In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 2 Varieties ofProphecy: Fortune-Tellers, Visionists, and Millenarians We can think of revolutionary-era prophecy as spanning a continuum ranging from simple folk practices to learned exegesis. On the lower end of the spectrum are the cunning people, folk healers, and "secondsighted " whose ability to see into and manipulate the future was limited in kind and scope. Their prophetic powers rarely reached beyond the personal and the immediate: unexpected deaths, sudden reversals in fortune, warnings from beyond the grave to reform now or pay later. The world of peasants and common laborers was still a world of magic, despite the best efforts of Protestant reformers and Enlightenment popularizers who had worked so tirelessly since the sixteenth century to root out all vestiges of popish superstition and primitive occult beliefs. A robust if untheorized collection of magical and quasi-magical practices continued to arm Anglo-Americans against the exigencies of life, death, and random misfortune well into the nineteenth century.1 Elizabeth Hobson told John Wesley in 1768 that "From my childhood, when any ofour neighbours died ... I used to see them, either just when they died, or a little before; and I was not frightened at all, it was so common."2 Wesley was fascinated by such folk beliefs, which he refused to dismiss as superstitious nonsense; his journals are full of stories of men and women who spoke to angels, dreamed of buried treasure, foretold their own and others' 1 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971); David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days ofJudgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge , Mass., 1990); Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea ofFaith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); John Wigger, Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America (New York, 1998); Erik R. Seeman, Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore, 1999); John L. Brooke," 'The True Spiritual Seed': Sectarian Religion and tlle Persistence of the Occult in EighteentllCentury New England;' in Wonders ofthe Invisible World, J6oo-1900, ed. Peter Benes (Boston, 1995), pp. 107-26. 2 Nehemiah Curnock, ed., Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., standard ed., 8 vols. (London, 1910), 5:267. 58 Chapter 2 deaths, and healed the sick using folk remedies-all recounted without a hint of condescension. Bridget Bostock, an "elderly woman;' healed "blindness , lameness, and many diseases" by "stroking the part chiefly affected, and sometimes applying a little spittle."3 Daniel Car, an apothecary's apprentice, told a strange ghost tale to a curious Wesley, who obviously plied him for details . One night Car heard "strange noises in our house" and saw "a man standing in the middle of the chamber, in light-coloured cloths and a green velvet waistcoat, with a lighted torch in his hand." The apparition told Car, "I am the spirit of Richard Sims, who died here in the year 1702" and pleaded with the young apothecary to warn his niece and nephew that they must "turn to God, for he will die on the 26th of next month, and she will die on the 30th." The ghost even dictated a letter for Car to write to his nephew, "word for word;' and singed a corner of the paper with his burning torch as tangible proof of his visitation.4 Wesley was frankly agnostic about these supernatural appearances, at one point telling two young men who wondered whether the specters who visited them in the night were "good or bad spirits" that he "could not resolve" the question.5 Not all evangelical preachers (from whose diaries and memoirs much of our knowledge of lay religious practice comes) were as willing as Wesley to credit these stories of ghostly visits and occult powers. Yet despite their skepticism they were reluctant to dismiss out-of-hand such evidence, perhaps because they themselves often experienced unaccountable gifts of the spirit. Dreams and visions, many of a prophetic nature, were commonplace occurrences in the lives of most evangelicals. God often communicated with his people through such means, even if it was sometimes difficult to tell the difference between a vision sent by God and mere fancy. Nancy Towle, the most noted female preacher of her day, was "certain that God has not infrequently spoken to me, in dreams, and in visions of the night;' and :most sectarian preachers agreed.6 The messages that God sent by way of dreams were usually intimate ones, intended for the...

Share