see neither streamers, curls, nor topsails again.' Persons in all stages of spiritual disease applied to him: those who were raving in the high frenzy fever of fanaticism, those who were shaking in the ague fits of fear, and others who mistook the tympany of spiri tual self-conceit for the good condition of health. Describing his practice to a brother in the trade, he says, many groanings have l to attend, and many pregnant women who look every hour, and whose reckoning, according to their account, has been out these three, some four, some five years; these conclude that they have passed the time, and shall always be big, bring forth wind, or die in labour. Many, many difficulties, singular cases, and strange influences attend our profession; and he proceeds through the letter in the same coarse characteristic strain; requesting his brothertrader, as he calls him, to excuse the ins and outs, spelling and inditing, for the thoughts soon came, and were as soon down.' Mr. Bramah appears among his controversial correspondents, and Huntington tells him that he makes a good patent lock, but cuts a sad figure with the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Mr. Bensley the printer was one of his believers, which explains the handsome appearance of the S. S.'s collected works; his spiritual employer calls him dear brother in the Lord, and dear Tom in the flesh. Impudent quack and trader in faith as he was, there were some social qualities about him, which won and secured the attachment of his friends, even of those upon whom he drew most largely. He mentions particularly Mr. and Mrs. Baker of Oxfordstreet, who, having no children of their own, kept caring and travailing many years for him; and though 'sorely tried, by various losses in business, bankruptcies, and bad debts, supplied him with money whenever he required it.' "While the chapel was building,' he says, 'when money was continually demanded, if there was one shilling in the house, I was sure to have it.' This couple and another, with whom he was upon terms of equal intimacy, agreed, as they were bound together with their chosen pastor, for life and for eternity, not to be divided in death; and accordingly they jointly purchased a piece of ground near Petersham, and erected a substantial tomb there, wherein they might rest together in the dust.

When the S. S. began his course he said, that if God's wills and shalls did not hold him up, his own ifs and buts would sink him into irrecoverable ruin. So strong, however, was his confidence of success, that at a time when his only friends were two or three journeymen shoemakers, and other such persons, and when the people of Thames Ditton were endeavouring to remove him to his own parish, as a man who was likely to become burthensome to their's, he boldly affirmed that he should not only preach to thousands

before

before he died, but that the day would come when he should lend to many and borrow of none, and when he should ride in temporal prosperity over the heads of his enemies. Whether he was ever as liberal in lending as he had been in borrowing, the books before us afford no means of determining; the other part of his presentiments was fully accomplished. His never-failing friends settled him in a comfortable country house, stocked his garden and his farm for him, and, that he might travel conveniently to and from his chapel, they presented him with a coach and a pair of horses, and subscribed to pay the taxes for both. To crown all, having buried his wife, the gleaner, he preached himself into the good graces of Lady Saunderson, the widow of the Lord Mayor, and married

her.

His uniform prosperity received but one shock, and that in its consequences served to confirm it, and show the extent of his authority. The chapel in Tichfield-street, which he had raised from the ground, and carried up into the air, when ground room was wanting, was burnt down. The author of some remarks upon his character observes, that considering how much Mr. Huntington had accustomed himself to put the worst possible construction upon the misfortunes of others, he must have felt this blow, with whatever face he might bear it.' And this writer, who is otherwise, in many respects, judicious as well as temperate, hints at this catastrophe as if it were a judgment upon the S. S. for having inclosed the free seats, and laid out the whole chapel 'in boxes, like an opera house.' But Huntington looked at his misfortune with that hopeful spirit which, when under the direction of prudence, bears a man through all remediable calamities. Writing to one of his best friends, he says, 'such a stroke as this, twenty-seven years ago, would have caused our hope to give up the ghost; but, being a little stronger in the Lord, faith has heavier burthens laid on. The temple built by Solomon, and that built by Cyrus, were both burnt. It will cause a little rejoicing among the Philistines, as has been the case often; they once triumphed gloriously when the ark of God taken, supposing that Dagon had overcome the God of Israel; but their joy was but short. This I know, that it shall work for our good, but how I know not; if I did, I must walk by sight, and not by faith.' His first thought had been, that he must remove into the country, either into the North, or to Suffolk, or Ely, parts which he had visited, and where he had obtained considerable popularity. But his London followers were presently in motion, 'some looking out for a spot of ground, some bringing their offerings, others wishing the glory of the latter house may exceed that of the former.' But,' says he, it is to bear the same name: this I gave them to understand from the pulpit, and assigned the following reasons for it :

was

that,

that, unless God provided men to work, and money to pay them, and materials to work with, no chapel could be erected; and if he provided all these, Providence must be its name.' The chapel accordingly was built, in Grays-inn-lane, and upon a larger scale than the last taught by his former experience, the S. S. took care not to make himself responsible for any part of the expenses, and when it was finished, managed matters so well with his obedient flock, that the chapel was made over to him, as his own, for he is said to have refused to preach in it on any other conditions. The author of the Remarks affirms, also, that in his will he disposed of the chapel as part of his estate, and bequeathed it to his widow; but that she properly, as well as prudently, waived her claim, and resigned it to the congregation.

Men of Huntington's stamp not unfrequently end in becoming their own dupes; finding others accredit their pretensions, they at last accredit them themselves. Thus it was in the case of Joanna Southcote, and thus it appears to have been, in a less degree, with the S.S. It may have been mere audacious enthusiasm which made him believe, as he asserted, that the Three Persons of the Trinity were present when his soul was first espoused and united to the bridegroom of the church, (another of the innumerable parallels between the enthusiasts of sectarianism and of popery); it may have been an error of his inordinate self-conceit in mistaking ordinary foresight for supernatural prescience, which made him say, that when he would have prayed for the recovery of a sick man, he felt a bar on his heart, so that he dared not make the petition, being assured that the sickness would prove mortal; or it may have been craft to keep up the credit of his prayers, for he boasts of their efficacy when employed for others as well as for himself. But it could only have been the delirium of vanity and the intoxication of success that made him lay claim to a prophetic spirit, and boldly foretel future events. When Buonaparte went to Egypt, he preached upon this passage in Isaiah, Since thou hast been precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, therefore I will give men for thee, and people for thy life; I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Sheba for thee.' This, he observed, was now about to be fulfilled, for Buonaparte would find his destruction in Egypt, and neither he nor a man of his army would ever return to France! If Nelson had been supplied with frigates the S. S. might, in all human likelihood, have seen his prediction accomplished; but, as the event proved, he was unlucky in prophecy; nor, perhaps, is there much credit due to him for his wishes. For, though his loyalty was so vehement, that he is said to have refused the sacrament to persons whom he suspected of disaffection, this is more likely in such a man to have proceeded from a hatred of the regular dissenters,

and

and a determination to be as unlike them as possible, than to any worthier motive. Their booksellers would publish none of his works: his chapels were omitted in their pocket-books when a list of all other such places was given as a sort of Evangelical Directory; and his presence was thought to desecrate their meetinghouses, so that one in which he had preached at Bristol was forsaken, he says, for some weeks afterwards, by their preachers; and one of them declared he would never enter a pulpit after him. He had, therefore, great satisfaction in attacking them on the score of their politics, and in relating that in a large town, where above six hundred persons were convicted of using false weights and measures, more than five hundred of them were professors.

In his other prophetical attempts he was more prudent with regard to time; but here too his good-will towards the dissenters was displayed. Popery, he said, was spreading, and would spread; the Catholics would come into power, and then such as called themselves the Evangelical Association would, by degrees, go over to the holy see. This hour of temptation would discover the hearts of the hypocrites in Gospel Zion, their disaffection to rulers, and their unruly spirits; the corruption of their hearts, their rotten principles, their perjury, their presumption in assuming the ministerial office, and their craftiness and deception in it.' The crisis he thought was at hand in 1810, when the late King was seized with his last and incurable affliction. That event he believed would bring the Papists into power, and he related a dream, wherein he imagined that himself and one of his friends were burnt at a stake, and a beautiful woman, most gaily attired, with a handsome face, but vicious appearance, came to look at the execution, and laughed for joy. I concluded,' he says, 'she was the whore of Babylon. I saw the remains of myself and friend lie on the earth black as a coal, and not bigger than two geese, which I thought was the departed soul's view of the body's last remains, and then I awoke.' In his opinion all ranks and classes of worshippers were paving the Pope's way, Churchmen, Arminians, Socinians, and all sorts of dead dissenters. The toleration acts would be taken away, the witnesses would be slain, and the great and last slaughter would take place; and in this miserable state we were to go on for nearly seventy years. But then the golden city would cease; the papal see should be turned into darkness, and the Turkish wine into lood. According to the best calculation of the number of the beast, this would take place in 1866, or at farthest in 1870; but ifthe eastern way of reckoning years, which was shorter than ours, is meant, then the account might be shorter. Thus, reader,' he says, 'I have given thee a true account of the work now on the wheels; nor shall the hypocrites in Zion, nor all the enemies that I

have

have in Britain, no, nor even time itself, prove me a false prophet in this, nor make this prediction a lie.'

This was laying the time of his prophecy at a safe distance. But his authority would not have been weakened if he had fixed upon a nearer date of fulfilment. There were persons who persisted in crediting the dreams of Joanna Southcote after she was dead and buried; and though the poor creature, before she died, was convinced that a delusion had possessed her, they believed in her, in spite of herself, and insisted that she was gone to bring forth the promised birth in heaven! So impossible is it for minds of a certain character to be disabused! Most men have a disposition, however they may be disposed to think so, or to acknowledge it, to rest in a state of implicit faith and implicit obedience. The fact is exemplified even by the most mutinous and unbelieving spirits of these distempered times; they who neither fear God nor honour the King, but defy both, believe, with the most abject prostration of intellect, in the blasphemous and treasonable journalist who has corrupted them, and are moved as Le chuses to mislead them, with as much precision as the dancing bear follows the hand of the Savoyard who leads him by the nose. The followers of the S. S. were in this state of perfect acquiescence, and the art with which he had brought them to it is remarkable. He held forth none of those allurements by which persons are sometimes drawn to chapels and meetinghouses, as they are to mass. Singing, indeed, he permitted in his chapel, because it allowed him time to rest between the acts; but he seems rather to have tolerated than approved it, and church music of every kind he held in abhorrence, quoting the prophet Amos, who says, "Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.' There were no prayermeetings, which he said served only to nourish pride and hypocrisy ; no love-feasts, which he said were rightly named, because young lovers were very fond of them, and which he compared to the Moabitish festival, to which the men of Israel were invited by Balaam's advice. His people had not even any of those offices to fill which might have flattered their sense of self-importance, and given them consequence in the congregation. Their sole business was to find the contributions; every thing else depended upon his single will. His church government was an absolute despotism; he admitted or rejected the candidates, he expelled them by simply withholding the sacrament ticket at the next issue. While he fed their spiritual pride, he kept them in a state of intellectual submission, reminding them frequently that it was impossible for them to learn the true meaning of the scriptures without his aid; and that, do what they could, they could not do without him, who had received an un

doubted