Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/335

Rh MILLENNIUM 317 that gave a specifically Christian character to their system. This, however, holds good of the Western theologians only after the middle of the 3d century. The earlier fathers, frenseus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, believed in chiliasm simply because it was a part of the tradition of the church and because Marcion and the Gnostics would have nothing to do with it. Irenreus (v. 28, 29) has the same conception of the millennial kingdom as Barnabas and Papias, and appeals in support of it to the testimony of disciples of the apostles. Hippolytus, although an opponent of Montanism, was nevertheless a thorough-going millennarian (see his book De Antickristo). Tertullian (cf. especially Adv. Marcion., 3) aimed at a more spiritual conception of the millennial blessings than Papias had, but he still adhered, especially in his Montanistic period, to all the ancient anticipations. It is the same all through the 3d and 4th centuries with those Latin theologians who escaped the influence of Greek speculation. Commodian, Victorinus Pettavensis, Lactantius, and Sulpicius Severus were all pronounced millennarians, holding by the very details of the primitive Christian expectations. They still believe, as John did, in the return of Nero as the Antichrist ; they still expect that after the first resurrection Christ will reign with His saints &quot; in the flesh&quot; for a thousand years. Once, but only once (in the Gospel of Nicodemus), the time is reduced to five hundred years. Victorinus wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse of John ; and all these theologians, especially Lactantius, were diligent students of the ancient Sibylline oracles of Jewish and Christian origin, and treated them as divine revelations. As to the canonicity and apostolic authorship of the Johannine Apocalypse no doubts were ever entertained in the West ; indeed an Apocalypse of Peter was still retained in the canon in the 3d century. That of Ezra, in its Latin translation, must have been all but a canonical book, the numbers of extant manuscripts of the so-called 4 Ezra being incredibly great, while several of them are found in copies of the Latin Bible at the beginning of the IGth century. The Apocalypse of Hermas was much read till far through the Middle Ages, and has also kept its place in some Bibles. The apocalyptic &quot; Testamenta duodecim Patriarcharum &quot; was a favourite reading-book ; and Latin versions of ancient apocalypses are being continually brought to light from Western libraries (e.g., the Assumptio Mosis, the Ascensio Jesajse, &c.). All these facts show how vigorously the early hopes of the future maintained themselves in the West. In the hands of moralistic theo logians, like Lactantius, they certainly assume a somewhat grotesque form, but the fact that these men clung to them is the clearest evidence that in the West millennarianism was still a point of &quot; orthodoxy &quot; in the 4th century. This state of matters, however, gradually disappeared after the end of the 4th century. The change was brought about by two causes, first, Greek theology, which reached the West chiefly through Jerome, Rufinus, and Ambrose, and, second, the new idea of the church wrought out by Augustine on the basis of the altered political situation of the church. Jerome, the pupil of the Greeks, feels him self already emancipated from &quot;opiniones Judaicse&quot;; he ridicules the old anticipations ; and, though he does not venture to reject them, he and the other disciples of the Greeks did a great deal to rob them of their vitality. At the same time the influence of Greek theology was by no means so great in the West that this of itself could have suppressed chiliastic views. It was reserved for Augustine to give a direction to Western theology which carried it clear of millennarianism. He himself had at one time believed in it ; he too had looked forward to the holy Sabbath which was to be celebrated by Christ and His people on earth. But the signs of the times pointed to a different prospect. Without any miraculous interposition of God, not only was Christianity victorious on earth, but the church had attained a position of supremacy. The old Roman empire was tottering to its fall; the church stood fast, ready to step into its inheritance. It was not simply that the world-power, the enemy of Christ, had been vanquished ; the fact was that it had gradually abdicated its political functions in favour of the church. Under these circumstances Augustine was led, in his con troversy with the Donatists and as an apologist, to idealize the political side of the catholic church, to grasp and elaborate the idea that the church is the kingdom of Christ and the city of God. Others before him may have taken the same view, and he on the other hand never forgot that true blessedness belongs to the future ; but still he was the first who ventured to teach that the catholic church, in its empirical form, was the kingdom of Christ, that the millennial kingdom had commenced with the appearing of Christ, and was therefore an accomplished fact. By this doctrine of Augustine s, the old millennarianism, though not completely extirpated, was at least banished from the realm of dogmatic. For the official theology of the church it very soon became a thing of the past ; certain elements of it were even branded as heretical. It still lived on, how ever, in the lower strata of Christian society ; and in certain undercurrents of tradition it was transmitted from century to century. At various periods in the history of the Middle Ages we encounter sudden outbreaks of millennarianism, sometimes as the tenet of a small sect, sometimes as a far-reaching movement. And, since it had been suppressed, not, as in the East, by mystical specula tion, its mightiest antagonist, but by the political church of the hierarchy, we find that wherever chiliasm appears in the Middle Ages it makes common cause with all enemies of the secularized church. It strengthened the hands of church democracy ; it formed an alliance with the pure souls who held up to the church the ideal of apostolic poverty; it united itself for a time even with mysticism in a common opposition to the supremacy of the church ; nay, it lent the strength of its convictions to the support of states and princes in their efforts to break the political power of the church. It is sufficient to recall the well-known names of Joachim of Floris, of all the numerous Franciscan spiritualists, of the leading sectaries from the 13th to the 15th century who assailed the papacy and the secularism of the church, above all, the name of Occam. In these men the millennarianism of the ancient church came to life again ; and in the revolutionary move ments of the 15th and 16th centuries especially in the Anabaptist movements it appears with all its old uncom- promisirg energy. If the church, and not the state, was regarded as Babylon, and the pope declared to be the Antichrist, these were legitimate inferences from the ancient traditions and the actual position of the church. But, of course, the new chiliasm was not in every respect identical with the old. It could not hold its ground without admitting certain innovations. The &quot; everlasting gospel &quot; of Joachim of Floris was a different thing from the announcement of Christ s glorious return in the clouds of heaven; the &quot;age of the spirit&quot; which mystics and spiritualists expected contained traits which must be characterized as &quot; modern &quot; ; and the &quot; kingdom &quot; of the Anabaptists in Miinster was a Satanic caricature of that kingdom in which the Christians of the 2d century looked for a peaceful Sabbath rest. Only we must not form our ideas of the great apocalyptic and chiliastic movement of the first decades of the 16th century from the rabble in MiinstcT. There were pure evangelical forces at work in it ; and many Anabaptists need not shun comparison with the Christians of the apostolic and post-apostolic ages.