ticular. There can be but one literal sense of the same passage of scripture: the various meanings which the anagogical principle might extract from one and the same literal text, may be endless. An ingenious imagination can never be at a loss for mystical analogies; and were it driven from one position, might readily take its stand on another: whereas the advocate of the literal sense has to rest upon a single chance; and must either make out his case from the simple and obvious construction of the text, or give up the controversy as hopeless.

This peculiar rule and method of scripture interpretation was once exceedingly popular; nay, even the only orthodox mode of explaining scripture; especially among the Christian writers of the third century. Great names, like those of Clemens Alexandrinus, and Origen, had set the example of it, and brought it into fashion: there was a charm about the system itself, which tempted men to adopt it, and apply it in their comments on the word of God, both written, and delivered from the pulpit. It afforded unbounded scope to the exercise of invention, the labour of which seemed to be its own reward, in the pleasure communicated by the discovery of new truths, unobserved analogies, and a nearer and nearer view of the unexplored and unfathomable depths of the riches of the sense of scripture, which were thus continually brought to light. It is no wonder that those, who took along with them this principle of interpretation, as the only legitimate key to the understanding of the scriptures, were not millennarians.

It was a further reason why the doctrine in question should gradually sink into oblivion, that high

authorities, as Dionysius of Alexandria, and Origen, were found inculcating by their writings a persuasion, concerning the book of Revelation, which could not fail in the end to lead to such an effect; viz. that it was a sealed book; which no wisdom of man could understand, no ingenuity of human wit could penetrate: which was full of absurdity and contradictions, if literally construed and explained ; and therefore to be rendered consistent and reasonable, must be explained and construed, in some way not literal; though in what, they did not pretend

to say.

This was to render due honour, indeed, to the book, as of divine original, but effectually to deter men from the study of it; and still more, to stop beforehand the mouth of all arguments founded upon its literal sense and meaning. With such a prejudice on their minds as this, respecting the deep, mystical signification of the text of Revelation, men would no more listen to reasonings derived from its literal construction, or allow any one to have penetrated into its meaning, who was conversant only with its text, than they would have attended to one, who professed to explain the utterings of the spirit in an unknown tongue, without the gift of interpretation or to translate and bring down to the level of human comprehension, the unspeakable words, which St. Paul had heard in paradise. Now, it is upon the testimony of the book of Revelation, that the millennarian, mainly, though not exclusively, grounds his faith in this article of his belief. I say mainly, though not exclusively: for we owe to the book of Revelation our assurance, if not of the fact in general, yet of one of its most important circum

stances. We might have had reason, for instance, to expect a kingdom of Christ upon earth, without that book; but we should not have certainly known, without it, that it would be for a thousand years. And so, of other particulars relating to it.

Lastly, another influential reason, which would operate strongly to the discredit of the doctrine of the millennium, especially after the fifth century, was the unhesitating reception both by its advocates and by its opponents, of the erroneous measurement of time, founded on the Septuagint, in preference to the Hebrew. Professing to expect the millennium, at the end of A. M. 6000, and being mistaken in their computation of the age of the world, by nearly 1500 years in excess, the millennarians would soon have the mortification of seeing their favourite theory disproved by the event. So confident was Lactantius of the approach of the end, reckoned by this false chronology, that he predicted the fulfilment of all that he himself, or his party expected, within 200 years from his own time. The fallacy of that prediction was speedily matter of historical notoriety and we should be little conversant with the ordinary workings of human reasoning, did we hesitate to suppose, that the practical confutation of expectations so confidently put forth, and so soon and so effectually proved to be nugatory and vain,

a Sulpicius Severus, in like manner, compromises the credit of his favourite saint, Martin, by making him declare that Antichrist must be already born, and even in his boyhood, not long before his own death; and therefore that the end of the world was shortly to be expected. Quod autem hæc ab illo audivi"mus," says the speaker in the dialogue, annus octavus est. "Vos autem æstimate, quo in præcipitio consistunt, quæ futura "sunt." Dialog. ii. 16.

would operate reflexively with the world at large, as demonstrative proof of the falsehood of all such expectations. Had Lactantius himself lived to see the disappointment of his own prediction, I question not but that he must either have recast his scheme of chronology entirely, (which very few in those days would have thought of doing,) or have become a convert to the opinions of the anti-millennarians; and allowed that he was before in error.

To these reasons, perhaps more might be added; all calculated to strengthen the influence of causes, unfavourable to the continuance and existence of the doctrine. But these appear to me abundantly sufficient to account for its gradually falling into decay, and even its temporary extinction in the church, as a capital article of religious faith and trust, notwithstanding its reception among Christians generally, at a period of remote antiquity, and bordering on the lifetime of the apostles themselves.

CHAPTER XII. PART III.

On the Millennium. Objections to the doctrine; and uses to which the interposition of the Millennary Economy is subservient.

THE statement of the nature and final end of the millennary dispensation, rightly considered, supplies an answer to all the objections a priori which have been, or may be, urged to the event. If these objections, whether of an abstruse and philosophical, or of an obvious and popular character, are yet derived, as must ultimately be the case, from the state of things around us; they cannot be urged against the doctrine of the millennium, except so far as the supposed state of things under that dispensation, corresponds and is parallel to the state of things in existence at present. But no objections, derived from the actual system of things, as at present constituted, can apply to a state of nature, and a condition of the moral and physical world, so widely distinct from the present, as that which the advocates of the millennium expect, under their millennary dispensation.

The most distinguishing characteristic of the state of nature at present; and the most difficult to reconcile to the acknowledged derivation of all things from the same allwise and beneficent, as well as almighty Creator, is its mixed and heterogeneous constitution; the coexistence and coagency of antagonist principles, in one and the same scheme of being; the diffusion of evil of various kinds, and of different degrees of activity, as widely as that of