Later in the period from Origen to Jerome, now under consideration, there is evidence that millennarian opinions were held by Gregory of Nyssa, and by Paulinus, bishop of Antioch. And Jerome informs us, that it was likewise held by Victorinus, bishop of Pettaw, by Apollinaris, bishop of Bituria. Augustine however and Jerome himself now demand attention, and with the mention of these, the account of this period shall be closed. These eminent men were contemporaries; Jerome dying in A. D. 420, Augustine in 430. Augustine thus expresses himself on this point, in his remarks on Rev. xx. 6. "Those who have supposed from these words, that there shall be a first corporal resurrection, have been moved among other things chiefly by the number of the thousand years; as if there ought to be, among the saints, a sabbatism, as it were, in a holy vacation, after their six thousand years of trouble. Which opinion would indeed be tolerable, if it should be believed that spiritual delights should redound to the saints in that sabbath, by the presence of the Lord; for we also were ourselves formerly aliquando) of that opinion." De Civ. Dei. Lib. xx. c. 7. Now, if Augustine had been formerly of that opinion, it is plain that he must first have received it as the most plain and obvious view of the subject; and that he was not induced to look shy

twenty canons of the council of Nice, contained in Gelasius, questions the 'acts,' related by him as of that council, to be genuine. He says: "Neither Ruffin, nor Socrates, nor Theodoret, nor any other ancient historian, has either seen or known these acts. St. Jerome says, that he had read the acts of the council of Nice; but he means by this form of expression, the canons and subscriptions. The acts which Gelasius attributes to Dalmasius, were made subsequent to the council, and taken out of Eusebius, Theodoret, Socrates, and other historians." There is no need to enter into the reasons which Dupin, who was a Roman Catholic, had for controverting the testimony of Gelasius: the reader is requested only to observe, that so far as the point in hand is concerned, it is not affected by the doubt which he endeavours to cast upon it. For, suppose it to be true, that Gelasius compiled these things from the sources named; and suppose, as another Romish historian has asserted, "that he was a compiler without method, collecting at random all he could find;" it shakes the credit of Gelasius, as an original and discreet writer, but the later in date any of the authorities are, which may be pirated by Gelasius, the more useful they are in the present instance; for they prove the prevalence of the doctrine at so much later a period. There is reason however to question, whether the STUTTwos, &c. be not different from what Dupin means by the 'acts;' and greater reason still to question, whether Jerome, when he mentions acts, did not fully understand his own form of expression, and mean acts. Certainly more has come down to us, as authentic, of the proceedings of that council, than the rules for ecclesiastical discipline, contained in the twenty canons acknowledged by Dupin. For the drawing up these canons was the last thing the council did; the first business that occupied them, and for which they specially assembled, being the Arian controversy, which produced the Creed, known by the name of the Nicene creed; and another thing we know to have been debated by them was,-the time for keeping Easter. (See Cave's Lives of the Fathers.) And though Dupin, and others after him, may contend against the authenticity of the acts; yet Lindanus, who is of the same church, as eloquently contends for it. (Panopl. lib. 2. c. 6.)

at it, till he was given to understand that some held it carnally. And for this 'on dit' there appears to be no trace but in Eusebius, from whom Ludovicus Vives declares Augustine had it. Eusebius was prejudiced against the doctrine, for reasons which will be presently considered.

We finally come to Jerome. He was a vehement adversary of the doctrine; but whatever his own prejudices may have been, he nevertheless lets fall a very important admission as to the number of divines who continued to hold it, in his days. In his commentary on Jeremiah xix. 10, he says, "that he durst not condemn the doctrine, because many ecclesiastical persons and martyrs affirmed the same.”

Thus the sentiments of the earlier fathers were not so entirely corrupted, during this period, but that a very considerable number of Christians, and among them, as we have seen, many very eminent ecclesiastics, still maintained the same; whilst the adversaries of it make very important concessions.*

4. We next have to consider the voice of the Church, during that long period of darkness which elapsed from the time of Jerome to the Reformation; a period which is important. and interesting, as regards prophecy, not from its supplying us with evidence in behalf of the primitive mode of interpretation; but from its showing how that evidence, which previously existed, has been tampered with and thrust aside.

We have already seen, that a new character was given to the system of Scripture exposition, in the time of Origen; and that this new allegorizing system very materially affected the prophecies. But another circumstance occurred in the century following, which shortly after began to exercise a far more considerable influence upon the interpretation of prophecy; an influence which kept gradually but rapidly increasing, till in the age of Jerome, and downward through the papal ages, it prompted men to resort to various wicked artifices, in order to get rid of the primitive_millennarian doctrine. This event was the conversion of the Roman emperor to the Christian faith.† It was the uniform and constant opinion of the church, previous to this period, that Rome would become the seat of ANTI

The reader will find copious quotations from the fathers on this subject in the works of Mede, Dr. Homes his contemporary, Dr. Whitby and Dr. Burnett. If he cannot obtain the larger works, he will likewise find much of them extracted in a modern little treatise, 'Thoughts on Millennarianism,' by the Rev. W. W. Pym, and in some other writers. I have thought it needful, however, in this instance, to refer to the works of the fathers themselves, and to adduce, in some instances, passages which are more directly applicable to the particular point in hand, than those which are to be met with in the above writers.

+ The date of Constantine's conversion is variously placed at A. D. 306, 312, 326 and 337. Gibbon is disposed to date it from the the Milan edict, in favour of Christianity, somewhere between A. D. 306 and 312. Vol. iii. chap. xx.

CHRIST; that the empire would, by a revolution, be first divided into ten kingdoms, that then Antichrist would be revealed and prosper for a time, and that, after the reigning power should have suffered a signal discomfiture, the dominion should be altogether taken from "the eternal city."* Such a notion could not be palatable to the Roman emperor, if known to him; and the less so if it was further understood, that some, in times of pagan persecution, had already mused in their hearts, whether the emperor himself for the time being were not personally the antichrist. These things must have been very perplexing to those ecclesiastics, now mingling with the court, who were of a compliant and secular spirit: which may be judged of, when we find an honest and bold, and godly man, like Lactantius, now expressing himself with avowed reluctance on these topics. He says: "The Roman power which now governs the world-(my mind dreads to declare it; yet I must speak it, because it will surely come to pass!) the Roman power will be taken away from the earth, and the empire will return into Asia, and the east will again have the chief dominion, and the west will be in subjection." De Instit. cap. xv.

The convenient explication, however, was soon afterwards discovered, and adopted by many, that Antichrist was Pagan Rome, and that from the date of Constantine's conversion the millennium commenced. And though the advocates of such an opinion were obliged to maintain, that Satan was bound during the time of the rancorous dissensions and persecutions which arose in the Church on the Arian controversy; and notwithstanding those daily other evils, temptations and deceits constantly experienced during the supposed thousand years, and of which Satan must necessarily have been the author; yet able men were found to maintain such an interpretation! yea, even protestant writers, such as Grotius and his followers, have, at a much later period, adopted the opinion; notwithstanding the immensely greater improbability with which they have had to contend, viz., that of considering the darkest period of papal history, the one of greatest light and glory to the Church!

Among those who in the reign of Constantine may be justly suspected of time-serving, was Eusebius the historian, bishop of Pamphylia, who boasts of his conversation with that monarch; and as from him appears to have originally sprung the obloquy which was cast upon the Chiliasts, (as they were now called,) it is necessary to bring him first in order under notice. He does not directly attack the doctrine itself; but raises questions on the canonical authority of the Apocalypse, and on the sup* See Jerome's Commentary on Daniel vii. wherein he declares the uniform testimony of the fathers on this head, and was persuaded of it himself.

*

posed author of the millennarian doctrine. His statements, however, on this head are contradictory and absurd; for in one place he seems to attribute the invention of it to the heretic Cerinthus, and to insinuate that the early upholders of the doctrine were Ebionites; but in another place he distinctly says that Papias was its author, and that by the generality, (TOS) of ecclesiastics following it was afterwards received, owing to the antiquity of the man. (lib. iii. sect. 39.) Now Papias was no ancient to his own generation; and though Irenæus, in the age immediately following, speaks of him as having declared certain things on this subject, which he heard from the apostle John; yet he by no means intimates that he adopted the doctrine from him; nor could Irenæus indeed be moved by the antiquity of a man who flourished only about fifty years before him. Neither is there a shadow of evidence that any orthodox ecclesiastics in the first two centuries did otherwise than hold it. Moreover, when Eusebius is speaking of the Millennarian doctrine of Papias, he calls him, (as we have before noticed,) a man of very weak intellect, and supposes therefore that he must have misconceived the doctrine; but when he refers to him in another part of his works for other objects, he can admit him to have "enjoyed great fame and celebrity," and to have been "a man most eloquent in all things, and skilful in the Scriptures." Hist. of Euseb. iii. 32.

Further, it is not a little matter that Eusebius, besides having disparaged the authority of the Apocalypse, and insinuated that it was perhaps the work of Cerinthus the Ebionite, was decidedly tainted with the Arian heresy, which renders his views liable to suspicion on this point in more respects than the one named. The Magdeburgensian centuriators thus treat of him: "Being now about to say some few things concerning the doctrine of Eusebius, we first give this admonition, that Jerome every where holds him forth, suspected of the error of Arianism. For in his apology against Ruffinus he says of Eusebius, 'that he was indeed a most learned man, but not a Catholic; [i. e. according to the usages of the word in those times, not orthodox,] and throughout six of his books did continually declare that Origen was of the same faith with him,—i. e. of the Arian falsehood." Hist. Eccles. cap. x. sect. 3. Bishop Jeremy Taylor in his 'Liberty of Prophesying,' not only says of him, that he entertained Arian sentiments; but that he is not clear of a suspicion of having endeavoured to corrupt and

* For a learned and able refutation of Eusebius on this point, shewing that Cerinthus actually never did hold the true millennarian doctrine, and that the carnal notions really held by him were not held by Justyn, Irenæus, &c. see Medes' Works.

falsify the Nicene Creed, (fol. ed. p. 954,) which will account for what Scultetus says of him, that though immediately after the council of Nice he seemed to have returned to his right mind, he never did cordially believe the co-equality of Christ with the Father. Now a man who can be disingenuous enough to insinuate that Origen was of the same faith with him; who can go about to falsify a document of such importance as the Nicene Creed; and who can apparently veer round in his opinions on an important doctrine, and yet in heart remain of the same opinion still; may justly be suspected of having been influenced in his change of sentiments by the opinion of the emperor, who, in the council of Nice, took decidedly against Arius. And yet, it is on the credit and judgment of such a man, that the whole weight of an objection, insignificant in itself, is rested.*

When the Christian bishop of Rome came, in progress of time, to be elevated to the high rank which he attained under the papacy, the inconvenience of explaining Rome to be the capital city of the Antichrist, and the 'Babylon' and 'Harlot of the Apocalypse, was more sensibly felt than ever: because it could not be asserted without giving occasion for the very obvious conclusion, that the bishop of Rome would some day apostatize, together with the church in general over which he was the head. Accordingly, from the time of Justinian, efforts were both openly and clandestinely made to get rid of the doctrine altogether, by removing or corrupting the evidence in its favour, or by affixing to it the stigma of heresy. Pope Damasus endeavoured peremptorily to put it down by a decree. And some works of the Fathers, which were in favour of it, (such as the works of Papias, the Treatise of Nepos already adverted to, several of the more direct works of Irenæus on the subject, Tertullian's treatise on Paradise,† and various others,) were successfully suppressed; and in regard to those which could not be so well withdrawn, a system of interpolating, or otherwise altering the text, commenced, which in some instances has affected only a portion of the manuscript copies that have come down to us, and in other instances the entire of them.

*The reader who wishes to see other authorities in proof of the Arianism of Eusebius, may consult-'The Resurrection Revealed,' by Dr. Homes. See the revised edition of 1833, p. 37; also the works of Le Clerc and Mosheim. + Some of these treatises, by showing that the saints are not perfectly glorified at death, but wait for the time when the Lord shall take to him his great power and reign, were found also to conflict against the growing heresy of the invocation of saints and angels, so profitable to the Romish church in after times: and Bellarmine admits (de Beat. Sanct. Ord. Disput.) that the notion of the saints going immediately to heaven on their death, was the foundation