Читать книгу Sketches of Imposture, Deception, and Credulity онлайн

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Passing to the commencement of the eighteenth century, we find a group of pretended prophets, and miracle-workers, perhaps not less fanatical than those which have just been described, but certainly less noxious. They were Protestants, and were known by the appellation of the French prophets. It was towards the latter end of 1706 that they came to England, from the mountains of the Cevennes, where their countrymen had for a considerable time maintained a contest with the troops of the persecuting Louis XIV. As exiles for conscience sake, they were treated with respect and kindness; but they soon forfeited all claim to respect by the folly or knavery of their conduct. Of this group Elias Marion was the prominent figure; the others acting only subordinate parts. He loudly proclaimed that he was the messenger of Heaven, and was authorized to denounce judgments, and to look into futurity. All kinds of arts were employed by Marion and his associates to excite public attention—sudden droppings down as though death-struck; sighs and groans, and then shrieks and vociferations, on recovering; broken sentences, uttered in unearthly tones; violent contortions; and desperate strugglings with the Spirit, followed by submission and repentance; were all brought into the play. The number of the believers in their power soon became considerable. In proportion as they gained partisans, they increased their vaunts of miraculous gifts; and at length they boldly announced that they were invested with power to raise the dead. They even went so far as to try the experiment; and, notwithstanding repeated failures, their besotted followers continued to adhere to them. In vain did the ministers and elders of the French chapel, in the Savoy, declare their pretensions to be blasphemous and dangerous. Far from being deterred by this censure, the prophets grew more strenuous in their exertions to make proselytes, and more daring in their invectives; prophesying daily in the streets to crowds, launching invectives against the ministers of the established church, and predicting heavy judgments on the British metropolis and nation. It was at last thought necessary to put a stop to their career, and they were consequently prosecuted as impostors. They were sentenced to be exposed on a scaffold, at Charing Cross and the Royal Exchange, with a paper declaring their offence; to pay each of them a fine of twenty marks; and to find security for their good behaviour. After a time the sect which they had formed died away, but its ruin was less to be attributed to the punishment of the prophets, or the recovery of reason by their votaries, than by a report which was spread that they were nothing more than the instruments of designing men, who wished to disseminate Socinianism, and destroy orthodoxy.