This is certain, that as late as 1820 an edition of the _Spiritual Epistles,_ which must have cost at that time two or three hundred pounds to print, was subscribed for, and that nine years afterwards appeared _Divine Songs of the Muggletonians_--they were not ashamed of the name--printed also by subscription, filling 621 pages, and showing pretty clearly that there had of late been a strange revival of the sect: an outburst of new fervour having somehow been awakened, and an irrepressible passion for writing "Songs" having displayed itself, which had not been without its effect in resuscitating dormant enthusiasm. The vagaries of the human mind in what, for want of any better designation, we call "religious belief" have always had for me a peculiar fascination, as they have for others. Epiphanius, whose name is and used to be a terror to her Royal Highness in days gone by, when I insisted upon reading to her about the peculiar people who made it a matter of faith to eat bread and cheese at the Eucharist--Epiphanius is to me positively entertaining, and Pagitt's _Heresiography_ is none the less instructive because it is a vulgar catch-penny little book, made up, like Peter Pindar's razors, to sell. To me it seems that to dismiss even the wildest and foolishest opinion _which makes way,_ as if it were a mere absurdity that does not deserve notice, is to show a certain flippancy and shallowness. Do not all thoughtful men pass through certain stages of intellectual growth, and are not the convictions of our youth held very differently from those which we find ourselves swayed by in our later years? The beliefs which the multitude take up with are such as the untrained and the half-trained are always captivated by, whether individually or in the mass. There are limits to our powers of assimilation according as our development has been arrested or is still going on, and he who hopes to understand the course of human affairs or to make any intelligent forecast of what is coming can never afford to neglect the study of morbid appetites or morbid anatomy in the domain of mind.
There is a strong family likeness among all fanatics; and this is characteristic of them all, that they are profusely communicative and absolutely honest. Prophets have no secrets, no reserve, no doubts, they are always true men. John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton are no exception to the general rule. We can follow their movements pretty closely for some years. The book of _The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit_ furnishes us with quite as much as we want to know about the sayings and doings of the grotesque pair and their early extravagances; and Muggleton's letters cover a period of forty years, during all which time he was going in and out among the artisans and small traders of the city, obstinately asserting himself in season and out of season, and leaving behind him in his eccentric chronicle such a minute and faithful picture of London life among the middle--the lower middle--class during the last half of the seventeenth century as is to be found nowhere else. The reader must be prepared for the most startling freaks of language, for very vulgar profanity, the more amazing because so manifestly unintended. When people break away from all the traditions of the past and surrender themselves to absolute anarchy in morals and religion the old terminology ceases to be employed in the old way, ceases indeed to have any meaning. The prophet or the philosopher who sets himself to invent a new theory of the universe or a new creed for his followers to embrace, can hardly avoid shocking and horrifying those who are content to use words as their forefathers did and attach to these words the same sort of sacredness that the Hebrews did to the Divine name. There is no need to do more than allude to this side of the Muggletonian writing. What we are concerned with is the story of the prophet's life, which has been told with the utmost frankness and simplicity; a more unvarnished tale it would be difficult to find, or one which bears more the stamp of truth upon its every line.
_The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit_ is a posthumous work written by Muggleton when he was very old, and left behind him in manuscript with directions that it should be published after his death. It is a quarto volume of 180 pages and is a book of some rarity. It was published in 1699, with an epistle dedicatory to all true Christian people, apparently written by Thomas Tomkinson, one of the chosen seed. After preparing us for what is coming by dwelling upon the wonderful stories in the Old Testament and the New, Muggleton plunges into his subject by giving us a brief account of his own and his brother prophet's parentage and early biography. Let the reader understand that here beginneth the third chapter of _The Acts of the Witnesses_ at the third verse:--
"3. As for John Reeve, he was born in Wiltshire; his father was clerk to a deputy of Ireland, a gentleman as we call them by his place, but fell to decay.
"4. So he put John Reeve apprentice here at London to a tailor by trade. He was out of his apprenticeship before I came acquainted with him; he was of an honest, just nature, and harmless.
"5. But a man of no great natural wit or wisdom; no subtlety or policy was in him, nor no great store of religion; he had lost what was traditional; only of an innocent life.
"7. And I, Lodowick Muggleton, was born in Bishop-gate Street, near the Earl of Devonshire's house, at the corner house called Walnut-tree Yard.
"8. My father's name was John Muggleton; he was a smith by trade--that is, a farrier or horse doctor; he was in great respect with the postmaster in King James's time; he had three children by my mother, two sons and one daughter, I was the youngest and my mother loved me."
His mother died, his father married again, whereupon the boy was sent into the country--_boarded out_ as we say--and kept there till his sixteenth year, when he was brought back to London and apprenticed to-a tailor--one John Quick--"a quiet, peaceable man, not cruel to servants, which liked me very well." Muggleton took to his trade and pleased his master. The journeymen were a loose lot, "bad husbands and given to drunkenness, but my nature was inclined to be sober." Hitherto the young man had received no religious training; when he had served his time, however, "hearing in those days great talk among the vulgar people and especially amongst youth, boys, and young maids, of a people called Puritans.... I liked their discourse upon the Scriptures and pleaded for a holy keeping of the Sabbath day, which my master did not do, nor I his servant."
This must have been about the year 1630--for Muggleton was born in June 1610--when the Sabbatarian controversy was at its height, and the feeling of the country was approaching fever heat, and when Charles the First had resolved to try and govern without a Parliament, and when Archbishop Abbot was in disgrace, and Laud had begun to exercise his predominant influence. Muggleton was but little impressed by "the people called Puritans," and he went on his old way. When he had nearly served his time, he began to look about him. The tailor's trade did not seem likely to lead to much, unless it were combined with something else, and a brilliant opening offered itself, as he was at work for a pawnbroker in Hounsditch. "The broker's wife had one daughter alive. The mother, being well persuaded of my good natural temper, and of my good husbandry, and that I had no poor kindred come after me to be any charge or burthen to her daughter, ... proposed to me that she would give me a hundred pounds with her to set up.... So the maid and I were made sure by promise, and I was resolved to have the maid to wife, and to keep a broker's shop, and lend money on pawns, and grow rich as others did." Muggleton had not yet been admitted to the freedom of the city, and the marriage was arranged to take place after he should have done so. In the meantime he found himself working side by side with William Reeve, Prophet John Reeve's brother, at this time a "very zealous Puritan," with whom he talked of his prospects. "I loved the maid, and desired to be rich," he tells us; but these Puritan people were horrified at his deliberately intending to live the life of a usurer, and they "threatened great judgments, and danger of damnation hereafter."