Arminian Today

This is the final installment of allowing Arminius to share his thoughts with us on the Roman Catholic Church and her pope.  While his words are not as gracious as we might find in today’s Church when dealing with the Catholics, certainly we would agree with Arminius that the Catholic Church needs the gospel of Christ to tear down her traditions that have robed God of His glory and the people of their salvation in Jesus Christ (Romans 1:16-17; Titus 1:16).  

XII. It is demonstrable by the most evident arguments that the name of Antichrist and of The Adversary of God belongs to him. For the apostle ascribes the second of these epithets to him when he calls him “the man of sin, 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, shewing himself that he is God.” (2 Thess. ii, 3-8.) It was he who should arise out of the ruins of the Roman empire, and should occupy its vacant digaity. These expressions, we assert, must be understood, and can be understood, solely respecting the Roman pontiff. But the name of “The Antichrist” belongs to him pre-eminently, whether the particle anti signifies opposition, or the substitution of one thing for another; not indeed such a substitution as is lawfully and legitimately made by Him who has the power of placing things in subordination, but it signifies one by which any man is substituted, either by himself or by another person through force and fraud. For he is both a rival to Christ, and his adversary, when he boasts of himself as the spouse, the head, and the foundation of the church, endowed with plenitude of power; and yet he professes himself to be the vicegerent of Christ, and to perform his functions on earth, for the sake of his own private advantage, but to the manifest injury of the church of Christ. He has, however, considered it necessary to employ the name of Christ as a pretext, that under this sacred name he may obtain that reverence for himself among Christians, which he would be unable to procure if he were openly to profess himself to be either the Christ, or the adversary of Christ.

XIII. Although the Roman pontiff calls himself “the servant of the servants of God,” yet we further assert that he is by way of eminence, That Wicked And Perverse Servant, who, when he saw that his Lord delayed his coming, “began to smite his fellow-servants.” (Matt. 24, 48.) For the Roman pontiff has usurped domination and tyranny, not only over his fellow- servants, the bishops of the church of God, but likewise over emperors and kings themselves, whose authority and dignity he had himself previously acknowledged. To acquire this domination for himself, and still further to augment and establish it, he has employed all kinds of satanic instruments — sophistical hypocrisy, lies, equivocations, perfidy, perjury, violence, poison, and armed forces — so that he may most justly be said to have succeeded that formidable beast which “was like unto a leopard, a bear and a lion,” and by which the Roman empire was prefigured — and to have “had power to give life unto the image of the beast, and to cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast, should be killed.”

XIV. Lastly, though from all these remarks it will readily appear that the Roman pontiff is unworthy of the name of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher, and of universal bishop; (1 Cor. iii, 5; xii, 28; Ephes. iv, 11;) yet, by this single argument, which is deduced from their peculiar attributes and duties, the very same satisfactory conclusions may be rendered evident to all who search the scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, and especially the epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus. (1 Tim. 3; Tit. 1.) Nor will this evasion avail any thing, “that whatever a man does through another who is his vicar or substitute, he seems to do it himself;” for it is Christ alone who makes use of the vicarious aid of these persons as ministers; and the duties which they perform, are such as ought to be discharged by those who are distinguished by those titles. (Gal. i, 7-9.) Therefore, that rightly appertains to the Roman pontiff which God threatens through the prophet Zechariah, that he will raise up a foolish shepherd, and an idol shepherd, who shall devote no attention to the sheep, but who “shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.” (Zech. xi, 15-17.) God grant that the church, being delivered from the frauds and tyranny of Antichrist, may obtain shepherds that may feed her in truth, charity and prudence, to the salvation of the sheep themselves, and to the glory of the chief Shepherd. Amen.

COROLLARIES

I. It is a part of religious wisdom to separate the Court of Rome from the church, in which the pontiff sits. II. The Roman pontiff, even when conducting himself with the greatest propriety, must not be acknowledged by any human or positive right as the head of the church, or the universal bishop; and such acknowledgment of him has hitherto contributed, and does in its very nature contribute, not so much to preserve unity in the church, and to restrain the license of thinking, speaking and teaching differently on the chief articles of religion, as to take away necessary liberty, and that which is agreeable to the word of God, and to introduce a real tyranny.