That you be not easily moved from your sense, nor be terrified, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by epistle, as sent from us, as if the day of the Lord were at hand.

“Now I am aware that your teachers, sirs, admit the whole of the words of this passage to refer to Christ; and I am likewise aware that they maintain He has not yet come; or if they say that He has come, they assert that it is not known who He is; but when He shall become manifest and glorious, then it shall be known who He is. And then, they say, the events mentioned in this passage shall happen, just as if there was no fruit as yet from the words of the prophecy. O unreasoning men! understanding not what has been proved by all these passages, that two advents of Christ have been announced: the one, in which He is set forth as suffering, inglorious, dishonoured, and crucified; but the other, in which He shall come from heaven with glory, when the man of apostasy, who speaks strange things against the Most High, shall venture to do unlawful deeds on the earth against us the Christians, who, having learned the true worship of God from the law, and the word which went forth from Jerusalem by means of the apostles of Jesus, have fled for safety to the God of Jacob and God of Israel; and we who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have each through the whole earth changed our warlike weapons — our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into implements of tillage— and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith, and hope, which we have from the Father Himself through Him who was crucified; and sitting each under his vine, i.e., each man possessing his own married wife.”

“And, what was worse than all, some attempted merely to report words as if they were said by Paul, but others even to forge Epistles as written by him. On this account, cutting off all access for them, he says, "Be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us." "Neither by spirit" he says, glancing at the false prophets.”

“Therefore, not to know the times is something different from moral decay and the love of vice. For when the apostle Paul said, "Don't be easily shaken in your mind nor be frightened, neither by word nor by epistle as sent from us, as if the day of the Lord were at hand," he obviously did not want them to believe those who thought the coming of the Lord was already at hand. Neither, moreover, did he want them to be like the wicked servant and say, "My Lord will not be coming for a long time," and deliver themselves over to destruction by pride and immoral behavior. Thus, Paul's desire that they should not listen to false rumors about the imminent approach of the last day was consistent with his wish that they should await the coming of their Lord fully prepared and ready for the journey, with lamps burning.”

“He who is Apostle above showed things to come, as regards the punishments of the wicked and the rewards of the good; here he announces things to come as regards the dangers of the Church, which will be in the time of Antichrist. And first he announces the truth about the future dangers; second he warns them to remain in the truth, at the place therefore, brothers. Concerning the first he does two things: first he excludes falsity; second he instructs concerning the truth, at the place unless. Again the first is divided into three: first he recalls that from which they ought to be induced; second he shows to what they ought to be induced, at the place that you be not quickly; third he removes that which could move them, at the place nor by spirit. Now he induces from three things, namely from his own prayers, at we beg, not from precepts. Philem. 8: having much confidence in Christ Jesus to command you what pertains to the matter, for charity's sake I rather beseech. Second, from the coming of Christ, desirable to the good, though terrible to the wicked. Amos 5:18: woe to them that desire the day of the Lord, et cetera. 2 Tim. 4:8: and not only to me, but to them also that love his coming, et cetera. Apoc., last chapter: come, Lord Jesus, et cetera. Third, from the desire and love of the whole congregation of the saints, unto the same, namely where Christ is, because Matt. 24:28: where the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together. Or unto the same, that is, into the same, because all the saints will be in the same place and glory. Ps. 49:5: gather ye together his saints to him. But to what does he induce them? That you be not quickly moved from your sense. Now to be moved is one thing, to be terrified another. He is moved from his sense who abandons what he held; as if he were to say: do not quickly let go of my teaching. Ecclus. 19:4: he that is hasty to give credit is light of heart. But terror is a certain trepidation, with dread of what is contrary. And therefore he says: be not terrified. Job 15:21: the sound of dread is always in his ears. Likewise, if there is peace, they always suspect ambushes. Wis. 17:10: for whereas wickedness is fearful, it beareth witness to its condemnation, et cetera. Then when he says nor by spirit, he removes what could move them, first in particular, second in general, at the place lest anyone. Now a person is seduced through a false revelation; hence he says nor by spirit, that is: if anyone should say that something contrary to my teaching has been revealed to him through the Holy Spirit, or by the Holy Spirit, do not be terrified. 1 John 4:1: believe not every spirit. Ezek. 13:3: woe to the foolish prophets that follow their own spirit, and see nothing. Sometimes too Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, as is said 2 Cor. 11:14; and 3 Kings, last chapter: I will go out, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. Second, through reasoning, or a false exposition of Scripture; therefore he says nor by word. 2 Tim. 2:17: their speech spreadeth like a canker. Eph. 5:6: let no man deceive you with vain words. Third, through authority adduced in an evil sense. 2 Peter, last chapter: as also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures, et cetera. But concerning what were they being seduced? As though the day of the Lord were at hand. And he says nor by an epistle as if sent by us. Because in the first epistle, unless it be well understood, it seems to say that the Lord's coming is at hand, as that: then we who live, et cetera. Then when he says lest anyone, etc., he does the same in general. Luke 21:8: take heed you be not seduced, et cetera. 1 Cor. 15:33: be not seduced. Now the reason why the Apostle removes these things, namely concerning the Lord's coming, is that a prelate ought in no way to wish that any goods be procured through a lie. 1 Cor. 15:15: we are found also false witnesses, et cetera. Likewise, because the thing believed was dangerous, namely that the day of the Lord was at hand. First, because occasion would be given for greater seduction, because after the times of the apostles there were to be some who would say that they were Christ. Luke 21:8: many will say: I am, et cetera. And therefore the Apostle was unwilling. Likewise the Demon frequently pretends to be Christ, as is clear concerning blessed Martin. And therefore, lest they be seduced, he was unwilling. But Augustine gives another reason, that a danger to faith would threaten. Hence someone might say: the Lord will come late, and then I will prepare myself for him. Another would say: he will come soon, and therefore I will prepare myself now. Another would say: I do not know. And this one speaks better, because he agrees with Christ. But he errs more who says: soon; because, the term having elapsed, men would despair, and would believe that the things written are false. Then when he says unless the departure come first, etc., he establishes the truth; and first he shows what things are to come regarding the coming of Antichrist. And there are two things, one of which precedes the coming of Antichrist; the other is his coming itself. The first is the departure, which is explained in many ways in the Gloss. And first, a departure from the faith, because it was to be that the faith would be received by the whole world. Matt. 24:14: and this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world. This therefore precedes, which according to Augustine has not yet been fulfilled, and afterward many will depart from the faith, et cetera. 1 Tim. 4:1: in the last times some shall depart from the faith, et cetera. Matt. 24:12: the charity of many shall grow cold. Or a departure from the Roman empire, to which the whole world was subject. Now Augustine says that this is figured in Dan. 2:31 in the statue, where four kingdoms are named; and after those, the coming of Christ, and that this was a fitting sign, because the Roman empire was established for this, that under its power the faith might be preached throughout the whole world. But how is this, since the nations withdrew from the Roman empire long ago, and yet Antichrist has not yet come? It must be said that it has not yet ceased, but has been changed from temporal into spiritual, as Pope Leo says in a sermon on the apostles. And therefore it must be said that the departure from the Roman empire ought to be understood not only as regards the temporal, but as regards the spiritual, namely from the Catholic faith of the Roman Church. Now this is a fitting sign, that just as Christ came when the Roman empire ruled over all, so conversely the sign of Antichrist is a departure from it. Second, he foretells the second thing to come, namely Antichrist. And first as regards his guilt and punishment; second as regards his power, at the place whose coming. Again, first he touches on his guilt and punishment commonly and implicitly; second he explains both, at the place who opposes. He says therefore: the departure will come first, and then he will be revealed. Now he is called the man of sin and the son of perdition, according to the Gloss, because just as the fullness of virtue abounded in Christ, so in Antichrist a multitude of all sins abounds. And just as Christ is better than all the saints, so he is worse than all the wicked. And for this reason he is called the man of sin, because he will be totally given over to sins. But he is not called man of sin in such a way that he could not be worse, because evil never corrupts the whole good, although as regards act he will not be able to be worse. But no man could be better than Christ. Now he is called son of perdition, that is, appointed to utter perdition. Job 21:30: the wicked man is reserved to the day of destruction, and he shall be led to the day of wrath. Or of perdition, that is, of the Devil, not by nature, but by the completion of his malice, which will be completed in him. And he says he will be revealed, because just as all the goods and virtues of the saints who preceded Christ were a figure of Christ, so in all the persecutions of the Church the tyrants were, as it were, a figure of Antichrist, and Antichrist lay hidden there; and thus all that malice, which lies hidden in them, will be revealed at that time. Then when he says who opposes, he explains what he had said. And first he shows how he is the man of sin; second how he is the son of perdition, at the place and then shall be revealed. Again, first he foretells his future guilt; second he assigns its cause, at the place and then. Again, first he describes the guilt, second he says that he is not announcing a new teaching, at the place you remember not. Again, first he shows the guilt, second its sign, at the place so that, et cetera. Now his guilt is twofold, namely opposition to God; hence he says who is opposed to all good spirits. Job 15:26: he ran against God with neck erect, and with fat neck he is armed, as also are his members. Isa. 3:8: their tongue and their devices are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his majesty. The second is that he prefers himself to Christ; therefore he says he is lifted up, et cetera. Now God is spoken of in three ways. First, naturally. Deut. 6:4: hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God. Second, by opinion. Ps. 95:5: all the gods of the Gentiles are devils. Third, by participation. Ps. 81:6: I have said: you are gods. But Antichrist will set himself above all these. Dan. 11:36: he shall be lifted up, and magnified against every god, and shall speak great things against the God of gods. Now the sign of the guilt is when he says so that in the temple, et cetera. For the pride of Antichrist is greater than the pride of all who preceded him. Hence just as it is read of Caius Caesar, that while he was still living he wished to be worshipped, setting up his statue in every temple, and Ezek. 28:2 it is said of the king of Tyre: thou hast said, I am God, et cetera: so it is credible that Antichrist will do likewise to them, saying that he is God and man. And as a sign of this he will sit in the temple. But in which temple? Was it not destroyed by the Romans? And therefore some say that Antichrist is of the tribe of Dan, which tribe among the other twelve is not named in Apoc. 7:5. And therefore the Jews will first receive him, and will rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and thus that will be fulfilled, Dan. 9:27: there shall be in the temple the abomination and the idol; Matt. 24:15: and when you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, he that readeth let him understand. But some say that neither Jerusalem nor the temple will ever be rebuilt, but the desolation will persist even to the consummation and the end. And this also some Jews believe. Therefore it is expounded in the temple of God, that is, in the Church, because many from the Church will receive him. Or according to Augustine, he sits in the temple of God, that is, he rules and dominates, as though he himself with his messengers were the temple of God, just as Christ is with his own. Then when he says do you not remember, he shows that he writes nothing new; as if he were to say: formerly, when I was with you, I said this. 2 John 5: I write not a new commandment to you, but the old commandment, which you had from the beginning. 2 Cor. 10:11: such as we were in word through letters when absent, such also when present in deed, et cetera.”

“That ye be not soon shaken in mind,.... Or "from your mind or sense", as the Vulgate Latin version; or "from the solidity of sense", as the Arabic version; that is, from what they had received in their minds, and was their sense and judgment, and which they had embraced as articles of faith; that they would not be like a wave of the sea, tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine; or be moved from the hope of the Gospel, from any fundamental article of it, and from that which respects the second coming of Christ particularly; and especially, that they would not be quickly and easily moved from it; see Gal 1:6 or be troubled; thrown into consternation and surprise, for though the coming of Christ will not be terrible to saints, as it will be to sinners; yet there is something in it that is awful and solemn, and fills with concern; and to be told of it as at that instant might be surprising and shocking: the several ways in which their minds might be troubled and distressed with such an account are enumerated by the apostle, that they might guard against them, and not be imposed upon by them: neither by spirit; by a prophetic spirit, by pretensions to a revelation from the Spirit, fixing the precise time of Christ's coming, which should not be heeded or attended to; since his coming will be as a thief in the night: nor by word: by reason and a show of it, by arguments drawn from it, which may carry in them a show of probability; by enticing words of man's wisdom; by arithmetical or astronomical calculations; or by pretensions to a word, a tradition of Christ or his apostles, as if they had received it "viva voce", by word of mouth from any of them: nor by letter, as from us; by forging a letter and counterfeiting their hands, for such practices began to be used very early; spurious epistles of the Apostle Paul were carried about, which obliged him to take a method whereby his genuine letters might be known; see Th2 3:17 or he may have respect in this clause to his former epistle, wherein he had said some things concerning the Coming of Christ, which had been either wrongly represented, or not understood; and as if his sense was, that it would be while he and others then living were alive and on the spot: wherefore he would not have them neither give heed to any enthusiastic spirits, nor to any plausible reasonings of men, or unwritten traditions; nor to any letters in his name, or in the name of any of the apostles; nor even to his former letter to them, as though it contained any such thing in it, as that the day of Christ is at hand; or is at this instant just now coming on; as if it would be within that year, in some certain month, and on some certain day in it; which notion the apostle would have them by no means give into, for these reasons, because should Christ not come, as there was no reason to believe he would in so short a time, they would be tempted to disbelieve his coming at all, at least be very indifferent about it; and since if it did not prove true, they might be led to conclude there was nothing true in the Christian doctrine and religion; and besides, such a notion of the speedy coming of Christ would tend to indulge the idle and disorderly persons among them in their sloth and negligence: and now for these, and for the weighty reasons he gives in the next verse, he dissuades them from imbibing such a tenet; for though the coming of Christ is sometimes said to be drawing nigh, and to be quickly, yet so it might be, and not at that instant; besides, such expressions are used with respect to God, with whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years; and because the Gospel times, or times of the Messiah, are the last days, there will be no other dispensation of things until the second coming of Christ; and chiefly they are used to keep up the faith, and awaken the hope and expectation of the saints with respect to it. The Alexandrian copy, and some others, read, "the day of the Lord"; and so the Vulgate Latin version; and accordingly the Syriac and Ethiopic versions, "the day of our Lord".”

“Be not soon shaken in mind - Απο του νοος· From the mind; i.e. that they should retain the persuasion they had of the truths which he had before delivered to them; that they should still hold the same opinions, and hold fast the doctrines which they had been taught. Neither by spirit - Any pretended revelation. Nor by word - Any thing which any person may profess to have heard the apostle speak. Nor by letter - Either the former one which he had sent, some passages of which have been misconceived and misconstrued; or by any other letter, as from us - pretending to have been written by us, the apostles, containing predictions of this kind. There is a diversity of opinion among critics concerning this last clause, some supposing that it refers simply to the first epistle; others supposing that a forged epistle is intended. I have joined the two senses. The word σαλευθηναι, to be shaken, signifies to be agitated as a ship at sea in a storm, and strongly marks the confusion and distress which the Thessalonians had felt in their false apprehension of this coming of Christ. As that the day of Christ is at hand - In the preface to this epistle I have given a general view of the meaning of the phrase the coming of Christ. Now the question is: Whether does the apostle mean, the coming of Christ to execute judgment upon the Jews, and destroy their polity, or his coming at the end of time, to judge the world? There are certainly many expressions in the following verses that may be applied indifferently to either, and some seem to apply to the one, and not to the other; and yet the whole can scarcely be so interpreted as to suit any one of these comings exclusively. This is precisely the case with the predictions of our Lord relative to these great events; one is used to point out and illustrate the other. On this ground I am led to think that the apostle, in the following confessedly obscure words, has both these in view, speaking of none of them exclusively; for it is the custom of the inspired penmen, or rather of that Spirit by which they spoke, to point out as many certain events by one prediction as it was possible to do, and to choose the figures, metaphors, and similes accordingly; and thus, from the beginning, God has pointed out the things that were not by the things that then existed, making the one the types or significations of the other. As the apostle spoke by the same Spirit, he most probably followed the same plan; and thus the following prophecy is to be interpreted and understood.”

“St. Augustine, writing to Hesychium, declareth that no one from the Scripture can be assured of the day, year, or age[century] when the second coming shall be. (ep. lxxx.) Let us attend to what St. Augustine declares he had learnt from the first Church authorities. At the last judgment, or about that time, will arrive Elias, the Thesbite, the conversion of the Jews, the persecution of antichrist, the coming of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the separation of the good from the bad, the conflagration of the world, and the renovation of the same: that these things will arrive, we are to believe, but in what manner and in what order experience will teach better than reason. It is my opinion that they will come in the order I have related them. (De Civ. Dei. lib. xx. cap. ultra) That the man of sin will be born of the Jewish tribe of Dan, that he will cruelly persecute the faithful for three years and a half, that he will put to death Henoch[Enoch] and Elias, and that great, very great, will be the apostacy, is the general belief. Oh! God, preserve us with thy grace, and do not permit us to lose sight of the dreadful danger that threatens even the elect.”

“soon--on trifling grounds, without due consideration. shaken--literally, "tossed" as ships tossed by an agitated sea. Compare for the same image, Eph 4:14. in mind--rather as the Greek, "from your mind," that is, from your mental steadfastness on the subject. troubled--This verb applies to emotional agitation; as "shaken" to intellectual. by spirit--by a person professing to have the spirit of prophecy (Co1 12:8-10; Jo1 4:1-3). The Thessalonians had been warned (Th1 5:20-21) to "prove" such professed prophesyings, and to "hold fast (only) that which is good." by word--of mouth (compare Th2 2:5, Th2 2:15); some word or saying alleged to be that of Paul, orally communicated. If oral tradition was liable to such perversion in the apostolic age (compare a similar instance, Joh 21:23), how much more in our age! by letter as from us--purporting to be from us, whereas it is a forgery. Hence he gives a test by which to know his genuine letters (Th2 3:17). day of Christ--The oldest manuscripts read, "day of the Lord." is at hand--rather, "is immediately imminent," literally, "is present"; "is instantly coming." Christ and His apostles always taught that the day of the Lord's coming is at hand; and it is not likely that Paul would imply anything contrary here; what he denies is, that it is so immediately imminent, instant, or present, as to justify the neglect of everyday worldly duties. CHRYSOSTOM, and after him ALFORD, translates, "is (already) present" (compare Ti2 2:18), a kindred error. But in Ti2 3:1, the same Greek verb is translated "come." WAHL supports this view. The Greek is usually used of actual presence; but is quite susceptible of the translation, "is all but present."”