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The evangelist John has spoken of these two resurrections in the book
which is called the Apocalypse, but in such a way that some
Christians do not understand the first of the two, and so construe the
passage into ridiculous fancies. For the Apostle John says in the
foresaid book, "And I saw an angel come down from heaven. . . .
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on
such the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God
and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." Those
who, on the strength of this passage, have suspected that the first
resurrection is future and bodily, have been moved, among other
things, specially by the number of a thousand years, as if it were a
fit thing that the saints should thus enjoy a kind of Sabbath-rest
during that period, a holy leisure after the labors of the six thousand
years since man was created, and was on account of his great sin
dismissed from the blessedness of paradise into the woes of this mortal
life, so that thus, as it is written, "One day is with the Lord as
a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," there should
follow on the completion of six thousand years, as of six days, a kind
of seventh-day Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years; and that it
is for this purpose the saints rise, viz., to celebrate this
Sabbath. And. this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were
believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be
spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God; for I myself,
too, once held this opinion. But, as they assert that those who then
rise again shall enjoy the leisure of immoderate carnal banquets,
furnished with an amount of meat and drink such as not only to shock the
feeling of the temperate, but even to surpass the measure of credulity
itself, such assertions can be believed only by the carnal. They who
do believe them are called by the spiritual Chiliasts, which we may
literally reproduce by the name Millenarians. It were a tedious
process to refute these opinions point by point: we prefer proceeding
to show how that passage of Scripture should be understood.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself says, "No man can enter into a
strong man's house, and Spoil his goods, except he first bind the
strong man", meaning by the strong man the devil, because he had
power to take captive the human race; and meaning by his goods which he
was to take, those who had been held by the devil in divers sins and
iniquities, but were to become believers in Himself. It was then for
the binding of this strong one that the apostle saw in the Apocalypse
"an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss, and a
chain in his hand. And he laid hold," he says, "on the dragon,
that old serpent, which is called the devil and Satan, and bound him
a thousand years,", that is, bridled and restrained his power so
that he could not seduce and gain possession of those who were to be
freed. Now the thousand years may be understood in two ways, so far
as occurs to me: either because these things happen in the sixth
thousand of years or sixth millennium (the latter part of which is now
passing), as if during the sixth day, which is to be followed by a
Sabbath which has no evening, the endless rest of the saints, so
that, speaking of a part under the name of the whole, he calls the
last part of the millennium, the part, that is, which had yet to
expire before the end of the world, a thousand years; or he used the
thousand years as an equivalent for the whole duration of this world,
employing the number of perfection to mark the fullness of time. For a
thousand is the cube of ten. For ten times ten makes a hundred, that
is; the square on a plane superficies. But to give this superficies
height, and make it a cube, the hundred is again multiplied by ten,
which gives a thousand. Besides, if a hundred is sometimes used for
totality, as when the Lord said by way of promise to him that left all
and followed Him "He shall receive in this world an hundredfold;"
of which the apostle gives, as it were, an explanation when he says,
"As having nothing, yet possessing all things,", for even of old
it had been said, The whole world is the wealth of a believer, with
how much greater reason is a thousand put for totality since it is the
cube, while the other is only the square? And for the same reason we
cannot better interpret the words of the psalm, "He hath been mindful
of His covenant for ever, the word which He commanded to a thousand
generations," than by understanding it to mean "to all
generations."
"And he cast him into the abyss,", i.e., cast the devil into the
abyss. By the abyss is meant the countless multitude of the wicked
whose hearts are unfathomably deep in malignity against the Church of
God; not that the devil was not there before, but he is said to be
cast in thither, because, when prevented from harming believers, he
takes more complete possession of the ungodly. For that man is more
abundantly possessed by the devil who is not only alienated from God,
but also gratuitously hates those who serve God. "And shut him up,
and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more
till the thousand years should be fulfilled." "Shut him up,",
i.e., prohibited him from going out, from doing what was forbidden.
And the addition of "set a seal upon him" seems to me to mean that it
was designed to keep it a secret who belonged to the devil's party and
who did not. For in this world this is a secret, for we cannot tell
whether even the man who seems to stand shall fall, or whether he who
seems to lie shall rise again. But by the chain and prison-house of
this interdict the devil is prohibited and restrained from seducing
those nations which belong to Christ, but which he formerly seduced or
held in subjection. For before the foundation of the world God chose
to rescue these from the power of darkness, and to translate them into
the kingdom of the Son of His love, as the apostle says. For what
Christian is not aware that he seduces nations even now, and draws
them with himself to eternal punishment, but not those predestined to
eternal life? And let no one be dismayed by the circumstance that the
devil often seduces even those who have been regenerated in Christ,
and begun to walk in God's way. For "the Lord knoweth them that
are His," and of these the devil seduces none to eternal damnation.
For it is as God, from whom nothing is hid even of things future,
that the Lord knows them; not as a man, who sees a man at the present
time (if he can be said to see one whose heart he does not see), but
does not see even himself so far as to be able to know what kind of
person he is to be. The devil, then, is bound and shut up in the
abyss that he may not seduce the nations from which the Church is
gathered, and which he formerly seduced before the Church existed.
For it is not said "that he should not seduce any man," but "that
he should not seduce the nations", meaning, no doubt, those among
which the Church exists, "till the thousand years should be
fulfilled,", i.e., either what remains of the sixth day which
consists of a thousand years, or all the years which are to elapse till
the end of the world.
The words, "that he should not seduce the nations till the thousand
years should be fulfilled," are not to be understood as indicating
that afterwards. he is to seduce only those nations from which the
predestined Church is composed, and from seducing whom he is
restrained by that chain and imprisonment; but they are used in
conformity with that usage frequently employed in Scripture and
exemplified in the psalm, "So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God,
until He have mercy upon us,", not as if the eyes of His servants
Would no longer wait upon the Lord their God when He had mercy upon
them. Or the order of the words is unquestionably this, "And he
shut him up and set a seal upon him, till the thousand years should be
fulfilled;" and the interposed clause, "that he should seduce the
nations no more," is not to be understood in the connection in which
it stands, but separately, and as if added afterwards, so that the
whole sentence might be read, "And He shut him up and set a seal
upon him till the thousand years should be fulfilled, that he should
seduce the nations no more,", i.e., he is shut up till the
thousand years be fulfilled, on this account, that he may no more
deceive the nations.
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