Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

hour of confidence; and if you do not, you will be obliged to declare the whole truth upon oath, why you have refused; and give satisfactory answers to all questions that shall be demanded of you; and inform the court of what the papers contained. Happy shall I feel if I am an instrument to prevent you from disgrace and ruin; and I hope you will consider this letter as the letter of a friend; for I know it is said to Joanna, that the Lord will not permit you longer to contend against his will; for you once believed it to be of divine authority, and encouraged her to proceed, adding these words, you will wait until you bring the sword, the plague, and the famine upon us. Now, Sir, these words are your own words to Joanna, and are published to the world at large; which words you would not have used, neither would you have had any interview with her at all, if you had not had some belief, at that time, of the truth of her visitation. You also added, you would meet with twelve persons; and advised her not to wait until the sword came upon us. Why, Rev. Sir, do you continue silent? Why will you suffer people to have the least cause to suspect you to be a traitor to your king and country? Why not invite the church to come forth, and vindicate the cause of God and man? I have already told you the church forms a part of our government, and you are one of its ministers; your opinion, as a minister, ought to be of consequence, and those gentlemen, whom you used to meet at the coffee-house at Exeter, ought to have some decency towards you. It was not for them to teach you what to believe, or whom you chose to converse with upon the subject of prophecy. They treated you with impertinence and disrespect; and, mark my words, these very men may be the first to condemn you, when they read in the public papers a true statement of what has

THE REV. MR. POMEROY.

67

passed in a court of law. These very men will exclaim against you for being guilty of a breach of trust. These supercilious coffee-house politicians will be the first to cry out against you; so that your character will be trampled on by those, whose opinion, or rather ridicule, you have been such a slave to, as to make you betray the confidence of an innocent woman, who treated you with every respect, and placed in you the most implicit faith. You believed her to be a good woman, and an innocent woman; now you are trying to make her appear an impostor. But every one's character in a court of justice is of some value; and your conduct has forced her to take this step. The publicity of the proceedings in a court of justice must justify her conduct; and her duty to her God is of too sacred a nature to make her disobedient to his commands. Had you, Sir, the fortitude to treat with contempt the mockery and ridicule of ignorant people, whether in a coffee-house or at any other place, and considered your dignity, as a minister, in its proper point of view, you would not have suspected Joanna to have been led by the Devil, after having encouraged her to proceed. You must remember, when myself and six other gentlemen first came to Exeter, that the three clergymen warted on you with Joanna: the Rev. Mess. Bruce, Foley, and Webster. As soon as you heard that the letter you had written to the printer in London, in which you forbid him to print, or make public your name in Joanna's Book of Letters, was at Exeter, you particularly desired that very letter to be returned to you again. Now, Sir, as soon as your wish was made known to ne, I gave it up; and it was conveyed safely into your hands. I would ask you, Sir, in the name of justice or honour, by what right can you withhold the letters and papers that Joanna placed in your hands, which she had copied at a great expence to herself, by your request, when she could

ill afford the money, even if you were under no express condition to return them to her when you was called upon? As a gentleman you ought to comply, as I did, when your request was made known to me. I was not bound to return you that letter. It could be no breach of trust on my part, if I had refused your request; my conscience would not have been wounded by such refusal: I was not in the situation you have been placed in, with an innocent woman. Your breach of trust with Joanna, no one can justify; and all persons who have read the account of this transaction condemn you; whether they believe in her visitation or not, all alike condemn you. And when the proceedings of a court of justice are laid before the public, what can the world say of your character as a man, your duty as a clergyman of the church of England? Your being afraid of the slander and mockery of fools, in order to have the praise of fools, must sink you very low indeed! You ought to be their spiritual teacher, and to have resisted their impertinent mockery. The character of a minister of the gospel they ought to have held in respect. Now view the conduct of Joanna towards you and the clergy on the one hand, and view the conduct of these men, whose praise you fear to lose on the other; then examine your own heart and mind to find out who is your true and faithful friend. I need say no more. The different pictures are before your view. Joanna has a duty to perform to herself; she has a sacred duty to perform to her God, and the truth she cannot give up; and when her trial comes there must be nothing withheld.

I am, Rev. Sir,

Your sincere friend and wellwisher,
WILLIAM SHARP.

P. S. It is not too late for you to withdraw yourself from your present unfortunate dilemma; you

THE REV. MR. POMEROY.

69

may now pursue a noble line of conduct: throw off your chains of worldly applause, restore to Joanna her papers, and unite with her friends, with an independent mind, only to search out what is true.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

SIR,

MR. POMEROY'S ANSWER,

Oct. 4, 1804,

Though I have neither time nor inclination to answer the many strange letters I have received respecting J. Southcott, that you may not suppose me capable of treating any gentleman's letter with contempt, I take the first opportunity to assure you, that, (except one just received,) I have no letters, or writings whatever of, or belonging to, that deluded, ungrateful woman. She herself knew this near two years-since, so that to charge me with having any of her papers now, is to deceive the public, and wantonly to traduce my character. As to the menacing part of your letter I wish to observe, that though it is impossible to produce what I am not possessed of, I shall be ready at all times, and in all places, to bear my testimony to what appears to me to be the truth; to vindicate my aspersed and injured character, and to maintain my opinion, with respect to the farrago of sense and nonsense, of scripture and blasphemy, contained in her pretended prophecies; that such incoherent matter could proceed from a sound mind, or from the pure spirit of wisdom. You are pleased to sign yourself my sincere friend and wellwisher; prove the sincerity of your profession, by exerting your influence to restrain her, and her printer, from the malevolent employment of exposing and vilifying my name, in such an unprecedented, and illegal manner, in direct violation of her own solemn promise; and by

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

never

prevailing on her to desist from publishing, with such misrepresentation and shocking perversion, the confidential conversation, which at the earnest request of her friends, and out of compassion to the disordere'd state of her mind, I was induced to permit her to hold with me. In short, Sir, if you are possessed of a christian spirit, or even of humanity; if you have any regard for her, or her cause, you will immediately exert your interest and authority to prevent this unhappy woman from disgracing her own pretensions, and violating the laws of God and man, by thus continuing to add to the irreparable, and inconceivable injuries she has already done to the respectable name, and sacred character of

Sir, yours, &c.

J. P.

P. S. You will excuse my answering any future

letters.

TO THE REVEREND J. POMEROY,

REV. SIR,

BODMIN, CORNWALL.

The Lord hath commanded me, once more, to write unto you from the words of Samuel, the following texts: First Book of Samuel, 15th chapter, beginning at the 22nd verse, to the end, "And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king. And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the com

« PreviousContinue »