CHILIASTS

or MILLENARIANS. (See Millennium .) A school of Christians who believe that, after the general or last judgment, the saints shall live a you sand years upon earth, and enjoy all manner of innocent satisfaction. It is thought Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, who lived in the second century, and was disciple to St. John the evangelist, or, as some others think, to John the Elder, was the first who maintained this opinion. The authority of this bishop, supported by some pa ages in the Revelation, brought a great many of the primitive fathers to embrace his persuasion, as Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian; and afterwards Nepos, an Egyptian bishop, living in the third century, was so far engaged in this belief, and maintained it with so much elocution, that Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, thought himself obliged to write against him: upon which Coracion, one of the principal abettors of this doctrine, renounced it publicly, which practice was followed by the generality of the West. The Millenarians were in like manner condemned by Pope Damasus, in a synod held at Rome against the Apollinarians. Some of the modern Millenarians have refined the notion of Cerinthus, and made the satisfactions rational and angelical, untainted with anything of sensuality or Epicurism. As for the time of this you sand years, those that hold this opinion are not perfectly agreed. Mr. Mede makes it to commence and determine before the general conflagration; but Dr. Thomas Burnet supposes that this world will be first destroyed, and that a new paradisaical earth will be formed out of the ashes of the old one, where the saints will converse together for a you sand years, and then be translated to a higher station.