"Upon this survey, there appears little room to doubt of the general sense and meaning of the passage. The Thessalonians, (as we have seen from some expressions in the former epistle,) were alarmed as if the end of the world was at hand. The apostle, to correct their mistake and dissipate their fears, assures them that a great apostasy or defection of the Christians from the true faith and worship must happen before the coming of Christ. This apostasy, all the concurrent marks and characters will justify us in charging upon the church of Rome. The true Christian worship is the worship of the only true God, through the one only Mediator, the man Jesus Christ, and from this worship the church of Rome has most notoriously departed, by substituting other mediators, and invoking and adoring saints and angels; nothing is apostasy if idolatry be not. * * * If the apostasy be rightly charged upon the church of Rome, it follows, of consequence, that the 'man of sin' is the pope, not meaning any pope in particular, but the pope in general, as the chief head and supporter of this apostasy." The opinion of Dr. MacKnight is also cited with approval by Clarke. In his "Commentary and Notes"--(Vol. III, p. 100, etc.) MacKnight says: "As it is said, the man of sin was _to be revealed in his season_, there can be little doubt that the dark ages, in which all learning was overturned by the irruption of the northern barbarians, were the season allotted to the man of sin for revealing himself. Accordingly we know, that in these ages, the corruptions of Christianity, and the usurpations of the clergy, were carried to the greatest height. In short, the annals of the world cannot produce persons and events to which the things written in this passage can be applied with so much fitness as to the bishops of Rome." CHAPTER X. **Results of the Apostasy.--Its Sequel**. 1. The thoroughly apostate and utterly corrupt condition of the Church of Rome as proclaimed by its history down to the end of the fifteenth century,--(See Note 1, end of chapter.) was necessarily accompanied by absence of all spiritual sanctity and power, whatever may have been the arrogant assumptions of the Church as to authority in spiritual affairs. Revolts against the Church, both as rebellion against her tyranny and in protest against her heresies, were not lacking. The most significant of these anti-church agitations arose in connection with the awakening of intellectual activity which began in the latter part of the fourteenth century. The period from the tenth century onward to the time of the awakening has come to be known as the dark ages--characterized by stagnation in the progress of the useful arts and sciences as well as of fine arts and letters, and by a general condition of illiteracy and ignorance among the masses.