Mahometanism in its Relation to Prophecy/Chapter 1
ON THE USE AND ADVANTAGE OF DIVINE PROPHECY.
Of all the evidences of the truth of revealed religion, there is perhaps not one that holds so important a rank—not even miracles being excepted—as prophecy. That this is so, reason alone must convince us. Who but God can possibly know what is still future? A man well acquainted with history, versed in the experience of the past, or who has studied the hidden depths of human nature, may assuredly form conjectures, more or less probable, of what is likely to happen in the times immediately bordering on his own; for, independently of what is called the Philosophy of History, which may assist him in some slight degree to unravel the mysteries of the future, there is no event of great magnitude which must not have been prepared at least by a series of smaller events, the chain of which he already finds commenced, so that its coming (to use the beautiful expression of our wise poet) "casts its shadow before it."
In this sense the politician, the philosopher, the poet, may be said to prophesy. In this sense, aided, too, no doubt, by the superior craft and experience of evil spirits, as the holy fathers of the Catholic Church abundantly prove, the heathen oracles foretold, and foretold correctly, many events.
But who does not see the infinite difference between such predictions as these, whether natural or preter-natural, and the prophecies of our Sacred Scriptures?—prophecies which, made many thousand years ago, foretell the events which are to take place even to the consummation of the world?—prophecies, which foretell what the free will of unborn millions in the remotest ages was foreseen by the mind of God as certain to accomplish?—prophecies, in fine, which not only lay bare the future, but reveal the great and glorious purposes of the Almighty, which He intended to bring to perfection out of a series of acts having no individual reference the one to the other, nor, indeed, ordained as though by a fate inconsistent with the freedom of the human will; but which, foreseen by Him as the certain result of that very free will of which He was the Author and Creator, were made subservient by Him to that unity of gracious purpose which could never appear so glorious as when triumphing over a chaos that must have baffled the highest created intelligence, nor so beneficent as when turning the abuses of man's freedom at once to the benefit of the creature so abusing it, and to the greatest glory of the Creator so offended and so dishonoured by it?
Truly, when we contemplate the wonderful prophecies of our Sacred Scriptures, we may well exclaim, in the devout and humble language of St. Paul, "O ! the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how incomprehensible are His judgements, and His ways past finding out!"—(Romans xi. 33.)
But if we may say of these Divine prophecies that they perhaps constitute the strongest evidence of the truth of that revelation of which they form a part, and in which they hold so conspicuous a place, it is no less true that their fulfilment, manifested by the event, is their only certain and satisfactory expositor. This truth is beautifully expressed by the prince of the apostles, the glorious St. Peter : "We have also a more sure word of prophecy, to which ye do well to give heed, as unto a light shining in a dark place, until the day shine forth" (2 Peter i. 19–21); that is, until the event manifest its fulfilment; while we learn, from the same words, that the great object of prophecy, separate from that still higher one of serving as an evidence of revelation, is "to shine as a light in a dark place;" or, in other words, to enable the Christian to read the designs of God on the dark face of events.
Amongst all the various events foretold by the prophecies of God, there are two which appear to hold a place conspicuous amongst all the rest, and to which the others hold a subordinate relation : the first of these is the coming of the Messiah, that is, the Christ; the second is the coming of the Antichrist. Of these two great events we may say, that as, on the one hand, Almighty God has made every human event subservient to His great and glorious designs, manifested and accomplished in the incarnation of his Son, that is, in the coming of Christ; so, on the other, man's great enemy, Satan, has endeavoured to render the same subservient to that grand scheme which he devised to counteract the work of God, namely, the coming of Antichrist. Hence the whole history of the human race may be compared to a sublime epic, in which the contending powers are, in the invisible world, Almighty God with His blessed angels against Satan and the rebel angels; in the visible world, Christ and Antichrist; whilst the opposite camps are the city of God (that is, the Holy Catholic Church) on the one hand, and the city of the devil (that is, fallen human nature warring against God) on the other. And as Almighty God, the Supreme Disposer of human events, turns all to the glory of His cause, that is, the good of His Holy Church, consisting as it does of redeemed and regenerate men purchased by the blood of Christ, so that the whole chain of Divine acts is, as it were, riveted to that single Divine purpose, namely, the coming of Christ, and the establishment of His spiritual kingdom; so the devil, in all his contradictory plans and schemes, would at least make the wickedness of all of them subservient to the single diabolical purpose meditated in the coming of Antichrist, and the establishment of his iniquitous kingdom.
It would seem that the blessed apostle St. John viewed Antichrist in this light, when in his first epistle he thus wrote : "Little children, this is the last hour : and like as ye have heard that Antichrist is to come, even so now (I tell you) there are already many Antichrists." (1 John ii. 18.) That is, besides the general evil and malice meditated by Satan in the acts to which he tempted and directed all his agents and instruments, from the foundation of the world, he had an especial reference to the coming of Antichrist, as the full development of all his designs: so that, as all the holy personages who went before Christ, were so many types of Christ ; so, in like manner, all the servants of Satan who were to precede Antichrist, were so many types of him, and might therefore be termed, not inappropriately, so many Antichrists, as the apostle said: " There are already many Antichrists."
It is the object of the present treatise to endeavour, humbly treading in the footsteps of the earliest fathers and doctors of the Holy Catholic Church, to unfold the prophecies of God, which relate to this masterpiece of Satanic malice and craft, manifested in the coming of Antichrist.