be purified and made white and tried; but the wicked shall do
wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand." And again:
"The wise shall understand; and from the time that the daily
sacrifices shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh
desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety
days," Dan. 12:10, 11. Christ testifies that this prophecy is to
be fulfilled, but that it has not been as yet fulfilled, Matt.
24:15. Therefore the daily sacrifice of Christ will cease
universally at the advent of the abomination - i.e. of Antichrist
- just as it has already ceased, particularly in some churches,
and thus will be unemployed in the place of desolation - vz. when
the churches will be desolated, in which the canonical hours will
not be chanted or the masses celebrated or the sacraments
administered, and there will be no altars, no images of saints, no
candles, no furniture. Therefore all princes and faithful subjects
of the Roman Empire ought to be encouraged never to admit or pass
over anything that may aid the preparers of Antichrist in
attaining such a degree of wickedness, when the woman - i.e. the
Catholic Church - as St. John saw in the Spirit, will flee into
the wilderness, where she will have a place prepared of God, that
she may be nourished there twelve hundred and sixty days, Rev.
12:6. Finally, St. Paul says, Heb. 5:1: "Every high priest taken
from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God,
that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins." But since
the external priesthood has not ceased in the new law, but has
been changed to a better, therefore even today the high priest and
the entire priesthood offer in the Church an external sacrifice,
which is only one, the Eucharist. To this topic that also is
applicable which is read, according to the new translation, in
Acts 13:1, 2: Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen and Saul