ignorant, and therefore
very credulous, they were easily terrified by the notion that the world
was to be burnt up speedily; and they as readily embraced the doctrine
which promised to bring them safely through the catastrophe. From the
way in which the game answers still with the Christian mob, after
nearly two thousand years of exposure, we can understand what a splendid
instrument of proselytising it must have been in the hands of the
fanatical preachers of the early Church. Combine with it the Millennium
promised to the saints after the Second Coming of Christ, in which
they were to enjoy themselves royally, and you will feel the justice of
Gibbon's remark that "it must have contributed in a very considerable
degree to the progress of the Christian faith." It was inculcated by a
succession of Fathers, from Justin Martyr to Lactantius. But when it had
served its purpose it was allowed to drop. As Gibbon says, "it 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." The Millennium is stigmatised, in
what once stood as the forty-first Article of the English Church, as "a
fable of Jewish dotage." We wonder whether the plain-spoken divines who
drew up that article included Jesus Christ, St. Paul, and St. John
among the Jewish dotards.

At the end of the tenth century the doctrine of the Second Coming was
revived. The people were led to believe that the old serpent's thousand
years of bondage was nearly up, that he would be let loose about the
year 1,000, that Antichrist would then appear, and that the end of the
world would follow. Churches and houses were therefore left to decay,
as they would cease to be wanted. Whenever an eclipse of the sun or moon
took place, the people ran into caverns and caves. Multitudes hurried
off to Palestine, where they supposed Christ would make his descent.
They transferred their property to the priests, who could say with
Iago, "thus do I ever make my fool my purse." Others not only gave their
property to the priests, but actually became their slaves; hoping, says
Mosheim, that "the supreme Judge would be more favorable to them if they
made themselves servants to _his_ servants."

Jortin justly observes that the priests industriously cherished the
delusion for the sake of filthy lucre. They accepted the gifts of their
poor dupes, although earthly possessions