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
