Page:Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents and Strange Events.djvu/362

 opprest me in the spirit, and I said, 'This is no other than Popery and persecution are intending to come forward amongst true Christians. Oh! England, beware of Popery!'"

Martin now began to write letters to the clergy and other members of the Church, "entreating them, as they valued their souls, to amend their lives, and flee to the blood of sprinkling for mercy and pardon." His conduct seems to have been so improper, so marked by a "zeal not according to knowledge," that he was expelled the Methodist Society; and he complains that his religious friends were afraid to own him—he was left alone in the world; and, to add to his troubles, he lost his employment. He then went to Whitby and worked for a few weeks, but soon returned to Norton, and from thence went to Bishop Auckland, where he obtained employment; and determined once more to attempt exhorting the people in the church. He was, however, taken out by a constable; and then he began that practice which he appears never afterwards to have abandoned, of posting papers on the church doors, as a warning to the clergy and congregation. The following is a copy of one of these singular productions:—

"Oh! hear the word of the Lord, you clergymen, for the mighty sword is expanded over your guilty heads; now shall you come to a complete dissolution; now shall your candlesticks be completely overthrown; now shall your blindness come to the light, and your shame before all the people, for the Lord will not suffer you to deceive the work of His hands any longer. Oh! prepare yourselves to meet your God, you double-hearted sinners; cry aloud for mercy, and now shall my God make bare His arm and conquer the devil, your great master, for the monster of hell shall be completely overthrown, and you and him shall not deceive the nations any longer, for now shall God be worshipped in