s; so that
the convulsions and changes whereto it is destined should occur, when the
existing race of men had either become so corrupt as to be unworthy of
the place which they hold in the universe, or were so truly regenerate by
the will and word of God, as to be qualified for a higher station in it.
Our globe may have gone through many such revolutions. We know the
history of the last; the measure of its wickedness was then filled up.
For the future we are taught to expect a happier consummation.

_Sir Thomas More_.--It is important that you should distinctly understand
the nature and extent of your expectations on that head. Is it upon the
Apocalypse that you rest them?

_Montesinos_.--If you had not forbidden me to expect from this
intercourse any communication which might come with the authority of
revealed knowledge, I should ask in reply, whether that dark book is
indeed to be received for authentic Scripture? My hopes are derived from
the prophets and the evangelists. Believing in them with a calm and
settled faith, with that consent of the will and heart and understanding
which constitutes religious belief, and in them the clear annunciation of
that kingdom of God upon earth, for the coming of which Christ himself
has taught and commanded us to pray.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Remember that the Evangelists, in predicting that
kingdom, announce a dreadful advent! And that, according to the received
opinion of the Church, wars, persecutions, and calamities of every kind,
the triumph of evil, and the coming of Antichrist are to be looked for,
before the promises made by the prophets shall be fulfilled. Consider
this also, that the speedy fulfilment of those promises has been the
ruling fancy of the most dangerous of all madmen, from John of Leyden and
his frantic followers, down to the saints of Cromwell's army, Venner and
his Fifth-Monarchy men, the fanatics of the Cevennes, and the blockheads
of your own days, who beheld with complacency the crimes of the French
Revolutionists, and the progress of Bonaparte towards the subjugation of
Europe, as events tending to bring about the prophecies; and, under the
same besotted persuasion, are ready at this time to co-operate with the
miscreants who trade in blasphemy and treason! But you who neither seek
to deceive others nor yourself, you who are neither insane nor insincere,
you surely do not expect that the millennium is to be brought about by
the triumph of what a