To raise a man from the grave was a supernatural act that pulled mysticism into the realm of the occult. The failure of Dr Thomas Emes to renounce eternal rest, however, moved the Prophets towards more settled practices. Already, by the end of 1707, they had organized congregations in private houses in London and other towns, where they carried out “Prophetic Blessings” by the laying-on of hands. They began to engage in silent prayer, called “waiting on God,” to keep regular records of their assemblies and even to accept a system of grades marking spiritual progress.61 The language of the Prophets, however, remained passionate and frequently violent. It was centred on the Holy Spirit, who entered physically into their bodies. Even in such states of mystic rapture, they did not surrender their identities and continued to speak as themselves. Their human consciousness was suddenly elevated to a divine level, as in a magical ritual.
Parallels between the mysticism of the French Prophets and occult thinking may explain why the movement was so attractive to alchemists. Among the latter was Sir Isaac Newton's former assistant in alchemy the Swiss Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, who was one of three Prophets pilloried in 1707 for blasphemy. Fatio retained his fascination with alchemy until his death in 1753, when he bequeathed in his will a “Vegetable Menstruum” for the benefit of his friend and fellow French Prophet the apothecary Francis Moult. An enthusiastic scientist, Moult and his cousin George, a Fellow of the Royal Society, became the first marketers of Epsom salts. In 1721, Francis Moult had a vision of the alchemical “Powder of Projection,” which he described in a poem addressed to his friend Charles Portales, another French Prophet who had become an admirer of Jacob Boehme's works.62 The unfortunate Dr Emes, “Chirurgo-Medicus” as he called himself, was also an alchemist. Before refusing to rise from the dead, he authored two pamphlets on alkalis, a treatise attacking deism and a philosophical work in which, contrary to the materialists or “Spinozists,” he equated God with “meer Mind.”63 Perhaps the most extraordinary alchemist among the French Prophets, however, was Timothy Byfield, a tireless self-promoter who marketed a universal medicine, the Sal volatile oleosum. In the same cheerful, helpful tone that characterized his commercial publications, Byfield expounded his views on the reunion of the individual spirit with that of God. “In Man is a peculiar, vivifying innate Spirit,” he wrote, “which contributes both Light and Life to the Body.”64 Apparently, that spirit could be animated either by visionary preaching or by Byfield's miraculous elixir.
The teachings of Jacob Boehme, widely regarded as a portal to the occult, infiltrated the ranks of the French Prophets through two other mystical groups, the Scots Quietists and the Philadelphians. The Quietists arose within the Episcopal Church of Scotland, which had been disestablished at the Glorious Revolution and whose clergy had become Nonjurors.65 Their spiritual leader was George Garden, a professor at King's College, Aberdeen, who was deprived of his position in 1692. He became an admirer first of Antoinette Bourignon, and later of Madame Guyon.66 Eschewing emotional experience, Guyon's mysticism was based on a total renunciation of the outside world and immersion in quiet, inner prayer—an utterly different method from that of the French Prophets. The Scottish Quietists included Garden's brother James, who had corresponded with John Aubrey about second sight. In England, the movement was represented by two notable medical men, James Keith in London and George Cheyne in fashionable Bath. Another celebrated Scottish Quietist was Andrew Michael Ramsay, the son of a Presbyterian baker from Ayr who would later migrate to France, where he befriended Madame Guyon herself.67
Socially well connected and orthodox in their theology, the Scots Quietists regarded the occult as diabolic. Recounting in his Life of Madame Bourignon how she had discovered a nest of young witches at an orphanage in Lille, George Garden opined with horror that “when ever any of them [witches] are discovered and tried, if strict Enquiry be made about them, their number appears incredible.”68 A more unsettling (and amusing) episode of demonic spirits was recorded in 1718 by James Keith, based on the testimony of his friend Simon Ockley, professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, who had been briefly imprisoned for debt in Cambridge Castle. While incarcerated, Ockley was tormented by “a Cacodæmon” who moved under his bed, banged on the door, tapped, thumped and even attacked the venerable academic in “the House of Office”: that is, the privy. Keith was inclined to think it “a Ludicrous Spirit,” but Ockley insisted it was “a malignant evil Genius.”69 Keith knew that his friend and patient was under stress, but he did not question the veracity of his account.
The improbable link between the Scots Quietists and the French Prophets was provided by an impressionable gentleman of Barns in Fife, James Cunningham. He had encountered a group of Prophets in Edinburgh during the spring of 1709. Excited by the spiritual possibilities, he wrote to George Garden to ask his opinion, quoting Jacob Boehme to the effect that union with God must be through “the Increated superessential Light” of Jesus Christ. In a later letter, Cunningham asked Garden about “the characteristicks, fallible rules and marks laid down in Scripture for discerning betwixt good and bad spirits,” which suggests a Neoplatonic approach to the unseen world. The learned Garden was quick to discern the sources of his correspondent's confusion. He recommended “the prayer of silence,” that is, internal meditation without agitation, and he reminded him that “[w]e are call'd to be the followers of our Lord J. Christ,” not of Jacob Boehme. As for “the Platonists,” Garden recognized their insights but condemned their intellectual pride.70 His cautionary words had an effect on Cunningham, who encouraged the Prophets to settle into regular meetings and to question some of their own predictions. Still, he shared in their public “warnings,” announcing on one occasion, as if in answer to Garden, that Scripture gave “Abundance of Characters, and distinguishing Marks, whereby to know a good, from a bad Spirit.” Journeying to London in 1712, Cunningham was almost drowned by a mob—like a witch—when he cried out, “Repent, Repent,” during evensong in St Paul's Cathedral. Three years later, he showed the strength of his political convictions by joining the rebellion in favour of the Stuart claimant to the throne. Captured by the Hanoverian army at the Battle of Preston, he died a prisoner.71
Cunningham's Behmenism may have been derived from the Philadelphians. They were more open-minded than the Quietists regarding spirits, but they did not all embrace spirit possession. Although they had officially disbanded by the time of Jane Lead's death in 1704, members of the group remained prominent in mystical and prophetic circles. London Philadelphians continued to meet at a congregation in Bow Street, where their chief spokesman was a German-speaking immigrant from Nuremberg, Andreas Dionysius Freher. A letter that he apparently wrote to Jane Lead from Utrecht in 1701 introduces Freher as a confident, dynamic personality, steeped in occult thought. Addressing Lead as “Blessed Virago, most endeared and remarkable Soul,” the letter praises “the highly illuminated Jac. Behme” and points to astrological predictions of dominion by the “fiery trigon,” a group of three zodiacal signs.72 The mixture of Theosophy and occult science was typical of Freher. His voluminous writings, none of them published, were carefully copied out by his followers Allen Leppington, a London hop merchant, and the artist Jeremias Daniel Leuchter. They exceed even Boehme in their lavish use of astrological and alchemical language. In one manuscript treatise, redemption is described as a “Process,” and the individual believer is referred to as “the Artist or Magus.” Union with the divine here takes the form of a chemical reaction:
in the Philosophical Work, a Breaking forth of the Solarish Power in a Golden Lustre, from the Fire's Center, and Tincturing this white Lunarish Appearance of Venus, is all in Vain expected: Because the Pure Union, and Universal Tincture cannot be made manifest, except first all the dark Wrath and Poison of Saturn, Mercury and Mars, be wholly drowned and swallowed up in Blood and Death.73
Freher's overwrought imagery is far removed from Jane Lead's intimate style, even if it follows the same Behmenist pattern. As so many of th
e French Prophets were alchemists, however, it might have held a special appeal for them.
Freher's colourful language lent itself to visualization. His friend Leuchter obligingly devised a series of “Hieroglyphica Sacra, or Divine Emblems,” showing the religious principles of the Philadelphians in graphic form, no doubt as an instructional tool. Perhaps the most enduring invention of their partnership was the so-called “Three Tables,” which depicted the progress of humanity from “Primeval Man” to “Fallen Man” to “Angelical Man,” with surrounding zodiacal symbols of “his Exterior Astral & Elementary Life.”74 The baroque effect of these illustrations, which were made into prints and accompanied by extensive notes, contrasts with the simplicity and spontaneity of the “warnings” issued by the French Prophets. While the latter strove to articulate the words of a single informing spirit, Freher and Leuchter sought to illuminate a universe of diverse spiritual entities, accessible through occult knowledge.
Freher did not lead a unified Philadelphian group, such as had briefly existed in the 1690s. The mastermind of that earlier movement, Francis Lee, was not a member of the Bow Street church, and he was drifting away from prophecy. In 1709, he published an anonymous attack on Montanism, an early Christian heresy that emphasized ecstatic visions, which he believed to be demonic. So that nobody could miss the contemporary point, the treatise was bound together with two attacks on the French Prophets.75 Soon after, Lee began a study of the apocryphal Second Book of Esdras (also confusingly known as 4 Ezra), an apocalyptic work frequently cited by visionaries as foretelling future events.76 When it finally appeared in 1722, three years after the author's death, it constituted not a vindication, but a final renunciation of visionary religion. Although he admired some of the beautiful passages in 2 Esdras, Lee also found in it “such a multitude of Things to shock me, so that it was hard for me not to throw it presently away with the utmost Contempt and Indignation.” He felt as if the Church of England, by including it among scriptural texts, might just as well have given authority to Mother Shipton's prophecy or John Partridge's astrological predictions.77
Lee's growing aversion to prophecy was in part a horrified response to the French Prophets. By contrast, his Philadelphian colleague the Reverend Richard Roach embraced them. Roach persisted in using the language of John Pordage and Jane Lead, at least in his diary, where he enthused about “[t]he Magick Sight, the Magick Will,” and scrawled down alchemical recipes.78 On 1 June 1710, “Mr. Richd. Roach belonging to the People call'd Philadelphians” appeared at a meeting of the French Prophets in London, where Mary Keimer was giving out blessings (her brother and fellow Prophet, Samuel, a printer, later moved to Philadelphia, where he took Benjamin Franklin as an apprentice). Roach proceeded to read out “w[ha]t. he calld an Inspiration” spoken by Sarah Wiltshire. Wiltshire was a former Quaker who seems to have succeeded Jane Lead in Roach's estimation as a female fount of prophecy. Roach and Wiltshire had allies among the French Prophets. At least three of them—the wool-comber Abraham Whitrow, the watchmaker John Cuff and the lawyer Thomas Dutton—were said to be “sometime Philadelphians.” Three days after proclaiming the “Inspiration,” Roach and Wiltshire founded the “Polemica Sacro-Prophetica,” which called for a redirection of the message of the French Prophets towards love and peace rather than imminent destruction. Not surprisingly, some of the Prophets reacted badly to the proposal, denouncing Roach as a “Ranter” and even punching Wiltshire. Roach continued to attend their meetings, but was unable to steer them in a more pacific direction.79
He was not discouraged. Indeed, Roach's sojourn with the Prophets seems to have further unshackled his visionary powers. Why should he despair when he had access to angels? Visits from the Archangel Raphael continued throughout his life. On St John's Eve in 1726, he noted a “Change of Angel” that caused him to begin a new diary.80 Around the same time, Roach began to commit his mystical and prophetic thoughts to print. In the anonymously published Great Crisis (1727), he postulated that battles seen in the air, meteors, blood-red rainbows, fires in the sky and monstrous births in Scotland constituted “God's Speaking to mankind.” The divine message, however, was still one of love and peace, symbolized by the harmony of Solomon's rulership. Roach praised the “many Famous Inlighten'd Virgins” who had carried that message, from Teresa of Avila to Madame Bourignon and Jane Lead.81 In a sequel, The Imperial Standard of Messiah Triumphant, Roach openly revealed his vision of “the Imperial Standard,” which had appeared to him in February 1723. This foretold “the blessed Millenium, or Solomonitical Kingdom,” which would expire with the Second Coming of Christ. Most of “the Perfected Ones” would then reascend with Christ, but some would remain to witness a general decline of religion on earth, and the forming of Satan's army, “instructed in Witchcraft and in the dark Magia … Against these the Blessed Inhabitants, the Divine Magi fight in Spirit.” The result was the consummation of the world and a new creation.82 Like earlier radicals, Roach envisaged rule by the saints before the coming of Christ, but the evocation of a final confrontation between two types of magic, good and evil, was entirely his own.
Roach devoted special attention to “the Divine Sophia or Wisdom,” explaining it as “the Bridal or Virgin Nature in God,” a kind of female version of the godhead, such as was postulated in Kabbalism.83 The exaltation of female spirituality in Roach's published writings goes beyond the Behmenist theory of androgyny and reveals a remarkable sensitivity to female visionary experience. Perhaps the most unusual feature of The Imperial Standard, however, was the index, in which Roach defined the terms of Philadelphian philosophy. They included many alchemical expressions such as “Grand Arcanum” and “The Great Secret of the Chymical Philosopher for Transmutation or changing of grosser Metals into Gold, and for Universal Medicine.” Jacob Boehme's Theosophy was discussed as relating “to the First Cause of all Things and its Act upon … both the Invisible and Visible Creation.” One of the longest discussions was reserved for “Magia” in its natural, diabolical and divine forms. “Natural Magic … perform'd by the Agency of Middle Spirits residing in, or Regent of the Air or Elements,” was no more lawful than the “Operation of Wicked and Infernal Spirits,” or “Diabolical Magic,” according to Roach. On the other hand, he fully endorsed “Divine Magia … the Operation of God Himself by the agency of his Holy Spirit.”84 The message of the French Prophets blares forth in this last statement.
When Richard Roach died in August 1730, the Prophets were still active. Their last Prophetess, Hannah Wharton, made tours of London in 1730 and of Birmingham and Worcester in 1732, where she spoke in the voice of the Holy Spirit to audiences that included Nicolas Fatio and Francis Moult. The endless torrent of inspired words that fell from her mouth comprised, as she put it, “the Privileges of Wisdom to manifest the Liberty which is a Liberty from the Word, for the Word is in it and so the Liberty of the Word is the Liberty the Chosen are in.”85 It was a public exultation of the self as divine. This may be why it so disturbed John Wesley. At London in 1739, he visited a French Prophetess, a young woman of about twenty-five, who spoke for about ten minutes “as in the person of God, and mostly in Scripture words,” while her whole body went into “convulsive motion.” Wesley thought she must be “either hysterical or artificial.” Later in the same year, he condemned the French Prophets in a sermon.86 Some of Wesley's own Methodist listeners, of course, would undergo similar convulsions while hearing him preach. He never fully approved of this, but its persistence illustrates a significant consequence of the emotionally expressive, spontaneous mystical effusions of the early eighteenth century. Because the Prophets had led the way, the evangelical revival would be marked by a popular belief in spirits, and would never be fully under the control of the preachers.
Among the educated elite, it was not Wesley and his associates who most eagerly upheld the spiritual inheritance of the French Prophets: rather, it was a medical man. The celebrated Dr George Cheyne was sympathetic to mysticism in all its forms, and strove to r
econcile its spiritual attractions with a contemporary understanding of physiology. The result was a powerful if not always coherent combination of Newtonian science, Lockean philosophy and occult thought, a “natural supernaturalism.” Cheyne grew up among the Aberdonian mystics, and remained in close contact with them after moving to England, but he was less staid or traditional than they were. James Cunningham, the ill-fated Scottish prophet, confided spiritual secrets to him.87 Cheyne was educated in medicine at Edinburgh University under the Newtonian Archibald Pitcairne, a man described as a Jacobite, deist and believer in apparitions, who claimed to have been informed in a vision of the time of his own death.88 Given this background, Cheyne's interest in spirits is hardly surprising.
Cheyne's Philosophical Principles of Religion: Natural and Revealed was first published in 1705. After the rise and fall of the French Prophets, it was substantially revised and reissued. Virtually ignored by the intellectual establishment, the book was popular enough to go through a number of different editions. Its purpose was to apply Newtonian principles to the operations of the mind, including religious sentiments. Cheyne pompously organized the treatise into Lemmatas, Propositions, Corollaries and Scholia, just like Newton's Principia Mathematica. In the first part, which dealt with the body, Cheyne equated the term “Spirit” with “the nervous Juice,” carried along through the arteries with the blood and into the muscles. The mind acts on these “Animal Spirits” to bring about voluntary motion, while involuntary motion is created by “Mechanical Necessity.”89 While he did not discuss the French Prophets directly, Cheyne's theory might be used to explain their agitated convulsions as the action of a stronger spirit on a lesser one. In the second part, Cheyne defines “Spirit” as “an extended, penetrable, active, indivisible, intelligent Substance,” sharing nothing with Body, or matter, except extension. “The Principle of Action in Spiritual Subsistences,” Cheyne continues, “is, or ought to be, that essential one of REUNION with the Origin of their Being, impress'd on ev'ry Individual of this Rank of Creatures.”90 All Spirits, in other words, are aspects of the Supreme Spirit, towards which they move continually, hindered only by the existence of Body. Thus, the mystic's goal of union with God is inherent in the Newtonian law of attraction, by which the whole universe moves.
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