immediate disciples of the apostles,
down to Lactantius, who was preceptor to the son of Constantine. Though
it might not be universally received, it appears to have been the
reigning sentiment of the orthodox believers; and it 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. 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.

Whilst the happiness and glory of a temporal reign were promised to the
disciples of Christ, the most dreadful calamities were denounced against
an unbelieving world. The edification of a new Jerusalem was to advance
by equal steps with the destruction of the mystic Babylon; and as
long as the emperors who reigned before Constantine persisted in the
profession of idolatry, the epithet of babylon was applied to the city
and to the empire of Rome. A regular series was prepared of all the
moral and physical evils which can afflict a flourishing nation;
intestine discord, and the invasion of the fiercest barbarians from
the unknown regions of the North; pestilence and famine, comets and
eclipses, earthquakes and inundations. All these were only so many
preparatory and alarming signs of the great catastrophe of Rome, when
the country of the Scipios and Caesars should be consumed by a flame from
Heaven, and the city of the seven hills, with her palaces, her temples,
and her triumphal arches, should be buried in a vast lake of fire and
brimstone. It might, however, afford some consolation to Roman vanity,
that the period of their empire would be that of the world itself;
which, as it had once perished by the element of water, was destined to
experience a second and a speedy destruction from the element of fire.
In the opinion of a general conflagration, the faith of the Christian
very happily coincided with the tradition of the East, the philosophy of
the Stoics, and the analogy of Nature; and even the country, which, from
religious motives, had