n the free enjoyment
of whose spontaneous productions, the happy and benevolent people were
never to be restrained by any jealous laws of exclusive property. 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.) the disciple of Papias, who had seen the Apostle St.
John. 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
Jesus' 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. But
although this doctrine had been "laid aside," and "rejected," it was
again resurrected, and is alive and rife at the present day, even among
those who stand as the leaders of the orthodox faith.

The expectation of the "last day" in the year 1000 A. D., reinvested the
doctrine with a transitory importance; but it lost all credit again when
the hopes so keenly excited by the _crusades_ faded away before the
stern reality of Saracenic success, and the predictions of the
"Everlasting Gospel," a work of Joachim de Floris, a Franciscan abbot,
remained unfulfilled.[241:1]

At the period of the _Reformation_, millenarianism once more experienced
a partial revival, because it was not a difficult matter to apply some
of its symbolism to the papacy. The Pope, for example, was
_Antichrist_--a belief still adhered to by some extreme Protestants. Yet
the doctrine was not adopted by the great body of the reformers, but by
some fanatical sects, such as the Anabaptists, and by the Theosophists
of the seventeenth century.

During the civil and religious wars in France and England, when great
excitement prevailed, it was also prominent. The "Fifth Monarchy Men" of
Cromwell's time were millenarians of the most exaggerated and dangerous
sort. Their peculiar tenet was that the millennium _had_ come, and that
_they_ were the saints who were to inherit the earth. The excesses of
the French Roman Catholic Mystics and Quietists terminated in
_chiliastic_[