Millenium
as the preparative and transitional state to perfect spiritualization: — second, that the doctrine of Christ's reign upon earth rested wholly or principally on the twentieth chapter of the Revelations, which actually, in my judgment, opposes it.
I more than suspect that Austin's and Jerome's strongest ground for rejecting the second coming of our Lord in his kingly character, was, that they were tired of waiting for it. How can we otherwise interpret the third and fourth clauses of the Lord's Prayer, or, perhaps, the
,
in hoc seculo
, (x. 30) of St. Mark? If the first three Gospels, joined with the unbroken faith and tradition of the Church for nearly three centuries, can decide the question, the Millenarians have the best of the argument.
Vol. viii. s. ix. p. 22.
One thing only I observe (and we shall find it true in most writings, whose authority is urged in questions of theology), that the authority of the tradition is not it which moves the assent, but the nature of the thing; and because such a canon is delivered, they do not therefore believe the sanction or proposition so delivered, but disbelieve the tradition if they do not like the matter, and so do not judge of the matter by the tradition, but of the tradition by the matter.
This just and acute remark is, in fact, no less applicable to Scripture in all doctrinal points, and if infidelity is not to overspread England as well as France, the same criterion (that is, the internal evidence) must be extended to all points, to the narratives no less than to the precept. The written words must be tried by the Word from the beginning, in which is life, and that life the light of men.