# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1861_S269
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

That the Pope at Rome is the Antichrist. 269

as though he were God. He speaks great things, as though he were God; he changes laws, he sanctifies his own laws, he defiles, robs, plunders, cheats, murders — this man, whom one commonly calls the Antichrist, on whose forehead stand the blasphemous words: I am God and cannot err! he sits in the temple and rules far and wide." Equally outspoken was Rupert of Lincoln (1250), in that he set forth and defended the claim: "the Pope has no power against justice and truth; but if he fights against them, then he is worse than Lucifer and the Antichrist." In a speech before Innocent IV and his cardinals he says: "Since the chief work of Christ, for the sake of which he came into the world, is the quickening of souls, and Satan's own proper work is the killing and murdering of souls, since he is a murderer from the beginning, those priests who carry Jesus outwardly on display but do not proclaim the Word of God — even if they added no further wickedness — are anti-christs and devils who transform themselves into angels of light, thieves and robbers, slaughterers and devourers of the sheep, who make the house of prayer into a den of murderers." Around 1260 Laurentius Anglicus, a master in Paris, wrote two works against the clergy: "Warning against the False Prophets" and "Defense of William of St. Amour." In both it is proven that the Antichrist stands at the door, and thus the bishop Probus of Toul (1280) publicly taught in a speech: "In Germany the deputies of Satan and of the Antichrist have sown the seed of discord." Robertus Gallus, a monk around 1290, had many visions and wrote them down. In chapter 1 he describes, under the image of a serpent, the Pope or Antichrist, who exalts himself above everything, oppresses the saints, and has many false prophets. In chapter 5 he calls the Pope an idol, indeed a god. If, then, all these voices resounded within the church itself, it is all the less to be wondered at that the Waldensians assert in Article 10 of their confession: "the Roman church is the apocalyptic Babylon; the Pope is the source of all errors and the true Antichrist." The same voice was raised by Gerhard Segarelli of Parma and Dulcinus of Novara (1280), which is also why Flacius supposes that they stood in connection with the Waldensians. So too Milicz of Prague (1350) and John Wycliffe at Oxford (1380), and, in consequence of Wycliffite teaching, again many Hussites. Among the Bohemians there also belonged Matthias of Paris (1380), who wrote his own book on the Antichrist to prove that he had already come. The locusts of the Apocalypse he interpreted as the hypocrites ruling within the church. As works of the Antichrist he names the fact that fables and inventions of men rule in the church, that images and false relics are worshiped, that other saints and helpers besides Christ are invoked. He also held that the Antichrist had already led astray all the universities and learned schools, so that there was no longer any pure doctrine to be found. Therefore the cry went out: Come out of