4. Periods of Development

The later development departed in many particulars from the Jewish-Christian type, as the Geutile Christians translated the belief into the terms of their old myths of a golden age, or as new inspirations and revelations gave it an individual form. The history of the doctrine may be conveniently divided into three main periods. In the first centuries it formed a constant, though not an unquestioned, part of the Church's doctrine, until a radical change in external circumstances and attitude forced it into the position of a heresy. After the Reformation, it became a favorite doctrine of mystical enthusiasts and sects, who looked upon it as a comfort in the disappointment of their wishes and hopes. From the middle of the eighteenth century, it began again to pens. trate more deeply into the life of the Church, building its evidence for the future on the history of the past.

In the first of these periods, next to the old Jewish conceptions, it received its most powerful impulse from the persecutions which forced men to look forward to an approaching compensation. It is found not only in Cerinthus, in the 5. Patristic Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and and among the Ebionites, but in the Medieval orthodox writers of the post-apostolic Doctrine. age, in the Epistle of Barnabas (xv.), and in the fragments of Papias (in Irenesus, Hier., V., xxxiii. 3 sqq., and Eusebius, Hist. eccl., III., xxxix.). Echoes of it are to be found also in the first Epistle of Clement (l. 3), in the Shepherd of Hernias (i. 3), in the Didache (x., xvi.), in the second Epistle of Clement, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the old Roman creed, which closes with the belief in the resurrection of the flesh. About the middle of the second century Justin Martyr (Trypho, 1xxx.) knows orthodox believers who do not share the hope of an earthly perfection of the Church, but for himself regards it as the expression of complete orthodoxy. The doctrine appears in Melito of Sardis (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V., xxiv. 5) and in the letters of the Christians of Lyons (ib- V., i. sqq.); and Irenæus (Hdr., V., xxxii. sqq.), like Papim, founded his belief in -it on the words of those who had been taught by the apostles themselves. The first objection against it was aroused by its fanatical exaggeration among the Montanists; its first literary opponent in the Western Church was the Roman presbyter Wua,

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though Hippolytus still followed Irenæus. The opposition of the Ale:andrians was more important. Origen's Platonic idealism, teaching him to see the seat of all evil in matter, ranked him among its opponents (De principiia, ii. 11); but this reasoning influenced none but the educated class. In Egypt a bishop, Nepos, professing to defend the literal sense of Scripture, stirred up a violent agitation among both clergy and people; the conciliatory Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria succeeded in quieting it by his writings on the spiritual meaning of the prophecies. Methodius, bishop of Tyre, supported millenarianism. Its final echo in the East was the polemical treatise of Apollinaris of Laodicea against Dionysius in the last half of the fourth century. It maintained itself longer as a popular belief in the West, and the millennial reign was depicted in material colors by Commodian, Lactantius, and Victorinus, bishop of Pettau. It was with Augustine first (cf. De civitate Dei, XX., vii. 9) that this doctrine was finally settled. It was henceforth an established principle that the Church was the kingdom of God upon earth. With the cessation of persecution, and still more with the conversion to Christianity of the secular powers, there was no more point in ldoking forward to a period of earthly triumph over the foes of the faith. The Middle Ages repeated the traditional formulae without special interest. The expectation of the end of the world at the conclusion of the first thousand years of the Christian era was only the result of the view, usual since Augustine, which reckoned the duration of the millennial reign, identified with the Church, from the beginning of Christianity. The apocalyptic sects and factions, which proclaimed the near approach of the age of the Spirit, saw it not in the return of Christ in external majesty but in a reversion to apostolic poverty, connected in Joachim of Floris with contemplation and enthusiastic love; in the "Spirituals" with imitation of the smallest details of the life of Christ; among the "Apostolic Brethren" with brotherly union under the rule of a holy pope sent from God. Later, the teachings of Joachim were used for political purpoem in the communistic revolution attempted by the Taborites of Bohemia (see Huss, John, Hussites, II., §§ 3-7).