Prideaux related the rise of Muhammad and the bishop of Rome’s claim to reign over all churches. Hence, the “Antichrist seems at this time to have set both his Feet upon Christendom together, the one in the East, and the other in the West.”

Evidence

So, when Fox claimed that the growth of the Quaker community demonstrated its credibility, Williams retorted that Islam and Roman Catholicism had grown equally as quickly. Elsewhere, Williams wrote of his anticipation that the destruction of Islam and Catholicism would coincide, along with the mass conversion of the Jews, with the apocalypse. — Peter Gottschalk and Gabriel Greenberg, Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear, 99 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

The earliest evidence, from the 1560s, shows that Drake’s religious convictions were not only deep but extreme and uncompromising. In time he would find himself a spiritual home among the Elizabethan Puritans, for to Drake the Roman Church was not merely corrupted by the excrescences of the centuries and in need of reform; it was a false church, administered, as he said, by Antichrist, and fit only to be eschewed and condemned. — John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake, 56 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Medieval Christendom defined itself by expelling threatening forces beyond its perimeter; Medieval Christians identified Muhammad with Behemoth, Leviathan, and the Antichrist; In colonial America, many Protestants associated Islam and Catholicism with the Antichrist. Indeed, Prideaux related the rise of Muhammad and the bishop of Rome’s claim to reign over all churches. Hence, the ‘Antichrist seems at this time to have set both his Feet upon Christendom together, the one in the East, and the other in the West.’ (+7 more)

Broader Connections