The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[75] fisticuffs with the adversary; or of Fleetwood and Vane and Harrison millennium-mad, and making preparations for an earthly reign of King Jesus. It was an age of intense religious excitement. Fanaticism had become epidemic. Cromwell swayed his Parliaments by ‘revelations’ and Scripture phrases in the painted chamber; stout generals and sea-captains exterminated the Irish, and swept Dutch navies from the ocean, with old Jewish war-cries, and hymns of Deborah and Miriam; country justices charged juries in Hebraisms, and cited the laws of Palestine oftener than those of England. Poor Nayler found himself in the very midst of this seething and confused moral maelstrom. He struggled against it for a time, but human nature was weak; he became, to use his own words, ‘bewildered and darkened,’ and the floods went over him.

Leaving London with some of his more zealous followers, not without solemn admonition and rebuke from Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough, who at that period were regarded as the most eminent and gifted of the Society's ministers, he bent his steps towards Exeter. Here, in consequence of the extravagance of his language and that of his disciples, he was arrested and thrown into prison. Several infatuated women surrounded the jail, declaring that ‘Christ was in prison,’ and on being admitted to see him, knelt down and kissed his feet, exclaiming, ‘Thy name shall be no more called James Nayler, but Jesus!’ Let us pity him and them. They, full of grateful and extravagant affection for the man whose voice had called