England, a land wherein there is never any lack of them, made a common
cause with this King of the Hebrews. Pamphlets in his favour swarmed
from the press; the prophecy of some old heretic was raked up, which
fixed the downfall of the church as destined now to be accomplished; and
the number of the Beast was explained by Ludovicus XVI. One madman
printed his dreams, another his day-visions; one had seen an angel come
out of the sun with a drawn sword in his hand, another had seen fiery
dragons in the air, and hosts of angels in battle array: these signs and
tokens were represented in rude engravings, and the lower classes of
people, to whose capacity and whose hungry superstition they were
addressed, began to believe that the seven seals were about to be
opened, and all the wonders in the Apocalypse would be displayed.
Government at last thought fit to interfere, and committed Brothers to
the national hospital for madmen. Mr Halhed made a speech in parliament
upon this occasion, the most extraordinary perhaps that ever was
delivered to a legislative assembly. It was a calm and logical
remonstrance against the illegality and unreasonableness of their
proceedings. They had imprisoned this person as a madman, he said,
because he announced himself as a prophet; but it was incumbent upon
them to have fairly examined his pretensions, and ascertained their
truth or falsehood, before they had proceeded against him in this
manner. Brothers had appealed to the Holy Scriptures, the divine
authority of which that house acknowledged; he appealed also to certain
of his own predictions as contained in the letters which he had
addressed to the king and his ministers;—let them be produced, and the
question solemnly investigated as its importance deserved. According to
the rules of the house of commons, no motion can be debated or put to
the vote, unless it be seconded; Mr Halhed found no one to second him,
and his proposal was thus silently negatived.
Thus easily and effectually was this wild heresy crushed. Brothers
continued to threaten earthquakes, fix days for them, and prorogue them
after the day was past; but his influence was at an end. The people had
lost sight of him; and being no longer agitated by signs and tokens,
dreams and denunciations, they forgot him. A few of his steadier
adherents persisted in their belief, and comforted him and themselves by
reminding him of Daniel in the lions' den, and of Jeremiah in the
dungeon. He was lucky enough to find out better consolation for himself.
There was a female lunatic in the same hospital, whom he discovered to
be the destined Queen of the Hebrews; and as such announced her to the
world. At present he and his chosen partner of the throne of David are
in daily expectation of a miraculous deliverance, after which they are
to proceed to Jerusalem to be crowned, and commence their reign. Plans
and elevations of their palace and of the new Temple have been made for
them, and are now being engraved for the public; and in these dreams
they will probably continue as long as they live. Upon madmen of this
stamp, experience has as little effect as hellebore. Their thoughts of
the future are so delightful that they forget the past, and are well
nigh insensible to the present, just as all other objects near or
distant appear darkened to him who has been looking at the sun. Their
hope has neither fear nor doubt to allay it, and its intensity gives
them a joy which could scarcely be exceeded by its accomplishment.
[23] At the ninth year, the children shall be solemnly offered to the
Mother of God at Genatzans; at that time you will already have made the
barbarians feel the blows that you are to give them. Yes; at that age,
so very tender, united to you two and to others, Charles will take up
for the first time his arms; the glory of his name shall spread every
where.
LETTER LXX.
_Account of Joanna Southcott._
In the early part of the thirteenth century there appeared an English
virgin in Italy, beautiful and eloquent, who affirmed that the Holy
Ghost was incarnate in her for the redemption of women, and she baptized
women in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of herself. Her
body was carried to Milan and burnt there. An arch-heretic of the same
sex and country is now establishing a sect in England, founded upon a
not dissimilar and equally portentous blasphemy. The name of this woman
is Joanna Southcott; she neither boasts of the charms of her forerunner,
nor needs them. Instead of having an eye which can fascinate, and a
tongue which can persuade to error by glossing it with sweet discourse,
she is old, vulgar, and illiterate. In all the innumerable volumes which
she has sent into the world, there are not three connected sentences in
sequence, and the language alikes violates common sense and common
syntax. Yet she has her followers among the educated classes, and even
among the beneficed clergy. "If Adam," she says, "had refused listening
to a foolish ignorant woman at first, then man might refuse listening to
a foolish ignorant woman at last!"—and the argument is admitted by her
adherents. When we read in romance of enchanted fountains, they are
described as flowing with such clear and sparkling waters as tempt the
traveller to thirst; here, there may be a magic in the draught, but he
who can taste of so foul a stream must previously have lost his senses.
The filth and the abominations of demoniacal witchcraft are emblematical
of such delusions; not the golden goblet and bewitching allurements of
Circe and Armida.
The patient and resolute obedience with which I have collected for you
some account of this woman and her system, from a pile of pamphlets half
a yard high, will, I hope, be imputed to me as a merit. Had the heretics
of old been half as voluminous, and half as dull, St Epiphanius would
never have persevered through his task.
She was born in Devonshire about the middle of the last century, and
seems to have passed forty years of her life in honest industry,
sometimes as a servant, at others working at the upholsterers' business,
without any other symptom of a disordered intellect than that she was
zealously attached to the Methodists. These people were equally well
qualified to teach her the arts of imposture, or to drive her mad; or to
produce in her a happy mixture of craziness and knavery, ingredients
which in such cases are usually found in combination. She mentions in
her books a preacher who frequented her master's house, and, according
to her account, lived in habits of adultery with the wife, trying at the
same time to debauch the daughter, while the husband vainly attempted to
seduce Joanna herself. This preacher used to terrify all who heard him
in prayer, and make them shriek out convulsively. He said that he had
sometimes, at a meeting, made the whole congregation lie stiff upon the
floor till he had got the evil spirits out of them; that there never was
a man so highly favoured of God as himself; that he would not thank God
to make him any thing, unless he made him greater than any man upon
earth, and gave him power above all men; and he boasted, upon hearing
the death of one who had censured him, that he had fasted and prayed
three days and three nights, beseeching God to take vengeance upon that
man and send him to eternity. Where such impious bedlamites as this are
allowed to walk abroad, it is not to be wondered at that madness should
become epidemic. Joanna Southcott lived in a house which this man
frequented, and where, notwithstanding his infamous life, his
pretensions to supernatural gifts were acknowledged, and he was
accustomed to preach and pray. The servants all stood in fear of him.
She says he had no power over her, but she used to think the room was
full of spirits when he was in prayer; and he was so haunted that he
never could sleep in a room by himself, for he said his wife came every
night to trouble him: she was perplexed about him, fully believing that
he wrought miracles, and wondering by what spirit he wrought them. After
she became a prophetess herself, she discovered that this Sanderson was
the false prophet in the Revelations, who is to be taken with the Beast,
and cast alive with him into a lake of burning brimstone.
Four persons have written to Joanna upon the subject of her pretended
mission, each calling himself Christ! One Mr Leach, a Methodist
preacher, told her to go to the Lord in _his name_, and tell the Lord
that _he said_ her writings were inspired by the Devil. These
circumstances show how commonly delusion, blasphemy, and madness are to
be found in this country, and may lessen our wonder at the phrenzy of
Joanna and her followers. Her own career began humbly, with prophecies
concerning the weather, such as the popular English almanacks contain,
and threats concerning the fate of Europe and the successes of the
French, which were at that time the speculations of every newspaper, and
of every alehouse politician. Some of these guesses having chanced to be
right, the women of the family in which she then worked at the
upholstering business began to lend ear to her, and she ventured to
submit her papers to the judgment of one Mr Pomeroy, the clergyman whose
church she attended in Exeter. He listened to her with timid curiosity,
rather wanting courage than credulity to become her disciple; received
from her certain sealed prophecies which were at some future time to be
opened, when, as it would be seen that they had been accomplished, they
would prove the truth of her inspiration; and sanctioned, or seemed to
sanction, her design of publishing her call to the world. But in this
publication his own named appeared, and that in such a manner as plainly
to imply, that if he had not encouraged her to print, he had not
endeavoured to prevent her from so doing. His eyes were immediately
opened to his own imprudence, whatever they may have been to the nature
of her call, and he obtained her consent to insert an advertisement in
the newspaper with her signature, stating that he had said it was the
work of the Devil. But here the parties are at issue: as the
advertisement was worded, it signifies that Mr Pomeroy always said her
calling was from the Devil; on the other hand, Joanna and her witnesses
protest that what she had signed was merely an acknowledgment that Mr
Pomeroy had said, after her book was printed, the Devil had instigated
her to print his name in it. This would not be worthy of mention, if it
were not for the very extraordinary situation into which this gentleman
has brought himself. Wishing to be clear of the connection in which he
had so unluckily engaged, he burnt the sealed papers which had been
entrusted to his care. From that time all the Joannians, who are now no
inconsiderable number, regard him as the arch-apostate. He is the
Jehoiakim who burnt Jeremiah's roll of prophecies; he is their Judas
Iscariot, a second Lucifer, son of the Morning. They call upon him to
produce these prophecies, which she boldly asserts, and they implicitly
believe, have all been fulfilled, and therefore would convince the world
of the truth of her mission. In vain does Mr Pomeroy answer that he has
burnt these unhappy papers:—in an unhappy hour for himself did he burn
them! Day after day long letters are dispatched to him, sometimes from
Joanna herself, sometimes from her brother, sometimes from one of her
four-and-twenty elders, filled with exhortation, invective, texts of
scripture, and denunciations of the Law in this world and the Devil in
the next; and these letters the prophetess prints, for this very
sufficient reason—that all her believers purchase them. Mr Pomeroy
sometimes treats them with contempt, at other times he appeals to their
compassion, and beseeches them, if they have any bowels of Christian
charity, to have compassion on him, and let him rest, and no longer add
to the inconceivable and irreparable injuries which they have already
occasioned him. If he is silent, no matter, on they go, printing copies
of all which they write, and when he is worried into replying, his
answers also serve to swell Joanna's books. In this manner is this poor
man, because he has recovered his senses, persecuted by a crazy
prophetess, and her four-and-twenty crazy elders, who seem determined
not to desist, till, one way or other, they have made him as ripe for
Bedlam as they are themselves.
The books which she sends into the world are written partly in prose,
partly in rhyme, all the verse, and the greater part of the prose, being
delivered in the character of the Almighty! It is not possible to convey
any adequate idea of this unparalleled and unimaginable nonsense by any
other means than literal transcript.[24] Her hand-writing was illegibly
bad, so that at last she found it convenient to receive orders to throw
away the pen, and deliver her oracles orally; and her words flow from
her faster than her scribes can write them down. This may be well
believed, for they are mere words, and nothing else: a rhapsody of
texts, vulgar dreams, and vulgar interpretations, vulgar types and
vulgar applications:—the vilest string of words in the vilest doggerel
verse, which has no other connection than what the vilest rhymes have
suggested, she vents, and her followers receive, as the dictates of
immediate inspiration. A herd, however, was ready to devour this garbage
as the bread of life. Credulity and Vanity are foul feeders.
The clergy in her own neighbourhood were invited by her, by private
letters, to examine her claims, but they treated her invitation with
contempt: the bishop also did not choose to interfere;—of what avail,
indeed, would it have been to have examined her, when they had no power
to silence her blasphemies! She found believers at a distance. Seven men
came from different parts of the country to examine—that is—to believe
in her; these were her seven stars; and when at another time seven more
arrived upon the same wise errand, she observed, in allusion to one of
those vulgar sayings from which all her allusions are drawn, that her
seven stars were come to fourteen. Among these early believers were
three clergymen, one of them a man of fashion, fortune, and noble
family. It is not unlikely that the woman at first suspected the state
of her own intellects: her letters appear to indicate this; they express
a humble submission to wiser judgments than her own; and could she have
breathed the first thoughts of delusion into the ear of some pious
confessor, it is more than probable that she would have soon
acknowledged her error at his feet, and the phrensy which has now
infected thousands would have been cut off on its first appearance. But
when she found that persons into whose society nothing else could ever
have elevated her, listened to her with reverence, believed all her
ravings, and supplied her with means and money to spread them abroad, it
is not to be wondered at if she went on more boldly;—the gainfulness of
the trade soon silencing all doubts of the truth of her inspiration.
Some of her foremost adherents were veterans in credulity: they have
been initiated in the mysteries of animal magnetism, had received
spiritual circumcision from Brothers, and were thus doubly qualified for
the part they were to act in this new drama of delusion. To accommodate
them, Joanna confirmed the authenticity of this last fanatic's mission,
and acknowledged him as King of the Hebrews,—but she dropt his whole
mythology. Her heresy in its main part is not new. The opinion that
redemption extended to men only and not to women, had been held by a
Norman in the sixteenth century, as well as by the fair English heretic
already mentioned. This man, in a book called _Virgo Veneta_, maintained
that a female Redeemer was necessary for the daughters of Eve, and
announced an old woman of Venice of his acquaintance as the Saviour of
her sex. Bordonius, a century ago, broached even a worse heresy. In a
work upon miracles, printed at Parma, he taught that women did not
participate in the atonement, because they were of a different species
from man, and were incapable of eternal life. Joanna and her followers
are too ignorant to be acquainted with these her prototypes in
blasphemy, and the whole merit of originality in her system must be
allowed her, as indeed she has exceeded her forerunners in the audacity
of her pretensions. She boldly asserts that she is the Woman in the
Revelations, who has the Moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of
twelve stars: the twelve stars being her twelve apostles, who with the
second dozen of believers make up her four-and-twenty elders. In her
visitation it was told her that the angels rejoiced at her birth,
because she was born to deliver both men and angels from the insults of
the Devil. Let it be lawful for me to repeat these blasphemies, holding
them up to merited abhorrence. The scheme of redemption, she says, is
completed in her, and without her would be imperfect; by woman came the
fall of man, by woman must come his redemption: woman plucked the evil
fruit, and woman must pluck the good fruit; if the Tree of Knowledge was
violated by Eve, the Tree of Life is reserved for Joanna. Eve was a bone
from Adam, she is a bone from Christ the second Adam. She is the Bride,
the promised seed who is to bruise the Serpent's head; she it is who
claims the promise made at the creation, that woman should be the
helpmate of man, and by her the Creator fulfils that promise, and
acquits himself of the charge of having given to man the woman in vain.
The evening star was placed in the firmament to be her type. While she
arrogates so much to herself, she is proportionately liberal to her
followers: they have been appointed to the four-and-twenty elderships:
and to one of them, when he died, a higher character was more
blasphemously attributed: she assured his relations, that he was gone to
plead the promises before the Lord; that to him was to be given the key
of the bottomless pit, and that the time was at hand when he should be
seen descending in the air,—for they knew not the meaning of our
Saviour's words when he said, "Ye shall see the Son of Man coming in the
clouds, in power and great glory!"
The immediate object of her call is to destroy the Devil: of this the
Devil was aware, and that it might not be said he had had foul play, a
regular dispute of seven days was agreed on between him and Joanna, in
which she was to be alone, and he to bring with him as many of the
Powers of Darkness as he pleased: but he was not to appear visibly; for,
as he did not choose to make his appearance on a former occasion, when
some of her elders went to give him the meeting, but had disappointed
them, he was not to be permitted to manifest himself bodily now. The
conditions were, that if she held out with argument against him for
seven days, the Woman should be freed, and he fall; but if she yielded,
Satan's kingdom was to stand, and a second fall of the human race would
be the consequence. Accordingly, she went alone into a solitary house
for this conference. Joanna was her own secretary upon this occasion,
and the process-verbal of the conference has been printed, as literally
taken down; for she was ordered to set down all his blasphemies, and
show to the world what the language of Hell is. It is by no means a
polite language;—indeed the proficiency which Satan displays in the
vulgar tongue is surprising.
Of all Joanna's books this is the most curious. Satan brought a friend
with him, and they made up a story for themselves which has some
ingenuity. "It is written," said they, "Be still, and know that I am
God;" this still worship did not suit Satan; he was a lively cheerful
spirit, full of mirth and gaiety, which the Lord could not bear, and
therefore cast him out of Heaven. This, according to Apollyon's account
of Heaven, could have been no great evil. "Thou knowest," he says, "it
is written of God, he is a consuming fire, and who can dwell in
everlasting burnings? Our backs are not brass, nor our sinews iron, to
dwell with God in Heaven." The Heaven therefore which men mistakingly
desire, is in its nature the very Hell of which they are so much afraid;
and it is sufficient proof of the truth of all this, that the Devil
invites them to make themselves happy and lead a gay life, agreeably to
his own cheerful disposition, whereas religion enjoins self-denial,
penitence, and all things which are contrary to our natural
inclinations. Satan accounted to Joanna for her inspiration by this
solution: An evil spirit had loved her from her youth up, he found there
was no other access to her heart than by means of religion; and, being
himself able to foresee future events, imparted this knowledge to her in
the character of a good spirit. This spirit, he said, was one which she
had been well acquainted with; it was that of one Mr Follart, who had
told her if she would not have him for a husband he should die for her
sake, and accordingly he had died. But this deception had now been
carried so far that Satan was angry, and threatened, unless she broke
her seals and destroyed her writings, he would tear her in pieces.
The conference terminated like most theological disputes. Both parties
grew warm. Apollyon interfered, and endeavoured to accommodate matters,
but without effect, and Joanna talked Satan out of all patience. She
gave him, as he truly complained, ten words for one, and allowed him no
time to speak. All men, he said, were tired of her tongue already, and
now she had tired the Devil. This was not unreasonable; but he proceeded
to abuse the whole sex, which would have been ungracious in any one, and
in him was ungrateful. He said no man could tame a woman's tongue—the
sands of an hour-glass did not run faster—it was better to dispute with
a thousand men than one woman. After this dispute she fasted forty days;
but this fast, which is regarded by her believers as so miraculous, was
merely a Catholic Lent, in which she abstained from fish as well as
flesh.
The Moon which is under her feet in the Revelations, typifies the Devil:
for the moon, it seems, having power to give light by night but not by
day, is Satan's kingdom, and his dwelling-place; he, I conclude, being
the very person commonly called the Man in the Moon; a conjecture of my
own, which, you must allow, is strongly confirmed by his horns. Once,
when the Lord made her the same promise as Herod had done to Herodias,
she requested that Satan might be cut off from the face of the earth as
John the Baptist had been. This petition she was instructed to write,
and seal it with three seals, and carry it to the altar when she
received the sacrament! and a promise was returned that it should be
granted. Her dreams are usually of the Devil. Once she saw him like a
pig with his mouth tied; at another time skinned his face with her nails
after a fierce battle; once she bit off his fingers, and thought the
blood sweet,—and once she dreamt she had fairly killed him. But neither
has the promise of his destruction been as yet fulfilled, nor the dream
accomplished.
This phrensy would have been speedily cured in our country; bread and
water, a solitary cell, and a little wholesome discipline are specifics
in such cases. Mark the difference in England. No bishop interferes; she
therefore boldly asserts that she has the full consent of the bishops to
declare that her call is from God, because, having been called upon to
disprove it, they keep silent. She who was used to earn her daily bread
by daily labour, is now taken into the houses of her wealthy believers,
regarded as the most blessed among women, carried from one part of
England to another, and treated every where with reverence little less
than idolatry. Meantime dictating books as fast as her scribes can write
them down, she publishes them as fast as they are written, and the
Joannians buy them as fast as they are published. Nor is this her only
trade. The seals in the Revelations furnished her with a happy hint. She
calls upon all persons "to sign their names for Christ's glorious and
peaceable kingdom to be established, and to come upon earth, and his
will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven, and for Satan's
kingdom to be destroyed, which is the prayer and desire of Joanna
Southcott." They who sign this are to be sealed. Now if this temporal
sealing, which is mentioned by St John in the Revelations, had been
understood before this time, men would have begun sealing themselves
without the visitation of the spirit; and if she had not understood it
and explained it now, it would have been more fatal for herself and for
all mankind than the fall of Eve was. The mystery of sealing is this:
whosoever signs his name receives a sealed letter containing these
words: _The Sealed of the Lord, the Elect, Precious, Man's Redemption,
to inherit the Tree of Life, to be_ _made Heirs of God, and Joint-heirs
with Jesus Christ._ Signed _Joanna Southcott_. I know not what the price
of this initiation is; but she boasts of having sealed above eight
thousand persons, so that the trade is a thriving one.