Annotatio CCXXXIII

”I will break this people, and this city, as the potter’s vessel is broken, which cannot be made whole again.” — Jeremiah 19:11

Jerome, in book 4 on Jeremiah, so explains this passage that he seems to assert that the error of the χιλιασταί [Chiliasts] — that is, of the Millenarians — is not to be condemned;¹ which [error], nevertheless, very many most holy Fathers condemned, in [the person of] Cerinthus the heresiarch, as a heretical dogma; but [Jerome holds] that it is free to each one to think in this [matter] what he will. For these things we read in him: “Manifestly this is said not of the Babylonian, but of the Roman captivity; for after the Babylonians both the city was restored, and the people brought back into Judaea, and restored to [its] former abundance; but after the captivity under Vespasian and Titus, and [what] afterward befell under Hadrian, unto the consummation of the age, the ruins of Jerusalem shall remain — although the Jews think that a golden and jeweled Jerusalem is to be restored to them, and again victims and sacrifices, and the marriages of the saints, and the kingdom of the Lord Savior on earth: which, though we do not follow, yet we cannot condemn, because many ecclesiastical men and martyrs said these things. And let each one abound in his own sense, and let all things be reserved to the judgment of the Lord.”

These things Jerome; who, disclosing by name the asserters of this opinion, says in the book On Illustrious Men: “Papias, the hearer of John, bishop of Hierapolis, is said to have published a Jewish Δευτέρωσις [Deuterosis, a ‘second [teaching]’] of a thousand years, whom Irenaeus and Apollinaris followed, and the rest, who say that after the resurrection the Lord will reign in the flesh with the saints. Tertullian also, in the book On the Hope of the Faithful, and Victorinus of Poetovio, are led by this opinion.” And in book 11 on Ezekiel, indicating the writings in which the same authors taught this, he says: “For neither, according to the Jewish fables — which they call Deuteroses — do we expect a golden Jerusalem from heaven: which [error] both many of ours, and especially the book of Tertullian which is entitled On the Hope of the Faithful, and the seventh volume of the Institutions of Lactantius, promise; and the frequent expositions of Victorinus of Poetovio; and lately our own Severus, in the dialogue on which he imposed the name Gallus; and — to name the Greeks, and to join the first and the last — Irenaeus and Apollinaris.”

Nor does Augustine seem to have shrunk from this opinion of Jerome; who, not daring to call it either a heresy or an error, wrote thus concerning it in the twentieth [book] On the City of God, chapter 7: “This opinion would be in some way tolerable, if some spiritual delights were believed to be about to be present to the saints in that Sabbath — namely, of a thousand years — through the presence of the Lord. For we too once held this opinion.” Thus far Augustine.

Know, therefore, that neither Jerome nor Augustine tempered their discourse in this manner in order to show that this opinion is not damnable — which both of them in many places assail and deride² — but in order to indicate, by the example of their modesty and benignity, that we too must dissent from the errors of the ancient Fathers of the Church with the highest reverence; and lest they should seem to persecute the many Catholics who were then led by that opinion — which Jerome hints not obscurely in the preface of the eighteenth commentary on Isaiah, in these words: “The Apocalypse of John, if we take [it] according to the letter, we must judaize; if we treat [it] spiritually, as it was written, we shall seem to go contrary to the opinions of many of the ancients — of the Latins, Tertullian, Victorinus, Lactantius; of the Greeks (to pass over the rest), I will make mention only of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons: against whom that most eloquent man Dionysius, Pontiff of the Alexandrian church, writes an elegant book, deriding the fable of the thousand years, and the golden and jeweled Jerusalem on earth, the restoration of the temple, the blood of victims, the rest of the Sabbath, the injury of circumcision, the marriages, the births, the education of children, the delights of banquets, and the servitude of all the nations; and again wars, armies, and triumphs, and the slaughters of the conquered, and the death of the hundred-year-old sinner — to whom Apollinaris responded in two volumes: whom not only the men of his own sect, but also (in this part only) a very great multitude of ours follows; so that with a foreboding mind I already perceive how great a rage is to be stirred up against me by [these], to whom I bear no envy, if they so love the earth that in the kingdom of Christ they desire earthly things, and, after the abundance of foods and the gluttony of belly and gullet, seek those things which are beneath the belly.”

Thus far Jerome, hinting by these words that the opinion of those [millenarians] is not far distant from the dogma of Cerinthus. There are, however, [some] who judge that the two opinions are most widely distant from each other. For Cerinthus, as Eusebius writes in the third book of the Ecclesiastical History, because he was given to the belly, and the gullet, and lust,³ taught those things which lust dictated to him — decreeing not only that Christ, after the resurrection, would administer a kingdom on earth for a thousand years, but also that in that very kingdom there would be all base pleasures: that is, the foul gluttony of banquets, of the belly, and the most exquisite incitements of those things which are beneath the belly, and certain most base vices of every monstrous and execrable lust. But those [orthodox millenarians], although they thought that Christ — the bodies of the Saints being raised up — would return to the earth and there reign a thousand years, nevertheless believed that there would be in that kingdom no wickedness, nor impiety, nor injustice of evil men, but, on the contrary, an inestimable tranquillity of a most happy and truly golden age, in which the Saints, living in the flesh, would enjoy all the delights of soul and body with the highest innocence, purity, justice, temperance, and piety. Which, that it may become more clear, it pleases [me] to write down here what Lactantius, in the seventh book of the Divine Institutions, has recorded concerning this matter, saying thus:” “The Son of the most high and greatest God will come, that he may judge the living and the dead; and when he shall have blotted out injustice, and executed the greatest judgment, and restored to life the just who were from the beginning, he will dwell among men for a thousand years, and will rule them with a most just governance. Then, those who shall be alive in [their] bodies will not die, but through those same thousand years will beget an infinite multitude, and their offspring will be holy and dear to God. But those who shall be raised from the dead, these shall preside over the living as judges; and the nations shall not be altogether extinguished, but certain [of them] will be left for a victory of God, that they may be triumphed over by the just, and subjugated to a perpetual servitude. About that time also the prince of the Demons, who is the contriver of all evils, will be bound with chains, and will be in custody for the thousand years of the heavenly empire, in which justice shall reign in the world, lest he contrive any evil against the people of God. After his coming, the just shall be gathered together out of every land; and the judgment being finished, the holy city shall be set up in the midst of the earth, in which the founder God himself may dwell with the just [who are] ruling. Then shall be taken away from the world that darkness by which heaven was affronted and obscured; and the Moon shall receive the brightness of the Sun, and shall no more be diminished; but the Sun shall become seven times brighter than it now is. And the earth shall open its fruitfulness, and of its own accord shall bring forth most abundant crops; the rocks of the mountains shall sweat honey, wines shall run down through the streams, and rivers shall overflow with milk; finally the world itself shall rejoice, and all the nature of things shall be glad, snatched away and freed from the dominion of evil, and of impiety, and of crime, and of error. In this time the beasts shall not be nourished with blood, nor the birds by prey; but all things shall be quiet and placid: lions and calves shall stand together at the manger; the wolf shall not seize the sheep; the dog shall not hunt; hawks and eagles shall not harm; infants shall play with serpents. In fine, then shall come to pass those things which the Poets said were done in the golden ages, Saturn then reigning; whose error arose from this, that the Prophets bring forth and pronounce very many things as if already accomplished. For visions were presented by the divine Spirit to their eyes, and those things were seen in their sight as if being done and finished; which prophecies of theirs, when report had gradually spread [them] abroad — since the profane, ignorant of the mystery, knew not in what sense they were said — they thought that all those things had been fulfilled in the ancient ages: which surely could not be done and fulfilled while [mere] man was reigning. But when, the impious religions being blotted out, and crime suppressed, the earth shall be made subject to God,

The sailor too shall give up the sea, nor shall the nautical pine exchange [its] wares; every land shall bear all things. The ground shall not suffer the harrows, nor the vine the pruning-hook; the sturdy plowman also shall now loose the yokes from the bulls. Then too the field shall grow golden with the soft ear [of grain], and the reddening grape shall hang on the wild brambles, and the hard oaks shall sweat dewy honey. Nor shall wool learn to counterfeit varied colors, but the ram himself in the meadows shall now change his fleece, now to a sweetly-blushing purple, now to a saffron dye; of its own accord scarlet shall clothe the grazing lambs. The she-goats themselves shall bring home their udders swollen with milk, and the herds shall not fear the great lions.

“Men shall therefore live a most tranquil and most abundant life, and shall reign together with God; and the kings of the nations shall come from the ends of the earth with gifts and presents, to adore and honor the great King, whose name shall be illustrious and venerable to all the nations which shall be under heaven, and to the kings who shall rule on the earth. But when the thousand years of the kingdom shall have begun to be ended, the prince of the Demons will be loosed again, and, sent forth from custody, will go out; and he will stir up all the nations which shall then be under the dominion of the just, that they may make war on the holy city; and there shall be gathered from all the globe of the earth an innumerable people of nations, and it shall besiege and surround the city. Then shall come the last wrath of God upon the nations, and he shall vanquish them to the last man. And first he shall shake the earth most violently, and by its motion the mountains of Syria shall be rent, and the hills shall sink down into a chasm, and the walls of all cities shall fall; and God shall fix the Sun for three days, that it set not, and shall inflame it; and there shall descend an excessive heat, and a great burning upon the rebellious and impious peoples; and showers of sulphur, and hailstones of stone, and drops of fire; and their spirits shall melt in the heat, and [their] bodies shall be crushed in the hail; and they themselves shall strike one another with the sword: the mountains shall be filled with corpses, and the fields shall be covered with bones. But the people of God shall, for those three days, be hidden beneath the hollows of the earth, until the wrath of God against the nations, and the final judgment, be ended. Then shall the just go forth from their hiding-places, and shall find all things covered with corpses and bones. But every race of the impious shall utterly perish by the root, nor shall there be any longer any nation in this world, save only the nation of God. Then, for seven whole years, the forests shall be untouched, nor shall wood be cut from the mountains, but the arms of the nations shall be burned; and there shall not even be war, but peace and everlasting rest. But when the thousand years shall have been completed, the world shall be renewed by God, and the heaven shall be folded up, and the earth shall be changed; and God shall transform men into the likeness of the Angels, and they shall be white as snow, and shall dwell forever in the sight of the Almighty, and shall sacrifice to their Lord, and serve [him] forever. At the same time shall come to pass that second and public resurrection of all, in which also the impious shall be raised up to everlasting torments. These are they who worshiped things made by hand, who either knew not, or denied, the Lord and Parent of the world. But their lord [the Devil] also, with his ministers, shall be seized, and condemned to punishment; with whom likewise all the crowd of the impious, for their crimes, in the sight of the Angels and of the just, shall be burned with perpetual fire forever. This is the doctrine of the holy Prophets, which we Christians follow: this is Christian wisdom.”

Thus far the opinion of Lactantius, and of the others whom we have commemorated: which, although it be diverse from the dogma of Cerinthus, nevertheless contains an error foreign to the Evangelical doctrine, which teaches that after the resurrection there will be no union of male and female, no use of food and drink, and, finally, no delight of the carnal life — Christ saying, to those who dreamed that there would be carnal marriages after the resurrection: “You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God: in the resurrection they shall neither marry, nor be married, but shall all be as the Angels of God”⁴ — who indeed neither use wives, nor are delighted with banquets, but feed on an invisible food, as Tobias says, which is God:⁵ with whose nectar and ambrosia the minds of the blessed are spiritually fed; so that, according to Paul’s word, “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.”⁶ Frederick Staphylus, in the Epitome of Lutheran Theology, reports that the Anabaptists — the plagues of our times — received this error among their other heresies. A very similar observation thou hast below, in Annotation 347 of the following book.