And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
Ver. 8. And then shall that wicked] Gr. ανομος, that lawless, yokeless, masterless monster to whom in the Council of Lateran, 1516 (one year only before Luther stood up to reform), there was granted plenary power over the whole Church; which was never settled upon him in any former Council. Pope Nicholas I said, that he was above law, because Constantine had styled the pope God. But the very gloss derides him for this inference.
With the spirit of his mouth] i.e. With the evidence of his word in the mouths of his faithful ministers. Vide catalogum testium veritatis. Bellarmine confesseth to his great grief, that ever since the Lutherans have declared the pope to be Antichrist., his kingdom hath not only not increased, but every day more and more decreased and decayed. (Lib. iii. de Papa Rom. cap. 21.) What long hath been the opinion and fear of some not unconsiderable divines, that Antichrist before his abolition, shall once again overflow the whole face of the west, and suppress the true Protestant Churches, I pray God to avert.
With the brightness of his coming] At the last day. The holy city shall they tread underfoot forty and two months,Revelation 11:2, that is (as some compute it) till the year of grace 1866. But that is but a conjecture. No more is that other, that Solomon's temple was finished in the year of the world 3000; and was destroyed, together with the city, by the Romans, in the year of the world exactly 4000, therefore the spiritual temple shall be consummated in 3000, or perhaps in 4000 more. (Lightfoot's Harm. 206.)