L. VIII.

TO ALL HIS HEARERS.

495

eternal judgment. It has been my continued effort to make these discourses practical. Will you not second that effort with your prayers? Will you not plead, that it may be proved in that day that I have not laboured altogether in vain? For this you know, my brethren, that except Christ come unto us now in all his quickening, pardoning, purifying might, his second coming must be to us a day of unutterable woe. "O blessed Saviour"— says one who loved the Lord and his appearing, and yet was no Millennarian-" how busy are the tongues of men,-how are their brains taken up with the indeterminable construction of this ænigmatical truth, when, in the mean time, the care of thy spiritual reign in their hearts is neglected! O my Saviour, while others weary themselves with the disquisition of thy personal reign here upon earth for a thousand years, let it be the whole bent and study of my soul to make sure of my personal reign with thee in heaven to all eternity"." Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

r

Bishop Hall, Breathings of the Devout Soul.

1 Tim. i. 17.

APPENDIX

TO THE LECTURES.

NOTE A, p. 7.

"We may not appeal for its decision to Tradition, whether Rabbinical or Patristic. We may not rely upon a progressive developement of truth, nor may we look forward to a new revelation. . . . Some of our PreMillennarian brethren do appear at times to place greater reliance on such external authorities, than is either consistent or wise."

I. 1. I SHALL have other occasions of referring to "progressive developements of truth" and "new revelations." I therefore pass them by for the present. I cannot however, forbear making some allusion to Mr. Brooks' long and interesting though somewhat partial chapter on "the Voice of the Church," in his Elements. of Prophetical Interpretation. (chapter iii. p. 34-108.) It exhibits on a large scale the inconsistencies into which even sound Protestants can be drawn by a favorite theory. Mr. Brooks begins by calling upon us to hearken to "the voice of the mystical members of Christ's body,' -for that voice, he says, "is surely the voice of the Spirit and the Bride," and will not "pass unheeded by those who desire to understand the voice of God himself." (p. 34, 35.) He then proceeds to re-echo the voice of "the Jewish Church," (p. 35.) as it sounds,-directly, in K k

498

IS THE TESTIMONY

NOTE A.

the Targums of Babylon and of Jerusalem, in the words of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Gamaliel, and in the books of Wisdom and of Tobit, (p. 36-38.)-and indirectly, in traditions like that of the house of Elias (p. 38, 39.). He next adduces the testimony of the Christian Church as it witnesses in its "purest period," (p. 35.) by the mouths of Barnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, and Tertullian (p. 40-49.). Passing through the twilight and midnight of the following centuries, he comes to the Reformation. He thinks that the Fathers of that age give but "an uncertain sound," but that their failure is amply compensated by the ever increasing distinctness with which "the Church" down to the present day bears witness to the truth.

2. There are some writers in whom such a deference to Patristic Tradition is only consistent with their avowed doctrinal opinions. Such, for example, is Mr. Greswell, who (in his work on the Parables, vol. i. p. 279.) asserts, that "the belief in the futurity of the Millennium was the orthodox or catholic notion in the second and third centuries;" and then (at p. 283.) proceeds further to argue, that "no opinion, either on facts or on doctrines, can be traced up to the oral, viva voce teaching of apostles, or apostolical men, especially so extraordinary an opinion as this, and yet turn out to be false."

3. But we may well wonder when men, at all other times so righteously jealous of any interference with the supremacy of Scripture, as are Mr. Brooks, Mr. Bonar, and Mr. Birks, venture to speak as they have done on the subject. To Mr. Brooks I have already referred. Mr. Bonar, (Prophetical Landmarks, p. xv.) calls upon us, though in the next sentences he seems to become conscious of the peril of his assertion, to receive PreMillennarianism as an "Article of the Apostolic Creed," on the concurrent testimony of all (?) the fathers of the three first centuries;" its only opponents being the Gnostics." [As to the correctness of this assertion, see the remarks

NOTE A.

OF PATRISTIC TRADITION

499

below, and Mosheim's invaluable summary of the history of primitive Millennarianism, in the note to which reference is there made.] On like authority, Mr. Birks, (Outlines, p. 149.) speaks of Pre-Millennarianism as "the primitive hope," and avers that the opposite "doctrine, which is such a novelty itself, and so alien from the teaching of primitive times, has no ground to obtrude itself as an essential part of the Catholic faith."

II. Not indeed that the facts of the case are so certainly in their favour, as these excellent men take them to be.

1. For, if Mr. Greswell (Parables, vol. i. p. 273-411.) has traced up primitive Pre-Millennarianism to Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, who may have been a hearer of St. John, and a companion of Polycarp; Dr. Wordsworth, (Hulsean Lectures, p. 9.) has carried it up further still, and has shewn that the orthodox Papias may have, in common with the heretic Cerinthus, borrowed it not from the college of the Apostles, but from the synagogue of the Jews. "Incunabula Chiliasmi in Talmude sunt quærenda."

2. And here my readers will do well to note this very probable explanation of the early prevalence of PreMillennarian doctrine; namely, that it was adopted as a compromise between the Jew and the Christian in relation to the Messiah ;-the Jerusalem glories of a personal reign were no longer denied, they were only postponed to the world's seventh millennary. "Verisimillimum est," says Mosheim, (De R. C. ante Constantinum, Cent. iii. §. xxxviii, note,) "plures ex Judæis, Christianos quo concordiam quodammodo Judaici dogmatis de terreno Messiæ regno cum Christianorum de Servatoris nostri cælesti regno sententiâ, speique Judaicæ cum spe Christianorum constituerent, duplex Christi regnum, duplicemque discipulorum ejus spem mente concepisse atque tradidisse, doctoresque Christianorum multos inventum hoc sive probasse, sive, ut alia quædam, tolerasse, ut