it is for that they set kingdoms, crowns, principalities, places, preferments, sacraments, pardons, prayers, indulgences, liberty, yea, and souls and bodies of men, women, and children, to sale; yea, it is for this that they have invented so many places, offices, names, titles, orders, vows, etc.:  it is to get money, to rob countries, that they may make their nests on high.  And indeed they have done it, to the amazement of all the world.  They are clambered up above kings and princes and emperors; they wear the triple crown; they have made kings bow at their feet, and emperors stand barefoot at their gates; they have kicked the crowns of princes from their heads, and set them on again with their toes.  Thus their covetousness hath set them on high, even above the suns, moons, and stars of this world:  but to what end? that they may be cast down to hell.

Antichrist must be destroyed, because he stands in the way of the setting up of the kingdom of Christ in the world.  Many princes were in Edom before there was a king in Israel; and Christ has suffered antichrist to set up before him; and he stands in Christ’s way, and has so overspread the world in all places with that which is directly contrary to him, that he cannot set up his kingdom until that which is antichrist’s is tumbled down to the ground.  Even as a man whose ground is full of thorns and briars and weeds, cannot sow in expectation of a crop, until he hath removed them.  And these seeds has antichrist sown where the kingdom of Christ should stand.

When God came from Egypt with his people to set up his kingdom in Canaan, he cast out the heathen before them, in order thereunto:  “Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it.”  Wherefore antichrist must be removed and destroyed for this; for antichrist is in flat opposition to Christ, as Tibni was to Omri; wherefore antichrist must die.

The reason is, because Christ’s kingdom shall be peaceable, without molestation, and glorious without the fumes and fogs of antichristian darkness.  Because also, as the world has seen the manner of the reign of antichrist, and how tyrannical and outrageous a kingdom his is; so they shall see the reign of Christ by his word and Spirit in his people, how peaceable, how fruitful in blessedness and prosperity his kingdom is.  And hence it is, that God purposes to bury antichrist before he sets glory in the land of the living; as also you read in the book of Revelation, for there you find the kingdom of antichrist was destroyed before the new Jerusalem was set up.  When men intend to build a new house, if in the place where the old one stood, they first pull down the old one and raze the foundation, and then they begin their new.  Now God, as I said, will have his primitive church-state set up in this world, even where antichrist has set up; wherefore, in order to this, antichrist must be pulled down, stick and stone; and then they that live to see it, will behold the new Jerusalem come down from heaven, as a bride adorned for her husband.