1859. _The Cottle Church._--For more than twenty years printed papers have been sent about in the name of Elizabeth Cottle.[195] It is not so remarkable that such papers should be concocted as that they should circulate for such a length of time without attracting public attention. Eighty years ago Mrs. Cottle might have rivalled Lieut. Brothers or Joanna Southcott.[196] Long hence, when the now current volumes of our journals are well-ransacked works of reference, those who look into them will be glad to see this {98} feature of our time: I therefore make a few extracts, faithfully copied as to type. The Italic is from the New Testament; the Roman is the requisite interpretation:
"Robert Cottle '_was numbered_ (5196) _with the transgressors_' at the back of the Church in Norwood Cemetery, May 12, 1858--Isa. liii. 12. The Rev. J. G. Collinson, Minister of St. James's Church, Chapham, the then district church, before All Saints was built, read the funeral service _over the Sepulchre wherein never before man was laid_.
"_Hewn on the stone_, 'at the mouth of the Sepulchre,' is his name,--Robert Cottle, born at Bristol, June 2, 1774; died at Kirkstall Lodge, Clapham Park, May 6, 1858. _And that day_ (May 12, 1858) _was the preparation_ (day and year for 'the PREPARED place for you'--Cottleites---by the widowed mother of the Father's house, at Kirkstall Lodge--John xiv. 2, 3). _And the Sabbath_ (Christmas Day, Dec. 25, 1859) _drew on_ (for the resurrection of the Christian body on 'the third [Protestant Sun]-day'--1 Cor. xv. 35). _Why seek ye the living_ (God of the New Jerusalem--Heb. xii. 22; Rev. iii. 12) _among the dead_ (men): _he_ (the God of Jesus) _is not here_ (in the grave), _but is risen_ (in the person of the Holy Ghost, from the supper of 'the dead in the second death' of Paganism). _Remember how he spake unto you_ (in the church of the Rev. George Clayton,[197] April 14, 1839). _I will not drink henceforth_ (at this last Cottle supper) _of the fruit of this_ (Trinity) _vine, until that day_ (Christmas Day, 1859), _when I_ (Elizabeth Cottle) _drink it new with you_ (Cottleites) _in my Father's kingdom_--John xv. _If this_ (Trinitarian) _cup may not pass away from me_ (Elizabeth Cottle, April 14, 1839), _except I drink it_ ('new with you Cottleites, in my Father's Kingdom'), _thy will be done_--Matt. xxvi. 29, 42, 64. 'Our Father which art (God) in Heaven,' _hallowed be thy name, thy_ (Cottle) _kingdom_ {99} _come, thy will be done in earth, as it is_ (done) _in_ (the new) _Heaven_ (and new earth of the new name of Cottle--Rev. xxi. 1; iii. 12).
"... Queen Elizabeth, from A.D. 1558 to 1566. _And this_ WORD _yet once more_ (by a second Elizabeth--the WORD of his oath) _signifieth_ (at John Scott's baptism of the Holy Ghost) _the removing of those things_ (those Gods and those doctrines) _that are made_ (according to the Creeds and Commandments of men) _that those things_ (in the moral law of God) _which cannot be shaken_ (as a rule of faith and practice) _may remain, wherefore we receiving_ (from Elizabeth) _a kingdom_ (of God,) _which cannot be moved_ (by Satan) _let us have grace_ (in his Grace of Canterbury) _whereby we may serve God acceptably_ (with the acceptable sacrifice of Elizabeth's body and blood of the communion of the Holy Ghost) _with reverence_ (for truth) _and godly fear_ (of the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost) _for our God_ (the Holy Ghost) _is a consuming fire_ (to the nation that will not serve him in the Cottle Church). We cannot defend ourselves against the Almighty, and if He is our defence, no nation can invade us.
"In verse 4 the Church of St. Peter is _in prison between four quaternions of soldiers_--the Holy Alliance of 1815. Rev. vii. i. Elizabeth, _the Angel of the Lord_ Jesus _appears_ to the Jewish and Christian body with _the vision_ of prophecy to the Rev. Geo. Clayton and his clerical brethren, April 8th, 1839. _Rhoda_ was the name of her maid at Putney Terrace who used _to open the door to her Peter_, the Rev. Robert Ashton,[198] the Pastor of 'the little flock' 'of 120 names together, assembled in an upper (school) room' at Putney Chapel, to which little flock she gave the revelation (Acts. i. 13, 15) _of Jesus the same_ King of the Jews _yesterday_ at the prayer meeting, Dec. 31, 1841, _and to-day_, {100} Jan. 1, 1842, _and for ever_. See book of Life, page 24. Matt. xviii. 19, xxi. 13-16. In verse 6 the Italian body of St. Peter _is sleeping_ 'in the second death' _between the two_ Imperial _soldiers_ of France and Austria. The Emperor of France from Jan. 1, to July 11, 1859, causes the Italian _chains of St. Peter to fall off from his_ Imperial _hands_.
"_I say unto thee_, Robert Ashton, _thou art Peter_, a stone, _and upon this rock_, of truth, _will I_ Elizabeth, the angel of Jesus, _build my_ Cottle _Church, and the gates of hell_, the doors of St. Peter, at Rome, shall not prevail against it--Matt. xvi. 18. Rev. iii. 7-12."
This will be enough for the purpose. When any one who pleases can circulate new revelations of this kind, uninterrupted and unattended to, new revelations will cease to be a good investment of excentricity. I take it for granted that the gentlemen whose names are mentioned have nothing to do with the circulars or their doctrines. Any lady who may happen to be intrusted with a revelation may nominate her own pastor, or any other clergyman, one of her apostles; and it is difficult to say to what court the nominees can appeal to get the commission abrogated.
_March 16, 1865._ During the last two years the circulars have continued. It is hinted that funds are low: and two gentlemen who are represented as gone "to Bethlehem asylum in despair" say that Mrs. Cottle "will spend all that she hath, while Her Majesty's Ministers are flourishing on the wages of sin." The following is perhaps one of the most remarkable passages in the whole:
"_Extol and magnify Him_ (Jehovah, the Everlasting God, see the Magnificat and Luke i. 45, 46--68--73--79), _that rideth_ (by rail and steam over land and sea, from his holy habitation at Kirkstall Lodge, Psa. lxxvii. 19, 20), _upon the_ (Cottle) _heavens, as it were_ (Sept. 9, 1864, see pages 21, 170), _upon an_ (exercising, Psa. cxxxi. 1), _horse_-(chair, bought of Mr. John Ward, Leicester-square)." {101}
I have pretty good evidence that there is a clergyman who thinks Mrs. Cottle a very sensible woman.
[_The Cottle Church._ Had I chanced to light upon it at the time of writing, I should certainly have given the following. A printed letter to the _Western Times_, by Mr. Robert Cottle, was accompanied by a manuscript letter from Mrs. Cottle, apparently a circular. The date was Nov^{r}. 1853, and the subject was the procedure against Mr. Maurice[199] at King's College for doubting that God would punish human sins by an existence of torture lasting through years numbered by millions of millions of millions of millions (repeat the word _millions_ without end,) etc. The memory of Mr. Cottle has, I think, a right to the quotation: he seems to have been no participator in the notions of his wife:
"The clergy of the Established Church, taken at the round number of 20,000, may, in their first estate, be likened to 20,000 gold blanks, destined to become sovereigns, in succession,--they are placed between the matrix of the Mint, when, by the pressure of the screw, they receive the impress that fits them to become part of the current coin of the realm. In a way somewhat analogous this great body of the clergy have each passed through the crucibles of Oxford and Cambridge,--have been assayed by the Bishop's chaplain, touching the health of their souls, and the validity of their call by the Divine Spirit, and then the gentle pressure of a prelate's hand upon their heads; and the words--'Receive the Holy Ghost,' have, in a brief space of time, wrought a {102} change in them, much akin to the miracle of transubstantiation--the priests are completed, and they become the current ecclesiastical coin of our country. The whole body of clergy, here spoken of, have undergone the preliminary induction of baptism and confirmation; and all have been duly ordained, _professing_ to hold one faith, and to believe in the selfsame doctrines! In short, to be as identical as the 20,000 sovereigns, if compared one with the other. But mind is not malleable and ductile, like gold; and all the preparations of tests, creeds, and catechisms will not insure uniformity of belief. No stamp of orthodoxy will produce the same impress on the minds of different men. Variety is manifest, and patent, upon everything mental and material. The Almighty has not created, nor man fashioned, two things alike! How futile, then, is the attempt to shape and mould man's apprehension of divine truth by one fallible standard of man's invention! If proof of this be required, an appeal might be made to history and the experience of eighteen hundred years."
This is an argument of force against the reasonableness of expecting tens of thousands of educated readers of the New Testament to find the doctrine above described in it. The lady's argument against the doctrine itself is very striking. Speaking of an outcry on this matter among the Dissenters against one of their body, who was the son of "the White Stone (Rev. ii. 17), or the Roman cement-maker," she says--
"If the doctrine for which they so wickedly fight were true, what would become of the black gentlemen for whose redemption I have been sacrificed from April 8 1839."
There are certainly very curious points about this revelation. There have been many surmises about the final restoration of the infernal spirits, from the earliest ages of Christianity until our own day: a collection of them would be worth making. On reading this in proof, I see a possibility that by "black gentlemen" may be meant the clergy: {103} I suppose my first interpretation must have been suggested by context: I leave the point to the reader's sagacity.]
