The coming of the "Man of Sin" was to be with the "all-deceivableness of unrighteousness" –with finished, perfected, and, till the "man of sin" appeared, unparalleled craft.
Let us mark the phrase. It is a very remarkable one. It is used in no other place; it is employed to describe no other system; it describes the great apostasy, and it alone. It is not simply "deceivableness," nor is it simply "unrighteousness" –it is the "deceivableness of unrighteousness;" nay, it is the "all-deceivableness of unrighteousness."
Craft and deceivableness were no unknown things before the Papacy entered the world. Priests and statesmen have, in every age, dealt largely in deceivableness. But the deceivableness peculiar to herself –it is the deceivableness of unrighteousness. Not only is it a craft more subtle and more defined than any with which man operated in former ages: it is a craft of a new order. It is a system of unrighteousness so set forth as to seem that system of righteousness which god has revealed for the salvation of the world, and by consequence accepted as such by all who, not taught of the Holy Ghost, are deceived and destroyed by it.
Paganism was a system of deceivableness. It was the worship of a false god, under the pretence of being the worship of the true God. But popery is a deceivableness on a scale far beyond that of paganism. The one was a counterfeit of the religion of the Gospel. Popery has a god of its own –him, even, whom the canon law calls the "Lord our God." It has a saviour of its own –the Church, to wit. It has a sacrifice of its own –the Mass. It has a mediator of its own –the Priesthood. It has a sanctifier of its own –the Sacrament. It has a justification of its own -that even of infused righteousness. It has a pardon of its own –the pardon of the Confessional; and it has in the heavens an infallible, all-prevailing advocate unknown to the Gospel –the "Mother of God." It thus presents to the world a spiritual and saving apparatus for the salvation of men, and yet it neither sanctifies nor saves anyone. It looks like a church; it professes to have all that a church ought to have; and yet, it is not a church. It is a grand deception –"the all-deceivableness of unrighteousness."
There is another point here that merits out attention. It relates to the architecture or order of the spiritual house, the Church. Popery from its foundation to its top-stone has imitated that order. That "Christ is the Son of God," is the corner-stone of the Gospel church. Out of that root the whole Gospel springs. It is the "rock" on which Christ, addressing Peter, said that He would build His Church.
That the "Pope is the Vicar of Christ" is the corner-stone of the papal Church. Out of that root does the whole of popery spring. On that "rock" said Boniface III in the seventh century, and Gregory VII, with yet greater emphasis in the eleventh, will I build my church.
And let us further mark that both churches rest not on a doctrine, but on a person. The Church of God rests on a Person, even Christ. No one is saved by simply believing a system of truth. The truth is the light that shows the sinner his way to the Saviour. He is united to Christ by his faith which takes hold of the Saviour, and by the Spirit who comes to dwell in his heart. Thus is he a member of the Spiritual Body. The Bible, ministers, and ordinances are the channels through which the life of the Head flows into the members of the body. Thus are they built up a spiritual house, a holy temple –"built on the foundation of prophets, and apostles, Jesus Christ Himself the chief corner-stone."
All this is most adroitly counterfeited in the Pope's Church. It is only in the way of the members of that church resting on Peter, or what is the same thing, on the Pope, that they can be saved. Romanists tell us that it is essential to the salvation of every human being that he be subject to the authority of the Pope. Peter –that is, the Pope –is the one reservoir of grace; from him it flows down through the grand conduit of apostolical succession to all the members of the "Church," and thus are they built up a spiritual house –built upon the foundation of traditions, sacraments, priests, bishops, cardinals, the Pope himself being the chief corner-stone.
Moreover, the whole policy and actings of the Roman Church have been marked by a deceivableness unequalled by any other society or confederacy known to history. Her Popes have been the most astute race of rulers the world ever saw. What a depth of cunning and craft in the Roman Curia! Where is the cabinet or monarch that can cope with it? Her more than human insight Rome conceals under the guise of artlessness and simplicity. She looks so guileless and so "lamb-like," that statesman say we shall have no difficulty in holding our own against diplomatists like these. It is only when they are outwitted and be fooled by them that they open their eyes and begin to wonder where the strength lies that has baffled them. Rome buys and sells statesmen in her market; she uses them as the muleteer his beasts of burden; and when they are old and broken down, and can no longer do her turns, she hurls them from the high places to which she had exalted them, and leaves their mangled reputations, like unsavory carcasses, on the highway of history, that posterity may see how Rome rewards those who serve her. It was written of her of old time, "She hath cast down many wounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her."
This vast deceivableness is one of the main sources of the strength of the so-called Church of Rome. She has the art of enlisting all the claims of virtue, and all the sanctions of law, on the side of that by which virtue is outraged and law violated. Where her purpose is the most cruel, her speech is ever the most bland. Where her motive is the most villainous, her profession is ever the most plausible. She always gives the holiest name to the most unholy deed. When she burns a heretic she calls it an auto-da-fe –an act of faith. When she ravages a province with fire and sword, she styles it a crusade –that is, an evangelistic expedition. Her torture chamber is styled the "Holy Office." And when she deposes monarchs, stripping them of crown and kingdom, and compelling them, as she did Henry IV of Germany, to stand with naked feet at her gates amid the drifts of winter, it is with the make-believe of a kind father administering salutary chastisement to an erring son. In short, she not only transforms herself into an angel of light, but vice itself she transforms into virtue, decking blackest crime in the white robe of innocence, and arraying foulest iniquity with the resplendent airs of holiness.
What are the sacraments by which she professes to replenish men with grace? What are the masses by which she professes to impart Christ and his salvation to them? What are the crucifixes, rosaries, and amulets, by which she fortifies men against the assaults of Satan and evil spirits? What are the indulgences by which she shortens the sufferings of souls in purgatory? What the pardons with which she sends men away into the other world? What the vows of poverty under which she cherishes a pride the most arrogant, and an avariciousness the most insatiable? What are the vows of celibacy under which she veils an unbridled lewdness? What are the dispensations by she releases men from the obligations of the moral law, and professes to annul oaths, promises, and covenants? Above all, what are her logic and system of ethics by which, as in the hands of Logouri, she makes vice and virtue falsehood and truth change sides, and shows how one, if he but direct aright his intention, can commit the most monstrous crime and yet contract not a particle of guilt? What are these things, we ask, save the "deceivableness of unrighteousness?" for surely the utmost limits of deception have here been reached, and the Deceiver himself can go no farther. He has produced his masterpiece.