Jesuits; they prove also, that however little may have been the religion of these men themselves, they were convinced how indispensably necessary it was for mankind; and that, instead of plotting to break up the system of social order by destroying faith and morals, faith was the engine which they employed to prepare society for some imaginary amelioration, forgetting that nothing which is founded upon delusion can be permanent.

The two Englishmen remained at Avignon six months, and were then informed by the Spirit that they might return. The brethren supplied them with money, so that they went back with more comfort than they came, and had a handsome sum left when they landed in England, where they both returned to their former employments, expecting the accomplishment of the mighty changes which had been foretold. The Revolution brake out.-They who had raised the storm could not direct it they became its victims-and

knavery reaped what fanaticism had sown, as they who lag in the assault enter the Lreach over the bodies of the brave who have won the passage for them. What becaine of the Avignon society Heaven knows. The honest dupes whom they had sent abroad, fully prepared to welcome any novelty as the commencement of the Millennium, were left to their own direction. A king of the Hebrews appeared in England, and Wright and Bryan were, as you may suppose, among the first to acknowledge him. They imagined that the appointed time was come, and published these secrets of the society which they had been ordered to keep concealed. Of the King of the Hebrews in my next.

LETTER LXIX.

Account of Richard Brothers. My former letters must have shown you that these English, whom we are accustomed to consider as an unbelieving people, are in reality miserably prone to superstition; yet you will perhaps be surprised at the new instance which I am about to relate.

There started up in London, about the beginning of the late war, a new pseudoprophet, whose name was Richard Brothers, and who called himself King of the Hebrews, and Nephew of God. He taught, that all existing souls had been created at the same time with Adam, and his system was, that they had all lived with him.in Paradise, and all fallen with him in consequence of their joint transgression; for all

things which they saw and knew were in God, and indeed were God, and they desired to know something besides God, in which desire they were indulged, fatally for themselves, for the only thing which is not God is Evil. Evil was thus introduced, and they for their punishment cast into hell, that is to say, upon this present earth; and in this hell they have remained from that time till now, transmigrating from one human body to another. But the term of their punishment is now drawing towards its close: the consummation of all things is at hand, and every one will then recover the recollection of all the scenes and changes through which he has passed. This knowledge has already been vouchsafed in part to Brothers himself, and it is thus that he explained the extraordinary relationship to the Almighty which he laid claim to, asserting that in the days of our Lord, he was the son of James, the brother of Christ. You know the heretics, in their hatred to virginity

and to Mary the most pure, maintain that when Christ's brethren are mentioned in the Gospels, the word is to be understood in its literal and carnal sense; consequently he was then the Nephew of the second Person in the Trinity.

Human fancy, it has been said, cannot imagine a monster whose constituent parts are not all already in existence; it is nearly as impossible for a new heresy to be now devised, so prolific has human error been. This metempsychosis not only bears a ge neral resemblance to that doctrine as held by the Orientals and by Pythagoras, but has been held in this peculiar heretical form by the old heretic Barules, and by the Flagellants of the fourteenth and fif teenth centuries.

Brothers had been a lieutenant in the navy, and was known to be insane; but when a madman calls himself inspired, from that moment the disorder becomes infectious. The society at Avignon had unintentionally trained up apostles for this