, was that, at some date fast approaching, Christ
would reappear visibly on Earth, accompanied by the re-embodied souls
of dead saints and martyrs, while the rest of the dead slept on, and
that in the glorious reign of Righteousness and the subjugation of
all Evil thus begun for a thousand years men then living, or the true
saints among them, might partake. This interpretation, though scouted
by the more rational theologians, had seized on many of the more
fervid English Independents and Sectaries, so that they had begun to
see, in the great events of their own time and land, the dazzling
edge of the near Millennium. The doctrine had caught the souls of
Harrison and other men of action, hitherto classed as Anabaptists or
Seekers. Now, so far there was no harm in it, nor could any of the
orthodox who rejected it for themselves dare to treat it as one of
the heresies to be restrained by the Civil Magistrate. Evidently,
however, there was a root of danger. What if the Fifth-Monarchy men
should make it part of their faith that the saints could accelerate
the Fifth Monarchy, and that it was their duty to do so? Then their
tenet might have strange practical effects upon English politics.
Already, in the time of the Barebones Parliament, there had been
warnings of this, the Fifth-Monarchy men there, or outside the
Parliament, having distinguished themselves by an ultra-Republicanism
which verged on Communism, and also by their zeal for pure
Voluntaryism in Religion and the abolition of a paid Ministry and all
express Church machinery. The fact had not escaped Cromwell, and in
his speech at the opening of the present Parliament he had taken
notice of it. In that very speech he had singled out for remark "the
mistaken notion of the Fifth Monarchy." It was a notion, he admitted,
held by many good and sincere men; nay it was a notion he honoured
and could find a high meaning in. "But for men, on this principle, to
betitle themselves that they are the only men to rule kingdoms,
govern nations, and give laws to people, and determine of property
and liberty and everything else,--upon such a pretension as this:
truly they had need to give clear manifestations of God's presence
with them, before wise men will receive or submit to their
conclusions." If they were notions only, he added, they were best
left alone; for "notions will hurt none but those who have them."
But, when the notions were turned into practice, and proposals were
mad