In my view, that which is seen is explained more easily
than that which is concealed under certain enigmatic veils, and we follow the
history of the present evils more than the future of anticipated things when we
interpret a prophet announcement from the past in light of the yoke of
servitude with which we are not oppressed. I think that those who have named
Antiochus or Nero, along with the others whom the blessed doctors report to be
precursors of Antichrist, would say that this one is an instrument of Antichrist
if they were to find themselves in our time. While he opposed Porphyry with
regard to Antiochus, and contradicted other very learned men with regard to
Domitius Nero, our admirable doctor Jerome still did not deny that these two
represented in part the form (figura) of Antichrist. To the extent that
he was able, he refused with a reasonable argument the idea that they were
Antichrists strictly speaking, and affirmed that Antiochus himself was only
partly to be imagined this way, saying: “And so, just as the Saviour had
Solomon and the other holy men serving as types (typi) of his advent, so
also we should believe that the Antichrist very properly had as a type of
himself the utterly wicked king Antiochus, who persecuted the saints and
defiled the temple; (Jerome, Commentary on Daniel 11.24) and: “Those
things that in him preceded in part are to be fulfilled in the case of
Antichrist.” (Based on Jerome, Commentary on Daniel 11.24) (Paul
Alvarus, Indiculus luminosus 34, in The Indiculus luminosus of Paul
Alvarus [trans. Kenneth Baxter Wolf; Translated Texts for Historians 84;
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2024], 196)
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