The Temporal Millennium—a Fable.
THE doctrine of the world's conversion, styled a “modern novelty,” and admitted by its author to be a “new hypothesis,” was invented by Daniel Whitby, D. D., of England, and first published about A. D. 1680. Dr. Henshaw, the late Bishop of Rhode Island, thus speaks of it:—“The fact is that the commonly received opinion of a spiritual millennium consisting in a universal triumph of the gospel and conversion of all nations for a thousand years before the coming of Christ, is a novel doctrine, unknown to the church for a period of sixteen hundred years. So far as we have been able to investigate its history, it was first advanced by the Rev. Dr. Whitby, the commentator, and afterward advocated by Hammond, Hopkins, Scott, Dwight, Bogue, and others, and has been received without careful examination by the majority of evangelical divines of the present day. But we may safely challenge its advocates to produce one distinguished writer in its favor, who lived before the commencement of the eighteenth century. If antiquity is to be considered as any test of truth, the advocates of the premillennial advent, and personal reign of Christ with his saints upon earth, need have no fears of the result of a comparison of authorities with the supporters of the opposite theory.”—Henshaw on Second Advent, p. 115.