AN ‘ANTI-RELIGION’?

The Roman Church was not alone in being judged doctrinally erroneous. In an especially contentious age most forms of Christianity accused each other of heresy. What was unique about the Church of Rome was the nature of the errors that Protestants imputed to her. Protestants generally believed Rome's errors to have a decreed purpose and significance that transcended the ways in which Rome might choose to maintain or defend them. Quite often, doctrines were damned because of their connection with her, rather than Rome being damned for espousing them. The background of the apocalyptic tradition was of fundamental importance here, as it lent a sense of inevitability to Rome's errors, which were preordained and of eschatological significance. Thus George Downame explained that because the pope was Antichrist, he was incapable of doing anything save what was papism and mere antichristianism. Errors which appeared to be fulfilments of scriptural prophecy were thus granted a significance well beyond their apparent doctrinal heterodoxy.

In works of apocalyptic exegesis, and also in many popular works of anti-papal polemic, Rome's errors were therefore depicted, not as a mere hybrid of false and erroneous doctrines and practices, but as the direct embodiment of a false religion. Popery was often presented, especially in the works of converts from Roman Catholicism, as a coherent system of false divinity. It was, as Dr Lake has noted, depicted as ‘an anti-religion’ – a separate religion which worked by essentially inverting the values and norms of Protestant Christianity.

Crucial here was the theme of deception, whose prominencewe have noted in expositions of the Romish Antichrist.