2 Thessalonians 2:3

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Let no man deceive you: here the apostle urgeth again his charge against this error, though in other words, and begins his arguments to refute it. He had adjured them not to be shaken, and here he cautions them against being deceived, for the one makes way for the other; so also not to be troubled, 2 Thessalonians 2:2, for troubled minds are apt to be made a prey to seducers. And the caution in the text proves that their shaking and trouble did arise from some deceivers that were amongst them, rather than any misunderstanding of their own of what he wrote in the former Epistle about Christ's coming. To be shaken in mind is bad, hut to be deceived is worse, for it is a going out of the path, as the word signifies; and thercfin e his caution against it is universal, both as to persons and ways: Let no man deceive you, though he pretend to revelations, or be of the greatest reputation in the church. By any means; either of era craft, flattery, pretending love, or plausible arguments, or misrepresenting our words, or forging of letters, or misintering our Epistle to you or any other part of Scripture, or feigned miracles, &c. Then he enters the arguments to confute it, which are.

1. The general apostacy.

2. The revelation of the man of sin. Neither of these are yet, nor will be in this age; and yet that day shall not come till these both first come. For that doth shall not come, except there come a falling away first; there is a supplement in our translation, for in the Greek it is only, for, except there come a falling away first, & c., or an apostacy, a recession, a departing, or a standing off, as the world imports; so that apostacy may be either good, when it is from evil to good, or evil, when it is from good to evil: it is always used in this latter sense in Scripture. Again, it is either civil or spiritual: civil, as when people fall off from the civil government they were under, and so some would interpret the text of the defection from the Roman empire, the east part from the west, and the ten kingdoms that arose out of it; which was the opinion of Hierom, Epist. ad Algasiam. But the apostle writing to the church speaks not of civil government, and the affairs of state, and speaks of such an apostacy which would give rise to the man of sin, and the revelation of him. And this man of sin riseth up in the church, not in the civil state; and the consequence of this apostacy is giving men up to strong delusions to believe a lie, and then follows their damnation; and the cause of it is said to be, not receiving the truth in the love of it; so that it is not a civil, but a spiritual apostacy, as the word in Scripture is always (I suppose) so taken. And it is not of a particular person, or of a particular church, but a general apostacy of the church, though not of every individual; that church that is afterwards called the temple of God, where the man of sin sitteth, and is exalted above all that is called God; which cannot be in any particular church; and would not the apostle have specified that particular church? Neither is it some lesser apostacy which may befall the best church; but such as would be eminent, called h apostasia, that apostacy, greater than that of some believing Jews to Judaism, or of some Christians to Nicolaitanism, which some think is meant. Much less can it be Caius Caesar, as Grotius interprets, or any one person, for the apostle saith not apostate, but apostacy; else a man of sin could not rise out of it, and exalt himself above all that is called God, and worshipped. It is an apostacy from sound doctrine, instituted worship, church government, and true holiness of life, as may be further considered afterwards. Neither is the apostacy all at once, but gradual; for out of it ariseth a man of sin, who grows up to this manhood by degrees; and sin and wickedness are not completed at first, as well as holiness. Much less is this apostacy a falling off from the Church of Rome, as some papists affirm, and make the Reformation to be the apostacy, which was a return from it. Doth the man of sin rise out of the Reformation? Did any of the first Reformers oppose and exalt themselves above all that is called God, or is worshipped? Or, as God sat in the temple of God, &c.? Was any of their coming with all power, and signs, and lying wonders? Or did any of them forbid to marry, and to abstain from meats, &c.? Which is the character our apostle gives of this apostacy, 1 Timothy 4:1. Neither is the Mahometan religion this apostacy, for Mahomet sitteth not in the temple of God. Neither is it in the falling of the converted Jews from the Jewish church to the gospel church; the apostle would never call that an apostacy. And that man of sin be revealed: the next argumnent is from the revelation of the man of sin; this is also to precede Christ's last coming: it is a Hebraism. A warlike man is styled a man of war; a bloody man, a man of bloods; a deceitful man, a man of deceit, &c.: so a man eminent in sin is here called a man of sin; not only personally so, but who doth promote sin, propagate it, countenance it, command it. See Platina, Sigebert, Blonetas, Beuno Uspregensis, Matt. Paris. In sins of omission, forbidding what God requireth; in sins of commission, requiring or allowing what God hath forbidden. In sins of the first table; corrupting God's worship by superstition and idolatry, taking God's name in vain by heartless devotion, dissembling piety, dispensing with perjury and false oaths, taking away the second commandment and the morality of the fourth commandment, and making men's faith and obedience to rest upon a humau authority, &c. In sins of the second table; to dispense with duties belonging to superiors and inferiors; with murder, adultery, fornication, incest, robbery, lying, equivocation, &c. And besides all these, promoting a false religion, and destroying the true, by fines, imprisonments, banishments, tortures, poisons, massacre, fire, and faggot. And this man of sin is not a single person, but a company, order, and succession of men; because all are acted by the same spirit, therefore called a man; as the man of the earth, Psalms 10:18, is all men of an earthly spirit, and a man of the field, Genesis 25:27, is men whose minds and employments are in the field. Or, it is a sinful state. As the civil state of the four monarchies in Daniel is represented by four single beasts, and the antichristian state by a beast rising out of the sea, Revelation 13:1; so by man of sin is meant a sinful state, which though it consisteth of many people and nations, yet, being under the influence and government of one man, may be also styled the man of sin upon that account; impietatis Coryphaeus. Moulin. And because the sin of the whole community is chiefly centred in him, and springs out from him; a man in whom is the fountain of all sins. Hierein ad Algasiam. And the sin of this state is called a mystery of iniquity, 2 Thessalonians 2:7, and so differing from the sin in all other political states; and therefore may well be judged to be the same with the whore sitting on many waters, that hath mystery written in her forehead, Revelation 17:1,5. And as no expositor takes the whore to be meant of a single woman, and the true apostolic church is represented by a woman in travail, Revelation 12:1,2, why then should we take the man of sin to be a single man, as the papists do? viz. a Jew of the tribe of Dan, that shall erect his kingdom and temple in Jerusalem, seduce the Jews, continue three years and a half, make great havoc of the church, to be opposed by Enoch and Elias, and is to come a little before the end of the world. Ridiculous! Neither call this man of sin be Simon Magus and his followers, for he was revealed in the apostle's time, seeing the mystery of iniquity belonging to this man of sin began to work in the apostle's days, as 2 Thessalonians 2:7, and he is the same whom St. John calls antichrist, 1 John 2:18; and the spirit of antichrist began to be in the world in his time, 1 John 4:3; and the nations are to be made drunk with the cup of his fornication, and to serve and obey him, &c., Revelation 13:8, Revelation 17:4; all which requires more time than is allotted by them: but they set him a great way off, that none may suspect him to be among themselves; but he that will compare the Church of Rome in the apostle Paul's times with what it is now, and the doctrine of the council of Trent with that laid down in his Epistle to the Romans, may say: How is the faithful city become a harlot! And this man of sin is to be revealed also, which shows that he is not a single person, not yet born: revealing relates not so much to a person, as a thing; in particular to the mystery of iniquity, mentioned 2 Thessalonians 2:7: his revealing is either quoad existentiam, or apparentiam. The former is meant here, and the latter 2 Thessalonians 2:8. He grows up into an existence, as the apostacy grows, as vermin grows out of putrefaction. As the church's purity, faith, love, holiness declined, and as pride, ambition, covetousness, luxury prevailed, so he grew up: and which was the direct point and time of his full revelation in this first sense is conjectured by many, but determined by none; it is most generally referred to the tithe of Boniface the Third, to whom Phocas granted the style of oecumenical bishop, and to the Church of Rome to be the mother church. But as the apostacy brings forth this man of sin, so as he riseth he helps it forward; so that he both causeth it, and is caused by it. As corruption in doctrine, worship, discipline, and manners brought him forth, so he was active in corrupting them more and more. The son of perdition; another Hebraism, where sometimes that which any way proceeds from another, as its cause, is called its son, as sparks the sons of the coal, Job 5:7, and branches sons of the tree, Genesis 49:22, and the learner the son of the teacher, Proverbs 3:1; and sometimes that which a man is addicted to, as a wicked man is the son of wickedness, Psalms 89:22. Again, that which gives forth what it hath in itself, as the branches of the olive trees giving oil are called the sons of oil, Malachi 4:14; and in the text, the man of sin is the son of perdition, as Judas is called, 1 Thessalonians 17:12: and he is so either actively, as he brings others to destruction, and so may be called Apollyon, Revelation 9:11; or rather passively, as devoted to perdition; as Revelation 19:20, the beast and false prophet are both cast into the lake of fire and brimstone; and the beast that was, and is not, is said to go into perdition, Revelation 17:11. The destroyer of others both in soul and body will be destroyed himself: first, morally, by the word and Spirit, as 2 Thessalonians 2:8; and then judicially, by God's revenging justice in this world, and that to come. The apostle, at the very first mentioning him, declares his destiny; at his first rising and revealing, mentions his fall and ruin.