Part 10 (2/2)
have always had for me a peculiar fascination, as they have for others. Epiphanius, whose name is and used to be a terror to her Royal Highness in days gone by, when I insisted upon reading to her about the peculiar people who made it a matter of faith to eat bread and cheese at the Eucharist--Epiphanius is to me positively entertaining, and Pagitt's _Heresiography_ is none the less instructive because it is a vulgar catch-penny little book, made up, like Peter Pindar's razors, to sell. To me it seems that to dismiss even the wildest and foolishest opinion _which makes way,_ as if it were a mere absurdity that does not deserve notice, is to show a certain flippancy and shallowness. Do not all thoughtful men pa.s.s through certain stages of intellectual growth, and are not the convictions of our youth held very differently from those which we find ourselves swayed by in our later years? The beliefs which the mult.i.tude take up with are such as the untrained and the half-trained are always captivated by, whether individually or in the ma.s.s. There are limits to our powers of a.s.similation according as our development has been arrested or is still going on, and he who hopes to understand the course of human affairs or to make any intelligent forecast of what is coming can never afford to neglect the study of morbid appet.i.tes or morbid anatomy in the domain of mind.
There is a strong family likeness among all fanatics; and this is characteristic of them all, that they are profusely communicative and absolutely honest. Prophets have no secrets, no reserve, no doubts, they are always true men. John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton are no exception to the general rule. We can follow their movements pretty closely for some years. The book of _The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit_ furnishes us with quite as much as we want to know about the sayings and doings of the grotesque pair and their early extravagances; and Muggleton's letters cover a period of forty years, during all which time he was going in and out among the artisans and small traders of the city, obstinately a.s.serting himself in season and out of season, and leaving behind him in his eccentric chronicle such a minute and faithful picture of London life among the middle-- the lower middle--cla.s.s during the last half of the seventeenth century as is to be found nowhere else. The reader must be prepared for the most startling freaks of language, for very vulgar profanity, the more amazing because so manifestly unintended. When people break away from all the traditions of the past and surrender themselves to absolute anarchy in morals and religion the old terminology ceases to be employed in the old way, ceases indeed to have any meaning. The prophet or the philosopher who sets himself to invent a new theory of the universe or a new creed for his followers to embrace, can hardly avoid shocking and horrifying those who are content to use words as their forefathers did and attach to these words the same sort of sacredness that the Hebrews did to the Divine name. There is no need to do more than allude to this side of the Muggletonian writing. What we are concerned with is the story of the prophet's life, which has been told with the utmost frankness and simplicity; a more unvarnished tale it would be difficult to find, or one which bears more the stamp of truth upon its every line.
_The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit_ is a posthumous work written by Muggleton when he was very old, and left behind him in ma.n.u.script with directions that it should be published after his death. It is a quarto volume of 180 pages and is a book of some rarity. It was published in 1699, with an epistle dedicatory to all true Christian people, apparently written by Thomas Tomkinson, one of the chosen seed. After preparing us for what is coming by dwelling upon the wonderful stories in the Old Testament and the New, Muggleton plunges into his subject by giving us a brief account of his own and his brother prophet's parentage and early biography. Let the reader understand that here beginneth the third chapter of _The Acts of the Witnesses_ at the third verse:--
”3. As for John Reeve, he was born in Wilts.h.i.+re; his father was clerk to a deputy of Ireland, a gentleman as we call them by his place, but fell to decay.
”4. So he put John Reeve apprentice here at London to a tailor by trade. He was out of his apprentices.h.i.+p before I came acquainted with him; he was of an honest, just nature, and harmless.
”5. But a man of no great natural wit or wisdom; no subtlety or policy was in him, nor no great store of religion; he had lost what was traditional; only of an innocent life.
”7. And I, Lodowick Muggleton, was born in Bishop-gate Street, near the Earl of Devons.h.i.+re's house, at the corner house called Walnut- tree Yard.
”8. My father's name was John Muggleton; he was a smith by trade-- that is, a farrier or horse doctor; he was in great respect with the postmaster in King James's time; he had three children by my mother, two sons and one daughter, I was the youngest and my mother loved me.”
His mother died, his father married again, whereupon the boy was sent into the country--_boarded out_ as we say--and kept there till his sixteenth year, when he was brought back to London and apprenticed to-a tailor--one John Quick--”a quiet, peaceable man, not cruel to servants, which liked me very well.” Muggleton took to his trade and pleased his master. The journeymen were a loose lot, ”bad husbands and given to drunkenness, but my nature was inclined to be sober.” Hitherto the young man had received no religious training; when he had served his time, however, ”hearing in those days great talk among the vulgar people and especially amongst youth, boys, and young maids, of a people called Puritans.... I liked their discourse upon the Scriptures and pleaded for a holy keeping of the Sabbath day, which my master did not do, nor I his servant.”
This must have been about the year 1630--for Muggleton was born in June 1610--when the Sabbatarian controversy was at its height, and the feeling of the country was approaching fever heat, and when Charles the First had resolved to try and govern without a Parliament, and when Archbishop Abbot was in disgrace, and Laud had begun to exercise his predominant influence. Muggleton was but little impressed by ”the people called Puritans,” and he went on his old way. When he had nearly served his time, he began to look about him.
The tailor's trade did not seem likely to lead to much, unless it were combined with something else, and a brilliant opening offered itself, as he was at work for a p.a.w.nbroker in Hounsditch. ”The broker's wife had one daughter alive. The mother, being well persuaded of my good natural temper, and of my good husbandry, and that I had no poor kindred come after me to be any charge or burthen to her daughter, ... proposed to me that she would give me a hundred pounds with her to set up.... So the maid and I were made sure by promise, and I was resolved to have the maid to wife, and to keep a broker's shop, and lend money on p.a.w.ns, and grow rich as others did.”
Muggleton had not yet been admitted to the freedom of the city, and the marriage was arranged to take place after he should have done so.
In the meantime he found himself working side by side with William Reeve, Prophet John Reeve's brother, at this time a ”very zealous Puritan,” with whom he talked of his prospects. ”I loved the maid, and desired to be rich,” he tells us; but these Puritan people were horrified at his deliberately intending to live the life of a usurer, and they ”threatened great judgments, and danger of d.a.m.nation hereafter.”
It is clear that the frightful eschatology of the time was exercising a far greater power upon the imagination of the ma.s.ses than anything else. People were dwelling upon all that was terrible and gloomy in the picture of a future life; the one thought with the visionaries was this--Save yourselves from the wrath to come. ”I was extremely fearful of eternal d.a.m.nation,” says Muggleton, ”thinking my soul might go into h.e.l.l fire without a body, as all people did at that time.”
There was evidently a struggle between conviction and inclination, and it ended as we should have expected--the marriage was broken off.
Then followed some years of vehement religious conflict; ”Neither did I hear any preach in these days but the Puritan ministers, whose hair was cut short. _For if a man with long hair had gone_ into the pulpit to preach, I would have gone out of the Church again, though he might preach better than the other.” All through this time visions of h.e.l.l and torment, and devils and d.a.m.nation troubled him; now and then there were ”elevations in my mind, but these were few and far between; a while after all was lost again.” He soon consoled himself for his matrimonial disappointment; he married and had three daughters, then his first wife died. He throve in his calling, ”only the spirit of fear of h.e.l.l was still upon me, but not so extreme as it was before.” He took a second wife, and the civil war began.
”And generally the Puritans were all for the Parliament, and most of my society and acquaintance did fall away and declined in love one towards another. Some of them turned to Presbytery, and some turned Independents; others fell to be Ranters, and some fell to be mere Atheists. So that our Puritan people were so divided and scattered in our religion, that I was altogether at a loss; for all the zeal we formerly had was quite worn out. For I had seen the utmost perfection and satisfaction that could be found in that way, except I would do it for loaves, _but loaves was never my aim.”_
The civil war ran its course, but Muggleton cared nothing for the general course of events. What were kings and bishops and Lords and Commons to him? he was living in quite another world. As for Laud and Strafford, and Pym and Hampden, he does not even once name them. He makes not the slightest allusion to the death of Charles the First, though he was living within half a mile of Whitehall when the king's head fell on the block. Prophets of the Muggleton type are so busied about their own souls and their own spiritual condition, that the battles, murders, and sudden deaths of other men, great or small, give them no concern whatever.
A couple of years or so after the execution of the king, ”it came to pa.s.s I heard of several prophets and prophetesses that were about the streets.... Also I heard of two other men that were counted greater than prophets--to wit, John Tannye and John Robins. John Tannye, he declared himself to be the Lord's High Priest, therefore he circ.u.mcised himself according to the law. Also he declared that he was to gather the Jews out of all nations,... with many other strange and wonderful things. And as for John Robins, he declared himself to be G.o.d Almighty. Also he said that he had raised from the dead several of the prophets, as Jeremiah and others. Also I saw several others of the prophets that was said to be raised by him, _for I have had nine or ten of them at my house at a time, of those that were said to be raised from the dead.”_
Is madness contagious? Or is it that, while the sane can exercise but a very limited power over the insane, there is no limit to the influence which the insane can gain over one another? Living in a world of their own, where delusions pa.s.s for palpable facts, where the logical faculty accepts the wildest visions as of equal significance with actual realities, these dreamers have a calculus of their own which includes the symbols in use among the sane, but comprehends besides a notation which these latter attach no meaning to, reject, and deride.
”Would you be so kind as tell me, sir, what's a ohm?” said the worthy Mr. Stiggins to me the other day. ”It's a modern term used in electricity, which I am too ignorant to explain to you.” He looked full at me for more than five seconds without a word then he said, ”I'm thinking that this man was a fool to talk about ohms when not even you knew what a ohm means. And he came from Cambridge College too, and he's got a vote! I reckon when a man can't talk the same as other folks he'd ought to be shut up.” Indignant Stiggins! But are we not all intolerant?
John Robins had acquired an almost unlimited ascendency over his crazy prophets, and speedily acquired the like ascendency over Muggleton. What specially fascinated him was that all John Robins's prophets ”had power from him to d.a.m.n any that did oppose or speak evil of him. So his prophets gave sentence of d.a.m.nation upon many, to my knowledge, for speaking evil of him, they not knowing him whether he was true or false.” Muggleton was profoundly impressed, but according to his own account he was a silent observer, and waited.
One of the prophets often came to his house and was welcome; he ”spake as an angel of G.o.d, and I never let him go without eating and drinking,” for Muggleton was a man of large appet.i.te and demanded large supplies of food, nor did he stint himself of meat and drink or withhold creature comforts from those he loved.
Just at this time Muggleton ”fell into a melancholy.” He had arrived at the prophetic age--he had completed his fortieth year. ”Then did two motives arise in me and speak in me as two lively voices, as if two spirits had been speaking in me, one answering the other as if they were not my own spirit.” So that our n.o.ble laureate was antic.i.p.ated by two centuries, unless indeed the ”two lively voices”
make themselves heard at times to most men who have ears to hear them. Muggleton's voices were not very high-toned voices; they were voices that spake of heaven and h.e.l.l, nothing more. Love and duty never seem to have formed the subject of his meditations. ”For I did not so much mind to be saved, as I did to escape being d.a.m.n'd. For I thought, if I could but lie still in the earth for ever, it would be as well with me as it would be if I were in eternal happiness... for I did not care whether I was happy so I might not be miserable. I cared not for heaven so I might not go to h.e.l.l. These things pressed hard upon my soul, even to the wounding of it.”
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