Annotation CCCXLVII

”Blessed [is he] who has part in the first resurrection. In these shall be priests of God, and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years.” — Apocalypse 20:6

Whether there are to be two [future] resurrections, and a golden age of a thousand years between the two.

Victorinus of Pettau, expounding these [words] in the commentaries on the Apocalypse, is believed to have approved the error of the Chiliasts [Millenarians]: who say that there are to be two future resurrections of the flesh — the first, of the good; but the second, of the bad, after a thousand years; and that Christ, from the first even to the second resurrection, will remain on the earth, and there for a thousand years will reign with his saints and elect in the greatest peace, with an incredible felicity of all earthly delights flowing on every side. This the divine Jerome attributes to him in various places, but especially in a certain little preface, which [he set before] the commentaries on the

—[to the commentaries on the] Apocalypse of this author he affixed [it], where he thus wrote to Anatolius: “DIVERS mishaps befall those crossing over the perils of the sea. If the throng of the winds be more vehement, there is dread: if the more moderate breeze ruffle the surfaces of the lying [calm] element, they [still] dread ambushes. So it seems to me in this — [namely] the volume thou hast sent, which, in the explanation of the Apocalypse, seems to contain [the work] of Victorinus: it is both perilous, and open to the barkings of detractors, to judge concerning the little works of an excellent man. For the earlier [author] Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, and Nepos, a bishop in the parts of Egypt, thought concerning the reign of a thousand years just as Victorinus [did].” Thus Jerome: who, in the preface of the eighteenth book on Isaiah, and in the fourth book on Jeremiah, reports that Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, Tertullian, Lactantius, Apollinaris, Severus, Sulpicius, and a great multitude of catholic men, were in the opinion of Victorinus: in which I find also to have been Justin, philosopher and martyr, who, in the disputation held with Trypho, writes many [things] concerning the restoration of the terrestrial Jerusalem, and concerning the age of a thousand years — which, studying brevity, I pass over.

BUT as regards the opinion of Victorinus: when I myself had once and again pertinaciously unrolled the little commentary which now is circulated under his name on the Apocalypse, to search out this error, so far [is it] from [being the case] that I found [that] which Jerome fastens upon him, that I even, at the end of the little work, fell upon an open confutation of this very error; in which, when the author had catholicly discoursed [on] the proposed chapter of John, at last he concluded his commentary with these words: “THEREFORE they are not to be heard, who affirm that the reign of a thousand years is earthly — who think with Cerinthus the heretic.” It is probable, either that the work is not Victorinus’s, and that the preface prefixed to the volume under the title of Jerome is falsified [forged]; or that the absurd explanation of Victorinus was thence removed — whether by Jerome, or by some other friendly reader — and, in place of it, that which now is had was substituted. BUT howsoever it happened, it appears that these most weighty men were deceived out of the foregoing words of the Apocalypse, wrongly understood by them; in which, concerning the twin resurrection, and the thousand years between the two, it is thus read: “I SAW the souls of those beheaded for the word of God; and they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest [of the] dead lived not, until the thousand years be consummated. This is the first resurrection. Blessed [is] he who has part in the first resurrection. In these the second death has no power: but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. And after a thousand years Satan shall be loosed, etc. And I saw the dead standing in the sight of the throne: and the dead were judged according to their works, etc. And this is the second death, etc.” The obscurity of these words — which afforded so many and so great men an occasion of erring — will be illustrated by the clearest light, if we observe those three [things] here mentioned: namely, the twofold death, the twofold resurrection, and the space of a thousand years.

And so, the first death is the separation of the divine grace from the soul through sin. The second death [is] the exclusion of the soul from the life of eternal felicity, and [its] damnation to perpetual punishments. The first resurrection is the passage from the death of sin to the life of grace, and from the life of grace to the life of his [i.e. that eternal] glory — which souls, stripped of [their] bodies, shall possess until the day of judgment. The second resurrection is that universal re-formation of the whole human flesh, in which souls, [their] bodies being resumed, shall fully enjoy the doubled joy of felicity. The space of a thousand years — which often in the sacred letters is taken for an indefinite multitude of number — is the time of evangelical grace, from the resurrection of Christ even to the day of the last resurrection. The sense, therefore, of this revelation is: that the souls of the saints, for a thousand years — that is, until the day of judgment — shall reign with God in the first resurrection (namely, in the vision of the divine glory), their own bodies not yet received; and that they shall not be liable to the second death, which brings with it eternal punishments: but that at last, in the second universal resurrection, they shall be judged, together with all mortals, in the sight of the throne. And then, the judgment being completed, the souls of the saints, clothed with their [own] bodies, shall receive a doubled beatitude. But the wicked, in whom the first resurrection of grace and glory had no place, shall be punished with the second death — that is, with the perpetual torments of hell. To this pertain the [things] which we wrote copiously above, in Annotation 233 of the fifth book.

THE END OF THE SIXTH BOOK.