What Reformation Heroes said about the Pope as the Antichrist
John Huss: "The more circumspect you ought to be, for that Anti-Christ laboureth the more to trouble you. Death shall swallow up many, but of the elect children of God the kingdom of God draweth near ..., Know ye, well-beloved, that Anti-Christ being stirred up against you deviseth divers persecutions."
Bishop Ridley: "The See of Rome is the seat of Satan, and the bishop of the same, that maintained the abominations thereof, is Anti-Christ himself indeed,- and for the same causes this See at this day is the same that St. John calls, in his Revelation, Babylon, or the whore of Babylon, and spiritual Sodom and Egypt, the mother of fornications and abominations on earth. "
John Calvin: "The arrogance of Anti-Christ of which Paul speaks, is that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself, that he is God. For where is the incomparable majesty of God after mortal man has been exalted to such a height that his laws take precedence of God's eternal decrees? I deny him to be the Vicar of Christ who is furiously persecuting the gospel, demonstrates by his conduct that he is Anti-Christ, I deny him to be the successor of Peter who is doing his utmost to demolish every edifice that Peter built. "
William Tyndale: "Though the Bishop of Rome and his sects give Christ these names (His rightful names), yet in that they rob Him of the effect and take the signification of His names unto themselves, and make of Him but a hypocrite, as they themselves be, they be the right Anti-Christs, and deny both the Father and the Son; for they deny the witness that the Father bore unto his Son, and deprive the Son of all power and glory that His Father gave Him."
Archbishop Cranmer: "And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished,- for it shall first be burned,- and as for the Pope, / refuse him as Christ's enemy, and AntiChrist, with all his false doctrines."
Martin Luther (December 1, 1520) published two tracts in answer to a papal Bull, one of which was entitled, Martin Luther against the Execrable Bull of Anti-Christ. In its conclusion Luther admonished the Pope and his cardinals no longer to persevere in madness, "no longer to act the undoubted part of the Anti-Christ of the Scriptures.'