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The entire elaboration that follows suggests the extent to which the antagonism between Protestants and Catholics influenced the interpretation of prophecy: (174:2) This view [the 'historic Protestant view' summarized above] originated about the eleventh century, with those who even then began to protest against the growing corruptions of the Church of Rome. It grew among the Waldenses, Wickliffites, and Hussites, into a consistent scheme of interpretation, and was embraced with enthusiasm and held with intense conviction of its truth, by the Reformers of the sixteenth century. In their hands it became a powerful and formidable weapon, to attack and expose the mighty apostasy, with which they were called to do battle. From this time it spread with rapidity that was astonishing, so that ere long it was received as a self evident and fundamental truth among Protestant churches everywhere. It nerved the Reformers in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden, and animated the martyrs of Italy and Spain; it decided the conscientious and timid adherents of the Papacy to cross the Rubicon, and separate from the so called Catholic Church; and it has kept all the Reformed churches since, from attempting reunion with Rome. (174:3) It was held and taught by Joachim Abbas, Walter Brute, Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Calvin, and the rest of the Reformers; by Bullinger, Bale, and Foxe; by Brightman and Mede, Sir Isaac and Bishop Newton, Vitringa, Daubuz and Whiston, as well as by Faber, Cunningham, Frere, Birks and Elliot; no two of these may agree on all questions of minor details, but they agree on the grand outline, and each one has added more or less to the strength and solidity of the system, by his researches. During the last seven centuries this system has been deepening its hold on the convictions of the Christian church, and has been embraced by some of her wisest and best guides and teachers. It originated with martyrs and confessors, exerted a sanctifying and strengthening influence over those who received it; it tended to revive the hope of the premillennial coming of the Lord, which had long lain in abeyance, leading naturally to many false anticipations of the event, which have been disproved by time, as well as to many very remarkable approximations to truth, as to the time of other events. It met of course with intense and bitter opposition from the church it branded Babylon, and the power it denounced as Antichrist, and to this day is rejected by all who in any way maintain or defend these, as well as by some who do neither. (Ibid. 94-5)
(174:4)
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