, 
 
 3* 
 
26 POPERY, THE 
 
 she does little more, at present, than prowl on 
 the pathway of light and life — little more than 
 follow, in the track of Protestant missions, 
 to batten on the death, which neglected or 
 repudiated truth will ever be leaving, on the 
 highway of her progress, among the nations. 
 VI. We turn from nations to individuals. 
 Proselytes to Popery from Protestant ranks 
 are mostly reprobate men ; by which we 
 mean, reprobate towards God: men of intel- 
 lect, learning, and taste, it may be ; and 
 men of unblemished morals too, conformed 
 to the average decency of social life; and 
 men of enlarged observation also, who have 
 travelled into many countries, and compared 
 many creeds, and actually tried, perhaps, 
 many professions ; but whose hearts all the 
 while have disrelished a religion of con- 
 science, and failed to "receive the love of 
 the truth;" and, on that account, are given 
 over of God to "strong delusion, that they 
 should believe a lie : that they all might be 
 damned who believed not the truth, but had 
 pleasure in unrighteousness." 
 
 i 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 27 
 
 We trust not ourselves to speak of living 
 examples. "\Ye go back to the great re- 
 storation of Papal authority, on the conti- 
 nent of Europe, in the ITth century, sent to 
 revenge a slighted and abused reformation ; 
 and which teems with striking examples. 
 From the Queen of Sweden, Christina, the 
 daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, whose rest- 
 less mind early turned, with disgust, from 
 the truth as it is in Jesus, and passed through 
 all the depths of virulent unbelief, into the 
 arms of passive and pleasurable confidence 
 in Rome — down to that notable preacher of 
 Brunswick, Henry Julius Blum, who en- 
 gaged, for a pension of 2000 a year, to 
 bring over himself and his prince together, 
 every proselyte, whose history we read, gave 
 anterior evidence of judicial abandonment ; 
 for infidel hatred, or fantastic abstraction, 
 or tasteful disgust, or immoral aversion, or 
 venal indifference to the truth of the gos- 
 pel. ''If you except from among them," 
 says a standard historian, ''all such as we 
 are abundantly assured, were led to this 
 
28 POPERY, THE 
 
 change by their domestic misfortunes, by 
 their desire to advance their rank and glory, 
 by their inordinate love of wealth and world- 
 ly advantages, by their fickleness of mind, 
 by their imbecility of intellect, or by other 
 causes of no better character, you will re- 
 duce the whole number to a few persons, 
 ■whom no one will greatly envy the Roman 
 Catholics." 
 
 VII. This Popish religion itself, is ob- 
 viously congenial with the character of re- 
 probate men, whether within or without the 
 pale of Popish communion. They love a re- 
 ligion of ease : one that will save them the 
 trouble of investigating themes which they 
 hate, and themes with which the unsancti- 
 fied, and much more the derelict mind, will 
 always grapple, in painful incertitude and 
 bondage of terror. Por such, the Papal de- 
 lusions are a haven of rest. The authority 
 of the church relieves them from searching 
 the Scriptures; a vicarious priesthood, from 
 offering spiritual sacrifices ; a charm in the 
 sacrament, from examining themselves ; in- 
 
PUNISHMEXT OF UNBELIEF. 29 
 
 clulfTcnco for monev, from all uneasy ac:ita- 
 tions of conscience ; and olive oil at the last, 
 from the hard-won victory of faith. And 
 yet they love a religion that will exalt the 
 2?i'ide of their nature. It is not humiliating 
 ease they would purchase, at the cost of pri- 
 vate judgment, the great birthright of man ; 
 but one which will flatter the bonda2;e that 
 such a barter has left — works of merit in 
 the alms and abstinences, the inflictions, the 
 exploits, the supererogation itself, of which 
 they feel their nature to be capable, even in 
 the arms of licentious indulgence. 
 
 They love a religion of sense^ imagina- 
 tion^ and taste ; one that will excite all the 
 diversified afl'ections of our nature, save the 
 sentiment of dealing directly with God, 
 through the Lord Jesus Christ. And, in 
 Popery, they have a system, which has been 
 for ages adapting itself to this very demand. 
 A gorgeous ritual, and magnificent ceremo- 
 nial, pomp, and tinsel, and pageantry vrith- 
 out end; music and painting, statuary and 
 architecture — all the treasures of art lie in 
 
30 POPERY, THE 
 
 her lap. And tlieiij imagination — what riot 
 has it taken among her religious in every 
 age ! There is not, under heaven, a form of 
 human activity, mental or physical, solitary 
 or social, civil or military, that she is not 
 willing to incorporate with her movement, 
 and promise it salvation. Crush but the 
 life of your moral nature beneath her wheel, 
 and you may turn the residue of the man or 
 monster into any possible line of endeavour, 
 and she will indulge it. 
 
 They love a religion of cherislied antipa- 
 thies : for the dereliction of God, will always 
 convert the ground-work of a human heart 
 to essential malignity. Inveterate spiteful- 
 ness, from the aboriginal hate of Satan him- 
 self, to the meek-eyed wish of a modern sis- 
 ter of mercy, pervades every bosom that is 
 cast away for refusing to receive the love of 
 saving truth. And what a magazine of ha- 
 tred is old Papal Rome ! — all sorts of venom, 
 antique and modern, open and concealed, 
 documentary and spoken, temporal and spir- 
 itual: dungeons of inquisition, daggers of 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 31 
 
 assassination, and medications of poison 
 without end. What words of calumny; what 
 volumes of anathema ; what galas of auto- 
 da-fe! What iron heels for the strong; 
 what treacherous lips for the weak ; what 
 vengeful pursuit when she is plaintiff at law ; 
 what cruel evasion when she is defendant at 
 law ; what cursing, by bell, book, and can- 
 dle, does she enjoin in the priest ; what 
 maledictions, in the house, and by the way, 
 and with the mob, and at the polls, does she 
 allow in her people ! Surely, the greatest 
 miracle of grace, if such a thing be possible, 
 is to inspire with true benevolence, a soul 
 that is steeped in the bitterness of that com- 
 mon sentiment, which the Papal religion en- 
 genders. 
 
 Thus might we go on to evince, that, in 
 every thing peculiar to the reprobate mind. 
 Popery meets it with a genial conformation ; 
 and, of course, we are furnished from this 
 point, with strong corroboration of the truth 
 we have asserted. But we return, to close 
 
32 POPERY, THE 
 
 the series of our positions, with another 
 point or two from the context. 
 
 VIII. The manner of his overthrow: 
 " Whom the Lord shall consume with the 
 spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with 
 the brightness of his coming." However 
 suddenly that destruction may come, in 
 some respects, as we are told in the Apoca- 
 lyptic visions of John, the language here 
 imports a gradual demolition. By "the 
 spirit of his mouth," we understand the 
 preaching of his word ; which ceased when 
 the man of sin was fully revealed, except in 
 the obscure retreats of the wilderness, where 
 the true Church fled from his violence ; 
 which returned, with signal power, at the 
 great Reformation; and which has continued 
 ever since to spread, with regenerating in- 
 fluence, among the nations. This mighty 
 breath of the gospel comes on this wicked 
 opposition, not to reclaim, not to reform it, 
 as would evidently be the case, if it were 
 a backslidden church merely, but to consume 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 33 
 
 it ; evoking from the midst of its thrall, a 
 people reserved from its spirit, to consign 
 the system itself, with all its wilful abettors, 
 to remediless doom. "For it is impossible 
 for those who were once enlightened, and 
 have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were 
 made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have 
 tasted the good word of God, and the powers 
 of the world to come, if they shall fall away, 
 to renew them again unto repentance; seeing 
 they crucify to themselves the Son of God 
 afresh, and put him to an open shame." 
 Let this awful and portentous admonition 
 be collated with our text, and considered to 
 adumbrate the corporate apostasy, of which 
 we speak, and the difficulties of its exposition 
 will vanish away. 
 
 But again, it is said of this ultimate over- 
 throw, that the Lord "shall destroy with the 
 brightness of his coming." His coming at 
 the final judgment, does it mean? Then, 
 here is a system, which nothing in all the 
 tide of time can meliorate or save ; which 
 passes the power of a great reformation, and 
 
 4 
 
34 POPERY, THE 
 
 the splendor of a glorious millennium, without 
 alteration or amendment; and stands till 
 the judgment day of Christ, only to dissolve 
 with entire destruction at the ^'brightness of 
 his coming:" and, of course, it must be now 
 the forsaken of God, petrified, as it were, by 
 his adamantine curse, and abiding for ever a 
 monument of warning, without the least 
 affinity or identity with the true Church of 
 Christ. His coming at the time of the mil- 
 lennium, does it mean ? Then is he absent 
 from the system now, entirely absent ; for 
 the advent of this coming glory, will be the 
 brilliant expansion of all that now enjoys 
 the presence of the Saviour : and, of course, 
 "the son of perdition" moves on, without a 
 particle of interest in the promise, "Lo, I 
 am with you always;" and consequently, 
 without a particle of right, to all the ordina- 
 tion that hangs upon that promise — the in- 
 stitution of the ministry, the propagation of 
 missions, and the administration of the sa- 
 craments. 
 
 IX. The antithesis of consolation, in the 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 35 
 
 13th verse, crowns our proof, that the church 
 of Rome is but a doomed antagonism to the 
 real Church of Christ : " But we are bound 
 to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren, 
 beloved of the Lord, because God hath from 
 the beginning chosen you to salvation, 
 through sanctification of the Spirit and be- 
 lief of the truth." If the body of this vast 
 anti-christianism were any thing less than a 
 reprobate body, if there be in its identity a 
 church transmitted, with a solitary ordinance 
 of Christ remaining in force, why does the 
 decree of grace, on which the whole church 
 is built, utter its comfort, as the reverse of 
 the picture ? How can the deep foundations 
 of divine redemption, deeper than the world's 
 beginning, deep as eternity itself, roll over 
 against this wicked superstructure, and yet 
 receive it, as any part of the living temple, 
 which came down from God out of heaven ? 
 To quote for consolation a promise of the 
 gospel, might imply, that the opposite evil is 
 no more than fearful declension; to quote 
 for consolation the faithfulness of God to his 
 
36 POPEEY, THE 
 
 people in the past, might imply that the evils 
 which threaten them, are no more than sad 
 calamities : but to quote the earliest origin 
 of mercy, the radical secret, the ultimate 
 and uttermost resources of the grace that 
 bringeth salvation, must imply, that the evil 
 it meets, can be no less than the extremity 
 of hostile and accursed antagonism, to the 
 body of Christ — "the fulness of Him that 
 filleth all in all." 
 
 If then, the very names of this anti- 
 christian power, import an utter opposition 
 to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ — 
 if the original basis of his strength, was laid 
 in the obduracy of a reprobate world — if the 
 mode of his establishment, was the deceit- 
 fulness of hell, without a qualification or a 
 limit — if perpetuated malice against the re- 
 vival of truth has been the characteristic of 
 his policy, in all circumstances and places — 
 if the inveteracy of these features can be 
 traced on the map of Europe, in proportion 
 to the amount of primitive truth, which was 
 resisted and rejected — if the transition to 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 3T 
 
 his ranks from tlie knowledge of gospel 
 truth, is still accompanied with evidence of 
 a prior rejection of that truth — if the well 
 known characteristics of the reprobate mind, 
 are all met with corresponding aptitudes in 
 this body, w^hich has had ages to mould its 
 genial propensities — if the appointed means 
 for reforming the church and saving the 
 w^orld, come on this system only to consume 
 and destroy it ; the same waters of the sanc- 
 tuary that flow out to fertilize every other 
 spot in the waste of our nature, flow over 
 this one only to convert it into "the miry 
 places and marshes" which can never be 
 healed, but must be "given to salt" — and if 
 the sole consolation of the church against 
 the dreary perspective, is brought from a 
 decree of election which stands in perpetual 
 contrast with the decree of reprobation — we 
 conclude that Popery is an organized form 
 of God' s judicial ivrath against the unbelief 
 of men — the hopeless counterpart, in revealed 
 religion, to that dismal picture of apostasy, 
 in natural religion, with which the Spirit of 
 
 4* 
 
38 POPERY, THE 
 
 inspiration hj the mouth of Paul an apostle, 
 introduced to the Christians of Pagan Rome, 
 the great article of a standing or a falling 
 church. 
 
 We learn from this subject, in conclusion, 
 how to understand the boast of continuance, 
 with which the man of sin vaunts his own 
 superiority over all the changes that have 
 overthrown other institutions of men. He 
 is founded on a rocJc, indeed, but it is a rock 
 of adamant in the human heart, which the 
 insulted Spirit of God has left to its own 
 hardness for ever. That rock cannot be 
 broken by the surges of political or social 
 revolution. It stands as firmly among free- 
 men, as bondmen ; unless it be the freemen, 
 "whom the truth makes free." The shak- 
 ing of the nations now at which we are so 
 much astonished, is not the agitation at 
 which Popery must crumble; we wait for 
 another, for a " yet once more," when God 
 will shake, not the earth only, but the hea- 
 vens also, and come down, with the bright- 
 ness and glory of pentecostal changes. It 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 39 
 
 may be that Popery, in its outward form of 
 despotism, in that union with the State, 
 which mainly reared its power at the first, 
 will perish this very year. For, let it be 
 observed, the suffrages of commentators, 
 have, with perhaps a great majority, desig- 
 nated this year in the force of their calcu- 
 lations for the overthrow of him, '^who op- 
 pose th and exalteth himself above all that is 
 called God, or that is worshipped." Say, 
 that the year 606 was the epoch of his full 
 revelation; when Boniface III. was pro- 
 claimed universal bishop, by the bloody 
 Phocas ; and add the duration throuorh 
 
 a 
 
 which he was to " wear out the saints of the 
 Most High" — ''a time and times and the 
 dividing of time" — or three years and a half 
 of years, a day for a year ; and the apoca- 
 lyptic month being 30 days, and, of course, 
 the whole duration 1260 years, we have the 
 whole number 1866; and subtracting 5 days 
 for each year, to make it correspond with 
 our time, we are brought precisely to the year 
 1818, for this grand consummation. It may 
 
40 POPERY, THE 
 
 be, that the dreadful reprobation of God 
 upon a faithless Christendom, is about to 
 shift its ancient form entirely, and take the 
 shape of socialism,^ instead of churchism^ in 
 which to persecute the saints and blot the 
 ■world. But, however this may be, essential 
 Popery will remain as long as the wrath of 
 God remains on the unbelief of men, in any 
 organized form; long as the latter-day glory 
 is withheld, and the preaching of the gospel 
 is attended with no mighty revivals, and 
 overspreading life. 
 
 And here, my brethren, in this happy 
 land of Bibles, and Sabbaths, and pulpits, 
 we are destined, in the light of this subject, 
 to a conflict with Popery in its ultimate and 
 utmost power. Here, re-invigorated by de- 
 liberate rejection of the living truth, divested 
 of its lumbering despotism and obsolete enor- 
 mities, it comes to marshal that terrible re- 
 serve, which has hitherto been buried from 
 our sight, in the depths of our apostate 
 nature. Here, unless a Pentecost shall in- 
 terpose, there will be vast accession to its 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF. 41 
 
 ranks, from the millions whom God will leave 
 to perish in their unbelief, long before their 
 lives are ended. What multitudes of irre- 
 ligious men among us, do already range 
 themselves upon the side of Popery, instinc- 
 tively disposed to plead apologies for her, to 
 condemn the opening of our lips against her, 
 and, with all varieties of outward devoir to 
 indicate the willing change their hearts would 
 make of faith and love, for her form and 
 fashion, and visible advantage ! And, with 
 all our freeness, there is no country where 
 so many countervailing influences resist the 
 power of Divine truth ; political excitement, 
 which absorbs the man from boyhood to old 
 age; immoderate pursuit of gain for which 
 we are distinguished among all the nations 
 of the' earth; passion for adventure which 
 tears the susceptibility of youth so early 
 away from the influences that would sanctify, 
 to the influences that only harden and cor- 
 rupt — these are peculiarities of the nation, 
 which all tend to defeat the gospel ; and, of 
 course, to enthrone that wicked one, who 
 
42 * POPERY, THE 
 
 comes at once, the substitute and the avenger 
 of rejected mercy, "in them that perish." 
 
 What manner of persons ought we to be, 
 mj brethren, in view of these things ; we, 
 the ministers of that gospel, which has such 
 a "savour of death unto death!" How 
 should we gird up the loins of our mind, for 
 the mighty struggle which cannot be for- 
 borne ; how contend with indigenous propen- 
 sities, which, more than foreign propagand- 
 ism, more than all the myrmidons of Jesuit- 
 ism, that trans-atlantic states vomit on our 
 shores, call for anxious and uttermost en- 
 deavour ? Let the edge of controversy be 
 drawn again from the armories of the great 
 Reformation ; let the tenderness of youth be 
 imbued with saving knowledge, in parochial 
 schools ; let Bibles be scattered over all the 
 land, like dew drops of the morning ; let the 
 volumes of our sacred literature flow on to 
 every door that colportage can open ; let the 
 house of God go up in every township of 
 the western wilderness; let the missionary 
 take his station in the heart of Papal coun- 
 
PUNISHMENT OF UNBELIEF* 43 
 
 tries, before the emigrant shall come to the 
 more hopeless perdition of Poperj, as it is 
 refined and hardened here; let the pulpit be 
 adorned with men of faith, and love, and 
 light, who will not taint the breath of the 
 everlasting gospel with their own unsancti- 
 fied tempers — and above all, men of zeal for 
 revivals of religion, who will preach, and 
 pray, and believe, and toil, and look for 
 them, with intense yearning of soul. Here 
 is the bane of Antichrist — here alone the 
 potency that will send him, like a millstone, 
 to the bottom of the sea. The man who is 
 not for revivals, with all his heart and hand, 
 is not the man for this country and this age : 
 he has not proved the armour which must 
 now be worn, and in which the battle must 
 be won. Never, never, will Babylon be 
 fallen, till, through every wonted sanctuary 
 of prayer, public, private, family, and social, 
 the unwearied supplication ascend: ^'Return, 
 Lord, how long ? and let it repent thee 
 concerning thy servants. satisfy us early 
 with thy mercy ; that we may rejoice and be 
 
44 POPERY, &C. 
 
 glad all our clays. Make us glad according 
 to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, 
 and the years wherein we have seen evil. 
 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and 
 thy glory unto their children. And let the 
 beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and 
 establish thou the work of our hands upon 
 us ; yea, the work of our hands establish 
 thou it." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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