d life are followed, the kingdom of God
will indeed cover the world, and not for a thousand years only,
but unimaginable glory and happiness shall fill the dwellings of
the successive generations of men forever.24

The doctrine of a purgatory a place intermediate between Paradise
and hell, where souls not too sinful were temporarily punished,
and where their condition and stay were in the power of the Church
on earth, a doctrine which in the Middle Age became practically

20 Neander, Planting and Training, Eng. trans. p. 102.

21 De Usu Patrum, lib. ii. cap. 4.

22 Munscher, Entwickelung der Lehre vom Tausendjahrigen Reiche in
den Drei Ersten Jahrhunderten. In Henke's Magaz. b. vi. ss. 233
254.

23 See e. g. The End, by Dr. Cumming. The Second Advent, by D.
Brown.

24 Bush, On the Millennium. Bishop Russell, Discourses on the
Millennium. Carroll, Geschichte des Chiliasmus.

the foremost instrument of ecclesiastical influence and income was
through the age of the Fathers gradually assuming shape and
firmness. It seems to have been first openly avowed as a Church
dogma and effectively organized as a working power by Pope Gregory
the Great, in the latter part of the sixth century.25 No more
needs to be said here, as the subject more properly belongs to the
next chapter.

It but remains in close to notice those opinions relating to the
future life which were generally condemned as heresies by the
Fathers. One of the earliest of these was the destruction of the
intermediate state and the denial of the general judgment by the
assertion, which Paul charges so early as in his day upon Hymeneus
and Philetus, "that the resurrection has passed already;" that is,
that the soul, when it leaves the body, passes immediately to its
final destination. This opinion reappeared faintly at intervals,
but obtained very little prevalence in the early ages of the
Church. Hierax, an author who lived at Leontopolis in Egypt early
in the fourth century, denied the resurrection of the body, and
excluded from the kingdom of heaven all who were married and all
who died before becoming moral agents.

Another heretical notion which attracted some attention was the
opposite extreme from the foregoing, namely, that the soul totally
dies with the body, and will be restored to life with it in the
general resurrection at the end of the world; an opinion held by
an Arabian sect of Christians, who were vanquished in debate upon
it by Origen,