In illustration of the character of the man, the study of whose life engages us, the prayer with which he concludes the book on the ‘Restoration of Christianity’--for here the work does end in fact, all that follows being but by way of appendix--ought not to be overlooked. It is in immediate sequence to a renewed phillipic against the baptizers of infants, and to the following effect:--
‘Almighty Father! Father of all mercy, free us miserable men from this darkness of death, for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ Our Lord. O Jesus Christ, thou Son of God, who died for us, help us, lest we perish! We, thy suppliants, pray to thee as thou hast taught us, saying, Hallowed be thy Name; thy kingdom come; and do thou, Lord, come! thy bride the Church, praying in the Apocalypse, says, Come! The spirits of thy children, praying here, say, Come! Let all who hear this pray and cry aloud, and with John exclaim, Come! Thou Who hast said, I come quickly (Apocalypse xxii.) wilt surely come, and with thy coming put an end to Antichrist. So be it. Amen!’
The first of the additions to the system of ‘Restored Christianity’ are the thirty letters to Calvin, which we have already analysed, in what seemed the appropriate place.
The book or chapter on the ‘Sixty signs of the reign of Antichrist, and of his presence among us,’ which follows, need not detain us. The signs are for the most part arbitrarily assumed by the writer, on the ground that his own views are the truth, those of the Papists and Reformers mistaken, false, or short of the truth. Having shown to his own satisfaction that every evil-doer, in the shape of an exalted personage who has ever appeared in the world, even from Satan, Nimrod, and Nebuchadnezzar, prefigured the Pope, and that the Pope is Antichrist, he then very logically concludes that all the dogmas and doctrines sanctioned by the Papacy are of the Devil. Under this category he places the doctrine of the Trinity in the foremost rank, then the Baptism of Infants, the Mass, Transubstantiation, all but everything, in short, characteristic of Roman Catholic Christianity. As in so many other places, he is here also ready with a prayer, which we quote as ever-recurring testimony to the sincerely, but misunderstood, pious nature of the man:--