cution raged with the greatest severity in the South of France; which induced the people who had no opportunity of making their escape, to take shelter in those barren mountains called the Cevennes. There they suffered many hardships, which naturally filled their minds with notions altogether superstitious. Fixing carnal senses on the most reputable providential passages in the old testament, they begun to imagine they were divinely inspired, and assumed the name of Prophets : Pretending, at the same time, to that sacred character which ought always to be treated with respect."

Necessity furnished these people with an opportunity of making their escape to Geneva, where they were kindly received, and furnished with money to carry them to Holland, by the way of

the Rhine.

From Holland, a whole cargo of these enthusiasts came over to London, and they began to shew their importance in a very remarkable manner indeed. They laboured at the ends of the most remarkable and most conspicuous streets in London, declaiming against popery, and condemning with the bitterest violence, the whole frame of the church of England. They denounced the severest judgments on queen Anne for not extirpating all the papists in Europe; and they prophesied that within a few months England would be destroyed.

On this subject of religious madness, Voltaire contrary to his usual way of writing, has a very just remark. "Queen Anne, says this author, was well known to have a strong attachment to the church of England; and although a little superstition might be found in her conduct, yet she did not choose to have her favourite church ridiculed. She therefore ordered her attorney-general, Sir Thomas Parker, to proceed against these enthusiasts in a summary manner. Accordingly they were ordered to be whipped round St. Paul's church yard; and at every lash they received, they prophesied a curse against her majesty, and against the nation." But this conduct had not the desired effect, for they had daily great numbers of converts, so that for some time London was little better than in a state of confusion.

It was not, however, sufficient for them to make converts in London, they sent missionaries as far as Scotland. Here one Cunningham, a common mechanic, preached in the streets of Edinburgh, to a tumultuous mob; and the Presbyterian ministers began to imagine, that the French Prophets were devils indeed. They were afraid they should lead

away their people from their churches, and bring their ministry into contempt.

The magistrates of Edinburgh acted more prudently, for they caused Cunningham, and about a dozen of his followers to be apprehended and committed to prison, and like the Muggletonians, they were so ignorant of future events, that they did not know what was to happen to themselves. During his confinement, Cunningham wrote a book full of rhapsodies, bordering on blasphemy, pronouncing a thousand curses on Scotland; but the magistracy took no further notice of it, then to order him to be whipped through the city.

For some time after Cunningham had been released from his imprisonment, his followers attempted to disseminate their sentiments in the different towns in Scotland, but the Presbyterian ministers formed a plan to have them all knocked on the head. It is certain, that enthusiasm will carry men to great lengths, even in a bad cause; but the French Prophets in Scotland had not fortitude sufficient to submit with patience to be massacred, according to the plan laid down by some zealous Presbyterian ministers. They had less zeal and more prudence than one would have expected from men, who, in all other respects, were darkened in their understandings.

Stimulated by motives of self-preservation from the fury of the enraged Presbyterians in Scotland, they wisely crossed the Tweed, and joined their friends in London. It does not appear, that, properly speaking, they had any meetings; for in their opinion, temples built with hands were places too profane for them to exhibit in. They had tents erected in the fields leading towards Islington, where they harangued every day to a promiscuous multitude. This created many disturbances, and frequently led the Middlesex Justices from their bottle to see them set in the stocks. Sympathy for the sufferers operated on the minds of the vulgar, and their bold pretensions to the spirit of prophecy, induced the ignorant to consider them as divinely inspired. In proof of this, we shall mention the following fact, related to the author by an eminent surgeon now alive, and who enjoys two considerable places in public hospitals.

One of these madmen having asserted, that in proof of his Divine mission, he would die on a particular day, and on the third day he would rise. from the dead; a wag present, laid him a wager cn the strength of his prophecy. The Prophet, who knew not in what manner the materia medica

operated,

Now it is well known, that even the council of Nice rejected some of those books which we now consider as canonical. And this has given rise to a question, viz. whether, if the scriptures acknowledged to be canonical by the council of Nice, were written by Divine inspiration?. And, secondly, whether Divine inspiration should guide the hand of every transcriber?

We shall not enter into the nature of this controversy; the learned are well acquainted with it, and we know the weak cannot bear it. There are subjects which particular persons may discourse on, but we must not make them known indiscriminately.

This leads us to consider the origin and progress of these people called Millenarians. The Apocalypse, or the book which we now call the Revelation of St. John the Divine, was not recognized in the church as canonical, till the end of the fifth century. It is certain, there are some expressions in that book which bear strong marks of a Divine original; but it is upon a particular expression that the doctrine of the Millenarians has been founded.

The passage alluded to is in Revelation xx. "And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand,

And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and satan, and bound him a thousand years,

And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled; and after that, he must be loosed a little season.

And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, nor his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first

resurrection.

Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God, and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

And shall go out to deceive the nations, which are No. 35.

in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.

And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city and fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.

And the devil that deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophets are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

Now it is very probable, that these expressions are rather figurative than otherwise; for days are often mentioned as years in scripture; and it is said, that a thousand years are in the sight of God but as one day. However, it will appear that some of the ancient Christians, who never saw the book called the Apocalypse, or Revelation, believed the same sentiment contained in the above passage. The first of these was Ireneus, an author whose goodness of heart was far superior to the clearness of his head. The notion itself was carnal, but it was easily em. braced and greedily swallowed by the weak Christians in those early ages.

But with respect to what had been advanced by Ireneus, it was trifling to the notions broached by Origin. That father, celebrated for his learning, became equally celebrated, or rather despised, for his preaching doctrines unknown to the Christian church before his time. Origin had learning without knowledge, and piety without prudence. He was acquainted with human wisdom; he loved that which was divine; but his passions were too strong to be brought under proper restraints.

A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep, or taste not the pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
But drinking largely sobers us again.

However, it became an established notion among the primitive churches, that Christ, at his second coming, was to reign with his saints on earth a thousand years; and then the whole plan of redemption was to be completed. We are not certain how far this sentiment operated in the middle ages of Christianity; but we are certain that it was received soon after the reformation from popery. We shall therefore proceed to consider in what manner these sentiments were propagated, who the persons were who embraced them, and by whom they are countenanced in the present age. This leads us into 9 Y

the

the history of the civil wars, an age when new religions grew up as fast as mushrooms do from their beds, and who vanish away like Jonah's gourd.

When the civil wars broke out, the views and designs of the Puritans were discovered both by the churchmen, whom they opposed, and by the Republican party, who countenanced them. They had before that time been considered under the general name of Puritans, as men who sought for a purer reformation than had taken place in the reign of queen Elizabeth. To promote the destruction of church and state, they concealed their real sentiments; but no sooner had they got into the possession of the church livings, than they pulled off the mask, and, like Pandora's box, as many religions flew out as were sufficient to have darkened the air.

Among some of these Psudo reformers were a great number of Fifth Monarchy Men, or Millenarians; and so fond were they of this notion, that they excommunicated their hearers who refused to be of the same sentiment with themselves. Many books were written on the belief of Christ's coming to reign with his saints a thousand years on earth, and it was considered as much an article of religion as the existence of God, or the incarnation of Christ.

Some of those men who taught this notion. were, in other respects, considerable in the literary world; but whenever new religions are broached by men of learning, they must not expect to find it wholly engrossed by themselves.

They will find competitors to enter the lists with them, and it will frequently happen, as it too often does in the physical world, that the quacks will have more followers and greater fees, than those who have been regularly bred to the profession.

This was the very case with the Fifth Monarchy Men in England; for no sooner had they published their sentiments and procured a considerable number of followers, whose imaginations they wrought up into a state of confusion, than many of their hearers turned preachers, and taught for themselves. It might have been supposed, that a person of such a cool disposition as Oliver Cromwell certainly was, would have done something towards suppressing these people; but then it must be considered that the Independents, whom he always esteemed, supported his government. Now he could not, with Now he could not, with propriety, have attacked the spawn of his own party, without giving them offence; and as mere nominal

preachers have no mercy, consequently he might have been, for such an action, deprived of his life and his dignity.

The more sober part of the Millenarians, or Fifth Monarchy Men, only believed that Christ would reign a thousand years before the general resurrection; but the madmen, who sprung up under them, carried the notion much higher. They They were not content to wait till Christ's second coming; they had fixed a time for setting the crown on his head, Of this the following is a remarkable instance.

In 1660, and on the very day on which king Charles II. was crowned, a considerable number of these madmen met in Coleman-street in London, where they were headed by one Venner, a fiery. ignorant preacher. In the morning, he delivered a discourse to them, in which he told them, that the day was come when Christ was to ascend his throne. Having fired their imaginations with the highest raptures of enthusiasm, and finding them ready to obey him in every thing, he ordered them to sally. forth into the streets, and kill every person who refused to join with them.

This was readily complied with, and these infatuated men made a more than dreadful havock in the streets. The guards were brought to disperse them, and several of them were killed. A considerable number were taken into custody, among whom was Venner, the ringleader, who with nine of his deluded followers, were executed in different parts of the city.

This instance of madness afforded a pretence for the corrupted court to wreak its vengeance upon the whole body of Nonconformists, although it is cer tain, that they had no concern in it. Whatever might have been the sentiments of many of the Dissenters at that time, this much is certain, that they never intended to act in the same manner as Venner. They kept their opinions to themselves; but Venner reduced them to practice. This was a dreadful stroke to the Fifth Monarchy men, and from that time they have made no great figure in England.

At present they are confined to writers, and there is now in the church of England a learned bishop who has embraced the sentiment concerning the Millenarians. We acknowledge the sentiment to be of a disputable nature, but still we think it too carnal to make a part of the Christian religion. However, we shall leave every one to his own opinion, without pretending to judge of things above our comprehension.

ACCOUNT

THE

further we proceed in our accounts of sects and parties in religion, the more the curiosity of our readers must be stimulated, because we are of opinion, that many of them were seldom heard of before. However, that they either exist, or did exist, we can make appear.

To understand the nature of this sect, we must consider, that about the time of the reformation, or at least soon after it, there were some feint attempts made to improve the study of the Hebrew language. Laudable as a proposal of this nature might have been, yet it might have been entangled with a variety of difficulties, had not the attempts made to suppress the enquiry defeated its own in

tention.

All the Hebrew manuscripts were written without the points, or vowels, and these points or vowels were, at the same time, used by the Jews. The grand question was, whether the Hebrew language was to be read with the Masoretic points, or or whether the letters Aleph, He, Vau, Jod, and Gnain, should be substituted in place of the common vowels. These different methods of reading created much confusion; and the Jews, by the use of the points, had fixed a sense upon the scripture, which had never been known before.

Our first reformers had learned the Hebrew.according to the Jewish method, by the use of the Masoretic points; and as these points put a wrong construction on the sense of the scripture, consequently the Deists took the advantage, while the Jews triumphed over the weakness of the Christians. In particular it was objected by the Deists, that the Mosaic account of the creation was, in all respects, inconsistent with the principles of natural philosophy, according to the experiments that had been made in latter ages.

Here the interests of Divine revelation were concerned, and therefore it was either necessary, that we should acknowledge that Moses never taught a system of philosophy, or that he was not divinely inspired; because he concealed from us those things - which can be easily known by common experience, at least by the use of modern philosophy, which has been for some time reduced to a system..

This naturally leads us to the investigation of the sect of whom we are now treating..

John Hutchinson was the son of a farmer in Yorkshire, and as his father's sole design was to bring him up to be a land-steward to some nobleman, he sent him to school to be educated in those rules of mechanical science which naturally leads. thereto. When he had compleated himself in mensuration, and the other practical parts of the sciences, he returned from school to his father, and at that. time the following circumstance too place.

In the village where Mr. Hutchinson's father lived, a stranger unknown to any person in the country, came to ask for lodgings, and old Mr. Hutchinsou took him into his house. It was never known who this stranger was, but after he had been about three weeks in his new lodgings, he told Mr. Hutchinson, he would for his board and lodging. teach his son the languages.

The father embraced the proposal, and in the compass of four years our young student was enabled to go through not only the Roman and Greek clas-.. sics, but likewise to make a considerable figure in the Hebrew. The education of the young man being compleated, the stranger left the place, and never was heard of afterwards. There are circumstances of this nature to be be found in history, and reasons may be assigned for them, which none but the intelligent can answer.

Furnished with all the learning of the schools, though disseminated thro' the channel of a private education, Mr. Hutchinson made an amazing progress in the study of the ancient writers, and between: all of them he ran such a parallel, as to point out the difference between the Mosaic œconomy, and the mythology of the Greeks. To the knowledge of languages he added that of philosophy, and by comparing the ancient with the modern systems, he formed those notions which have made no inconsiderable figure in this nation. By inconsiderable, we mean, that some celebrated persons, who shall be mentioned afterwards, have embraced them.

Mr. Hutchinson, being as it were at leisure in the enjoyment of a sinecure place, under the duke of Somerset,