Millennium

In the 17th-century context this meant the return of Christ on earth and the rule of all his faithful believers for a period of 1000 years. During the Civil War and the Commonwealth, some Puritan scholars believed that the Millennium was about to occur in the 1650s: “John Milton believed that Jesus Christ was ‘shortly-expected King’, whose coming would put an end to all earthly tyrannies” (Hill 144). For many Puritan sects, among them the Fifth Monarchists and the Quakers, Christ’s Second Coming became almost synonymous with a utopian ideal government.

Source: Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution. 1603-1714. London: Nelson, 1980.