The Consolidation of Evangelical Millennialism, 1660–1789

Abstract

The debates that were generated by this millennial revival were not easily resolved. Writing in 1691, the English nonconformist Richard Baxter complained that these disputes, which had consumed the energies of evangelicals throughout most of the preceding century, had failed to reach any consensus about the most basic issues at stake. Discussion continued to focus on the number of periods of time referred to in Revelation 20:1–10 (‘some hold but one Thousand years, and some two’), the location of the reign of Christ (‘some of them say, The Thousand years are on Earth; and some say, They are … in Heaven: Some say, They are both in Heaven, or in the Air, and on Earth at once’), the geographical and political implications of these expected events (‘some say, That there shall be a Jewish Monarchy at Jerusalem, and some, That it shall be of the godly all over the World’), and the character of the presence of the Messiah (‘some say, Christ will reign there visibly in his Humane Nature; Others, that he will only sometime appear, as he did after his Resurrection: And some, That he will Rule there only by Reforming Christian Princes’). Baxter’s analysis listed a long series of theological differences that were, he believed, concealed by the debaters’ shared rhetorical commitment to the ‘bare name of a Thousand years Reign.’ ‘It is a marvel,’ he lamented, after the ‘great disagreement of the Millenaries among themselves,’ that they continued to ‘cry up the Thousand years Reign, though most of them know not what the words mean.’¹ In fact, he concluded, these debates, which had continued since the reformation, had produced ‘no consensus’ as to whether the ‘golden age would be literal or spiritual, in heaven or on earth, or, indeed, about whether the millennium was to occur in the past, present, or future.’²