United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Pickwick and his friends by the Muggleton Telegraph, on their way to Dingley Dell; and at three o'clock that afternoon they all stood high and dry, safe and sound, hale and hearty, upon the steps of the Blue Lion, having taken on the road quite enough of ale and brandy, to enable them to bid defiance to the frost that was binding up the earth in its iron fetters, and weaving its beautiful network upon the trees and hedges.
Wardle came in search of the runaway couple, and Sam Weller was the first person they interviewed on the subject. How they discovered the misguided Rachael, how they bought off the adventurer, Jingle, and how Mr. Pickwick, Wardle and the deserted lady set forth the next day by the Muggleton heavy coach is duly set forth in Dickens's own way.
Soon Penson began to deride and abuse the prophet; whereupon Muggleton calmly "did pronounce this Penson cursed to eternity." Penson did not like being damned under the circumstances.
And so the legislature might enact that Ferguson or Muggleton should live in the palace at Lambeth, should sit on the throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and should walk in processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of the legislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be the only true Archbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to usurp the archiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic.
"There were four conspirators in the rebellion... for which I damned two of them, and the other two I did excommunicate." This time the fomenter of discord was a busy Scotchman. Muggleton calls him Walter Bohenan, which appears to be only a bhonetic representation of Walter Buchanan.
Staid, stern, and curiously insensible to physical pain, he was absolutely fearless, with a constitution that could defy any hardships and bear any strain upon it. When we come to the teaching of Muggleton, we find ourselves in a tangled maze of nonsense far too inconsequential to allow of any intelligible account being given of it.
For example, how could the attempt to make application of mystical prophecy to current events be rendered more ridiculous than when we read that two hundred years ago it was a leading point in the teaching of Lodowick Muggleton, a noted heresiarch, "that one John Robins was the last great antichrist and son of perdition spoken of by the Apostle in Thessalonians"? I remember also an eloquent and distinguished person who, beginning with the axiom that all the disorders of this microcosm, the body, had their origin in diseases of the soul, carried his doctrine to the extent of affirming that all derangements of the macrocosm likewise were due to the same cause.
"Did you ever hear tell of Lodowick Muggleton?" "Not I." "That is strange. Know then that he was the founder of our poor society, and after him we are frequently, though oppro-briously, termed Muggletonians, for we are Christians. Here is his book; I will sell it cheap." Scrupulous veracity was hardly a characteristic of the late George Borrow.
Much more interesting to me is the problem how the sect has gone on retaining its vitality. Perhaps the great secret of that permanence has been that Muggleton did not give his followers too much to believe or too much to do. He disdained details, he was never precise and meddlesome.
But "The Bull" waiter informed the Pickwickians that Muggleton was nearly double the distance, or fifteen miles; while Gravesend is about six miles from Rochester so the evidence of distance does not help us. Where, too, did Mr. Pickwick drop his whip? The Pickwickian enthusiast can ascertain this 'an he will by a little calculation.
Word Of The Day