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MILLENARIANS.
The Millenarians are those who believe that Christ will reign personally on earth for a thousand years; their name having a direct allusion to the duration of this spiritual empire. The doctrine of the Millennium has always retained a number of adherents both in ancient and modern times; and several eminent divines have advanced different opinions respecting the nature and duration of this paradisiacal state. But, however the Millenarians may differ regarding this great event, it is very generally believed that such a revolution will be effected in the latter days, as will banish vice and its attendant misery from the earth, and terminate the grand drama of human affairs with Universal Felicity.
SWEDENBORGIANS.
The Swedenborgians are the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish nobleman, and philosophical enthusiast of the eighteenth century, now chiefly known as the founder of the New Jerusalem Church. His tenets, although peculiarly distinct from every other system of divinity in Christendom, appear to be drawn from the Holy Scriptures, and are supported by numerous quotations from them. He asserts, that in the year 1743, the Lord manifested himself to him in a personal appearance; and opened his spiritual eyes, so that he was enabled constantly to see and converse with spirits and angels. From that time he began to publish various wonderful things relating to heaven and hell, the several earths in the universe, and their inhabitants, with many other extraordinary particulars, the knowledge of which was, perhaps, never pretended to by any other writer.
Baron Swedenborg denies a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, but contends for a divine Trinity in the single person of Jesus Christ alone, consisting of a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He likewise denies the doctrine of atonement, or vicarious sacrifice, together with the doctrines of predestination, unconditional election, justification by faith alone, the resurrection of the material body, &c., and in opposition thereto maintains, that man is possessed of free will in spiritual things; that salvation is not attainable without repentance; and that man immediately on his decease, rises again in a spiritual body, in which he lives to all eternity, either in heaven or in hell, according to the quality of his past life.
It is further maintained by Swedenborg and his followers, that by the end of the world, or consummation of the age, is not signified the destruction of the world, but the end of the existing Christian Church, and that this last judgment actu-
