Now the arrival of Anti-Christ meant the end of the world, and Bacon accepted the view, which he says was held by all wise men, that "we are not far from the times of Anti-Christ." Thus the intellectual reforms which he urged would have the effect, and no more, of preparing Christendom to resist more successfully the corruption in which the rule of Anti-Christ would involve the world.

"Truth will prevail," by which he meant science will make advances, "though with difficulty, until Anti-Christ and his forerunners appear;" and on his own showing the interval would probably be short.
The frequency with which Bacon recurs to this subject, and the emphasis he lays on it, show that the appearance of Anti-Christ was a fixed point in his mental horizon.

When he looked forward into the future, the vision which confronted him was a scene of corruption, tyranny, and struggle under the reign of a barbarous enemy of Christendom; and after that, the end of the world.

[Footnote: (1) His coming may be fixed by astrology: Opus Majus, iv.p.269 (inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel magis certitudo de tempore Antichristi; cp.p.

402).