The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

VII United Testimony of Churches on Antichrist in 1680

Various individual catechisms had been published by Cotton, Norton, Mather, Davenport, Noyes, Eliot, and others. ⁶¹ Then the group statement of the Cambridge Synod, of August-September, 1618, appeared. This large body, representing the New England churches, after deliberation, framed, agreed upon, and published A Platform of Church Discipline Gathered Out of the Word of God: and Agreed Upon by the Elders: And Messengers of the Churches Assembled at the Synod of Cambridge in New England (1649), in which it concurred with the doctrinal part of the Westminster Confession. And now by formal vote, the Massachusetts churches on May 12, 1680, with Increase Mather as moderator, owned and consented to A Confession of Faith (1680), a modification of the Savoy Confession, which was based on the Westminster Confession of Faith. This most representative declaration of the Cambridge Synod goes on record concerning the pope as the prophesied Antichrist: PFF3 111.1

“There is no other Head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be Head thereof, but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalted himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God, whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.” ⁶² PFF3 111.2

And Antichrist, they declared, is to be destroyed in the latter days: PFF3 111.3

“According to his promise, we expect that in the latter dayes, Antichrist being destroyed, the Jews called, and the adversaryes of the kingdome of his dear Son broken.” ⁶³ PFF3 111.4

Such was the general seventeenth-century American position on Antichrist. Nothing could be more explicit; nothing-more representative and general. The full significance of this group statement must not be lost on us. We repeat: This was the commonly accepted colonial American position. PFF3 111.5