[71]: "To the eye of vulgar logic," says he, "what is man? An omnivorous biped that wears breeches. To the eye of pure reason what is he? A soul, a spirit, and divine apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a garment of flesh (or of senses), contextured in the loom of heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with them in Union and Division; and sees and fashions for himself a universe with azure starry spaces and long thousands of years. Deep hidden is he under that strange garment; amid sounds and colours and forms, as it were, swathed in and inextricably overshrouded: yet it is skywoven and worthy of a God."
[72]: Perhaps the most remarkable incident in modern history is not the diet of Worms, still less the battle of Austerlitz, Wagram, Waterloo, or any other battle, but an incident passed carelessly over by most historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others, namely George Fox's making to himself a suit of leather.
[73]: Something monastic there appears to be in their constitution; we find them bound by the two monastic vows of poverty and obedience: which vows, especially the former, it is said, they observe with great strictness; nay, as I have understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably enough consecrated thereto, even before birth. That the third monastic vow, of chastity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to conjecture.
Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar costume.
Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets, and irregular wings, of all colours; through the labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced by some unknown process. It is fastened together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers, to which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial and often wear it by way of sandals.
One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth: for they dig and affectionately work continually in her bosom; or else, shut up in private oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances derived from her; seldom looking up towards the heavenly luminaries, and then with comparative indifference. Like the druids, on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings; often even breaking their glass-windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored.
In respect of diet, they have also their observances. All poor slaves are rhizophagous (or root-eaters); a few are ichthyophagous, and use salted herrings: other animal food they abstain from, except indeed, with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural death. Their universal sustenance is the root named potato, cooked by fire alone.... In all their religious solemnities Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite and largely consumed.
[74]: A certain touch of manicheism, not indeed in the gnostic shape, is discernible enough: also (for human error walks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not inconsiderable resemblance to that superstition of the Athos monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of time into their own navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven unveiled. To my own surmise, it appears as if the Dandiacal sect were but a new modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval superstition, self-worship.
They affect great purity and separatism; distinguish themselves by a particular costume (whereof some notices were given in the earlier part of this volume); likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken lingua franca, or English-French); and on the whole, strive to maintain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted from the world.
They have their temples, whereof the chief, as the Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis; and is named Almack's, a word of uncertain etymology. They worship principally by night; and have their highpriests and highpriestesses, who, however, do not continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are sacred books wanting to the sect; these they call fashionable Novels: however, the Canon is not completed, and some are canonical and others not....