RAINBOW Brethren beloved, correspondents in the RAINBOW; suffer the word of exhortation. Take care of controversy. Anything that assails and imperils love cannot be good. Therefore watch unto prayer, lest contending for the truth may not be according to the mind and spirit of Christ. "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." W. H. Clifton. ANSWERS TO QUERIES. 1.-2 Cor. v. 3, 6. The apostle did not desire death, but to be clothed upon with immortality, "if so be," if, indeed, it might be so. To be "naked" means to be unclothed, to die. God had "wrought him for the selfsame thing," had taught him to cherish this desire for a glorious immortality. Therefore he was always confident, i.e., courageous in the midst of danger, knowing that he was but a sojourner in the mortal body; "at home in the body" is a wrong translation. He was but a sojourner, and therefore he was brave in the midst of all his trials, but he was so far from being "at home," that he desired—not death, nakedness, but to be clothed upon with immortality, if such a thing might be, that is, if it were the Lord's will to come, when he should be "changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." 2.-1 Tim. ii. 6. A correspondent writes :-" This seems to me only to affirm that a ransom is rectorally provided by God as the Governor, for all. It is sufficient for all; it is the basis of the offer of salvation to all. But through the enmity of man's heart, it is effectual for salvation only to those who are elected." 3.-Eph. i. 10. "It is God's counsel to 'head up all things in the Christ, at the dispensation of the fulness of the times, all things, that are in the heavens and the earth.' The Messiah in millennial days will appear as the centre of all the great bodies that are in heaven and in earth. As an Angel, He will be chief and centre of angels; as the risen Son of God, head of the sons of God, risen from the dead; as the Son of David and of Abraham, head of the Israelites; and as Son of Man, head of the Gentiles. The Saviour does not retain His title, 'the Christ,' after the millennium." 4.—Tit. ii. 11. "For the grace of God, the saving for all men hath appeared. This seems to me to say no more than that the good news opens wide its arms to all. It bears a salvation for all, but a salvation rejected by most." 5.-Col. iii. 10. In or by the knowledge of the gospel we have the means of spiritual renovation. Jesus, to whom we are to be conformed is the Great Pattern there set before us. We think these verses contain more than our correspondent finds in them.-ED. Oct. 1, 1865. "OUR LORD GOD THE POPE." IN an article in the August number on "The Antichrist," by Dr. Kelsall, R.N., in which that gentleman brings forward evidence to show that the Pope is not the Antichrist, occurs the expression, “Though the Pope has been blasphemously called 'Our Lord God the Pope,' he has never exalted himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped." The meaning of these words is obviously just this: "Granted that the Pope is called 'Our Lord God the Pope,' still that does not prove him to be the Antichrist." A Roman Catholic gentleman is greatly offended, and demands our authority for the application of this title to the Pope, and he denies the fact that the Pope has ever received it. For ourselves we should be very glad to accept the denial if we could, for the current belief among Protestants that the Pope is sometimes so denominated, strengthens the mischievous notion that he is the Antichrist. We, however, submit the following, which we wish to be taken for what it is worth, and no more. It is granted at once that the earlier popes or bishops of Rome were not so styled. Protestant writers, who see the man of sin in the popes, do not begin to count them popes till the seventh century. It must be granted that in later days they have had flatterers, who, more or less openly, have proclaimed their divinity. Marcellus, a Venetian prelate, addressed Leo the Tenth as Our shepherd, our physician, in short, a second God upon earth." Cited in Elliott, Hor., Apoc. II. 78. In honour of Sixtus the Fourth, there was inscribed on a triumphal arch the following couplet:-"By the oracle of your voice you manage the reins of the world, and are justly believed to be God on earth." Downham, Antich. p. 310. Now, of course, it may be said in reply, that these words were only the sin of the guilty individual who caused them to be inscribed. We do not know that the Pope saw them, much less that he approved them. The Roman Catholic and the popes are bound only by their standards. Now the creed of Pope Pius defines the position which Romanists give to the Pope :--"I promise and swear true obedience to the bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, prince of the apostles, and vicar of Jesus Christ."—Art. x. : The only passages that we are aware of which may be considered as at all implicating later popes in this impiety is thus treated of by Downham :—“ In the Glos of the Jus Canonicum, the Pope is called in so many words 'Our Lord God.' The passage at large is as follows: To believe that our Lord God the Pope, the institutor of the aforesaid decretal and of the other, could not determine, as he has determined, should be accounted heretical.' And lest some Eudemon should object to us that the word "God" ought to be regarded as an error of the printer, we would have him know that the omission of the word is rather to be esteemed so. For this is the state of the case. Gregory the Thirteenth appointed certain cardinals and others to revise and correct the Gloss of the Jus Canonicum, wherever it was needed. While, then, many editions had the word 'God,' and some had it not, the new and corrected edition of the pontifical correctors of the press, which came out under the sanction of Gregory the Thirteenth, restored the word which had been omitted by the mistake of the printers. . . . Nor is any change made in this point in the censures of the Gloss of the Jus Canonicum edited by command of Pius the Fifth,” p. 310. There is one act which involves every modern pope in the impiety of making himself a God He sits, on the day of his consecration, on the high altar at St. Peter's, and there receives the adoration of the cardinals.--Elliott, Hor. Apoc. III. 168. Keith, "Signs of the Times," 5th edition, vol. i. page 115; marginal note. "Dominus Deus noster papa alter Deus in terra. Rex regum, dominus dominorum. Idem est dominium Dei et papæ. Credere Dominum Deum nostrum papam non potuisse statuere prout statuit, hæreticum censeretur. Papæ potestas est major omni potestate creata, extenditque se ad celestia, terrestria, et infernalia. Papa facit quicquid libet, etiam illicita, et est plus quam Deus." See these and the like instances quoted in Bishop Jewel's Apology and Defence, in Downham's Treatise de Antichristo, and Poole's English Annotations. likewise Barrow's Treatise of the Pope's supremacy in the Introduction "- Bishop Newton. See Southey, "Book of the Church," second edition, vol. i., page 329. "Nor was it possible that he (the Pope) should be amenable to any secular power, for he had been called God by Constantine, and God was not to be judged by man . . . And the commentators even gave him the blasphemous appellation of, 'Our Lord God the Pope.' Elliott, Hora Apocalyptica, 2nd edition, Vol. iii, pp. 150, 151, merely says the same as Southey, without any reference to a Popish authority, but he adds that on the gate of Tolentino there is the following inscription:-" Paulo iii., Opt. Max. in terris Deo." Should it not be "Paulo iii., Pont. Max. in terris Deo. ?" Dr. Cumming, "Apocalyptic Sketches," 10th edition, page 313. "The Pope who is called God by Constantine, can never be bound or released by man; for God cannot be judged by man." At page 307, Dr Cumming quotes from a Romish book, entitled, "Libri Symbolici, Ecclesio Catholicæ editi a Streitwolf, Götting, 1838, vol. ii. page 343." It is called the confession of the Catholic faith, to be taken by all Protestants in Hungary conforming to the (Romish) faith. There are five clauses or articles, the fifth of which runs as follows:-"We confess that the most Holy Pontiff ought to be honoured by all with divine honour with more prostration than even what is due to Christ Himself." WHENEVER we prefer anything in our desires above the glory of God, we worship an idol; for the heart can engrave as well as the hand, aud an idol in the heart is as bad as an idol set up in the house.-Gurnall. Oct, 1, 1865. Correspondence. [The Editor wishes it to be distinctly understood that he is not responsible for the sentiments of his correspondents. In every case, also, name and address are required, not necessarily for publication, but as a proof of good faith.] "J. B." AND "AN INQUIRER AFTER the Book of Revelation, we can hardly TRUTH." DEAR SIR,-I would wish, with your permission, to answer two or three of the questions proposed in your last two Numbers, and, if permitted, I would answer them under separate heads, so as to avoid confusion, as follows: understand how anyone can escape from ALL things unless he be taken up altogether from the earth, for the judgments are universal; and the very flight into the wilderness constitutes a trial equal to the severest sentence of banishment, so that no saint who remains on earth can escape from ALL things, since, at the 1. Will the elect be in the tribulation? very least, he will be compelled to fly "J. B." thinks that the language of into the wilderness-no small trial in Scripture proves that they WILL, and he itself. Again, do we not find a number quotes our Lord's words in Matt. xxiv. of saints enthroned in heaven before the 26, as "destroying all idea of a secret first seal is opened? (Rev. v.) But the coming." But this is no contradiction great tribulation does not begin, nor, whatever to the idea of a secret coming. indeed, does anything begin, before the The word elect merely signifies "CHOSEN." first seal, for the first seal is the beginEveryone who is chosen for some special ning of the whole action, so that some favour is called an "elect" person. This saints must be in heaven before the appears from the fact that even angels judgments begin. We can no longer are called "elect." Yet the election of adhere to the old-fashioned interpretaangels (who are sinless) must be quite tion, that the elders in chapter fifth are a different thing from the election of only a kind of visionary emblem. This sinful men. There is election for salva- | idea cannot stand, for the elders are tion; there is election for those Jews who are to escape the judgments and to live on the millennial earth; and there is election for those nations who are likewise to escape the judgment and to inhabit the millennial earth. All these persons are "elect," because all are "chosen" for some special favour. In the 24th of Matthew, our Lord speaks of those who are elected to escape the judgments, and to receive blessings of some kind or another when he has come down upon earth. But it by no means follows that our Lord speaks of all persons who have been elected for salvation. "J. B." will not deny that angels are called "elect," and yet that does not in the least identify angels with elect men. Again, it cannot be said that escape does not mean rapture, when we consider that our Lord speaks of escaping ALL things that are coming on the earth. When we reflect upon the judgments in represented as sitting on thrones in heaven, while the saints, and even holy MARTYRS, are represented as still lying under the altar; and how is it possible to account for so vast a difference between those two bodies of saints? Only in this way. The elders are the saints who have been taken up to heaven. The souls under the altar are those who have been left behind, and have suffered martyrdom otherwise, and if all were left behind, surely the MARTYRS would have the best claim of all to be represented as sitting on thrones like the elders, instead of lying in death under the altar! For these, as well as for other reasons, I can feel no doubt as to the rapture of a certain body of true believers before the first seal, while others will be left behind, elected for deliverance at the end of the tribulation, and, therefore, called "elect,"-to be gathered from all parts of the earth, Oct. 1, 1865. when the Son of Man has come down to the earth out of the "air." (See Zech. xiv.; 1 Thess. iv.) dispensation will be a satanic one, as the present is a christian one. Yet this is only a question of names, not of things, 2. "An Inquirer after Truth" asks for if any one should prefer calling whether there is any Scripture text that the time of Antichrist the "Christian proves that the Church must be removed dispensation depraved," it will make no before Antichrist appears? or whether difference either in argument or practice. it is only an inference? It is certainly I cannot but refer here to one or two an inference only, but it is an inference points in connection with the present that is undeniable. The elders are in subject. 1st. The seven days of the heaven before the first seal, whereas feast of tabernacles have been justly deAntichrist does not arise until long after scribed in your periodical as a type of the first seal, for he is raised up by the the seven years which will be passed by dragon in the 13th chapter, and not our Lord and the Church, in the "air" before. But no one can doubt that the after the removal of the church-the 13th chapter is after the first seal. last week of Daniel. Besides this, it is Therefore Antichrist does not appear my own opinion that the seven days retill after the rapture. Besides, we are quired in purifying and preparing a man told in chapter xii. that the dragon goes for the Jewish priesthood, had, also, a forth to persecute the remnant of the mystical or emblematical signification. woman's seed, and it is after he goes They were intended to represent the forth for that purpose that he raises up seven years of the church in the "air," the Antichrist. But what is the remnant? during which seven years the saints will Nothing less than those who are LEFT be living in the presence of the Lord, after others have been taken away. The and gradually prepared and purified for Greek word is "Loipon "-something the offices both of priest and king, that remains when a part has been taken away. So that the dragon raises up the Antichrist to persecute that part of the "woman's" seed which remains on earth after another part of her seed has been taken away, namely, those who are seen in heaven in chapter iv. and v., before the first seal is opened. And Antichrist also may be said to belong to another dispensation, and not to the present. But this does not affect my argument here. For if we choose to call it the present dispensation, the same thing will follow-namely, that glorified saints are in heaven in chapter v., before the first seal, and before the rise of Antichrist in chapter xiii. And that those saints must be really in the heavenly places somewhere, for if they were only an emblem, why are other saints represented as lying under the altar instead of being in heaven? The Thirdly. In the August Number there period of Antichrist, however, may pro- is a letter from Mr. Maw speaking of a perly be called a different dispensation; time when the present dispensation shall first, because it will be a time of ven- have passed away, and when, in short, geance (Rev. vi); whereas the present a JEWISH dispensation will return again, dispensation is a time of grace; and secondly, because Satan and his angels will then have been cast down into the earth, so that it will be filled with satanic spirit, and the spirit of Satan will take the place of the Spirit of God. The which they are to fill during the millen- The at least in the land of Israel. Mr. Maw is very right in approving of this idea, and in speaking of it as the most correct; for so it is. But he must not almost wish all former writings to be swept away, and forgotten; for let me |