It is clear that the frightful eschatology of the time was exercising a far greater power upon the imagination of the masses than anything else. People were dwelling upon all that was terrible and gloomy in the picture of a future life; the one thought with the visionaries was this--Save yourselves from the wrath to come. "I was extremely fearful of eternal damnation," says Muggleton, "thinking my soul might go into hell fire without a body, as all people did at that time."
There was evidently a struggle between conviction and inclination, and it ended as we should have expected--the marriage was broken off. Then followed some years of vehement religious conflict; "Neither did I hear any preach in these days but the Puritan ministers, whose hair was cut short. _For if a man with long hair had gone_ into the pulpit to preach, I would have gone out of the Church again, though he might preach better than the other." All through this time visions of hell and torment, and devils and damnation troubled him; now and then there were "elevations in my mind, but these were few and far between; a while after all was lost again." He soon consoled himself for his matrimonial disappointment; he married and had three daughters, then his first wife died. He throve in his calling, "only the spirit of fear of hell was still upon me, but not so extreme as it was before." He took a second wife, and the civil war began.
"And generally the Puritans were all for the Parliament, and most of my society and acquaintance did fall away and declined in love one towards another. Some of them turned to Presbytery, and some turned Independents; others fell to be Ranters, and some fell to be mere Atheists. So that our Puritan people were so divided and scattered in our religion, that I was altogether at a loss; for all the zeal we formerly had was quite worn out. For I had seen the utmost perfection and satisfaction that could be found in that way, except I would do it for loaves, _but loaves was never my aim."_
The civil war ran its course, but Muggleton cared nothing for the general course of events. What were kings and bishops and Lords and Commons to him? he was living in quite another world. As for Laud and Strafford, and Pym and Hampden, he does not even once name them. He makes not the slightest allusion to the death of Charles the First, though he was living within half a mile of Whitehall when the king's head fell on the block. Prophets of the Muggleton type are so busied about their own souls and their own spiritual condition, that the battles, murders, and sudden deaths of other men, great or small, give them no concern whatever.
A couple of years or so after the execution of the king, "it came to pass I heard of several prophets and prophetesses that were about the streets.... Also I heard of two other men that were counted greater than prophets--to wit, John Tannye and John Robins. John Tannye, he declared himself to be the Lord's High Priest, therefore he circumcised himself according to the law. Also he declared that he was to gather the Jews out of all nations,... with many other strange and wonderful things. And as for John Robins, he declared himself to be God Almighty. Also he said that he had raised from the dead several of the prophets, as Jeremiah and others. Also I saw several others of the prophets that was said to be raised by him, _for I have had nine or ten of them at my house at a time, of those that were said to be raised from the dead."_
Is madness contagious? Or is it that, while the sane can exercise but a very limited power over the insane, there is no limit to the influence which the insane can gain over one another? Living in a world of their own, where delusions pass for palpable facts, where the logical faculty accepts the wildest visions as of equal significance with actual realities, these dreamers have a calculus of their own which includes the symbols in use among the sane, but comprehends besides a notation which these latter attach no meaning to, reject, and deride.
"Would you be so kind as tell me, sir, what's a ohm?" said the worthy Mr. Stiggins to me the other day. "It's a modern term used in electricity, which I am too ignorant to explain to you." He looked full at me for more than five seconds without a word then he said, "I'm thinking that this man was a fool to talk about ohms when not even you knew what a ohm means. And he came from Cambridge College too, and he's got a vote! I reckon when a man can't talk the same as other folks he'd ought to be shut up." Indignant Stiggins! But are we not all intolerant?
John Robins had acquired an almost unlimited ascendency over his crazy prophets, and speedily acquired the like ascendency over Muggleton. What specially fascinated him was that all John Robins's prophets "had power from him to damn any that did oppose or speak evil of him. So his prophets gave sentence of damnation upon many, to my knowledge, for speaking evil of him, they not knowing him whether he was true or false." Muggleton was profoundly impressed, but according to his own account he was a silent observer, and waited. One of the prophets often came to his house and was welcome; he "spake as an angel of God, and I never let him go without eating and drinking," for Muggleton was a man of large appetite and demanded large supplies of food, nor did he stint himself of meat and drink or withhold creature comforts from those he loved.
Just at this time Muggleton "fell into a melancholy." He had arrived at the prophetic age--he had completed his fortieth year. "Then did two motives arise in me and speak in me as two lively voices, as if two spirits had been speaking in me, one answering the other as if they were not my own spirit." So that our noble laureate was anticipated by two centuries, unless indeed the "two lively voices" make themselves heard at times to most men who have ears to hear them. Muggleton's voices were not very high-toned voices; they were voices that spake of heaven and hell, nothing more. Love and duty never seem to have formed the subject of his meditations. "For I did not so much mind to be saved, as I did to escape being damn'd. For I thought, if I could but lie still in the earth for ever, it would be as well with me as it would be if I were in eternal happiness... for I did not care whether I was happy so I might not be miserable. I cared not for heaven so I might not go to hell. These things pressed hard upon my soul, even to the wounding of it."
The battle within him went on fiercely for some time, and it ended as we should have expected. "I was so well satisfied in my mind as to my eternal happiness, that I was resolved now to be quiet and to get as good a living as I could in this world and live as comfortably as I could here, thinking that this revelation should have been beneficial to nobody but myself." The "motional voices," and visions, and questionings, continued from April 1651 to January 1652; and it was during this time that the intimacy between Muggleton and Reeve became more closely cemented, for "John Reeve was so taken with my language that his desires were _extreme earnest_ that he might have the same revelation as I had. His desires were so great that he was troublesome unto me, for if I went into one room, into another, he would follow me to talk to me." His persistence was rewarded, and just when Muggleton's visions ceased "in the month of January 1652, about the middle of the month, John Reeve came to me very joyful and said, Cousin Lodowick, now said he, I know what revelation of Scripture is as well as thee." Reeve's revelations increased, and never ceased for two weeks. "First visions, then by voice of words to the hearing of the ear three mornings together the third, fourth, and fifth days of February, 1652, and the year of John Reeve's life forty-two, and the year of my life forty-one."