ANTHROPOPATHY, a metaphor by which things belonging to creatures and especially to man are ascribed to God. Instances of this abound in the Scriptures, by which they adapt themselves to human modes of speaking, and to the limited capacities of men. These anthropopathies we must however interpret in a manner suitable to the majesty of the divine nature. Thus, when the members of a human body are ascribed to God, we must understand by them those perfections of which such members in us are the instruments. The _eye_, for instance, represents God’s knowledge and watchful care; the _arm_, his power and strength; the _ears_, the regard he pays to prayer and to the cry of oppression and misery, &c. Farther, when human affections are attributed to God, we must so interpret them as to imply no imperfection, such as perturbed feeling in him. When God is said to repent, the antecedent, by a frequent figure of speech, is put for the consequent; and in this case we are to understand an altered mode of proceeding on the part of God, which in man is the effect of repenting. ANTICHRIST, compounded of ἀντὶ, _contra_, _against_, and Χριϛὸς, _Christ_, in a general sense, denotes an adversary of Christ, or one who denies that the Messiah is come. In this sense, Jews, infidels, &c, may be said to be _antichrists_. The epithet, in the _general_ sense of it, is also applicable to any power or person acting in direct opposition to Christ or his doctrine. Its _particular_ meaning is to be collected from those passages of Scripture in which it occurs. Accordingly, it may either signify one who assumes the place and office of Christ, or one who maintains a direct enmity and opposition to him. The Fathers all speak of antichrist as a single man; though they also assure us, that he is to have divers precursors, or forerunners. Yet many Protestant writers apply to the Romish church, and the pope who is at the head of it, the several marks and signatures of antichrist enumerated in the Apocalypse, which would imply antichrist to be, not a single person, but a corrupt society, or a long series of persecuting pontiffs, or rather, a certain power and government, that may be held for many generations, by a number of individuals succeeding one another. The antichrist mentioned by the Apostle John, first Epistle ii, 18, and more particularly described in the book of Revelation, seems evidently to be the same with the _man of sin_, &c, characterized by St. Paul in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, chap. ii; and the whole description literally applies to the Papal power. A late writer, after collecting the principal prophecies relating to antichrist, infers from them that a power, sometimes represented as the little horn, the man of sin, the antichrist, the beast, the harlot, the star falling from heaven, the false prophet, the dragon, or as the operation of false teachers, was to be expected to arise in the Christian world to persecute and oppress,