Part 11 (1/2)
The battle within him went on fiercely for some time, and it ended as we should have expected. ”I was so well satisfied in my mind as to my eternal happiness, that I was resolved now to be quiet and to get as good a living as I could in this world and live as comfortably as I could here, thinking that this revelation should have been beneficial to n.o.body but myself.” The ”motional voices,” and visions, and questionings, continued from April 1651 to January 1652; and it was during this time that the intimacy between Muggleton and Reeve became more closely cemented, for ”John Reeve was so taken with my language that his desires were _extreme earnest_ that he might have the same revelation as I had. His desires were so great that he was troublesome unto me, for if I went into one room, into another, he would follow me to talk to me.” His persistence was rewarded, and just when Muggleton's visions ceased ”in the month of January 1652, about the middle of the month, John Reeve came to me very joyful and said, Cousin Lodowick, now said he, I know what revelation of Scripture is as well as thee.” Reeve's revelations increased, and never ceased for two weeks. ”First visions, then by voice of words to the hearing of the ear three mornings together the third, fourth, and fifth days of February, 1652, and the year of John Reeve's life forty-two, and the year of my life forty-one.”
Two men in this curious ecstatic condition obviously could not stop at this point. It was a critical moment--would they enter into rivalry or spiritual partners.h.i.+p? If the latter, then who was to be the leader, who would make the first move? It was soon settled.
”The first evening G.o.d _spake_ to John Reeve he came to my house and said, Cousin Lodowick, G.o.d hath given thee unto me for ever, and the tears ran down both sides his cheeks amain. So I asked him what was the matter, for he looked like one that had been risen out of the grave, he being a fresh-coloured man the day before, but the tears ran down his cheeks apace.” John Reeve was not yet prepared to deliver his commission with authority; it was coming, but not yet.
Meanwhile he turned to Muggleton's children and p.r.o.nounced them blessed, ”but especially thy daughter Sarah, she shall be the teacher of all the women in London.” Sarah was hiding on the stairs and was not a little afraid; she was a girl of fourteen, but she accepted her mission there and then.
She proved to be a valuable helper, ”and several persons came afterwards to my house more to discourse with her than us, and they marvelled that one so young should have such knowledge and wisdom.”
Next day John Reeve came again, and Muggleton was p.r.o.nounced to be the _mouth_ of the new revelation, ”as Aaron was given to be Moses' mouth.”
The first thing to be done was to depose the other two prophets, Robins and Tannye, and to hoise them on their own petard. It had to be seen who could d.a.m.n hardest. For one moment even Muggleton's stout heart failed, he would take another with him to be present at the great trial of strength. He called upon a certain Thomas Turner to accompany him, ”else you must be cursed to all eternity. But his wife was exceeding wroth and fearful, and she said, if John Reeve came again to her husband that she would run a spit in his guts, so John Reeve cursed her to eternity.” Whereupon Turner, appalled by the sentence, complied with the order and went. The three presented themselves before the other madman, and John Reeve uttered his testimony, denouncing him as a false prophet and gave him a month to repent of his misdeeds. When the month had elapsed Reeve wrote the sentence of eternal d.a.m.nation upon him ”and left it at his lodging, and after a while he and his great matters perished in the sea. For he made a little boat to carry him to Jerusalem, and going to Holland to call the Jews there, he and one Captain James was cast away and drowned, so all his powers came to nothing.”
The day after the interview with Tannye, the prophets proceeded to deal with John Robins. He had been thrown into Bridewell by Cromwell, and there he lay, his wors.h.i.+ppers still resorting to him for any one with money could visit a prisoner in gaol as often as he pleased.
When the prophets appeared at the gate empty handed, the keeper as a matter of course refused them admittance. Then said John Reeve to the keeper, ”Thou shall never be at peace.” By and by they were shown where Robins's cell was; they summoned him to the window, and a strange interview took place, which is minutely described. It ended by Reeve delivering his charge and p.r.o.nouncing his sentence. Many had been the crimes of John Robins. He had ruined and deceived men in a mult.i.tude of ways; among others ”thou givest them leave to abstain by degrees from all kinds of food, thou didst feed them with windy things, as apples and other fruit that was windy, and they drank nothing but water; therefore look what measure thou hast measured to others we will measure again to thee.”
John Robins was utterly mastered; ”he pulled his hands off the grates and laid them together and said, It is finished; the Lord's will be done.” In two months he had written a letter of recantation, was released from durance, and is heard of no more.
”Thus the reader may see that these two powers were brought down in these two days' messages from the Lord.”
The world was all before them now. It remained that the new prophets should have some distinctive dogma, and that the printing press should be called in as an accessory to spread their fame. Again John Reeve took the lead, and in 1652 he wrote an account of his divine commission and published his first work, _A Transcendant Spiritual Treatise_, which told of his last revelation of the message to Tannye and Robins.
While the book was pa.s.sing through the press the prophets lived by their trade, and made no attempt to preach before any a.s.sembly. They _talked_ incessantly, and they cursed liberally. At last the children in the streets began to follow Reeve and pelt him, crying after him, ”There goes the prophet that d.a.m.ns people!” Muggleton, meanwhile, was always ready to meet an inquirer, and to eat and drink with him. ”On one occasion an old acquaintance would needs have me drink with him, that he might have some talk with me, and there followed a neighbour of his, a gentleman, as we call them; his name was Penson, and he sat down in our company.” Soon Penson began to deride and abuse the prophet; whereupon Muggleton calmly ”did p.r.o.nounce this Penson cursed to eternity.” Penson did not like being d.a.m.ned under the circ.u.mstances. ”Then he rose up, and with both his fists smote upon my head... But it came to pa.s.s that this Penson was sick immediately after, and in a week or ten days after he died, much troubled in his mind, and tormented insomuch that his friends and relations sought to apprehend me for a witch, he being a rich man, but they couldn't tell how to state the matter, so they let it fall.”
It is pretty clear that John Reeve was from the first disposed to go beyond his brother prophet; and shortly after the incident of Penson's death Reeve made a grand _coup_, which produced a profound impression. Muggleton had d.a.m.ned a _gentleman_. Reeve tried his power upon the same cla.s.s, and succeeded in actually converting two of them, who were influential men among the Ranters.
The Ranters were startled and puzzled. ”And it came to pa.s.s that one of these Ranters kept a victualling house and sold drink in the Minories, and they would spend their money there. So John Reeve and myself came there, and many of them despised our declaration. So John Reeve gave sentence of eternal d.a.m.nation upon many of them, and one of them, being more offended than all the rest, was moved with such wrath and fury that five or six men could hardly keep him off, his fury was so hot. Then John Reeve said unto the people standing by, 'Friends,' said he, 'I pray you stand still on both sides of the room, and let there be a s.p.a.ce in the middle, and I will lay down my head upon the ground and let this furious man tread upon my head and do what he will unto me....' So John Reeve pulled off his hat and laid his face flat to the ground, and the people stood still. So the man came running with great fury, and when he came near him, lifting up his foot to tread on his neck, the man started back again and said, 'No, I scorn to tread upon a man that lieth down to me.' And the people all marvelled at this thing.”
Though Muggleton does not make much of this incident, it appears to have been a very important one in the early history of the sect, for from this moment the numbers of Muggletonians began to increase, and they began to absorb a small army of wandering monomaniacs who were roaming about London and talking about _religion_, and visions, and revelations, and attaching themselves first to one body and then to another, according as they could get admission to the meeting- houses and be allowed to preach and harangue. Astrologers too, came and conferred with the prophets, and drunken scoffers laid bets that they would get the prophet's blessing; and on one occasion a company of ”Atheistical Ranters” made a plot to turn the tables upon Muggleton, and d.a.m.n him and Reeve. Three of ”the most desperatest”
agreed to do it. ”So the time appointed came, and there was prepared a good dinner of pork, and the three came ready prepared to curse us.” Part of the agreement was that the dinner should follow upon the cursing. But whether it was that the rogues could do nothing until they were fortified with drink, or that a sudden spasm of conscientiousness came upon them, or that they were like superst.i.tious people who with blanched lips loudly protest that they do not believe in ghosts, but decline on principle to walk through a churchyard after dark, these three fellows all ran away from their engagements at the eleventh hour. ”So they departed without their dinner of pork.”
The prophets were becoming notorious. The Ranters and John Robins had been vanquished; their first book was published and was selling; they were advertising themselves widely, and being advertised by friends and foes; but as yet they had not been persecuted, and as yet they had not put very prominently forward any distinctive or special theology. They claimed to be prophets, but their mission, What was it? What were they charged to proclaim?
It was just about this time that the works of Jacob Boehm had begun to exercise a very great influence upon the visionaries in England.
The _Mercurius Teutonicus_ was first published in an English translation in 1649, and the _Signatura_ _Rerum_ had appeared in 1651. Muggleton had certainly read these books, and as certainly turned them to account. The jargon of the German mystic was exactly what he wanted in his present state of mind, and there was that in the new philosophy which commended itself vastly to him. Not that he, as an inspired prophet, could for one moment admit that he had received any light from man or was under any obligation to anything but the divine illumination enlightening him directly and immediately; but the obligation was there all the same, and to Jacob Boehm's influence we must attribute the evolution of the distinctive doctrine of the Muggletonians, which just about this time comes into obtrusive prominence.
It was at the beginning of the year 1653 that the prophets made their first important convert. Up to this time they had been heard of only in the back streets of London. But now a New England merchant named Leader, who had made a fortune in America, and had come back in disgust at the intolerance and persecution that prevailed among the colonists, made advances to Muggleton. Leader was in a despondent state of mind, and on the lookout for a religion with some novelty in it. He too had, it seems, been a student of Jacob Boehm, and the _Signatura Rerum_ had opened out a new line of speculation to him. ”His first question was concerning G.o.d--whether G.o.d, that created all things, could admit of being any form of Himself?”
Prophets are never at a nonplus, and never surprised by a question; the more transcendental the problem, the more need for the prophetic gift to solve it. In fact, the prophet comes in to help when all human cunning is at fault.
Accordingly Mr. Leader's question led to a discussion which is all set down at full for those who choose to read it, and as the result of that discussion comes out into clearness the astounding declaration which henceforth appears as the main article of the Muggletonian theology.
”G.o.d hath a body of His own, as man hath a body of his own; only G.o.d's body is spiritual and heavenly, clear as _christial_, brighter than the sun, swifter than thought, yet a body.”
Hitherto the prophets had been groping after a formula which might be their strength, but they had not been able to put it into shape.
Jacob Boehm's mysticism, pa.s.sing through the alembic of such a mind as Leader's, and subjected to that occult atmosphere which Muggleton lived in, came forth in the shape of a new theology, transcendental, unintelligible, but therefore celestial and sublime. The prophets from this moment made a new departure.
Meanwhile, the unhesitating and authoritative d.a.m.ning of opponents exercised a strange fascination over the mult.i.tude. Reeve and Muggleton lived among the blackguards at their first start, and they d.a.m.ned the blackguards pretty freely. In numberless instances the blackguards were to all intents and purposes d.a.m.ned before Muggleton's sentence was p.r.o.nounced. They were fellows given over to drink and debauchery, sots who had not much life in them, scoundrels who were in hiding, skulking in the vilest holes of the city, whom the plague or famine would be likely to rid the world of any day.
They died frequently enough after the sentence was p.r.o.nounced, and it is quite conceivable that the sentence may have hastened the end of many a poor wretch who had nothing to live for. Nay, in more cases than one a timid man, when the sentence was pa.s.sed, was so terrified that he took to his bed there and then, and never rose from it, or became insane, neglected his business, and so was ruined; and as the number of the d.a.m.ned was always increasing, the chances of strange accidents and misfortunes would go on increasing also. People heard of these, and of these only.
What the prophets themselves did, it was only natural that their followers would try to do also; indeed, it is wonderful that the d.a.m.ning prerogative was not invaded much oftener than it was. It was very rarely intruded upon, however. Once, indeed, a misguided and too venturous believer named Cooper took upon him to usurp authority, and p.r.o.nounced the sentence of d.a.m.nation upon a small batch of fifteen scoffers who had jeered at him and the prophet's mission. The precedent was a dangerous one, there was no telling what it would lead to if such random and promiscuous d.a.m.ning was to go on. Next day Cooper fell grievously sick, and conscience smote him; he could not be at peace till he had confessed his fault and been forgiven. He was forgiven accordingly, but he was admonished to lay to heart the warning, and to presume no more. ”Not but that I do believe,” says Muggleton, ”they will all be d.a.m.ned,” all the whole fifteen!
The movement was becoming a nuisance by this time, and Reeve got a hint, and no obscure one, that a warrant would be issued against him, ”either from General Cromwell, or the Council of State, or from the Parliament.” So far from being deterred by the prospect--was there ever a prophet who was frightened into silence?--he declared that if Cromwell or the Parliament should despise him and his mission, ”I would p.r.o.nounce them d.a.m.ned as I do you!” Though no warrant came from the Council or Cromwell--a matter much to be regretted--yet a warrant was taken out by five of the opponents, and the prophets were brought before the Lord Mayor. As usual, a detailed account is given of the proceedings, which are valuable as ill.u.s.trating the method pursued in those days in the examination of an accused person, and the procedure of the court--so very different from our modern practice. The prophets were committed for trial; they refused to give bail, and were thrown into Newgate. It was the 15th of September, 1653, one of the great festivals among the believers. The hideous picture of prison life in Newgate deserves to be read even by those who have some acquaintance with the horrors of our prisons at this time. The prophets were well supplied with money, and so were spared some of the worst sufferings of the place; but it was bad enough, in all conscience, and one night the two narrowly escaped being hanged in their own room, and were only saved by five condemned men, who came to the rescue. Muggleton says the highwaymen and _the boys_ were most set against him; one of the highwaymen, whenever he saw him in the Hall, ”would come and deride at me, and say, 'You rogue, you d.a.m.n'd folks.' And so it was with the boys that were prisoners; they would s.n.a.t.c.h off my hat, and p.a.w.n it for half-a-dozen of drink. So the boys did, and I gave them sixpence every time they did it, to please them.” Highly gratifying to the boys!