“The answer to this inquiry demands several preliminary observations.

(i) It is necessary to admit, in all its force, the antecedent improbability, according to the natural course of thought, of the speedy and general obscuration of the great light of truth kindled by God for the salvation of the world. The mind, left to its own auguries of the probable future of early Christianity, would unquestionably have foretold the universal diffusion and solid establishment of apostolic doctrine. If heresies and errors arose, they would doubtless be swept away before the triumph of truth. An infallible and triumphant Popedom, or an infallible and triumphant Church, are the expressions of all that seems at first view probable in the history of a Divine Revelation.

But the true philosophy in religion, as in other sciences, is founded on induction of facts. It consisted with the Divine wisdom to permit first of all of the corruption of patriarchal theology into pantheism and world-wide idolatry. The worship of false gods, and the adoration of images, representing grotesque phantasies of the imagination, has been the religion of Asia, of Europe, and Africa, almost since the beginning of their settlement. When Moses had been commissioned to found a newtheocratic institution, apostasy commenced very soon after his death. The history of Israel is the history of a series of reforms following on a series of apostasies to idolatry, ending with a final subsidence of nearly all the ablest minds into Pharisaic superstition, or the materialism of the Sadducees.

Sophronius, who had been patriarch of Jerusalem in the beginning of the century, was read, in which, after reciting his faith in the Trinity, he proceeds to speak of the Incarnation ; next of the errors of Nestorius and Apollinaris; and ends by declaring the true faith to be that 'men's souls have not a natural immortality; it is the gift of God that they receive the giant of immortality and incorruptibility.'”

Patristic apologists like to make much about matter being “God bearing”. This is the theological basis for the pantheism that White is getting at.  

427-431

“The preceding history of the world, therefore, did not throw so encouraging a light a priori on the future of Christianity as might be at first supposed. On the contrary, to any one who sincerely believed in the combined action of a corrupt humanity, and of a host of infernal spirits still battling against God, the probability of an uncorrupted Christianity was reduced to a shadowy expectation. The experience of past ages would render it the most wonderful of all miracles, if Christianity escaped the universal tendency to perversion.

But we are not left to hesitate between such conflicting probabilities. The ancient prophets foretold a general apostasy from the faith of Christ (Dan.* vii., xi.). Christ and His apostles stedfastly enforced on their disciples the same lamentable prediction. Every one of the apostles left the world warning the churches of some Power of Darkness which was soon to arise, and to found its throne in Christendom on the basis of a widely corrupted doctrine. The elements of disorder were, they affirmed, in action already. '754* mystery, or secret doctrine, of lawlessness doth already work' (2 Thess. ii.). 'There shall be false prophets, and many shall follow their pernicious ways '(2 Peter ii.). 'The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and shall turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside unto fables' (2 Tim. iv. 3). '0f your own selves shall men arise, speaking eorrupt things' (Acts xx. 30).

[FN] * I venture to quote this book as Daniel's, because the modern objections have been effectively answered by Dr. Pusey in his learned work on this prophet, and by Mr. Birks in his best work, The Elements of Prophecy. In the same manner we adhere in the following pages to the ancient interpretation of these and other predictions respecting the rise and domination of an evil spiritual and temporal power at Rome, lamenting only that the theologians of the Anglican branch, assisted by some extreme and less learned sects of 'Plymouth Brethren,' [Modern day dispensationalists] have laboured so hard of late years to shake the faith of Protestants in that well-established application of the prophecies. Modem Rome is grateful to the English and the Germans who have striven to prove that she is not the Babylon of the Apocalypse. But the Italian people seem to be unaffected by these arguments. As soon as they become Reformed, they apply with immense vigour this weapon with which the Scripture supplies them, rivalling the German and old English Reformers themselves in the zeal with which they hold up the mirror of the Book of Revelation before the bedizened face of the ' Mother of Harlots,' and Mistress of all Churches. The writings of Bishop Wordsworth are also to be commended as efficient replies to the modem Anglican doctrine on the Apocalypse.

The errors of this apostasy had their origin, not in the Eternal City, but in the human heart. The evil principles which were to lay the foundation for the throne of the great Antichrist were all at work in the first stage of Christianity. Human nature was commencing then the process of degradation, through which the spiritual would become materialised, and the divine be transmuted into the diabolical. The spirit of self-glorification and formality, the spirit of a false mystical philosophy, the ambitious and greedy sacerdotal spirit, had already revealed themselves in the churches —and these, coalescing with the remainders of paganism, established the reign of the powers of darkness. Christianity descended from the spiritual region into the region of material forms. Instead of churches of living stones, there were ' churches ' of dead stones, and of marble. Instead of regeneration by the truth and the Spirit, men were offered baptismal regeneration. For eating and drinking by faith the body and blood of Christ, there was substituted the gross dogma of transubstantiation. Instead of faith, there was the endless repetition of an incredible 'creed, in a foreign tongue; instead of spiritual discipline, oppressive ecclesiastical courts; instead of a royal priesthood of God's elect, a hierarchy, whose alleged succession from the apostles consisted in an unbroken series of laying on of hands. In place of the beautiful garments of Christian piety, this priesthood was arrayed in purple and gold; and ' fine linen' literally became the ' righteousness of saints.' Instead of Christ's Gospel, there was ecclesiastical law; money effected the work of grace, and church decoration shone in the room of holiness. Music filled the place of moral harmony, and compensated for the absence of 'melody in the heart unto the Lord.' Finally, a visible Antichrist and his satellites usurped the honours due to the 'High Priest of our Profession,' and pretended to regulate the destinies of souls departed in that region whose keys are possessed by the Invisible Potentate alone.

Dr. J. H. Newman excellently described it a very few years before he seceded, in these words :

'The spirit of old Rome has risen in its former place, and has evidenced its identity by its works. It has possessed the Church there planted, as an Evil

Spirit might seize the demoniacs of primitive times, and makes her speak words which are not her own. In the corrupt papal system we have the very cruelty, the craft, and the ambition of the Republic; its cruelty in its unsparing sacrifice of the happiness and virtue of individuals to a phantom of public expediency, in its forced celibacy within, and its persecutions without ; its craft in its falsehoods, its deceitful deeds, and lying words ; and its grasping ambition in the very structure of its policy, in its assumption of universal dominion ; old Home is still alive ; nowhere have its eagles lighted, but it still claims the sovereignty under another pretence.'—Archbishop Whatcly's Cautions for the Times, p. 240.

Thus was 'that Wicked One revealed, the Son of Perdition,' who is characterised, in the prophecies, by his intelligence, audacity, and political power in connection with the Roman Empire; by his blasphemies against Supreme Goodness, Holiness, and Authority; by his long persecutions against 'the saints of the Most High;' by his bold alteration of Divine Institutions; by his assumption of the right to legislate in opposition to the distinct decrees of the Deity; by his profane reception of honours due to Heaven alone, as he 'sitteth in the temple of God;' by his disregard of the gods of his Pagan forefathers, and of the conjugal instincts of humanity; by his boundless self-exaltation, yet 'voluntary humility in the worshipping of angels,' and 'honouring of a foreign deity,' with the magnificence of a 'gay religion full of pomp and gold.'

More than twelve hundred years have now passed since the days of Boniface, and ' the horns,' or civil Powers, have at length begun, according to the prediction, to 'hate the Whore'; but those baleful eyes of the Man of Sin still fascinate the nations with their soul-consuming beams. That forehead, beaten by the storms of centuries, and scarred with the lightnings that have impatiently hovered over it for ages, still lifts its presumptuous front aloft above the world's mightiest thrones. That voice of the pontifical Magician, as of subterranean thunder, still overawes adoring millions, still sends up to heaven its 'blasphemies against the God of gods': and the tyrant will 'prosper until the indignation' against Israel be accomplished (Dan. xi. 36).

But 'the adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; out of heaven shall He thunder upon them.' Of this Man of Sin,'—' the son of perdition,'—the perpetual holder of the title and apostolate of Judas, who 'betrayed the Son of Man with a kiss,—it is foretold, that the Lord shall 'consume him with the spirit of His mouth, and destroy him by the brightness of His coming.' 'And if any man shall worship the Beast or his Image, or receive his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.'

The history of the ante-Nicene ages, notwithstanding their heroic character, offers a convincing comment on the truth of the apostolic predictions. We may not consult as a final authority the post-apostolic Church on the interpretation of the holy writings. Holding these writings in our own hands, we can understand for ourselves, at least as well as they, what Christ and the apostles taught . And they taught something exceedingly different from the larger part of ante-Nicene Christianity. We harbour no irreverent design of questioning the illustrious virtue of that age of martyrdom; but it is patent to students of Scripture that the men of those centuries were better trained athletes in fasting, and in dying for Christ, than they were in maintaining while alive the evangelic doctrine against corruption. Let any one peruse S. Paul's Epistle to the Romans or the circular epistle inscribed to the ' Ephesians,' or the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, and then, if competently informed in the Christian literature of the three centuries following, tell us how often we shall find a page of similar doctrine on the Atonement, or on Justification in Christ, or on the way of a sinful man's 'access with boldness unto the holiest by the blood of Jesus ;' or a page of similarly devout and loving meditation on the characteristics of family piety? In reading the ante-Nicene Fathers you feel as if you were breathing an atmosphere very different from that of the New Testament. Compare again S. John's Gospel, or Epistles, or S. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, with the fierce ascetic diatribes of Tertullian, the incredible futility of much that remains even of Justin, the lame interpretations of Origen and Clement.

The truth unhappily is, that these saintly men had either forgotten, or never learned, some of the principal peculiarities of Christ's religion, and were driving hard along the road of x falsely philosophic and thence ascetic superstition. If, then, the earliest ages, in their best remains, offer so meagre a representation of the apostolic gospel in its faith, joy, and love, why shall we doubt the possibility of a rapid oblivion of other closely connected 'peculiarities ' of the faith of Jesus Christ, specially those which were the most characteristic of it?”

431-432

“This opinion, so natural in its auguries, proceeds on inattention to the facts of religious history. Even in the lifetime of the apostles, each church was prevented from lapsing into apostasy only by the watchful care of the founders. All the churches of Galatia had apparently abandoned true Christianity within a short space from their foundation; they had received 'another gospel.' The Corinthians had allowed the entrance even of Sadducean disbelievers in a future state and a resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. xv. 12). Nearly all the apostolic epistles are warnings against prevailing errors.

The apocalyptic addresses of Christ to the 'Seven Churches of Asia' indicate, in the majority, exposure to influences which were well-nigh fatal to their faith.

Every century of Christian history teaches the lesson that not only are separate communities subject to rapid changes of belief and feeling, through the influence of leading minds; but that currents of thought sweep, like pestilential gales, over wide areas of Christendom, poisoning the ideas of men in millions, in a comparatively small number of years. Let any one review the history of English religious thought during the present century, or even during the last twenty-five years.”

433

“We discern the influence of similar motives at work around us in the present age. The last lesson that Christians learn is the strength of 'the weakness of God'—the saving power of that doctrine which men count ' foolishness '—the irresistible moral force that dwells in unadulterated Christianity. All this will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me, has been the tempter's seductive proposal in every age. The Church of the second century accepted the offer which her Lord had declined. She 'showed her treasures to the ambassadors from Babylon,' and learned their speech; she 'went down to Egypt for help,' and 'leaned not on the Lord of Hosts;' she 'trafficked with Javan,' and 'committed fornication with Tyre and Sidon;' she received her doctrine from the ascetic heathenism of the Athenian and Alexandrian philosophies, rather than from the 'unlearned' but inspired apostles of the Incarnate Word.

And thus it came to pass that every convert from Judaism brought with him into the Church some remnant of the 'oral law;' the Pharisee-Rabbins of that day, on embracing Christianity, too often 'betrayed the Son of man with a kiss.' They came not to learn of the Word of Life, but to teach Christianity to sanction a qualified Judaism. The Greek and Asiatic philosophers naturally imitated so respectable an example. They certainly believed in Christ, but many of the ablest of them believed, as Simon Magus did, with a view to power and profit; and the last thing they would submit to do was to adopt the 'degrading' dogma of man's dependence for immortal life on 'Jesus of Nazareth.'

Accordingly every year of growing apostasy witnessed the decline of the primitive peculiarity which attributed our life eternal to the Incarnation. The religion of Redemption, in the person of Christ and His apostles, had descended into a world where some doctrine of man's natural immortality, and generally of his pre-existencc, was the established opinion of nearly all who had any belief on the subject of a future state.”