Doomsayers

Religious and Spiritual Mobility in Britain: The Panacea Society and Other Movements in the Twentieth Century

“…23 Susan Juster's summary of 'contemporary and historical verdicts on Joanna Southcott' observes that they 'converge on one score: that her writings are tedious, and maddeningly opaque'. 24 Nonetheless, in the early days of her work in London, Southcott is reported as having quickly amassed thousands of followers and Hopkins has used incomplete data to identify more than 7000 members of her movement nationwide. 25 The crescendo of Southcott's career came at the end of her life in 1814, when she was in her mid-60s.…”

Huguenot prophetism, clerical authority, and the disenchantment of the world, 1685-1710

“…Even by the time of the Theatre sacra's publication they had given up on trying to convince the London clergy of the genuine character of their inspiration. At the end of the work was a signed disposition in which the three inspires renounced their allegiance to the Church of Savoy, excoriating it as "an assembly that treated us so shamefully, and that has no kind of authority over us...."45 The judgments of the prophets, grounded in immediate inspiration, were absolute, and thus could not be reconciled with the arbitrary will of the ministry: "the eternal is our retreat, 42 Frangois-Maximilien Misson, Les prophites protestants: reimpression de I'ouvrage intitule le theatre sacri des Cevennes, ed. Ami Bost (Paris: Delaye, 1847), 27.…”