a practice of this sort. Every year they have a watch-night, that is, they continue in prayer and psalm-singing, till after midnight, on the last night of the year; the new year is then ushered in with a suitable hymn and appropriate service. It is melancholy to see so many people, of really religious dispositions, most of them irreproachably moral, honest, and honourable, led astray by error, buffeted about by every wind of doctrine. Those who are members of the holy Catholic Church are bound to praise God daily for the inestimable blessing conferred on them; and seeing how little in general they correspond to the extraordinary graces they receive by the sacraments, and the holy sacrifice, should be humbled at their own unworthiness, and unceasingly pray to Gad, that the strayed sheep may be brought into the fold, under the guidance of the one Shepherd. Had Wesley, their founder, been born and disciplined, from his youth, in the doctrines and practices of the Catholic Faith—his self-love and spiritual pride corrected by the holy practice of the confessional—he might have been one of the lights of his age, and, perhaps, have carried the Gospel with effect to the nations still sitting in darkness. But the judgments of God are inscrutable[1].
8. Johanna Southcott. This extraordinary woman was born in Devonshire, in 1750, and is no less remarkable for the extravagance of her tenets, than as a melancholy example of the credulity of her numerous followers. She was, in the early part of her life, only a domestic servant, and scarcely received any education. She joined a Methodist society, and being of an excitable temperament, persuaded herself at first, it is supposed, that she was endowed with extraordinary gifts. She soon found followers, and then commenced as a prophetess, and proclaimed herself the "woman" spoken of in the Book of Revelations. She resided all this time in Exeter, and it is wonderful to find that an ignorant woman could make so many dupes. She had seals manufactured, and sold them as passes to immortal happiness. It was impossible that any one possessed of one of these talismen could be lost. Exeter soon became too confined a sphere for her operations, and, at the expense of an engraver of the name of Sharp, she came to London, where the number of her disciples was considerably increased, and many persons joined her, whom we would be the last to suspect of fanaticism. She frequently denounced unbelievers, and threatened the unfaithful nations with chastisement. She was now sixty years of age, and put the finishing stroke to her delusions. She proclaimed that she was with-child of the Holy Spirit, and that she was about to bring into the world the Shiloh promised to Jacob. This event was to take place on the 19th of October, 1814. This we would
- ↑ Wesley's Journal; Centenary Report, and Benson's Apology, &c.
