was committed against his own body; but our vile bodies must be changed, for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.' With regard to his assuming a false name also, he affirms that there is refuge in Scripture, for Abraham, and Israel, and Sarah in the Old Testament, and Simon in the New, had been ordered to change theirs; and a person, he says, who is a partaker of two natures has a just right to two names. Further casuistry than this was required, and he has related, with apparent truth, that which passed in his own mind at the time.

"My parent's name is Hunt, and the man who is my real father, his name is Russel.-But then he has got sons in good circumstances, and they may sue me for assuming his name, though their father never disowned me.-If I change my name, the law may follow me for that; and, if I let the present name stand, I may by that be traced by means of the newspapers. There is but one way for me to escape, and that is by an addition; an addition is no change, and addition is no robbery." This is the way that iniquity creeps out of so many human laws. When the thoughts of an addition started up, "Well thought on," said I," it is i, n, g, t, o, n, which is to be joined to H, u, n, t,; which, when put together, make Huntington." And thus matters were settled without being guilty of an exchange, or of committing a robbery; for the letters of the alphabet are the portion of every man. And from that hour it was settled; nor did I ever make a single blunder for any body to find it out. The wisdom and assiduity that I showed in the contrivance and quick dispatch of this business, are a sharp reproof to the sluggishness of my informers; for there are some hundreds of them that have been labouring for years in pulling this name to pieces, and they have not removed one letter of it yet; when I, though a very indifferent compiler, fixed it in less than an hour.

With this name I was born again, and with this name I was baptized with the Holy Ghost; and I will appeal to any man of sense, if a person has not a just right to go by the name that he was born and baptized with.--I had no name before my first birth; the name was conferred on me atferwards; but I had the name of Huntington before I was conceived the second time, and was born again with it: and thus "old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new." pp. 70-72.

Thus was the name of Hunt prevented from becoming thriceillustrious, and left to receive all its honours from the Examiner and the Orator. The worthy who might first have raised it to celebrity condescends to inform his readers what is meant by the other addition which he had thought proper to make to his name, of the mystical initials, S.S.

You know we clergy are very fond of titles of honour; some are called Lords Spiritual, though we have no such lords but in the persons of the ever-blessed Trinity; others are named Doctors of Divinity, and Prebends, though God gives no such titles; therefore I cannot con

scientiously

scientiously add D.D. to my function, though some hundreds have been spiritually healed under my ministry; nor have I fourteen pounds to spare to buy the dissenting title of D.D. Being thus circumstanced, I cannot call myself a Lord Spiritual, because Peter, the pope's enemy, condemns it: nor can I call myself Lord High Primate, because supremacy, in the Scriptures, is applied only to kings, and never to minis ters of the gospel. As I cannot get at D.D. for the want of cash, neither can I get at M.A. for the want of learning; therefore I am compelled to fly for refuge to S.S. by which I mean Sinner Saved.'-p. 30.

It is sufficiently plain in what this man began, and the reader may think it equally evident, in what he ended,-but in many of the intermediate stages his character is of so mixed a nature that it is difficult to know where he should be classed,-sometimes knave, sometimes fanatic, and not unfrequently both in combination, like the colours of a shot-silk, according to the manner in which the light falls on them. After some years of an unsettled life he married, and took ready-furnished lodgings at Mortlake. An accident, which disabled him for a short time, and a hard winter soon afterwards brought the young couple to want, and their first child, then about four months old, died suddenly, in a manner which may easily be understood, though happily for themselves the parents seem not to have suspected it. One morning early,' he says, 'my wife asked me for the tinderbox, seemingly in a great fright, crying out, I wonder the poor child has not waked all night! She lighted the candle and took up the child; and behold it was dead, and as black as a coal. It went off in a convulsive fit, as five more have done since, all of whom turned black also.' The lessons of affliction are too often and too easily forgotten, but few hearts are insensible to them while under its severe though wholesome discipline. Huntington had lived a life of poverty and hardships; but he had never before this event experienced so sharp a sorrow. Lameness, poverty, distress of mind, the loss of his child and the sufferings of his wife, made up a more complicated distress than he had ever felt before. To this was added a sense of divine wrath; for it came upon him now that all these evils had been brought upon him for his sins; that he neither knew, feared, loved, nor served God as he ought; and that it was a great mercy he himself had not been cut off instead of the infant. From this time,' he says,' spiritual convictions began to plough so deep in my heart as to make way for the word of eternal life.'

In this state he describes himself as seeking comfort in secret prayer, and using such forms as he had learnt, with some expressions of his own, because no form seemed sufficient to suit the complicated diseases of his troubled mind. He now regularly attended church, shunned the acquaintances with whom he had formerly associated, worked diligently, lived regularly, kept up private and

family

family prayer with his wife, laboured to recommend himself to the favour of God, and learned short prayers to repeat on the road as he walked, or at his labour, or on his bed. According to a mischievous custom which prevails too generally, he was obliged to go to a public house on the Saturday evening to receive his week's wages, and the custom was that every man should spend four-pence. The songs and conversation which he could not choose but hear while waiting for his turn, disturbed him greatly. He says, this I found scattered all my religious thoughts, and made many breaches in that poor false heart which I had been patching up by the mere dint of hard labour: however to close up these gaps, I generally worked the harder, said more prayers, read more, and got up earlier in the morning in order to perform a greater task; and so by these means I pacified conscience with a double portion of dead works.'

In most of those psychological cases which have been stated by enthusiasts and professors of religion in their accounts of their own experience, that state in which sometimes the body is deranged and sometimes the mind, and sometimes both, each acting upon the other, appears usually to have been produced by sympathy. But in this man's case it arose out of the workings of his own heart and intellect. For in this part of his narrative he is entitled to full belief; it bears the genuine stamp of passion and truth. One evening, reading the Bible by his fire-side, he came to these words, At that day ye shall know that I am in my father, and ye in me, and I in you.' Upon considering these words he clearly perceived that there was something more in religion than he had ever experienced or understood; and the first effect of this perception was a paroxysm of horror and despair. The thought of all his offences came upon him, and the fear of judgment. Immediately,' says he, such an intolerable flood of divine wrath was poured forth on my guilty soul, that it swept away all my refuge of lies. This removed all my false hope, drove away all my vain props, and left me without one particle of that sandy foundation which I had laid for myself to stand upon; and down I went into the deep waters, where there was no standing, so that the floods overflowed me, and I feared the pit would shut her mouth upon me.' He felt himself violently tempted to blaspheme, and, to the astonishment of his wife, cried out that he was undone for ever, and that there was no hope or mercy for him. He went to bed, but could find no rest, the room seemed to be running round, and his soul, he says, sinking so fast under the wrath of God, that it was as if he fell a thousand fathoms in a minute. He rose in the dead of the night,, knelt down to read the Bible, and attempted to pray, but the propensity to blaspheme continually intruded. He went to work, his

6

head

head swimming, and his legs staggering, like a drunken man; and he describes himself when he got upon Hampton-Wick Green as standing to look upon the horses and bullocks and asses which were feeding there, and envying their condition. Ah!' said he, 'you have no sin to answer for, no judgment seat to appear before, no wrath from God to feel, no hell to fear! When you die there is an end of you, but eternity is our lot.' In the same passionate strain he proceeds to record his feelings at this time; and he confesses that he was frequently tempted to throw himself into the Thames.

The temptation to suicide grew stronger when this state of despair induced a hope that the Bible might be false, that there was no God, and no judgment to come; but it was not in his power to lay that narcotic unction to his soul. He sought to obtain advice from the minister of the church which he frequented; but he feared that if he were to confess the blasphemous thoughts with which he was afflicted, the clergyman would order him to be confined in prison as a madman, or smothered between two beds; so he resolved only to consult him about going to the sacrament, and not finding him at home, he went to the clerk. The clerk took him to a public house, drank at his expense as long as he could find money to pay for it, and promised to direct him how to behave at the Communion Service. But he was too violently diseased in mind to find relief in the performance of his regular duties, and that disease was soon aggravated by a circumstance which might have affected any ignorant mind, even though less prepared to receive frightful impressions. His wife had left him for a time to visit her relations; and having removed to Sunbury to take a gardener's place, he was lodged in the room where his predecessor had cut his throat, having been detected in embezzling his master's money: the wretched man had lived long enough to say that a black man who stood in the corner had tempted him to the act; and the stain of his blood was still visible in the boards, though they had endeavoured to plane it out. To complete all he was to sleep in the suicide's bed. 'I now thought,' says he, every thing conspired together in order to bring me to death and destruction. I was all day long tempted to do as this man had done. He was left to do it, and why not I? I thought his temptations could not be stronger than mine were. And he was left of God, and why should not I, seeing my mind was daily harassed with such blasphemies against him. I think I was never before so sunk in despair; my sins standing perpetually before my eyes; the guilt of them so keen within me; the Scriptures levelling their dreadful threatenings at me as a sinner; temptations very

violent

violent all day long; a room to lie in where the devil had gained his point over a fellow sinner: and I at the same time so timorous and fearful, that I was almost afraid to walk alone, having been so long haunted with these terrors. I used to go to bed with as much reluctance as the ox goeth to the slaughter, being fearful that every night would be my last.'

Some of those imaginary conflicts and dialogues with the Devil ensued, which would naturally occur in such circumstances. During one of these insane conferences, these waking dreams of a disordered imagination, when he had taken courage and for a minute non-plused the Devil, he lifted up his head in prayer and beheld a beautiful and perfect rainbow, upon which he completed his victory by crying out There is a God, and the Bible is true! God's word says I do set my bow in the clouds,—and there it is!' Lovers are not the only persons liable to strange fits of passion. It is recorded of a crew of Portugueze, whose ship struck in the night, and who were certain of shipwreck, that when in utter darkness and almost utter despair they had been singing litanies and making vows to all the saints in heaven, the moon rose in great beauty, and such was the effect produced among them at beholding the brightness and serenity of that orb, that most of the men began to lift up their voices, and with tears and vows to call upon the Virgin, declaring that they saw her in the moon. Many parallel cases might be adduced from Catholic and from Sectarian history. Huntington relates another similar instance in his own experience, and of a beautiful kind. One morning as he was going at daybreak to his work, it came into his mind that Christ was born in the east, and that if he directed his eyes round that quarter of the horizon, they would look straight to the spot of his blessed nativity. Just at that moment, as his eyes were slowly moving, the sun rose above the hills, and he says that a sudden feeling, such as he had never felt before at the thought of our Saviour's birth, seemed to flow into his soul and filled his heart so that he could not refrain from weeping aloud.

Whatever this man's impudence and knavery were in after-life, when his character had settled, the progress of his mind at a time when he was unquestionably sincere is not the less interesting, perhaps, indeed, it may be the more valuable as showing how possible it is for perfect enthusiast to ripen into perfect rogue, and how imperceptibly this natural transition sometimes takes place. For this end only, were there no other advantages to be derived from studying the morbid anatomy of the human mind, it would be worth while to sift the facts from the rubbish of his own relation. Being a little encouraged, he says, by the sight of the rainbow, he prayed

and