is the limitation which Dr. Duffield theoretically lays down for his use of these writers; and yet the broad principle upon which he actually uses them far exceeds this good Protestant rule. To these writers does Dr. Duffield apply the maxim of Tertullian, whether upon a point of doctrine or of prophecy,-" Whatever is first is true, whatever is later is adulterate." Truth, then, is to be indubitably sought and found in the Christian fathers; and the only test is ANTIQUITY. If this is not adopting an extra-scriptural rule of faith, we know not how such a charge can be sustained against the Papacy itself. It matters not to Dr. Duffield how perfectly unknown to Scripture the tenet may be; he cannot permit us to pause one moment to show whence the adulterate dogma may have been derived; it is of no consequence to show that even in the apostolic days the times and the church were rife with floating errors, pouring in upon the church from every point of the compass, requiring every effort of apostolic pens and tongues to repel them, and liable to creep into any uninspired documents; the rule is peremptory and absolute," whatever in tradition is first is true, whatever is later is adulterate."

Granting, however, the applicability of the rule to doctrines, the reverse rule is applicable to prophecy. Were antiquity the true test of doctrines, it is equally true, at least, that TIME IS THE GREAT EXPOSITOR OF PROPHECY. Dr. Duffield himself in effect admits the truth of this distinction, although at so great a distance in his volume, that he seems scarcely to have brought the two principles into their modifying bearings upon each other. He does explain the direction to Daniel to "seal up the book to the time of the end," as referring "to the obscurity which should hang around the page of prophecy, like that of a seal or unopened book. It should not be removed till the time of the end-the season of its accomplishment, but that many would investigate the truth, and knowledge would be increased."-P. 373. And yet Dr. Duffield roundly reproves Faber because he neglected to "apply to the important themes of prophecy," as well as doctrines, the rule that "whatever is first is true, whatever is later is adulterate." But how will these different views of Dr. Duffield accord with each other? Or rather, how will he extricate himself from a direct self-contradiction? Which side of the contradiction is true in regard to the increasing evidence of prophecy, let those who know how prophetic interpretation has enlarged within the last two centuries decide.

The very first century had its peculiar liabilities to error as strongly as any subsequent age. If the Christianity of the second

century was exposed to the contagion of Platonism, that of the first was all but wholly impregnated with Judaism in its impurest form -rabbinism. The very first schism, among the apostles themselves, was a contest between Judaism and Christianity. And where, as in the case before us, perhaps, a rabbinical element is detected, historically traceable to a foreign and spurious source, the antiquity of the man is rather a proof against than in favor of his authority, as it shows him belonging to the very period, and surrounded by the very atmosphere of that very error. In process of time the unscriptural error would grow obsolete, especially as men were habituated to expurgate from their beliefs every thing not found in the Scriptures.

Our line of argument, next, therefore, is to show that early Chiliasm is but rabbinical, or, rather, Babylonian Judaism, transferred into the Christian church. If we compare together the great week of the Persian Simurgh, the Zoroastrian six thousand years, terminating with the resurrection, of the Sadder, (and perhaps the final renovation under Sosiosch of the Zend Avesta,) with the great week of Rabbi Ketina and other Jewish doctors, and with the prevalent Judaic idea that the Messianic dispensation was to be the closing thousand years of this world's history, preceded by the resurrection and renovation, no reasonable doubt can exist of their historical affinity, or rather, identity. And this was the prevalent form of Judaism in the time of our Saviour. The New Testament abounds with proofs, that the doctrine which required that the Messiah, having appeared in the clouds, should establish his glorified kingdom, and rule for the last great mundane period over the renovated world, cleared of the slaughtered nations, was the prevalent doctrine of Palestine. When the humble appearance and death of Christ had disappointed that expectation in the breasts of thousands predisposed to be his followers, the next demand would be, that his speedy second advent should, even in their own day, (for prophecy and public expectation had designated that as the destined period,) establish the true Messianic dispensation and kingdom-the glorified resurrection millennium. Thousands would enter the Christian church with such expectations palpitating in their hearts; and thus the Judaism of the day, imported in its great outlines from the East, transferred into Christianity, became Chiliasm.

A striking exemplification of this fact is presented in the very first Christian document adduced by Dr. Duffield, which passes under the name of Barnabas, though many writers (like Richard Watson) dissent; "that it is not the production of the companion

of Paul may be safely concluded from internal evidence, though it may have been written by some other person of the same name." In the extract from this document, the reader will at once behold the artificial process by which a foreign notion is first superimposed upon the Old Testament system, and then imported, without a pretence of New Testament authority, into the Christian circle. of tenets" Consider, my children, what that signifies: 'He finished them in six days.' The meaning is this: that in six thousand years the Lord will bring all things to an end; for with him one day is a thousand years, as himself testifieth, saying, 'Behold this day shall be as a thousand years;' therefore, children, in six days (that is, six thousand years) shall all things be accomplished. And what is that he saith, 'He rested the seventh day?' He meaneth, that when his Son shall come and abolish the wicked one, and judge the ungodly, and change the sun, and moon, and stars, then he shall gloriously rest on the seventh day. Behold, he will then truly sanctify it with blessed rest, when we have received the righteous promise-when iniquity shall be no more, all things being renewed by the Lord."

Irenæus also says, "The Lord will come from heaven with clouds, *** he will introduce the times of his righteous reign, that is, the rest, the seventh day sanctified."

Surely no stronger testimony than these extracts furnish can be needed to prove the identity of Christian Chiliasm with the Magian and rabbinical great mundane week. And but a very few words are necessary to identify both these notions with that great blunder, we may say THE GREAT BLUNDER of the primitive church, the dogma that the second advent was to take place in their own day. The great blunder, then, we repeat, which prevailed but too extensively in the church of the second century, and which, without their excuse, Dr. Duffield is, in effect, attempting to revive, was this, that the coming of Christ to dissolve the world was to take place in their own day. We do not think that Gibbon is correct in considering this error as in any way founded upon the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, nor upon any other part of the New Testament. It took its origin, as the extract from Barnabas shows, from the Judaic notion, that the commencement of the great closing sabbatic thousand years, to be ushered in with a renovation of the world and the resurrection, and forming the Messianic dispensation, was prophetically and chronologically at hand. And how stupendous, in point of fact, was this error! What a blank did it make of future prophecy! It annihilated about the whole Christian dispensation. The Apocalypse, which is now viewed as

a map of events, of, at any rate, near two thousand years of terrene Christian history, was to them a scribble of senseless reveries. Placing the second advent in their own day did, in the same act, prove their utter ignorance of the great page of prophetic events before them, and cut off the millennium from the train of terrene things, and drift it off into the regions of spiritual romance. It proved, at once, that on whatever other point of prophecy or doctrine their antiquity proved them infallibly "right," in regard to the real great final mundane events they were "adulterate." If arbiters of all other truths, upon these points-the very points upon which Dr. Duffield lucklessly quotes them-they are, by demonstration, as worthless as the sheerest self-convicted ignorance can make them.

And this same placing the second advent in their own day, which theoretically annihilated the present Christian dispensation, so reacted upon the prophecies of the Old Testament as to confirm the Chiliastic traditional error. Although in an age when copies of the Old Testament were necessarily scarce, and Christians were more engaged in practical action than in rounding out complete doctrinal or exegetical systems, many would not bring their doctrine of an immediate advent to bear upon the prophetic promises of a regenerated earth, yet, in most cases, where this was done, Chiliasm would be the result. The belief in an immediate advent did not necessarily imply a belief in Chiliasm, but the latter would frequently be produced by the former. The rich pictures of an evangelized world yet future, glowing upon the pages of Isaiah in all the hue and exuberance of raptured poetry, when severed by the advent from the terrene course of events, would be located by the imagination in the celestial state. The very passage of the great prophet which Philo quotes to describe the happy state of the converted nations, is appropriated by Justin Martyr to depict the realm of the resurrection. By consequence, that glorious realm was conceptually filled with animal and physical images of husbandry, procreation, sin, and death. It is useless to say, that these were not the universal results; they were the logical and strictly necessary results. Their millennium, filled with these images, yet placed in the heavenly state, was necessarily, while in a celestial locality, grossly terrene in its whole substance and nature. And as the expansion of centuries, by gradually removing the second advent to an unknown distance, took away the chasm which cleft that glorious future from the present world; so the gross imageries, with which Chiliasm filled the heavenly state, so revolted the spiritual taste of the church, that both causes combined, with the

absence of any support in Scripture, to mark out this offspring of spurious tradition, even in an age governed by tradition, for abscission from the faith of the Christian church. And it may be added, that in an age like the present, when doctrinal tradition is fast shriveling into scribbled parchment, and leaving the Bible in unrivaled authority, and when all the developments of Providence are pointing to a new era in human history of universal civilization and Christianity, the faith of the church is little likely to return to the great week of Zoroaster, the great sabbath of Barnabas, or the great blunder of early Christianity.

And it is remarkable, that while several of the fathers whom Dr. Duffield quotes were evident Chiliasts, yet a majority of his quotations either say nothing to the point, or merely avow a belief in an immediate advent. Clement of Rome, the "fellow-laborer" of Paul, did hourly expect the kingdom of God;" Ignatius, successor of Peter at Antioch, bids his brethren "expect Him who is above time;" the very relatives of our Saviour had such an expectation of the immediate kingdom of heaven, that the emperor Domitian summoned them to an account, no later than the very persecution in which the apostle John, with whom the mother of Christ was intrusted, was martyred. Now if these were the sure expositors of the apostles' doctrine, then never did an apostle prophesy the events of the last thousand years; then are all our expositions of the Apocalypse, of the twelve hundred and sixty days of the man of sin, and the twenty-three hundred days of Daniel, anti-apostolic and worthless. If we have the authority of the pseudo-Barnabas, the weak-minded Papias, and the philosophic Justin for the Chiliad, on the other hand we have the authority of the "fellow-laborer" of Paul, that he expected the destruction of the man of sin and the advent as "at hand;" we have the authority of the successor of Peter, that the "scoffers" of "the last times," and the burning world, should be in his own age; we have it on the authority of the relatives of Christ and fellow-sufferers of John, that he never dreamed of depicting in his Apocalypse the train of two or three thousand years of earthly events. The traditional authority of these fathers on these points prove all this, or nothing. If they are good cotemporary exposition to establish Chiliasm, they are, at least, quite as good an authority to sweep all modern prophecy with the besom of destruction.

Having traced, we would trust with satisfactory clearness, the origin of the Chiliastic doctrine, the mode of its insinuation into Christian antiquity, and the value of its traditional authority, our next question concerns the extent of its prevalence. Chillingworth