AGAPEMONE—AGASSIZ.
they rejected her claims of authority, saying that
the devil was speaking to them by her voice.
The affairs of the A. have several times given rise
to proceedings in the courts of law, on which occa-
sions the public obtained some glimpses into the
internal regulations of the establishment. In 1846,
one of the ladies above mentioned, having become
dissatisfied with the doctrine and rule of life in the
A., was expelled from the society, and put away by
her husband, Mr Thomas, though then about to give
birth to a child. After she had lived four years
with her mother, who had made provision for the
child, Mr Thomas wrote, renouncing her for ever,
and claiming the custody of his son. This was
resisted ; and in the course of the law proceedings
(1850) that took place, much that was offensive
in the conduct of the Agapemonians transpired.
Although the inmates were married couples, it
appeared that they éntertained some religious objec-
tion to the increase of population, as if believing
that the perfection of all things will be the extinc-
tion of the human race. In short, the doctrines or
peculiar notions of this remarkable sect are seemingly
a natural and not unusual consequence of allowing
an excited imagination to overrule the judgment ;
and, hence, Agapemonianism is but a new or revived
form of extreme religious fanaticism.
Mzr Prince’s first establishment was at Weymouth.
The present A., which has existed now (1859) for
about ten years, is a beautiful and spacious building,
most luxuriously fitted up, and containing a mag-
nificent music-hall, with all kinds of melodious
instruments. When summoned thither, the farmer
leaves his flocks, herds, and crops, even in the
midst of harvest, and goes to Charlynch to do the
will of his ‘ Lord’—such is the title by which Mr
Prince’s followers speak of him. At other times, the
yeoman receives at his own dwelling large parties
of the Princeites, and entertains them with lavish
hospitality. For this, it is to be supposed, he has
his reward, since one of Mr Prince’s disciples, upon
being offered assistance towards the recovery of a
large sum which he had lost, replied that the money
‘had been repaid by the Lord—the friend of friends,
who sticketh closer than a brother.’
Letters intended for Mr Prince pass through the
post-office directed to ‘The Lord;’ and his fol-
lowers have been heard to say that he is their
¢ creator.” In 1851, Mr Prince took up a party of
them to London to see the Great Exhibition. He
drove about town and in the parks in a carriage,
constantly attended by out-riders, bareheaded,
because they were in the presence of ¢ the Lord.’
Mr Prince has put forth many pamphlets, some
in the highest degree objectionable ; others, in which
the tenets of the Christian religion are mingled with
his own peculiar doctrines. Christ came to redeem
the soul. Prince affirms that Ais errand is to
redeem the body. One test applied to his disciples,
from which many shrank, was, that they were to
see the eternal punishment of those whom they
best loved, and to rejoice in it as redounding to
their Master's glory. When this was proposed,
several persons of respectability, who had hitherto
gone along with Mr Prince, declined to proceed
further ; others agreed to it cordially. There is
now, it is said, no necessity for prayer ; mourning
for deceased relatives is forbidden; a sort of
millennium is attained, in which no exertion is
demanded-—nothing but joy and thanksgiving.
Pain and grief, sorrow and sickness, have for ever
lost their dominion over the Princeites; yet still,
to the incredulous, it appears that consumption,
rheumatism, and other infirmities of human nature,
do affect them, and that they die, and are buried,
like other men. In one of Mr Prince’s latest pamph-
72
lets, the following words occur, which may serve
to elucidate his somewhat mysterious doctrine:
¢Grod in Jesus Christ has again entered into covenant
with man at the resurrection of mankind, and this
is the first resurrection, and now Brother Prince is
His witness.” ¢This one man, Brother Prince, has
Jesus Christ selected and appointed His witness to
His counsel and purpose to conclude the day of
grace, and to introduce the day of judgment. To
close the dispensation of the Spirit—the Gospel—
and to enter into covenant with flesh.’
In 1859 appeared Brother Prince's Journal, an
Account of the Destruction of the Works of the Dewvil
an the Human Soul by the Lord Jesus Christ through
the Gospel. It was commenced, according to Brother
Prince, twenty-three years ago, and more than nine-
teen years have elapsed since its completion. Its
aim is simply this: to shew the work of grace in the
writer’s soul, from its first struggling manifestations
to that: absolute harmony in which self is utterly
absorbed and swallowed up in God. Brother Prince,
at the close of his journal, deliberately states that
he considers himself perfect, and incapable of fur-
ther improvement. These are his words: ¢ Having
neither wishes nor desires, my will can have no
disposition whatever to move in any one direction
rather than another, but like the finely poised beam
of a well-adjusted balance, it hangs delicately sus-
pended on the divine will, in a holy equilibrium of
inward passiveness.” It was some time after Brother
Prince had reached this Buddhist-like annihilation
of self-consciousness, that he started his singular
establishment at Weymouth.
It would appear that a society, similar in its aims
and character, though not conventual in its form,
existed in England in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It was called the ¢ Family of Love. Its founder is
generally supposed to have been Henry Nicholas, a
native of Miinster, in Westphalia, but who lived a
considerable time in Holland. He held himself to
be greater than Moses or Christ, for the former only
taught men to hope, and the latter to believe, while
he first announced the doctrine of Love. He made
his appearance about 1540. Others, however, are
of opinion that the real father of this ¢ Family’ was
one David George, a fanatical Anabaptist of Delft,
in Holland, who died in 1556, and who imparted his
‘damnable errors’ to Nicholas, an old friend of his.
In the reign of Edward VI., according to Fuller,
Nicholas came over to England, and commenced the
perversion of silly people in a secret way. By 1572,
they had apparently increased in numbers consider-
ably, for in that year one John Rogers published a
work against them, entitled, 7he Displaying of an
Horrible Secte of Grosse and Wicked Heretiques,
namaing themselves the Family of Love, with the Lives
of their Authors, and what Doctrine they teach in
Corners. In 1580, Queen Elizabeth issued a procla-
mation for the hunting out and punishing of the
¢damnable sect.” The Family of Love, ‘or Lust,
rather, as old Fuller has it, tried to insinuate them-
selves into the good graces of King James, by pre-
senting a petition, casting aspersions on the Puritans.
At length, the society expired from continual expo-
sure to the effects of ridicule in prose and verse, as
well as from its own intrinsic worthlessness. Their
doctrines seem to have been a species of pseudo-
spiritual sentimentalism, inevitably resulting in gross
impurity.
A'GARIC and AGA’RICUS. See MUSHROOM.
AGASSIZ, Louis, one of the most distinguished
of modern naturalists, was born at Orbe, in the
Canton de Vaud, in 1807. After passing through the
usual course of elementary learning at Biel and
Lausanne, he prosecuted his studies at Zurich:and
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