( 35 ) To see the way my Blood is drank, To have ME come their Priest and King, The powers of darkness to chain down Then like thy hand they'll find ME stand, The Potter's clay, to thee I say, In pieces I shall break; My passions shall arise like thee Though men may judge ME weak; Like thee to do, can I go through, Thou break'st the basons that were two In fury here from thee appear'd And break in two, mankind to know, Now mark the day, to thee I say, So now the two, before my view, For sick as death, thou may'st expro Now in the night, bring to thy sight The shadow there that did appear, As though the candles placed were, Your dangers will come on.. The drum and bell, you do know well, To see the spirits in a flame, A warning to mankind. The Shadow's deep, the Type is great, Your flames will come that way, I tell you like that midnight dream That did appear so cloudy here, That death must be her doom; The rattle came, be it known for man, To be a flame and to consume I tell you all this is a call, A shadow deep you'll find, That it will break and you may sink No water there can come; No: spirits burn, it must be known, But as to thee, I'll never free To raise thee from thy bed, Until the shepherds wounded be Worse than the Jews, hear ye the news, You stubborn Gentiles be; Tell how the clergy ME refuse, And then Pll auswer thee f 37 ) Wednesday, July the 18th, 1804. As I, Joanna Southcott, am upon a sick bed, and am informed that the Lord will never restore me to health before I have publicly declared to the world what daggers the ministers have placed in my breast; I now must answer thousands and tens of thousands,and have often thought, ifI were in Turkey I should find more humanity amongst the priests there than I have found in England. In the first place I intreated them, as though my soul and body depended upon their advice to know from what Spirit my writings came; yet they refused to give it; or even to hear me. But the Rev. Mr. Pomeroy heard me with every attention, assuring me that my writings were not from the devil, desiring me to put the events of years in to his hands, promising, whenever my Trial came,tą bring the letters for or against me. Here he acted, as I thought, like a worthy minister; and though I was ordered to send him a letter, that if he acted faithlessly he would act like Judas; yet I had no idea that he would; because I was ordered to put the letters in his hands. But as soon as his name was nade public, the clergy kept on plaguing him till they made him advertise that my writings were from the devil; and he said that he could not go out of doors without doing it. After that I wrote to him to give me up my letters; but no tongue can describe my astonishment or what I felt, when he returned for answer that he had burnt all my letters. This appeared to me the deepest of arts, and the blackest of crimes; as he well knew that every letter I had put into his hands must appear, to convince the world that my writings were not from the devil. He knew they must appear to my honour, and to his own disgrace; for had the letters Leen, against me he would gladly have returned them. This made me write him a letter, telling him what black arts he had used to murder my character, and mur· der my peace; and that he had burnt the letters to conceal his own want of judgment; because he knew the letters were in my favour, and against himself. After this he went to Mr. Taylor's, and told Mr. Taylor I had written him one of the severest letters that ever was penned. Mt. Taylor told him it was for his not returning my letters. He said that he was persuaded to burn them. How far that is true I must leave. If he did it by persuasions from the clergy, I must say that they murdered his character, and the peace of his mind; for it is not in the power of all the men upon earth to clear Mr. Pomeroy's character, that he acted either consistent as a minister or a gentleman, as a counsellor or a man of honour-or I will say the meanest shop-boy: For now I will suppose a shop-boy has got large account books, that he had kept for his master; suppose the debtors make intercession with the boy, and say they will be his friend if he will burn his master's account books, and publish to the world no man owed him any thing; and so the boy leaves his master; how could that boy shun the laws of men? Then Pomeroy's crime is of much weightier consequence, because he has kept back the things that were of God, to prove the calling was of God, by the truths that followed. But here I shall leave him, and only say, my soul come not thou into hissecrets: how can he speak peace to his own conscience? Had I ever acted with such artful, deceitful, and wicked principle, I never could enjoy one hour of my life Then how can the judgment of such a man be true? For he appears to me in the perfect language that he now says I appear to him. Now I shall come to another minister, which was Mr. Leach, a methodist parson, who had that selfconfidence of his own wisdom as to tell me, in 1793, that not a word more of my writings would come true; and should go to the Lord in his name and tell the Lord, that he said they were from the devil. ( 39 ) This self-confidence shewed me that he made him self more than a man, and boasted as though hẻ were a God of knowledge, which I should think no earthly object would dare to do: and those objects that have dared to do it have every one erred, as the Jews did; for when they were self-confident that our Saviour was not the Son of God, and said, "His blood be on us and our children;" if their self-con fidence was true, why do the clergy bring us to the Gospel? If their self-confidence was wrong, why do our clergy boast in the same confidence, exercising themselves in what they know nothing about; and what they have no desire to know any thing about? And now I shall come to the other clergy. When my writings were examined by the seven gentlemen at Exeter, several clergymen were invited to come forward, but they all refused. Previous to my writings being proved at Paddington, the bishops and clergy were invited, by private letters and in the public Newspapers, to come forward and judge for themselves; but they refused by the same haughty, vain conceit, thinking they knew every thing, when I shall prove they are blind and know nothing. On the twenty-second of May, Miss Townley was ordered by the Lord, through me, to send out letters to warn the bishops and clergy; and afterwards was ordered, through me, to write again to the bishops, to say that if they would come forward themselves, or send twenty-four ministers from different dioceses, to meet the twenty-four chosen by the Lord, to examine my writings with them; and if the twenty-four ministers could prove that my writings were not from the Lord, they should be given up to their judgment. This fair and generous offer was refused also. So whether tens of thousands were going wrong on the one hand, being believers that my writings come from the Lord, looking for and hastening to the coming of the Lord. |