In this chapter we have the fullest exhibition of the great antichristian confederacy, spoken of by prophets and apostles, including the “man of sin, to be revealed in his time.”  The component parts of that complex moral person called “Antichrist,” are here graphically portrayed.  The three most prominent features are the two beasts of the sea and of the earth, with the image of the first; or, a tyrannical empire, an apostate church, and the Pope.  To suppose that the Antichrist is a power or moral person distinct from these,—­a “wilful, infidel or atheistical king,” is a mere chimera framed in a learned brain, disordered by antichristian politics.  The chief, if not the only ostensible ground of such hypothesis is the language of our apostle, (1 John ii. 22.) “He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son.”  The sound of the words of Scripture is too often mistaken for the sense.  This is a notable example.  From the words of our Divine Redeemer,—­“My Father is greater than I, Socinians infer the essential inferiority of the Son to the Father.  So in the preceding instance.  The inference is, that the Antichrist is to be known by a doctrinal denial of deity.  But the very name of this enemy of all righteousness, Antichrist, demonstrates his recognition of the existence and office of our Saviour.  For why should he oppose a nonentity?  All scholars are aware that the primary meaning of anti, is substitution. (Matt. xx. 28.) Antichrist usurps Christ’s place in church and state, that he may more successfully oppose his interest.  There is no mystery to the intelligent Christian in the declaration, that men too often “profess that they know God, but in works deny him.”  This explains the fact of Antichrist’s denying the Father and the Son.  Usurping the prerogatives of the Mediator is a practical denial of him,—­of his authority, and by consequence, of the Father who sent him.  “He that acknowledged the Son,” in this sense, “hath the Father also; while it is equally true, in the same sense,—­“whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.” (1 John ii. 23.) Hence it is not true that the Pope is the Antichrist of prophecy, nor the church of Rome, nor both combined; but Daniel’s ten-horned beast,—­John’s seven-headed, ten-horned beast, which are the same:  Daniel’s little horn and John’s beast of the earth, which are the same; together with the image of the first beast:  the Saracenic locusts and Euphratean horsemen;—­all these go to the composition of the Antichrist, the “eastern and western Antichrist,” so identified and familiarly designated by the martyrs and witnesses of Jesus for hundreds of years.  The great family of nations, called “the nations of this world,” (chap. xi. 15;) in unholy alliance with a gentile church; (ch. xi. 2;) these combined, constitute the Antichrist.  They