seems so well adapted to the desires and apprehensions of
mankind, that it must have contributed in a very considerable degree to
the progress of the Christian faith. But when the edifice of the church
was almost completed, the temporary support was laid aside. The
doctrine of Christ's reign upon earth was at first treated as a profound
allegory, was considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless opinion,
and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of heresy and
fanaticism. [66] A mysterious prophecy, which still forms a part of the
sacred canon, but which was thought to favor the exploded sentiment, has
very narrowly escaped the proscription of the church. [67]

[Footnote 61: See Burnet's Sacred Theory, part iii. c. 5. This tradition
may be traced as high as the the author of Epistle of Barnabas, who
wrote in the first century, and who seems to have been half a Jew. *
Note: In fact it is purely Jewish. See Mosheim, De Reb. Christ. ii. 8.
Lightfoot's Works, 8vo. edit. vol. iii. p. 37. Bertholdt, Christologia
Judaeorum ch. 38.--M.]

[Footnote 62: The primitive church of Antioch computed almost 6000 years
from the creation of the world to the birth of Christ. Africanus,
Lactantius, and the Greek church, have reduced that number to 5500, and
Eusebius has contented himself with 5200 years. These calculations were
formed on the Septuagint, which was universally received during the six
first centuries. The authority of the vulgate and of the Hebrew text has
determined the moderns, Protestants as well as Catholics, to prefer a
period of about 4000 years; though, in the study of profane antiquity,
they often find themselves straitened by those narrow limits. * Note:
Most of the more learned modern English Protestants, Dr. Hales, Mr.
Faber, Dr. Russel, as well as the Continental writers, adopt the larger
chronology. There is little doubt that the narrower system was framed by
the Jews of Tiberias; it was clearly neither that of St. Paul, nor of
Josephus, nor of the Samaritan Text. It is greatly to be regretted that
the chronology of the earlier Scriptures should ever have been made a
religious question--M.]

[Footnote 63: Most of these pictures were borrowed from a
misrepresentation of Isaiah, Daniel, and the Apocalypse. One of the
grossest images may be found in Irenaeus, (l. v. p. 455,) the disciple
of Papias, who had seen the apostle St. John.]

[Footnote 64: See the second dialogue of Justin with Triphon, and
th