exceeding strong.”[1] St. Paul calls him a man of sin, made up as it were of vice and wickedness: “The man of sin, the son of perdition.”[2] In any case he will be a man of the same nature as we, created by God for the same end, and he shall also have sufficient graces and means given him to save his soul, if he only chooses to make use of them. According to the opinion of St. Augustine and St. John Damascene, this wicked man is to be the offspring of adulterous intercourse, and as St. Jerome and St. Gregory maintain, to be born in the Jewish tribe of Dan at Babylon, and to be secretly brought up by people of the lowest kind: sorcerers and witches. It is easy to imagine the kind of training he is likely to get from such teachers.
At first he will deceive the world by hypocrisy. When he comes to man’s estate he will at first conceal his wickedness and craft under a mask of hypocrisy and apparent sanctity; he will be very zealous for the law of Moses, and pretend to despise all earthly things; to be an enemy of idolatry and a lover of the Sacred Scriptures. Although he will privately wallow in all kinds of impurity, he will outwardly condemn adultery and decry it as most criminal; he will be very charitable to the poor; in a word, he will put on such an appearance of virtue that many nations shall desire to have him as their king. Above all, says St. Anthony, he will try to persuade the people that all that the Prophets have said of the Messias is fulfilled in him. Thus he will draw the Jews to his side in crowds, and they will soon look on him and adore him as their long-expected Messias, when they see that he is a sworn enemy of Christ and the Christian law and an upholder of the Jewish law and its ceremonies, and moreover that they can hope to profit by having him in power.
Then he will draw most men after him by gifts and promises. When he shall thus have raised himself to a high position in the world and secured a great number of followers, then this wicked serpent shall commence to spit out his poison and to spread his authority over the world by craft, promises, and force of arms. Besides Turks, heathens, and Jews, he will attract to his standard and subject to his authority countless numbers of Christians. That he will effect first by the riches, honors, dignities, and sensual delights that he will place in the power of all his followers, as the Prophet Daniel says of him: “He shall increase glory and shall give them power over many, and shall divide
