General Apostasy of the Last Days

Chapter 2 of Demonology and Theology (1650) by Nathanael Homes (1599–1678), edited and modernized.

Showing in general that these present times in which we live are those evil times that precede the next appearance of Christ, which is yet to come. This will appear by an exact weighing of the agreement between our times and the general expressions of our three apostles regarding the last days:

• Jude says men should walk after their own ungodly lusts (Jude 1:18).
• Peter repeats the same words (2Pe. 3:3), and warns that there shall be false teachers who shall bring in damnable heresies (2Pe. 2:1).
• Paul says they shall be perilous times (2Ti. 3:1), and warns that men shall depart from the faith (1Ti. 4:1).

The sum of all is that men shall depart from their principles; they shall depart in faith and practice from their once received principles of truth and enlightened consciences. It is just as is said of the foolish virgins who had no oil in their vessels—to maintain their lamps of former profession (Mt. 25:1-13). They never had the principles of the essence of godliness (principia essendi); namely, true sanctifying grace, for that could never have gone out nor been utterly lost. But principles of knowledge (principia cognoscendi)—what as Christians they ought to think and do, namely, the knowledge of the Word, to some conviction on the conscience—that they had. And from these principles, immediately before Christ's coming, they were departed. And so it is now in these our days. Men who once professed to be Christians are turned topsy-turvy (as we proverbially say) from what they were, both in faith and practice.

These are most perilous times, above all times before them, for wicked beliefs and practices. The most wicked times before, as the Jews in the worst of times, held the Old Testament; and the Papists, both Old and New, though with many false glosses; but men in these times, with open mouth, cast away all the Scriptures, the ground of all divine truth. And what do they walk after or according to? Even after their own lusts, both corporal lusts, namely those principles that please the flesh, and intellectual lusts, mental recklessness, fantasies of their own spirits.

Whatever pleasant dreams they dream or new ideas they devise to flatter themselves as they put away all true fear of God and thoughts of judgment to come, of local hell and heaven, and the immortality of the soul, such dreams and imaginations, which put away all fundamental truths and the thoughts thereof, are their principles of truth. And as principles lead to corresponding conclusions, upon such premises must necessarily follow damnable heresies, as the following examples:

• The creature cannot sin, because God acts in him
• The creature has done nothing that he should torment himself by denying himself any contentment
• All things are common and to be enjoyed in common

And thus they depart from the faith as is said in 1 Timothy 4:1 concerning the evil times of which the apostle speaks. There is either the faith which we believe (i.e., the object and ground of faith, namely, the doctrine of faith, the Holy Scriptures) or the faith with which we believe (namely, the quality of faith).

The parallel of our times to this is that there is in this nation such an apostasy from the faith of men and women as I never heard or read of in any ecclesiastical history of any nation. We have those who deny the Scriptures, upon which they cast blasphemous reproaches and with such audacious equalizing prefer above them their own dreams. It will be safer to remain silent regarding the particulars than to carry the sound of them to your ears.

If men depart from the object of faith—the doctrine of the Word of God—they must necessarily depart from the quality of faith, as well (as much faith as may be in an apostate before his falling away). Such faith is merely a fundamental faith, that there is a God, and a historical faith, whereby one did once believe that the Scriptures were the truth of God, and so apostates become worse than the Devil (Jas. 2:19). For the Devil cannot be an atheist, but his sin is properly the sin against the Holy Spirit, in which he maliciously hates and persecutes the truth of which he is fully convinced.

Moreover, these apostates are worse than the majority of heathens, who also could not be atheists due to the common law of nature (Rom. 2:15). In setting up anything to be their god (as generally they all did), they acknowledged some oracle, secret conference, or tradition, etc. whereby they knew the mind of that god.

Lastly, these apostates are worse than the Jews or Papists whom they pretend to detest, both of whom, in all their heresies and errors in doctrine and practice, still in the main keep to those Scriptures which they first embraced.

Nor is it a sufficient excuse for them to pretend that they have all things dictated to them by the Spirit, because we are commanded to try the spirits by the doctrine of the Scriptures (1Jn. 4:1). And if this place of Scripture is not of weight with these Anti-Scripturians, let them hear reason. How were they two both led by the good Spirit, when at the same time one of them pretended to preach by the Spirit strange, high, supernatural transcendencies, and the other, in the auditory at the same time, breaks out into loud expressions of sublime spiritual raptures pretended to be upon the party's spirit, to the occasioning of the preacher to hold his peace a while until, by and by, he cries out to the other, "Be silent, O flesh!" The Spirit of God is certainly not contrary to himself, nor the author of confusion. If there be a lying spirit, as well as a spirit of truth, how shall we know to distinguish the good from the liar, but by the old good way ever since there was a written Word on earth; namely, by the written Word (Isa. 8:20)?