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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Of the changes that have taken place in theology since the Renaissance, none is more striking than the re-interpretation of the Mosaic account of the creation and fall of man, which has passed from the realm of history to that of ‘myth.’ Equally impressive, however, are the changes that have taken place in eschatology. This disagreement with our ancestors is not revolutionary on every point, since at least one fundamental idea, affirmed by George Hakewill in the earlier seventeenth century, still holds true. “That the world shall haue an end,” wrote Hakewill, “is as cleere to Christianity, as that there is a Sun in the firmament: And therefore, whereas there can hardly be named any other article of our faith, which some Heretiques haue not presumed to impugne or call into question; yet to my remembrance I never met with any who questioned this; & though at this day many & eager be the differences among Christians in other points of Religion, yet in this they all agree & ever did, that the world shall haue an end.” If on this, however, all Christians are agreed, the exact time of the Day of the Lord has been the subject of speculation ever since the advent of Christianity, not to mention Jewish apocalyptic thought.
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15 Of Reformation, in Works (Columbia edn.), III, 78.
16 Religio Medici, ed. Denonain, J.-J. (Cambridge, 1955), p. 60Google Scholar. For Milton's concurrence see De Doctrina Christiana, in Works, XVI, 339–41. This thesis is grounded upon the words of Jesus that no one knows the exact day of the Second Coming, “not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:32).
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40 The Foundation of Christian Religion (London, 1591), sig. C41. It must be understood that the souls of those dead during the Last Judgment were either in hell or in Heaven; mortalism and its related form, psychopannychism, though widespread during the Renaissance, were denounced by orthodox circles. See the studies by Williamson, George, “Milton and the Mortalist Heresy,” Studies in Philology, XXXII (1935), 553 ff.Google Scholar; Conklin, George N., Biblical Criticism and Heresy in Milton (New York, 1949), pp. 83 ff.Google Scholar; and Patrides, C. A., “Paradise Lost and the Mortalist Heresy,” Notes and Queries, New Series, IV (1957), 250–51.Google Scholar
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58 See Psalm 102:26 and Isaiah 65:17.
59 2 Peter 3:7, 10. In addition to Biblical references, Renaissance commentators usually cited Ovid (Metamorphoses, I, 256–58). See Dove, John, A Confutation of Atheisme (London, 1605), pp. 94–95Google Scholar, where Ovid's view of the world's end by fire is supported with quotations from Lucretius and Lucan.
60 Summa Theologica, III, lxxiv, 3.
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62 De Civitate Dei, XX, 16.
63 A Discoursive Probleme Concerning Prophesies (London, 1588), p. 31. For a full exposition of the final conflagration, see More, Henry, The Grand Mystery of Godliness (London, 1660)Google Scholar, Bk. VI, Ch. I–X.
64 Naturam non pati senium, 11. 65–69.
65 See above, p. 176.
66 Paradise Lost, X, 638.
67 Ibid., X, 647.
68 Ibid., XI, 66.
69 Ibid., XI, 900–1.
70 Ibid., XII, 463–65.
71 Ibid., XII, 548–51.
72 The Revelation Unrevealed. Concerning the Thousand-Yeares Reigne of the Saints with Christ upon Earth (London, 1650), p. 6Google Scholar. For a defense of chiliasm, see Holmes' work (a reply to Hall) cited above, Note 61. The present brief study cannot, of course, do justice to the great number of 17th century apocalyptic books interpreting current history on the basis especially of Daniel and/or the Johannine Revelation; nor is it possible to consider here the widespread millennialism of the Renaissance, which cannot be fully appreciated but in relation to earlier thought. For one of the most noteworthy recent attempts to clarify this complicated subject, see Tuveson, Ernest L., Millennium and Utopia (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949)Google Scholar. For an extensive bibliography, see Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium (Fairlawn, N.J., 1957), pp. 430–62.Google Scholar
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77 LXXX Sermons (London, 1640), p. 266Google Scholar.
78 PX., VIII, 412–14.
79 A Newe Anatomie of Whole Man (London, 1576), fol. 52.
80 I Corinthians 2:9. Cf. Isaiah 64:4.
