that Christianity was at first a
proletarian movement, and that a great part of its adherents certainly
did not join it merely with the hope of a return to the original state
of Paradise in a future world. Perhaps (thought they) this Paradise
might be attainable in this world. It can be seen that the Church had
originally nothing to lose by at least not opposing this hope of a
millennium[7]; and so we see not only heretics like Kerinthos, but
also pillars of orthodoxy, like Papios of Hieropolis, Irenaeus, Justin
Martyr, and others, preaching the doctrine of the millennium. In later
times, indeed, when the Church had long since ceased to be a mainly
proletarian movement, and when Christianity had risen from the
Catacombs to the palace and the throne, the hopes of the poor and
oppressed for an approaching millennial reign lost their harmless
character, and "Millennialism" became _ipso facto_ heresy. But this
heresy was, as may be understood, not so easy to eradicate; and when,
in the closing centuries of the middle ages, the material position of
large classes of people had again become, in spite of Christianity,
most serious and comfortless, Millennialism awoke again actively in
men's minds, and formed the prelude, as well as the Socialist
undercurrent, of the Reformation. Some Radical offshoots of this
medieval Millennialism we have already noticed in the "Brothers and
Sisters of the Free Spirit," the Adamites, Chelcicians, and "Free
Brothers."

[7] Or, from the Greek, chiliad; and hence the word
_chiliasm_, expressing the belief in a millennium.

* * * * *

The presuppositions of this flattering superstition are so deeply
founded in the optimism of mankind, that it remained the same even
when divested of its religious, or rather its confessional, garment;
and could be no more eradicated by the Rationalistic tendency that
arose after the Reformation than by the interdict of Rome or the
brutal cruelties of ecclesiastical justice.

If we look more closely into the doctrine of the so-called _contrat
social_, which was destined to form the programme of the French
Revolution, we again recognise without much difficulty the fundamental
ideas of the Millennialists, hardly altered at all. A Paradise
without laws, existing before civilisation, which is considered as a
curse, and another like unto it, when "this cursed civilisation" is
abolished, is what a modern Anarchist would say. The