Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/63

that every evil personage recorded in history is a sort of Antichrist, or type of the great Antichrist, we have scriptural authority for affirming; but if the real Antichrist is to last for only three years and a half, many of his types would be infinitely worse than the great antitype himself. For instance Arius, whose heresy desolated the Church for centuries, must have done much more mischief to the Church and to the souls of men, than any such ephemeral Antichrist ever could do: and what shall we say of the three centuries of Pagan-Roman persecution of the early Church on this theory? Assuredly no persecutor for three literal years and a half could ever rival the accumulated amount of the ten great persecutions enacted all over the earth by the Pagan-Roman emperors. Or what ought we to think of the still greater mischief perpetrated by Mahometanism during the last twelve centuries on such a theory as this? It is evident that if Antichrist be not yet come, and if his continuance is only to be for three literal years and a half, instead of being the principal incarnation of evil, to which prophecy points, he would be vastly inferior in this respect to what were merely types and shadows of what he was to be. It is therefore obvious to us, that either some enduring form of evil, already recorded in history, must be the