“Although all things were created perfect, yet when the first man sinned, they were corrupted, and will not again return to their congruous state till PHEREZ (_i.e._, the MESSIAH) comes.” “There are six things which shall be restored to their primitive state, viz.: the splendor of man, his life, the height of his stature, the fruits of the earth, the fruits of the trees, and the luminaries, (the sun, moon, and stars.)”—_R. Berakyah_, in the _name of R. Samuel—Bereshith Rabba, Fol. 11, Col. 3_. “In that time (_i.e._, of the Messiah) the whole work of creation shall be changed for the better, and shall return into its perfect and pure state, as it was in the time of the first man, before he had sinned.”—_R. Becai, in Shilcan Orba, Fol. 9, Col. 4, p. 360._ “Theopompus, who flourished three hundred and forty years B. C., relates that the Persian Magi taught that the present state of things would continue 6000 years; after which _hades_, or death, would be destroyed, and men would live happy,” &c. “The opinion of the ancient Jews, on this head, may be gathered from the statement of one of their Rabbins, who said, ‘The world endures 6000 years, and in the thousand, or millennium that follows, the enemies of God would be destroyed.’ It was in like manner a tradition of the house of Elias, a holy man, who lived about B. C. 200, that the world was to endure 6000 years, and that the righteous, whom God should raise up, would not be turned again into dust. That, by this resurrection, he meant a resurrection prior to the millennium, is manifest from what follows.... It is worthy of remark, that the two ancient authors, whose words have just been quoted, speak of the seventh millennium as ‘that day’—the day in which God will renew the world, and in which he alone shall be exalted.”—_Dis. on Mill. by Bishop Russell, Prof. Eccl. Hist. in the Scottish Epis. Ch._ “The Divine institution of a sabbatical, or seventh year’s solemnity among the Jews, has a plain typical reference to the seventh chiliad, or millenary of the world, according to the well known tradition among the Jewish doctors, adopted by many in every age of the Christian Church, that this world will attain to its limit at the end of 6000 years.”—_Mede._ “The observance of the Sabbath is essential to the faith; for such only as observe the Sabbath confess that the earth will be renewed: because He who created it out of nothing will renew it.”—_David Kimchi, on Isa. 55:5, quoted by Mede._ “In as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years it is perfected; for if the day of the Lord be as it were a 1000 years, and in six days those things that are made were finished, it is manifest that the perfecting of those things is in the 6000th year, when anti-Christ, reigning 1260 years, shall have wasted all things in the world, ... then shall the Lord come from heaven in the clouds, with the glory of his Father.” _Irenæus, Bish. of Lyons, A. D. 178._