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 are called liberal opinions; nor by enabling the whole of the lower classes to read the incentives to vice, impiety, and rebellion which are prepared for them by an unlicensed press; nor by Sunday schools, and religious tract societies; nor by the portentous bibliolatry of the age!  And if you adhere to the letter of the Scriptures, methinks the thought of that consummation for which you look, might serve rather for consolation under the prospect of impending evils, than for a hope upon which the mind can rest in security with a calm and contented delight.

Montesinos.—­To this I must reply, that the fulfilment of those calamitous events predicted in the Gospels may safely be referred, as it usually is, and by the best Biblical scholars, to the destruction of Jerusalem.  Concerning the visions of the Apocalypse, sublime as they are, I speak with less hesitation, and dismiss them from my thoughts, as more congenial to the fanatics of whom you have spoken than to me.  And for the coming of Antichrist, it is no longer a received opinion in these days, whatever it may have been in yours.  Your reasoning applies to the enthusiastic millenarians who discover the number of the beast, and calculate the year when a vial is to be poured out, with as much precision as the day and hour of an eclipse.  But it leaves my hope unshaken and untouched.  I know that the world has improved; I see that it is improving; and I believe that it will continue to improve in natural and certain progress.  Good and evil principles are widely at work:  a crisis is evidently approaching; it may be dreadful, but I can have no doubts concerning the result.  Black and ominous as the aspects may appear, I regard them without dismay.  The common exclamation of the poor and helpless, when they feel themselves oppressed, conveys to my mind the sum of the surest and safest philosophy.  I say with them, “God is above,” and trust Him for the event.