The faith of the present Church has produced monstrous births; for instance, instantaneous salvation by an immediate act of mercy; predestination; the notion that God has no respect unto the actions of men, but unto faith alone; that there is no connection between charity and faith; that man in conversion is like a stock; with many more heresies of the same kind; likewise concerning the sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Supper, as to the advantages reasonably to be expected from them, when considered according to the doctrine of justification by faith alone; as also with regard to the person of Christ: and that heresies, from the first ages to the present day, have sprung up from no other source than from the doctrine founded on the idea of three Divine Persons or Gods. The last state of the present church, when it is at an end, is meant by the consummation of the age, and the coming of the Lord at that period. Matt. xxiv. 3. The infestation from falses, and thence the consummation of every truth, or the desolation which at this day prevails in the Christian Churches, is meant by the great affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the world, nor ever shall be: Matt. xxiv. 21: and that there would be neither love nor faith, nor the knowledge of good and truth, in the last time of the Christian Church, is understood by these words in the same chapter of Matthew: “After the affliction of those days, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,” verse 29. They who are in the present justifying faith, are meant by the he-goats in Daniel and Matthew; and they who have confirmed themselves therein, are meant in the Apocalypse by the dragon and his two beasts, and by the locusts; and this same faith, when confirmed, is there meant by the great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where the two witnesses were slain; as also by the pit of the abyss, whence the locusts issued.