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Updated: June 22, 2025
Such a man as Thomas More, who was eminently rational as well as deeply religious, was not easily beguiled; but the more credulous and equally honest bishop of Rochester was unable to regard the prophesyings as mere imposture, as was also the case with Warham; and being thus countenanced, when the Nun's utterances reached the point of denouncing the wrath of Heaven upon those who consented to the Divorce, she became really dangerous.
But do what he might, he could not shake off a certain eerie sensation of fear, lest there should be some grains of truth in the prophesyings of this hag. What if it were a fact that he was near his death, and that the heart which beat so strongly in his breast must soon be still for ever no, he would not think of it.
He was a shrewd man in his way, with the simplicity which belongs to such shrewdness; he disliked the new ways which he experienced chiefly in the towns, and put them down, not wholly without justice, to the change of which religion formed an integral part; he hated the beggars and would gladly have gone to see one flogged; and he disliked the ministers and their sermons and their "prophesyings" with all the healthy ardour of prejudice.
The doctors lost half their practice in consequence of the reliance of the people on these spiritual methods of physicking. Children were taken out of school in order that they might attend the prophesyings and get all knowledge by supernatural intuition. Logic and other worldly methods of arriving at truth were superseded by dreams, discernings of spirits, and similar irrational processes.
Achilles was deeply moved and answered, "What, noble Patroclus, are you saying? I know no prophesyings which I am heeding, nor has my mother told me anything from the mouth of Jove, but I am cut to the very heart that one of my own rank should dare to rob me because he is more powerful than I am. This, after all that I have gone through, is more than I can endure.
He loses trust in, and charity to, and reverence for his fellow-men; he learns to despise, deny, and quench the Spirit, and to despise prophesyings, and so becomes gradually cynical, sectarian, fanatical. "And then comes a second and worse danger.
The voice of the poet of Paracelsus and of Rabbi Ben Ezra is still audible in this latest of his prophesyings. And therefore he welcomes earth in his Rephan, earth, with its whole array of failures and despairs, as the fit training-ground for man. Better its trials and losses and crosses than a sterile uniformity of happiness; better its strife than rest in any golden mean of excellence.
It had frequently been the practice of the Puritans to form certain assemblies, which they called "prophesyings;" where alternately, as moved by the spirit, they displayed their pious zeal in prayers and exhortations, and raised their own enthusiasm, as well as that of their audience, to the highest pitch, from that social contagion which has so mighty an influence on holy fervors, and from the mutual emulation which arose in those trials of religious eloquence.
"I fancy you have been busying yourselves here with prophesyings," said he: "Gabriele, my child, you shall have your reward for it read this aloud to your mother!" laying a newspaper before her. Gabriele began to read but threw the paper hastily down, gave a spring for joy, clapped her hands, and exclaimed, "Henrik's poetry has won the highest prize!"
I suppose I ought not to speak of this; but I know you will not speak of it again; and I can tell you of my own knowledge that the Holy Maid will not be at St. Sepulchre's much longer." His father leaned forward. "Do you mean " he began. "I mean that His Grace is weary of her prophesyings. It was all very well till she began to meddle with matters of State; but His Grace will have none of that.
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