Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER n. MODERN OPINIONS RESPECTING THE APOCALYPTIC MILLENNIUM. The Millennarian hypothesis, as it respects the patronage which it has at different periods received, has been remarkable for a series of waxings and wanings. During the first ages of the church, when the style of Christianity was ' to believe, to love, and to suffer,' this sentiment seems to have obtained a prevalence so general as to be properly entitled all but absolutely catholic. After the lapse of the three first centuries, a gradual change was wrought in public opinion in regard to this doctrine; a change effected by the combined influence of secular prosperity in the church, and of the controversial opposition of great names against the tenet itself. Origen, Augustine, and Jerome successively arrayed themselves against a Judaizing dogma discountenanced, as they supposed, at once by the spiritual genius of Christianity, and by a fair and rational interpretation of its letter. Their influence, it cannot be doubted, contributed powerfully to weaken the hold which Millennarianism had upon the minds of their contemporaries, and to pave the way for its general abandonment. Add to this that the more favored and felicitous condition of the church under Ccnstantine and his successors for one or two centuries, tended naturally to wean the thoughts of the pious from the anticipation of future to the meditation of present blessedness, in which it is not unlikely that some beheld an actual fulfilment of the promised rest, peace and joy of the world's expected Sabbatism. During the invasions of the northern nations and the deluge of disasters which thenflowed in upon the empire, speculation was overborne, and the minds of Christians were absorbed by the commotions of the times and the evils endured by them or impen...
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