monsters, not intended, but produced. His principles are like the chaos; a confused lump of every thing and nothing; or a gallimawfry of negatives; nor this, nor that, nor the other; but what he is, no man knows, no, nor the angels in heaven, nor himself to boot; this only excepted, that he is more party-coloured than Joseph's coat, and patched together of more pieces, than a taylor's cushion: Nor is his practice much unsuitable to his principles; he puts on religion as a cloke, not a garment, and varnishes his impostures with Holiness to the Lord. Thus Absalom pretends a sacrifice, when his business is rebellion; and Herod a worship, when his design is murder; nor with much won. der Machiavel, the Florentine, had taught him, he, that would gain by deceit, must first acquire a credit, by, at least, a shew of integrity; and he, that would practise upon the people, must follow the old rule of Finge Deum-Such influence have solemn looks, and verily, verily, upon the multitude, who have little else to pass them for men, but speech and figure: hence it is, that he puts off his tinsel for standard, and the maggots of his own brain, for divine inspiration: that he ob trudes his enthusiasms for visions, and justifies Homer, that even such dreams are of God: that he takes a holy pride to himself, and says to the rest of the world, stand off: that he calls the common infirmities of mankind, crying sins, national sins, bow-dyed sins; and his own mormo's, but slips and failings: that he can see no sin in Jacob, nor iniquity in his Israel of God: that he calls them the only holy, only chosen, only godly, only precious, only spiritually-discerning people: that he puts a discriminating schibboleth on others; as formalists, carnalists, dry moralists, withered fig-trees, outside men, negative-holiness-men, opus-operatum-men, will-worshippers, Laodiceans, and what not that he talks of nothing but new light and prophecy, spiritual incomes, indwellings, emanations, manifestations, sealings, and the like gibberish and canting; to which, also, the zealous twang of the nose adds no small efficay: that he runs counter to all things in power, and treads the antipodes to every thing commanded, and for no other reason, but because commanded for it may be observed, that the Lord'sprayer was not so absolutely thrown out of the kirk, till recommended by its own directory; in short, that he calls subjection, in matters of religion, a tying up the spirit, and all injunctions, even in things indif ferent, a manifest invading the sanctum sanctorum: and now the great cry is persecution for conscience; nothing in his mouth, but destitute, afflicted; and, the common corollary, but not forsaken. Alas! alas! the habitations of Jacob are swallowed, and the places of the assembly taken away: a bow is bent against the daughter of Judah, and the breach of the Virgin of Sion is like a great sea; whereas, on the other hand, let him be but as in the years passed, and the sun once more shine on his tabernacle. This success new models his conscience, and, like Aaron's rod, he swallows up every thing that lies in his way: even princes must lay their hands on their mouths, and the nobles not speak again to his words: the poor distressed is become hogan mogan and the servus servorum, dominus dominantium: the little flock claims a kingdom in condigno, and the chosen generation sets up for a royal priesthood. In short, this little horn takes a mouth to himself, speaking

And

mighty things, and his language is, Overturn, overturn, overturn. now he makes his doctrine suitable to his text, and owns above.board, that dominion is founded in grace, not nature: that the goods of this world are properly the elects: that himself and his hyperdolins are the only Israelites, and all the rest Egyptians: that the new Jerusalem must be propagated, as the second temple was built, with the sword in one hand, and the trowel in the other: or, as the abbot (in Henry the Third's time) gave it in absolution to the earl of Leicester, gladium spiritualem sine gladio materiali nihil posse. What shall I add?

he declares that quis suscitabit eum? was personally meant of his tribe: and yet this man has his followers, and these of the honourable women too, not a few; for, to say truth, his conversation is much after the rate of that before the flood, the sons of God among the daughters of men; devotion in all places, whether true or false, being most natural to that sex it was the devil's policy to our first parents, for well he knew that to beguile Eve was the ready way to hook in Adam. And thus he proves a stumbling-block to the wives, and a rock of offence to the husbands. In brief, like the dragon in the Apocalypse, his tail draws a third part of the stars, and casts them to the earth; the reason is obvious, fortitudo ejus in lumbis ejus, & virtus umbilico ventris. But, to proceed, his profession is like his allegiance, a mere fucus, yet, so well laid on, one, at first sight, could not but swear it were natural : his common-place, Polyanthea, and Concordance, and the height of his school-divinity, the assemblies catechism: his prayer, a rhapsody of holy hiccoughs, sanctified barkings, illuminated goggles, sighs, sobs, yexes, gasps, and groans, not more intelligible than nauseous: however, to give him his due, he prays most heartily for the king, but with more distinctions, and mental reservations, than an honest man would have taken the covenant: from hence, as out of the third heaven, he falls by head and shoulders into his preachment; which what other is it, than a wild career over hill and dale, till the afternoon chimes stop him ? Ῥήματα αῤῥητα, άρξητα ῥήματα; ihump upon thump, yelp upon yelp, doctrine upon doctrine, rule upon rule, reason upon reason, text upon text, proof upon proof, direction upon direction, motive upon motive, sign upon sign, token upon token, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little effect upon effect, and uses more than innumerable; and here likewise he cries up obedience to magistrates, but with such a salva gloria dei, that he had better let it alone: as also, that they ought to be defended by their subjects, in defence, nevertheless, of the true religion, of which himself must be judge. And, for his grace at meat, what can I better compare it to, than a Canterbury hack, half pace, half gallop? so his, an odd hobbling shuffle, between a grace and a prayer, and a prayer and a grace: lastly, as to his virtues, (for it cannot be denied, but he has somewhat of that which Tully calls, adumbrata virtutum specimina) I wish it might be said of them, that they were other than masked hypocrisy; the poet hit it: Da justum sanctumque videri,

Noctem peccatis, & fraudibus objice nubem:

And, like an apt scholar, he has gotten his lesson by heart, and can

VOL. VIII.

G

wrap the Philistine's sword in an holy ephod; from whence else is it, that he can crave a blessing to the designs, though never so ungodly, and give thanks for the success, be it never so wicked? that he will not swear, but can dispense with the profitable sin of lying: that he will not be drunk, to be seen of men, but yet can take a brotherly rouse in a corner; that he walks as though he had made a covenant with his eyes, and yet si uxor non vult aut non si possit, veniat ancilla, is wholsome doctrine with him: that he is a zealous observer of the sabbath, and yet can make less conscience of schism than a surplice: that he cries, væ mihi si non evangelizo vero, and yet allows no imposition of hands, but broken pates: that he abhors idols, and yet can commit sacrilege, which, what is it, but to burn the idol with a coal from the altar? that he exhorts his beloved to constancy under persecution, and yet, come what will, he can lick himself so whole, it will be hard to tell where he had been hurt. In short, that he is a perfect Samaritan, for let the Gentiles prevail, and he is of the race of Ishmael: and let the Jews get the upperhand, he had Abraham to his father: to conclude, he is a glow-worm, that shines best in the night of ignorance, one whose faith has eaten up his charity: one that has torn the seamless coat into rags, and tacked them together to cover his nakedness: one that, having for. saken the fountain, has hewed to himself but broken cisterns: one that swallows all things unchewed, and brings them up again as raw and undigested: one, whose eyes are at the end of the earth, and yet would be thought not to mistake his way. In short, one that has an excuse for every thing that he should not do, and a salvo for every thing that he should do: and all this by scripture, adeo nihil est quod S. Scriptura torqueri non possit, modo torqueatur: in a word, he is one of whom it may be said, as Heraclius of the bow, Τὸ μεν ὄνομα βίΘ, τὸ δὲ ἔργον Bávaros; and, but that I find him so well cut out by Horace, I had not yet taken off my hand from so everlasting an argument,

Mala quem scabies, aut morbus regius urget

Aut fanaticus error, aut iracunda Diana;
Vesanum tetigisse timent, fugiuntque—
Qui sapiunt-

And not without reason; for, though his distemper lies not in too much learning, yet, to my unenlightened understanding, he speaks not the words, either of soberness or truth, but darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge.

A MODEST ACCOUNT

OF

THE WICKED LIFE OF THAT GRAND IMPOSTOR,

LODOWICK MUGGLETON:

Wherein are related all the remarkable actions he did, and all the strange accidents
that have befallen him, ever since his first coming to London, to this
twenty-fifth of January, 1676.

ALSO, A PARTICULAR OF THOSE REASONS,
Which first drew him to these damnable Principles :

WITH

Several pleasant stories concerning him, proving his commission to be but counterfeit, and himself a cheat, from divers expressions which have fallen from his own mouth.

Licensed according to order.

Quarto, containing six pages, printed at London, for B. H. in 1676.

LODOWICK MUGGLETON was born of oil, though honest

parents, living at Chippenham, within fifteen miles of Bristol: his relations having but little means, and a great charge of children to maintain, they were forced to send their daughters to wait on their neighbouring gentry, and to place their sons to such trades as cost little binding them apprentices. But, amongst all the rest of, those of this worshipful brood, they were blessed withal, they might have observed, even in his cunicular days, in this Lodowick Muggleton, an obstinate, dissentious, and opposive spirit; which made them desirous to settle him at some distance from them, and also to bind him to such a trade, and master, as might curb him from that freedom, which the moroseness of his coarse nature extorted from his too indulgent parents: by which means, as soon as he had made some small inspection into his Accidence, without any other accomplishment, besides a little writing and casting of accompts, he was hurried up to London, and there bound apprentice to one of the cross-legged order, but of an indifferent reputation in the place where he lived, though by trade a taylor. We will pass over the parenthesis of his youth in silence, therein being nothing but usual waggeries, which generally recommend to our expectation something rema kable, 'when the usual extravagancies shall be seasoned with age. When the time of his apprenticeship grew near its expiration, so that he was admitted more liberty, than formerly was granted him, he was observed to be a great haunter of conventicles; insomuch that there could not a dissenting nonconformist diffuse his sedition in any obscure corner of the city, but this Lodowick Muggleton would have a part of

it; by which means, continuing in the same idle curiosity, and taking great observation on that unknown gain, many of that canting tribe got by their deluded auditors, he proposed to himself a certain and considerable income to be got by the same means, by which he had observed many of those great pretenders gull both himself and others: for a rooked conventicler, like a bankrupt gamester, having, for some time, been cullied out of his money, learns the trick, sets up hector, and trades for himself.

Thus did Lodowick Muggleton, by sliding out of one religion into another, so dissatisfy his judgment, and run himself from the solid basis of his first principles; first degenerating, from the orthodox tenets of the Church of England, to Presbytery; from thence to Independency; thence to Anabaptism; thence to Quakerism; and, lastly, to no religion at all.

When men have, thus, once fooled themselves out of religion and a good conscience, it is no wonder, that their secular interests draw them into all sorts of impiety and profaneness, as it has done this Lodowick Muggleton; who, though, in himself, a poor, silly, despicable creature, yet had the confidence to think he had parts enough to wheedle a company of silly, credulous proselytes out of their souls and estates: and, indeed, he has had such admirable success in that wicked enterprise, that, tho' we cannot absolutely conclude, that he has cheated them of the first; yet we can prove, if occasion were, that he has defrauded them of the latter; as has been often told him, since the first day of his standing in the pillory.

It has been told already, how this impious impostor lays claim to a counterfeit commission, whereby he has infected the truths of many honest, ignorant people, with an extraordinary power, that was de livered to him by as infamous a blasphemer as himself, John Reeve; who, as he formerly rivalled Muggleton in impiety, had he been yet living, should certainly have clubbed with him in his deserved punish

ment.

It is about twenty-one years, since this impudent creature began his impostures; who, knowing himself as defective of reason, as of religion, made it one of the grand maxims of his policy, that his proselytes should be fully persuaded, contrary to all sense, or probability. Reason was that great beast, spoken of in the Revelation, and, consequently, not to be consulted withal, as to the examining of any fundamental point in religion; whereby he secured both himself, and his shallow disciples, from all those frequent disputations and arguments, which, otherwise, must necessarily have diverted them from adhering to his damnable, impious, and irrational tenets; which I purposely omit, as being too unsufferably profane for the modest ear of any sober, well-meaning Christian.

But we may judge a little of the theorick by the practick, I mean, of his principles by his practices, and of the soundness of his doctrine by those duties he held himself, and his followers, obliged to, in the performance of it; which, indeed, were none at all; it being his usual custom, when they met on the sabbath-day, to entertain them with a pig of their own sow; I mean, with wine, strong drink, or victuals; which either