e
one of the most conclusive signs that the time is not very far distant.
I allude to the present position of the Church of Rome, and I earnestly
hope that God has directed my thoughts in the study of it, and that
whatever in what I may now say is according to His word, may be written
in all our hearts and minds by the teaching of the Holy Ghost.

There are three great historical prophecies, which, in the opinion of the
majority of our best expositors, predict the rise, the progress, and the
fall of the Church of Rome.

The first of these we briefly noticed last Sunday.  It is the prophecy of
the little horn rising amidst the ten horns of the beast, or the Papacy
rising in the midst of that cluster of European kingdoms which succeeded
the power of the undivided Roman Empire.

The second is the prophecy of ‘the man of sin’ in 2 Thess. ii.  And I
cannot forbear the mention of one illustration of a verse in that
prophecy which I saw myself in Rome.  Many people think that the
description in the fourth verse is too strong for Popery: but there is a
curious illustration of it in St. Peter’s.  You may there see what they
call the altar in the usual place at the end of the chancel, and above
it, surrounded by an elaborately decorated reredos, is what is called the
chair of St. Peter, or the Pope’s throne, the seat of Papal power.  On
the altar below, according to their own teaching, is the living person of
the King of Glory, perfect man and perfect God, and in front of that
altar may be seen men worshipping the wafer because they call it God.
But above it is the Pope’s chair, and if he were to occupy it he would
sit there with that which they call God, and worship as God, beneath his
feet.  Can anything be a more exact fulfilment of the words, ‘Exalteth
himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped?’

The third is the prophecy of the woman in Rev. xvii.  The application of
this to the Church of Rome is less disputed than that of either of the
other two, for the seat of the woman is decided by