'Only he who now holds, let him hold, until he be taken out of the way; and then shall be revealed that wicked one, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the spirit of His mouth, and shall bring to nothing by the shining of His presence him whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying wonders, and in all deceit of iniquity unto those who perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And therefore God shall send them a working of error, that they should believe a lie, and that all may be judged who believed not the truth, but consented to iniquity.'
There is no doubt to anyone that he said these things concerning Antichrist, and that the day of judgment (for this he calls the day of the Lord) shall not come, unless that one first come whom he calls the apostate—assuredly, apostate from the Lord God. And if this can rightly be said of all the ungodly, how much more of this one! But in what temple of God he shall sit is uncertain: whether in that ruin of the temple which was built by King Solomon, or rather in the Church. For the apostle would not call the temple of some idol or demon the temple of God. Hence some hold that not the prince himself alone, but in a certain manner his whole body—that is, the multitude of men pertaining to him, together with their prince himself—is to be understood as Antichrist in this passage;
and they think it is more correctly rendered even in Latin, as it stands in the Greek, not 'in the temple of God,' but 'that he sit unto the temple of God,' as though he himself were the temple of God, which is the Church; just as we say: 'He sits as a friend,' that is, as it were a friend, or whatever else is wont to be said by this manner of speech. But as for what he says: 'And now you know what withholds'—that is, what is the cause of delay, why there is a postponement of his being revealed in his own time—'you know': since he said that they knew, he was unwilling to say this openly. And therefore we, who do not know what they knew, desire to attain with labour to that which the apostle meant, and are not able; especially because those things too which he added make this meaning more obscure. For what is: 'For the mystery of iniquity already works.'
'Only he who now holds, let him hold, until he be taken out of the way; and then shall be revealed that wicked one'? I frankly confess that I do not know what he meant. Nevertheless, I will not keep silent about the conjectures of men which I have been able either to hear or to read. Some think that this was said concerning the Roman empire, and that for this reason the apostle Paul was unwilling to write it openly, lest, forsooth, he should incur the charge of having wished ill to the Roman empire, since it was hoped to be eternal; so that by what he said, 'For the mystery of iniquity already works,' he wished Nero to be understood, whose deeds already seemed like those of Antichrist. Hence some suspect that Nero himself shall rise again and be the future Antichrist;
but others think that he was not even slain, but rather withdrawn, so that he was thought to be slain, and that he is being kept alive in secret, in the vigor of that very age in which he was when he was believed to be extinguished, until in his own time he shall be revealed and restored to the kingdom. But the presumption of those who thus opine is greatly astonishing to me. That, however, which the apostle says: 'Only he who now holds, let him hold, until he be taken out of the way,' is not absurdly believed to be said of the Roman empire itself, as though it were said: 'Only let him who now reigns reign, until he be taken out of the way'—that is, be removed out of the way. 'And then shall be revealed that wicked one,' whom none doubts to signify Antichrist. But others hold that even what he says:
'You know what withholds' and that 'the mystery of iniquity works,' they think was said only of the evil and false ones who are in the Church, until they attain to such a number as may make a great people for Antichrist; and that this is the mystery of iniquity, because it seems hidden; and that the apostle exhorts the faithful to persevere tenaciously in the faith which they hold, by saying: 'Only he who now holds, let him hold, until he be taken out of the way'—that is, until the mystery of iniquity, which is now hidden, go out from the midst of the Church. For to this very mystery they judge that to pertain which John the evangelist says in his epistle: 'Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have arisen;
whence we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would assuredly have remained with us.' As therefore before the end, in this hour which John calls the last, they say, many heretics went out from the midst of the Church, whom he calls many antichrists: so shall all then go out thence who shall pertain not to Christ, but to that last Antichrist, and then shall he be revealed. One therefore conjectures the obscure words of the apostle in one way, another in another; yet that which he undoubtedly said is not doubtful: Christ shall not come to judge the living and the dead, unless first His adversary Antichrist shall have come to seduce those who are dead in soul;
although it already pertains to the hidden judgment of God that they shall be seduced by him. For his presence, as has been said, shall be 'according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying wonders, and in all deceit of iniquity unto those who perish.' For then shall Satan be loosed, and through that Antichrist shall he work in all his power, marvelously indeed, but mendaciously.
It is wont to be doubted whether they are for this reason called signs and wonders of a lie, because he shall deceive mortal senses through phantasms, so that he may seem to do what he does not do; or because those very wonders, even if they shall be true wonders, shall draw to a lie those who shall believe that they could not have been done except divinely, being ignorant of the power of the devil—especially when he shall have received power so great as he never had. For when fire fell from heaven and consumed at one stroke so great a household of holy Job together with so great flocks of cattle, and a whirlwind rushing in and casting down the house slew his sons, these were not phantasms; yet they were the works of Satan, to whom God had given this power.
For what reason, then, these are called wonders and signs of a lie shall rather appear at that time. But for whichever of these reasons it may have been said, they shall be seduced by those signs and wonders who shall deserve to be seduced, 'because,' he says, 'they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.' Nor did the apostle hesitate to add and say: 'Therefore God shall send them a working of error, that they should believe a lie.' For God shall send it, because God shall permit the devil to do these things—He Himself by a just judgment, although the other does it by an iniquitous and malignant counsel. 'That all may be judged,' he says, 'who believed not the truth, but consented to iniquity.' Accordingly, being judged they shall be seduced, and being seduced they shall be judged.
But being judged they shall be seduced by those judgments of God, secretly just, justly secret, by which He has never ceased to judge from the beginning of the sin of the rational creature; and being seduced they shall be judged by that last and manifest judgment through Christ Jesus, who shall judge most justly, having been judged most unjustly. [XX] But here the apostle was silent about the resurrection of the dead; yet, writing to the same people in his first epistle, he says: 'We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who sleep, that you sorrow not, even as the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus.'
'For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep before; for the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a command, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive, who remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet Christ in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.' These apostolic words most clearly show that there shall be a resurrection of the dead when Christ shall come, assuredly to judge the living and the dead.
But it is wont to be asked whether those whom Christ shall find here alive—in whose person the apostle transfigured both himself and those who then lived with him—shall never at all die, or whether at that very point of time in which, together with those rising again, they shall be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, they shall pass to immortality through death with wondrous swiftness. For it must not be said to be impossible that, while they are carried on high through the air, in that interval they should both die and come to life again. For as to what he says: 'And so shall we ever be with the Lord,' it is not to be taken as though he said that we shall ever remain in the air with the Lord; because He Himself assuredly shall not remain there, since coming He is about to pass on;
for one goes to meet Him as He comes, not as He remains; but we shall be with the Lord in this sense—namely, we shall be so, having everlasting bodies, wherever we shall be with Him. And to this sense, by which we may suppose that even those whom the Lord shall find here alive shall, in that same brief interval, both suffer death and receive immortality, the apostle himself seems to press us, where he says: 'In Christ shall all be made alive'; while in another place, speaking of that very resurrection of bodies, he says: 'That which you sow is not made alive, except it die.' How then shall those whom Christ shall find here living be made alive in Him through immortality, even if they do not die, since we see that it was said for this reason: 'That which you sow is not made alive, except it die'?
Or if we rightly say that none are sown save those bodies of men which, by dying, in some manner return to the earth (even as that sentence stands, divinely pronounced against the transgressor, the father of the human race: 'Earth you are, and to earth you shall go'): it must be confessed that those whom Christ, when He comes, shall find not yet departed from their bodies, are bound neither by these words of the apostle nor by those from Genesis; since, caught up on high in the clouds, they are assuredly not sown, because they neither go into the earth nor return to it, whether they experience no death at all or die for a little while in the air. But again another difficulty arises from what the same apostle said, when he spoke to the Corinthians concerning the resurrection of bodies: 'We shall all rise,' or as other manuscripts have it:
'We shall all sleep.' Since therefore neither can a resurrection take place unless death has preceded, nor can we understand 'sleeping' in that place except as death: how shall all either sleep or rise, if so many, whom Christ shall find in the body, shall neither sleep nor rise? If therefore we shall have believed that the saints who shall be found living at Christ's coming, and shall be caught up to meet Him, in that same rapture shall go forth out of mortal bodies and presently return to the same made immortal, we shall suffer no straits in the words of the apostle, whether where he says: 'That which you sow is not made alive, except it die,' or where he says: 'We shall all rise,' or: 'We shall all sleep';
because those too shall not be made alive through immortality, unless, however briefly, they nevertheless die beforehand; and by this they shall not be strangers to the resurrection, which they precede by a sleep, however most brief, yet not none at all. But why should it seem incredible to us that that multitude of bodies should in a certain manner be sown in the air, and there straightway revive immortally and incorruptibly, since we believe what that same apostle most openly says—that the resurrection shall be in the twinkling of an eye, and that the dust of the most ancient corpses shall return into members destined to live without end, with such ease and with a swiftness so beyond all reckoning? Nor let us think that from that sentence, in which it was said to man:
'Earth you are, and to earth you shall go,' those saints shall be exempt from it, if the bodies of them dying shall not fall back into the earth, but, as they shall die in that very rapture, so also shall rise, while they are borne through the air. For 'to earth you shall go' is: 'to this you shall go, life being lost, which you were before you took up life'; that is, you shall be this when bereft of soul, which you were before you were ensouled (for God breathed into the face of the earth the breath of life, when man was made a living soul); as though it were said: 'Earth you are ensouled, which you were not; earth you shall be, soulless, as you were'—which all bodies of the dead are even before they putrefy; which those too shall be, if they shall die, wherever they die, when they lack life, which they are immediately to receive back.
So therefore shall they go into the earth, because from living men they shall become earth, in the same manner as 'it goes into ashes' which becomes ash; 'it goes into age' which becomes old; 'it goes into a potsherd' which from clay becomes a potsherd; and a thousand other things we speak thus. But in what manner it shall come to pass—which now, according to the strength of our poor little reasoning, we somehow conjecture—shall rather be, so that we may be able to know it, at that time. For the future resurrection of the dead, and that in the flesh, when Christ shall come to judge the living and the dead, we must, if we wish to be Christians, believe; but not for this reason is our faith empty concerning this matter, if we are not able perfectly to comprehend in what manner it shall be.
But now, as we promised above, we ought to show what the ancient prophetic books also have foretold concerning this last judgment of God, as much as shall seem sufficient; which things, as I think, it will not be necessary to treat and expound with so much delay, if the reader shall have taken care to be aided by those matters which we have set forth beforehand. [XXI] The prophet Isaiah says: 'The dead shall rise, and those who were in the tombs shall rise again, and all who are in the earth shall rejoice; for the dew which is from thee is health to them; but the earth of the ungodly shall fall.' All that former part pertains to the resurrection of the blessed. But as for what he says: 'But the earth of the ungodly shall fall,' it is well understood to be said:
'But the bodies of the ungodly the ruin of damnation shall receive.' Further, if we should wish to look more carefully and distinctly at what was said concerning the resurrection of the good, that which was said—'The dead shall rise'—is to be referred to the first resurrection; but that which follows—'And those who were in the tombs shall rise again'—to the second. And if we should further inquire about those saints too whom the Lord shall find here alive, to them will fittingly be assigned what he added: 'And all who are in the earth shall rejoice; for the dew which is from thee is health to them.' By 'health' in this place we most rightly understand immortality; for that is the fullest health which is not restored by nourishments as by daily medicines.
Likewise concerning the day of judgment, first giving hope to the good, then terrifying the wicked, the same prophet speaks thus: 'Thus says the Lord: Behold, I turn toward them as a river of peace, and as a torrent flooding the glory of the nations. Their children shall be carried upon the shoulders, and shall be comforted upon the knees. As one whom a mother comforts, so will I comfort you; and in Jerusalem you shall be comforted, and you shall see, and your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall spring up as the grass. And the hand of the Lord shall be known to those who worship Him, and He shall threaten the defiant. For behold, the Lord shall come as fire, and as a tempest His chariots, to render vengeance in indignation and devastation in the flame of fire.'
'For by the fire of the Lord shall all the earth be judged, and by His sword all flesh; many shall be slain by the Lord.' In the promise to the good, by 'the river of peace' we ought assuredly to understand the abundance of that peace than which none can be greater. With this we shall in the end be watered; concerning which we have spoken abundantly in the preceding book. He says that this river turns itself toward those to whom He promises so great a blessedness, so that we may understand that in that region of felicity which is in the heavens all things are satisfied by this river; but because peace of incorruption and immortality shall flow thence even into earthly bodies, therefore He said that this river turns itself, so that from the higher regions it may in a certain manner flood even the lower, and render men equal to the angels.
Let us understand Jerusalem too—not that one which serves with her children, but our free mother, according to the apostle, eternal in the heavens. There, after the labors of mortal hardships and cares, we shall be comforted, as her little ones carried on shoulders and knees. For that unwonted blessedness shall receive us, raw and new as we are, with most gentle aids. There we shall see, and our heart shall rejoice. Nor did he express what we shall see; but what save God? that the evangelical promise may be fulfilled in us: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,' and all those things which we now do not see, but, believing, according to the measure of human capacity, we conceive far less than they are and incomparably so.
'And you shall see,' he says, 'and your heart shall rejoice.' Here you believe, there you shall see. But because he said: 'And your heart shall rejoice,' lest we should think that those good things of Jerusalem pertain only to our spirit: 'And your bones,' he says, 'shall spring up as the grass'; whereby he touched upon the resurrection of bodies, as though rendering what he had not said; for it shall not come to pass when we shall see, but when it shall have been done we shall see. For concerning the new heaven and new earth he had already said above, while he set forth often and in manifold ways those things which are promised to the saints in the end. 'There shall be,' he says, 'a new heaven and a new earth, and they shall not be mindful of the former things, nor shall it ascend into their heart, but they shall find joy and exultation in it.'
'Behold, I make Jerusalem an exultation, and my people a joy; and I will exult in Jerusalem, and rejoice in my people; and there shall no more be heard in her the voice of weeping,' and the rest, which certain persons endeavor to refer to those carnal thousand years. For tropical expressions are, after the prophetic manner, mingled with proper ones, so that the sober intention may arrive at the spiritual understanding with a certain useful and wholesome labor; whereas carnal sloth, or the tardiness of an untutored and unexercised mind, content with the surface of the letter, thinks that nothing is to be sought within. Let these things which I have said concerning the prophetic words that are written before this passage suffice. But in this passage, from which we digressed to those things, when he had said:
'And your bones shall spring up as the grass,' in order to show that he was now recalling the resurrection of the flesh indeed, but nevertheless of the good, he added: 'And the hand of the Lord shall be known to those who worship Him.' What is this but the hand of Him who distinguishes His worshipers from His despisers? Concerning whom, weaving what follows, he says: 'And He shall threaten the defiant,' or, as another translator says, 'the unbelieving.' Nor shall He then threaten, but the things which are now spoken threateningly shall then be effectually fulfilled. 'For behold,' he says, 'the Lord shall come as fire, and as a tempest His chariots, to render vengeance in indignation and devastation in the flame of fire. For by the fire of the Lord shall all the earth be judged, and by His sword all flesh; many shall be slain by the Lord.'
Whether by fire or by tempest or by sword, he signifies the penalty of the judgment; since indeed he says that the Lord Himself shall come as it were as fire—assuredly to those to whom His coming shall be penal. But His chariots (for they are spoken of in the plural) we not unfittingly understand to be the angelic ministries. But as for what he says—that all the earth and all flesh are judged in His fire and sword—let us not here understand the spiritual and the saints, but the earthly and the carnal, of whom it is said: 'Those who mind earthly things,' and: 'To be wise according to the flesh is death'; and such as are altogether called flesh by the Lord, where He says: 'My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh.' But as for what is here set down:
'Many shall be slain by the Lord,' by this wound the second death shall come to pass. Fire indeed, and sword, and wound, can also be taken in a good sense. For the Lord too said that He willed to send fire upon the world, and there were seen by them cloven tongues as of fire when the Holy Spirit came; and: 'I came not,' says the same Lord, 'to send peace upon the earth, but a sword'; and Scripture calls the word of God a sword twice-sharpened, on account of the double edge of the two testaments; and in the Song of Songs holy Church says that she is wounded by love, as though shot by the impulse of love. But here, when we read or hear that the Lord shall come as an avenger, it is clear in what manner these things are to be understood.
Then, having briefly recalled those who shall be consumed through this judgment, under the figure of the foods forbidden in the old law, from which they did not abstain—signifying sinners and the ungodly—he recapitulates from the beginning the grace of the New Testament, leading it on from the first coming of the Savior down to the last judgment, of which we now treat, and thus ending his discourse. For he relates that the Lord says He is coming to gather all nations, and that they shall come and see His glory. For all, as the apostle says, have sinned and lack the glory of God. And He says that He will leave upon them signs, which, marveling at, they may assuredly believe in Him;
and that from among them He would send forth the saved into diverse nations and far-off islands, which had not heard His name nor seen His glory; and that these would proclaim His glory among the nations and bring in the brethren of those to whom He was speaking, that is, the brethren of the elect Israelites, in the faith, under God the Father; and that they would bring, out of all nations, an offering to the Lord upon beasts of burden and vehicles (which beasts and vehicles are rightly understood to be the divine helps furnished through the ministries of every kind of God's servants, whether angelic or human) into the holy city Jerusalem, which is now spread abroad through the lands among the faithful saints. For where men are divinely helped, there they believe; and where they believe, there they come.
Moreover, the Lord likened them, as it were by a similitude, to the children of Israel offering to Him their sacrifices with psalms in His house—which the Church now does everywhere; and He promised that from among them He would take to Himself priests and Levites, which we see coming to pass no less now. For it is not by descent of flesh and blood, as it was at first according to the order of Aaron; but, as was fitting in the New Testament, where according to the order of Melchizedek the high priest is Christ, we now see priests and Levites chosen according to each one's merit—that which the divine grace has bestowed upon him—men who are to be esteemed not by that title, which the unworthy often attain, but by that sanctity which is not common to the good and the bad alike.
When He had said these things concerning the mercy of God which is now imparted to the Church—things plain and most fully known to us—He also promised the ends to which men shall come through the last judgment, when the separation of the good from the bad has been made, saying through the prophet, or the prophet himself speaking of the Lord: For as the new heaven and the new earth shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name stand, and there shall be month out of month and sabbath out of sabbath. All flesh shall come to worship before me in Jerusalem, saith the Lord; and they shall go forth and see the members of the men who have transgressed against me. Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh.
At this point this prophet ended his book, at the point where the world shall be ended. Some indeed have not rendered it 'the members of men,' but 'the corpses of the men,' signifying by the word 'corpses' the manifest punishment of the bodies; although a corpse is not usually so called except of lifeless flesh, whereas those bodies will be alive—otherwise they could feel no torments—unless perhaps, because they will be the bodies of the dead, that is, of those who shall fall into the second death, they may therefore not absurdly be called corpses as well. Hence comes also that which I have already set down above as spoken by the same prophet: But the land of the impious shall fall. And who does not see that corpses (cadavera) are so named from falling (cadere)? But it is plain that those translators put 'of the men' (virorum) for that which means 'of human beings' (hominum).
For no one is going to say that transgressing women will not be in that punishment; rather, by the more excellent sex—especially the one from which woman was made—both sexes are understood. But, what most pertains to the matter: since of the good also it is said, All flesh shall come, because from every kind of men that people shall consist (for not all men will be there, seeing that in the punishments there will be more)—yet, as I had begun to say, since among the good 'flesh' and among the bad 'members' or 'corpses' are named: assuredly, after the resurrection of the flesh, whose reality is wholly confirmed by these terms for things, that judgment is declared to be coming whereby the good and the bad shall be separated to their several ends. [XXII] But in what manner shall the good go forth to behold the punishments of the wicked?
Are they going to leave those blessed seats by a movement of the body, and proceed to the places of punishment, in order to behold the torments of the wicked with bodily presence? Far from it; rather they shall go forth by knowledge. For by this word it is signified that those who shall be tormented will be without. On which account the Lord also calls those places the outer darkness, to which that entrance is contrary of which it is said to the good servant: Enter into the joy of thy Lord; lest the wicked be thought to enter thither, that they might be known, but rather that toward them the good may as it were go forth by the knowledge whereby they shall know them, because they shall know that which is without. For those who shall be in the punishments shall not know what is done within, in the joy of the Lord;
but those who shall be in that joy shall know what is done outside, in that outer darkness. Therefore it is said, They shall go forth, because even those things which shall be outside them shall assuredly not be hidden from them. For if the prophets could know things not yet done, through this—that God was in the minds of those mortals, however little He was—how shall the immortal saints then not know things already done, when God shall be all in all? Therefore in that blessedness of the saints shall stand the seed and the name; the seed, namely, of which John says: And his seed abideth in him; and the name, of which through this same Isaiah it is said: I will give them an everlasting name.