1018 
vents, and her followers receive, as 
the dictates of immediate inspiration. 
A herd, however, was ready to de- 
vour this garbage as the bread of 
life. Credulity and Vanity are foul 
feeders. 
The clergy in her own neighbour- 
hood were invited by her, by pri- 
vate letters, to examine her claims, 
but they treated her.invitation with 
contempt: the bishop also did not 
choose to interfere ;—of what avail, 
indeed, would it have been to have 
examined her, when they had no 
power to silence her blaspheimies ! 
She found believers at a distance. 
Seven men came from different parts 
of the country to examine—that is 
—to believe in her ; these were her 
seven stars; and when at another 
time seven more arrived upon the 
same wise errand, she observed, in 
allusion to one of those vulgar say- 
ings from which-all her allusions are 
drawn, that her seven stars were 
come to fourteen. Among these 
early believers were three clergy- 
men, one of them a man of fashion, 
fortune, and noble family. It is 
not unlikely that the woman at firet 
suspected the state of her own in- 
tellects : her letters appear to indi- 
cate this; they express a humble 
submission to wiser judgments than 
her own; and could she have breathed 
the first thoughts of delusion into 
the ear of some pious confessor, it 
is more than probable that she would 
have soon acknowledged her error 
at his feet, and the phrensy which 
has now infected thousands would 
have been cut off on its first appear- 
ance. But when she found that 
persons into whose society nothing 
else could have elevated her, lis. 
tened to her with reverence, be- 
lieved all her ravings, and supplied 
her with means and money to spread 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 
1806. 
them abroad, it is not to be won. 
dered atif she went on more boldly 5 | 
—the gainfulness of the trade soon 
silencing all doubts of the truth of 
her inspiration, ’ 
Some of her foremost adherents 
were veterans in credulity ; they had 
been initiated in the mysteries of 
animal magnetism, had received spi- | 
ritual circumcision from Srothers, 
and were thus doubly qualified for 
the part they were toact in this new 
drama of delusion. ‘To accommo- 
date them, Joanna confirmed the - 
authenticity of this Jast famatic’s 
mission, and acknowledged him as 
King of the Hebrews,—but she 
dropt his whole mythology. Her 
heresy in its main part is not new. 
The opinion that redemption ex- 
tended to men only and not to wo- 
men, had been held by a Norman 
in the sixteenth century, as well as 
by the fair English heretic already 
mentioned. ‘Chis man, in a book 
called Virgo Veneta, maintained that 
a female Redeemer was necessary 
for the daughters of Eve, and an- 
nounced an old woman of Venice of 
his acquaintance as the Saviour of 
her sex. Bordonius, a century ago, 
broached even a worse heresy. In 
a work upon miracles, printed at 
Parma, he taught that women did 
not participate in the atonement, 
because they were of a different spe- 
cies from man, and were incapable 
of eternal life. Joanna and her fol- 
lowers are too ignorant to be ac- 
quainted with these her prototypes 
in blasphemy, and the whole merit 
of originality in her system must be 
allowed her, as indeed she has ex- 
ceeded her forerunners in the au- 
dacity of her pretensions. She 
boldly asserts that she is the Woman 
in the Revelations, who has the 
moon under feet, and on her head 
a crown 
