The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VII. Amyraut Puts Millennium After Judgment of Little Horn

MOISE AMYRAUT (1596-1664) was one of the most distinguished and influential theologians of the seventeenth century. He was born at Bourgueil. First studying law at Poitiers, he was led to enter the ministry by reading Calvin’s Institutes. Studying theology at Saumur, under Cameron, he served as pastor at Saumur and Charenton, and became one of the leading professors at Saumur, and finally rector of the school in 1639. He was a deputy to the Synod of Charenton in 1631 for the province of Anjou and was also held in high esteem by the Catholics. He secured from Louis XIII cancellation of the obligation of Protestant deputies to speak to the king only upon their knees. ⁴⁸ PFF2 633.2

He was a prolific writer, and published many sermons—among them one upon the Apocalypse. He was a poet, and we have from him 150 Christian sonnets. In his Du regne de mille ans, ou de la prosperite de I’Eglise (On the Thousand Years Reign, or the Prosperity of the Church) Amyraut takes issue with the dominant Augustinian concept of the kingdom of the saints in Daniel 2, and opposes De Launay in the latter’s chiliastic interpretations. He maintains that the kingdom of the saints comes only after the ruin of the iron and clay, and in the prophecy of Daniel 7 is received only after the judgment of the Little Horn. Then will come the triumphant state of the church in its celestial abode. ⁴⁹ PFF2 633.3