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This text has been proofread but is not guaranteed to be free from errors. Corrections to the original text have been left in place.
Title: The Revelation of Jesus Christ by Anne Wentworth,
	   an electronic edition. Edited with an introduction by Vickie Taft
Author: Wentworth, Anne
Publisher: 
Place published: 
Date: 1679
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Taft, Vickie. Preface to The Revelation of Jesus Christ. by Anne Wentworth.I edited The Revelation of Jesus Christ with the goal of bringing the prophetic writings and activities of Anne Wentworth to the attention of literary, historical, theological, and feminist scholars.  Though scholars of many disciplines have recently begun to analyze all facets of the seventeenth-century prophetic outpouring in England, few of them discuss Wentworth directly.  Those critics who do mention Wentworth's writings (such as Charlotte Otten in English Women's Voices, 1540-1700, Elaine Hobby in Virtue of Necessity:  English Women's Writing 1646-1688, and Dorothy P. Ludlow in "Shaking Patriarchy's Foundations:  Sectarian Women in England, 1641-1700") predominantly discuss her text A Vindication in order to illustrate the abuse women prophets often suffered at the hands of their husbands.  To encourage scholars to conduct more wide-ranging and in depth analyses of Wentworth's prophetic activities and writings, I chose to edit The Revelation which, unlike her tracts A Vindication and A true Account, is primarily prophetic rather than simply vindicatory.   Because Wentworth is virtually unknown even among the scholarly community and because her writings contain many autobiographical elements, I have provided in the introduction to this edition as much biographical material on Wentworth as is currently available.  Also in the introduction, I have attempted to situate Wentworth's writings within seventeenth-century prophetic discourses, especially those discourses employed by women.  Finally, I have offered my own stylistic analysis of the text's structure, imagery, and themes.  I hope that my analysis of Anne Wentworth's The Revelation of Jesus Christ will be followed by many more, and that the voice of this seventeenth-century prophet will be recovered. 
  Anne Wentworth's Life and WorksThe only biographical material thus far available concerning Anne Wentworth is contained in her own writings, especially within her two vindicatory, autobiographical tracts entitled A true Account of Anne Wentworths Being cruelly, unjustly, and unchristianly dealt with by some of those people called Anabaptists...  (1676) and A Vindication of Anne Wentworth...(1677), and within several of her letters collected in the Calendar of State Papers Domestic.  In these texts, Wentworth focuses on the events of her prophetic life, which begins at the age of forty, and relates little about her prior life.  For instance, she never mentions her childhood, her maiden name, her husband's occupation, or her social status.    Nor does she narrate any particular events which occurred in her life before her reception of a prophetic voice.  However, Wentworth does not leave readers without the means to outline the key events of her earlier life.  For instance, in the course of discussing her prophetic life, Wentworth indirectly provides several clues about her birth date, marriage date, and the date she gave birth to her daughter.  In A true Account , Wentworth says that she was forty-years-old at the time God first visited her in 1670, which would indicate that she was born in approximately 1630 (A true Account 16, C1 verso).  In this same tract, two of Wentworth's statements indicate that she married Mr. Wentworth either in 1652 or in 1653:  first, she says that she was married for 18 years at the time of God's visitation in 1670, which suggests that she married her husband in 1652 (A true Account, 9-10, B2 recto & verso); second, she says that she has been married for twenty-three years at the time of the publication of the tract in 1676, which suggests that she married him in 1653 (A true Account, 7, B1 recto).  Finally, Wentworth indirectly suggests that she gave birth sometime after the mid-1660s  by referring to her daughter as a "child"  in a letter dated 1677 (CSPD 435).  She makes no mention of having given birth to other children in any of her extant writings.    Though Wentworth generally only gives sparing and indirect information about her pre-prophetic life in her texts, she provides a detailed description of her relationship with her husband during these earlier years.  Specifically, in A true Account, she describes her husband as a tyrant to whom she constantly deferred and her marriage as an 18-year-long punishment which God inflicted upon her:I had spent out all my natural strength of body in obedience to satisfy the unreasonable will of my earthly Husband, and laid my body as the ground, and as the street for him to go over for 18 years together, and keep silent, for thou O Lord did'st it, and afflicted me less than I deserved, and now the Lord sees my Husband hath as much need of this as I had of his being so great a scourge and lash to me (A true Account, 8, B1 verso).By the end of this 18-year-long "scourge," presumably meted out by God because of her lack of true faith in Him (A true Account 14, B4 verso), she lay at the point of death, suffering from acute sorrow and depression:...after 18 years I had been my Husbands wife, and was consumed to skin and bone, a forlorn sad spectacle to be seen, unlike a woman; for my days had been spent with sighing, and my years with crying, for day and night the hand of the Lord was heavy upon me...and lay at the point of death (A true Account 9, B2 recto).At this point, the Lord came and "restored" her, filled her with pure faith in Him, and chose her to be his prophet (A true Account 9, B2 recto).  Wentworth, then, describes her marriage prior to her conversion and the acquisition of her prophetic powers as nearly fatal.     As aforementioned, Wentworth dates her healing and her reception of a prophetic voice as occurring on January 3, 1670 (A true Account 10, B2 verso).  However, she did not publish her first tract of vindicatory, prophetic writing until 1676.  Wentworth explains that the cause of this delay was her need to practice her writing skills:  "And he [Christ] afterwards revealed to me, that it must be seven years before I could perfect that writing, and the Lord would bring forth his end in all this" (A Vindication 12, B2 verso-brackets added).  Having learned the craft of writing six or seven years after her healing, Wentworth began to release her work for publication.  In 1676 and 1677, A true Account and A Vindication of Anne Wentworth were published respectively; in both of these tracts, she tries to justify her prophetic voice as genuine, narrates the persecution inflicted upon her because of her prophetic activity, and predicts the imminent coming of the Apocalypse.  Her tract entitled England's spiritual pill may have appeared in 1678, but its publication date is uncertain, and, because copies of it are only located at the University of Edinburgh, this critic has not yet been able to determine its contents.   In 1679, The Revelation of Jesus Christ was published, a text in which Wentworth records the actual words Christ supposedly spoke to her during the course of the years 1677 to 1679.  Wentworth's failure to publish from 1670 to 1676, however, did not cause her prophetic activity to go unnoticed during these years.  Wentworth claims that her husband and his fellow Anabaptist brethren began to persecute her at the time of her healing and only intensified their abusive behavior towards her as the years passed.  Moreover, Wentworth, who was once an Anabaptist, probably exacerbated the Anabaptists' animosity towards her by leaving their Church sometime after receiving her prophetic voice (The Revelation 19).   The first instance of persecution by the Anabaptists which Wentworth narrates occurred on February 13, 1673, when her husband brought three other Anabaptists home to intimidate her into ceasing to prophesy (A true Account 16, C1 verso & 17, C2 recto).  At some point thereafter, presumably because the Anabaptists' threats were ineffective, two of her husband's brethren named Thomas Hicks and William Dix drew up a "bill of charge" against her in which they accused Wentworth of "misbehaviour in life and conversation" and "neglect of duty to their brother, in not obeying him" (A true Account, 16, C1 verso).  Though Wentworth does not specifically note the consequences of these charges, they may have contributed to her being declared a "Heathen" and a "Publican" by the Anabaptist Church (A Vindication 1, A1 recto).     The height of Wentworth's persecution occurred in 1677 and corresponded with the height of her publicity as a prophet.  Besides having published A true Account in 1676, Wentworth wrote letters in July 1677 to King Charles II and to the Lord Mayor of London informing them of the coming of the Apocalypse before New Year's Day, 1678 (CSPD 1677, 279-80).  Wentworth's relation of her prophecies to such highly public, powerful figures may have been the event that caused her husband to engage three of Wentworth's cousins to remove her forcibly from her house in Midsummer 1677 (The Revelation 26).  Letters written from October to December 1677 by Thomas Barnes, who was probably an informant for the King, to an unknown addressee in the government suggest that Wentworth's prophecies spread throughout London at least throughout the Fall of 1677, but may have suffered a decline in popularity by December of that year.  In a letter dated October 21, 1677, Barnes writes, "The predictions of Mrs. A. W[entworth] are to be heard next week by some in town.  Several papers are dispersed about it, which, as soon as I can get, I may send.  There is much talk of it" (CSPD 1677, 411).  In a letter dated November 30, 1677, Barnes indicates that former supporters of Wentworth were becoming skeptical of her apocalyptic predictions:  "Our friend Mrs. A. Wen[tworth1/4s] friends begin to decline her predictions and her too; because she cannot or will not be positive when and what the great things she wrote about to the King will be.  Some considerable and otherwise ingenious persons were much affected with it at the first" (CSPD 1677, 478).  Nevertheless, Barnes indicates that Wentworth's prophecies were still being taken seriously by at least some of the London populous when he says in a letter dated December 26, 1677, "Some printed papers are out about Anne Wentworth's predictions and more to come.  If you please to have any of them, I can send them.  But 300 of the first are printed" (CSPD 1677, 529).       As Wentworth's prophecies were spreading throughout London in the Fall of 1677, her husband's wrath seems to have been growing.  In a letter dated October 1677 and addressed to "dear Christian friends," Wentworth claims that mortal fear of her husband and her wish to write a vindication of her prophetic activities had driven her into hiding with her daughter:  I shall be hid no longer than I have written so much as will be sufficient to give full proof that God is with me and in me while the enemy lays a horse load and a cart load of oppression on me...I keep my child with me, as is her duty to stay with her persecuted mother, seeing her father so cruel to persecute her mother for conscience sake and put me to fly for my life (CSPD 1677, 435).Besides suffering possible physical and definite emotional abuse by her husband in the latter half of 1677, Wentworth indicates in the same letter that she also suffered the loss of "two books" which she had written during "six years' labour" and which had been seized by her "enemies" (CSPD 1677, 434-35).  These "enemies" included her husband to whom Wentworth's friends petitioned in October 1677 for a return of her writings; specifically, her friends requested that the following items be returned:1.  A book with a white parchment cover.  The Epistle to the Lady Tyddle.  The title, A Mother's Legacy to her Daughter, dated 22 Sept., 1677.
               2.  A little book with a painted red cover having 8 or 9 titles with a prayer of faith to show my wrestling with God till I prevailed.3.  A paper of verses dated 22 Sept. (CSPD 1677, 436).Evidence suggests that these writings were destroyed.  As her October 1677 letter indicates, while in hiding Wentworth was writing a vindication of her prophetic activities.  In her 1677 tract entitled A Vindication, Wentworth says that she would have published God's word earlier "had not [her] Enemies hindred, by seizing and destroying [her] writings" (A Vindication 13, B2 verso-brackets added).  Presumably, then, Wentworth wrote A Vindication after her October 1677 letter and after discovering the fate of her writings.  No evidence exists that suggests the length of Wentworth's period of actual hiding.  However, the author of the conclusion to The Revelation claims that Wentworth was finally able to return to her house in Midsummer 1679, which indicates that she had ceased to fear her husband's wrath by then (The Revelation 26).  Wentworth's return, though, did not signal a reconciliation with her husband; as she indicates in The Revelation:  "...he [her husband] takes no care of me, nor once looks after me these almost two years" (TheRevelation 25).   The author of the conclusion to The Revelation  claims that the Lord, rather than her husband, provided for Wentworth:And though her husband would let her have no Houshold-stuff, Bedding, and the like; yet he, the Lord, would provide her with all suitable conveniencies, and Money too for her maintenance and House-Rent, by such as she never saw before (The Revelation 26).  Other than Wentworth's readmission to her house in 1679, little can be discerned about the events of her life after 1677.  Her name no longer appears in any letters in the Calendar of State Papers Domestic.  Most of the autobiographical references she makes in her 1679 tract The Revelation  concern the events of 1677.  One can only speculate that, when Wentworth's prophecy that the Apocalypse would arrive before New Year's Day, 1678, failed to be fulfilled, her popularity as a prophet declined.  As Barnes' November 30, 1677, letter indicates, her supporters were becoming skeptical of her prophetic powers even before the New Year arrived and it became obvious that her prediction was erroneous.  However, it seems as though Wentworth maintained at least some support for her prophetic activities until at least 1679.  Someone, for instance, had to finance Wentworth's domestic costs after her husband ceased to support her in 1677.  Someone, who is named only as a "Friend in love to Souls" on the title page, also financed the printing of The Revelation in 1679.  No trace of Wentworth or her prophetic activities after 1679 has been uncovered, however.  Though the author to the concluding material of The Revelation says that a larger version of this tract "is making ready to be published," there is no indication that it ever was.  Whether Wentworth's voice fell silent after 1679 because of her lack of support or whether she died before she could finish her larger version of The Revelation is unknown.The Seventeenth-Century Outpouring of Apocalyptic Prophecy.  [Relating to Anne Wentworth's The Revelation of Jesus Christ. Apocalyptic prophecies such as those of Anne Wentworth were not anomalous in seventeenth-century England.  In fact, when Wentworth predicted the date of the arrival of the Apocalypse, she participated in a tradition that stretched back at least into the 1300s of men and women who tried to calculate or prophesy the arrival of Doomsday (Thomas 141).  According to Keith Thomas in Religion and the Decline of Magic, the Reformation only heightened interest in predicting the Apocalypse, because the new availability of Scripture made the Biblical books of Daniel and Revelation accessible to the layperson who then interpreted the apocalyptic predictions contained therein literally; medieval schoolmen, on the other hand, had often read them allegorically (Thomas 141). Throughout the reign of Elizabeth, the belief that the Apocalypse's arrival was imminent became a popular one and was supported by the testimony of many prophets (Thomas 141).  It was not until the Civil War, however, that the belief in the imminent arrival of the Apocalypse reached its zenith in popularity.  Christopher Hill notes in The World Turned Upside Down that the social turbulence of this period contributed to the spread of apocalyptic thought:  "In the highly-charged atmosphere of the 1640s, many people expected it [the Apocalypse] in the near future" (Hill 95-brackets added).  A belief not only in the coming of the Apocalypse but in the coming of the 1000-year reign of Christ on earth (the millennium) as predicted in Revelation 20:4 became particularly popular among the lower classes and the radical Parliamentarians:  It is difficult to exaggerate the extent and strength of millenarian expectations among ordinary people in the 1640s and early 50s...To many men the execution of Charles I in 1649 seemed to make sense only as clearing the way for King Jesus (Hill 96).This millenarian anticipation of Christ supplanting earthly government with His own was heightened by a large number of prophets who predicted both the date of Christ's Second Coming and the nature of His millennial rule (Capp 42-43).     But while millenarian prophecy dominated in the 1640s and 1650s, apocalyptic prophecy in general dwindled after the 1660s, according to Keith Thomas:The spate of prophecy was sharply checked by the Restoration, the return of the Anglican Church, and the persecution of the Dissenting sects.  The governing classes were determined to prevent any recurrence of the social anarchy of the Interregnum years and most of the sectarians themselves were anxious to demonstrate their law-abiding character.  There were still some visionaries who claimed direct revelations from God or who uttered prophecies of imminent doom, but after the 1660s they became less common (Thomas 144).Thomas notes that Anne Wentworth was one of these uncommon, post-1660 utterers of doom (Thomas note 2, 144).  It is possible that Wentworth's apocalyptic fervor was the result of her retention of the millenarian sentiment that permeated the culture in the 1640s and 50s; in fact, millennial tracts did not entirely disappear until 1746 (Thomas 145).  However, Wentworth never clearly posits herself as a millenarian in her writings.   She does perhaps allude to the millennium when she says in The Revelation, "But Jesus hath purchased Redemption for all / His own Elect; and reign with him he shall" (The Revelation 17, C3 recto).  But unlike millenarians who often dwell on the future events of Christ's one-thousand-year reign on earth, Wentworth does not describe Christ's future kingdom as lasting for one-thousand years or as being an earthly rather than a heavenly reign.  Wentworth's apocalyptic beliefs and prophetic activity, then, may not have had close historical precedents; rather, her prophesying may have hearkened back to the prophetic activity of previous centuries in which the coming of the Apocalypse alone was predicted, not the coming of the millennium.     The lateness of Wentworth's advent as a prophet in the seventeenth-century may account for some of the hostile reaction she received.  Wentworth was still prophesying the coming of the Apocalypse as late as 1679, by which time prophecy had become largely unpopular, according to Thomas:In the later seventeenth century it became orthodox to declare that the gift of prophecy had ceased; God had sent all the revelation that was needed and the books of Daniel and Revelation were to be understood metaphorically (Thomas 145).Wentworth, then, may have appeared on the prophetic scene thirty years too late to become truly popular.  As aforementioned, her prophecies only seemed to have received serious attention during the Fall of 1677, and evoked a quite hostile reaction from both her husband and his fellow Anabaptists.  The unpopularity of Wentworth's prophetic activity, however, may have had less to do with its historical belatedness than with Wentworth's gender. 
 The (Un)Popularity of Seventeenth-Century Women Prophets.  [Relating to Anne Wentworth's The Revelation of Jesus Christ.Though women prophets were common in seventeenth-century England,  their prophetic activities were often scorned because they challenged traditional gender hierarchies.  As Christine Berg and Philippa Berry note in "'Spiritual Whoredom':  An Essay on Female Prophets in the Seventeenth Century," women who prophesied, especially for the public, subverted the idea that men alone should control the logos: ...these women and their prophetic activity represented a significant site of resistance in the revolutionary period - resistance against the acceptance of sexual difference and all that implied in the seventeenth century, this refusal of gender hinged upon the vital contemporary question of the possession of meaning or the logos.  This challenge had of course been posed before, by various women writers and poets, but the threat which it represented became much more acute when the contest was over not only the actual word of God but over the public (Berg & Berry 51-52).  Women prophets, then, doubly encroached on the patriarchal control of language by first positing themselves as meaning-bearers and then disseminating this meaning among the public.  The subversiveness of this encroachment was heightened by the fact that women's speech in general, because it was associated with that of Eve, the witch, and the harlot, was considered to be dangerous to those who listened to it.  The voice of the woman was thought to be damning, not divine, in the seventeenth-century (Mack 30-33).     According to Phyllis Mack in Visionary Women:  Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England, women prophets could only succeed in prophesying publicly if their activities were authorized and supervised by men:Clearly women were dependent on men for patronage once they began to prophesy in public.  Indeed, no woman presuming to address a mixed audience on political issues could have survived without male allies, either as editors, apologists, ministers, or, in a very few cases, lovers.  Excepting Lady Eleanor [Davis], every important prophet belonged to a congregation that was supervised by male ministers, and most (again excepting Lady Eleanor) were dependent on male editors who bracketed their texts by salutations that affirmed their piety and respectability, inserted supporting biblical citations, and added substantive arguments (Mack 96-97-brackets added).  Wentworth, who disseminated her apocalyptic prophecies publicly by both publishing them and sending them to the King and the Lord Mayor of London, had no significant male patronage.  Male members of the Anabaptist Church persecuted her rather than supported her as a prophet.  Her texts were neither edited nor affirmed by men,   though it is possible that men financed their publication.   Wentworth's husband, moreover, proved to be the greatest hindrance of all to her prophetic career.  Besides abusing and withdrawing financial support from her, he literally seized and probably destroyed a significant amount of her writing.  Devoid of significant male support, Wentworth never became more than a minor Renaissance prophet. Wentworth's Goal in The RevelationBy employing validatory discourses like "holy violence" and "personal weakness,"Wentworth hoped to convince her audience of the validity of her apocalyptic prophesying.  However, the question remains as to why she wanted her audience to believe that the Second Coming was imminent.  Did she hope to save "Babylon" from God's destructive wrath by convincing its sinners to repent?  Did she hope to hasten Christ's Second Coming by encouraging His followers to engage in some sort of militant action, as Fifth Monarchist prophets did?  Or, did she write The Revelation  simply to vindicate her prophetic activities and to vilify her persecutors?  Clearly, The Revelation is vindicatory and vilificatory rather than militant or reformative.  Wentworth never calls for any specific social action therein or suggests that the Apocalypse can either be halted or hastened.     Unlike Wentworth, seventeenth-century male prophets usually called for some sort of specific action in their writings (Matchinske 357-58).  According to Megan Matchinske in "Holy Hatred:  Formations of the Gendered Subject in English Apocalyptic Writing, 1625-51," this action was often targeted against "highly visible opponents" such as the Pope, King, or Anglican Church (Matchinske 363).  Using the example of Lady Eleanor Davies, Matchinske suggests that there may have been gender-specific reasons why a seventeenth-century woman prophet would have inundated her text with vindicatory statements about herself and vilificatory statements about her personal enemies to the exclusion of any specific social calls for action:Her [Davies'] texts demand justification at a personal level, in the righteousness of her own highly visible assumption of authority, and they disallow concerted action, this time at a social level.  As a woman traditionally denied an active role in politics, religion, and economy, Davies writes prophecies that offer her readers two choices--belief or disbelief in her texts--and no legitimate forum for acting upon either.  In affirming her status as an individual, she simultaneously undercuts the likelihood of a unified social response from her audience (Matchinske 361-brackets added).In other words, according to Matchinske, Lady Eleanor Davies felt that she had to spend so much time justifying herself personally as a prophet that she never formulated any specific social program in her prophetic texts as did many of her male counterparts.  Like Davies, Wentworth never moves beyond the language of personal vindication to engage in social discourse in The Revelation.  In fact, Wentworth suggests that all that true Christians can do is await the Apocalypse when she narrates Christ saying, "And all those, that long to see this thing done, / Must patiently wait till I the Lord do come" (The Revelation 10, B3 verso).Editorial Practice for Anne Wentworth's The Revelation of Jesus Christ.Because of the Biblical nature of much of Wentworth's language, the notes to this text consist primarily of Scriptural citations.  Since Wentworth often paraphrases Scripture and rarely quotes it directly, I have chosen to include relevant Biblical passages along with their citations in the footnotes.   To indicate the specific similarities between Scriptural language and Wentworth's language, I have boldfaced the words in the Biblical passages that appear in Wentworth's text.  Moreover, I have often included explanations of Wentworth's appropriation of Biblical language.  Because Wentworth herself lists passages from the King James Version of the Bible on page A1 verso of her text, and because her language so often parallels that of this version, I have quoted the King James Bible throughout the footnotes.     Besides citing and explaining Wentworth's Biblical allusions, I have also defined several obsolete word usages in the footnotes.  Finally, in an attempt to note similarities of imagery and phraseology among Wentworth's texts, I have also included several relevant textual references to Wentworth's A true Account and A Vindication.     I derived this text from a copy of The Revelation of Jesus Christ located in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England.  Besides changing the long "s" to a regular "s,"  I have maintained all of the original punctuation and spelling.Textual analysis of "The Revelation of Jesus Christ"by Anne WentworthGeneral AnalysisAny stylistic examination of "The Revelation of Jesus Christ" must begin with a discussion of how one can analyze prophetic writing that the author posits as the Word of God and not her own.  To attribute authorial strategy to Wentworth may appear to imply that she fraudulently assigns God's authority to her text.  As is discussed later in this textual analysis, Wentworth may, indeed, employ a validatory strategy in" The Revelation when she claims that she does not contribute to the text's composition.  However, one cannot doubt the sincerity of Wentworth's belief that God inspired her words, even if she did not really believe that He directly authored her texts.  In her earlier tract "A Vindication, she admits that her writing ability is the result of seven years' practice, but insists that God is still ultimately responsible for both her mastery of writing and for her texts' prophetic content:And he [God] afterwards revealed to me, (what I did not then know) that my oppressions and deliverance had a Publick Ministry and meaning wrapt up in them, that it must be seven years before I could perfect that writing, and the Lord would bring forth his end in all this ("A"Vindication 12, B2 verso-original italics, brackets added).It is possible, then, to structurally analyze "The Revelation" and to attribute authorial strategy to Wentworth without questioning the sincerity of her belief that she was delivering the word of God in her writings even if she was not delivering them by rote.     Besides being potentially complicated by Wentworth's assertion that this text was authored by God, a textual analysis of "The Revelation"  is also complicated by the fact that, structurally and formally, it does not readily fall into any particular genre.  It lacks a plot structure and consists of a seemingly random mixture of unusual prose and poetic forms.  Thematically, however, it is clearly apocalyptic.  Throughout the text, Wentworth, as Christ's amanuensis, relates His prophecy that the Apocalypse is coming when all sinners, especially Wentworth's own persecutors, will be punished.  Wentworth, moreover, engages in several modes of discourse employed by other seventeenth-century prophetic writers.  Specifically, she uses the discourse of "holy violence" adopted by both men and women prophetic writers, and a discourse of "holy weakness" adopted by women prophetic writers in particular.  Though "The Revelation" may appear singular to the modern reader, it shares many structural and authorial features with other apocalyptic and prophetic writings from the same era, especially those written by women, and is thus generically classifiable as seventeenth-century apocalyptic writing.Structure      Structurally, Wentworth's "The Revelation  of Jesus Christ"  consists of seventeen separate "revelations," which are diary-like entries in which she narrates Christ's different appearances and the prophetic, usually versified words He speaks to her about the imminent arrival of the Apocalypse.  "The Revelation" lacks a plot structure in any traditional sense because no particular events, in fact, occur.  Nor is there any sense of emotional or attitudinal progression to replace plot progression; both Christ and Wentworth appear equally denunciatory of sinners and admonitory about the coming of the Apocalypse in every revelation.   Though "The Revelation" may lack plot in a traditional sense, the dates of the entries indicate that the revelations may, in fact, have some correspondence with events in Wentworth's personal life.  The dates of the entries, spanning September 6, 1677, to August 18, 1679, superficially appear to be erratic, with twelve out of the seventeen falling in the small time frame between March and August 1679.  However, the anonymous author of the concluding material to "The Revelation"  supplies information as to a rationale for the dates and their relationship to the events of Wentworth's life when he/she concludes the text by relating Wentworth's eviction from her house in Midsummer 1677, God's prophecy to Wentworth that she would be readmitted to it by Midsummer 1679, and her actual readmission to the house by the time of "The Revelation"'s publication after August 1679 ("The Revelation" 22, D1 verso).  Though the anonymous author does not causally link the appearance of the revelations with Wentworth's period of eviction, he does implicitly say as much by concluding the text in this vein.  The dates of the revelations do indeed correspond with Wentworth's period of eviction, as well as with her period of hiding from her husband after he threatened her and seized her writings.  Moreover, the majority of these "revelations" occur during the climactic Summer of 1679 when she was expecting a vindicatory readmission to her home as Christ foretold.  Though the anonymous author may want the reader to recognize the relationship between Wentworth's personal trauma and the appearance of the revelations as the consequent expression of Christ's anger over the abuse of His messenger, the more skeptical reader may simply read it as the consequent expression of Wentworth's personal distress.  Whichever way one interprets this correspondence, it is clear that, though" The Revelation may lack plot in any traditional sense, its structure certainly bears some relationship to the events of Wentworth's life.Literary Form If the lack of plot makes "The Revelation" difficult to classify generically, so does its mixture of prose and poetic forms.  Typically, each revelation begins with a short prose introduction, perhaps only a single sentence or two in length, in which Wentworth posits the poem following it as the received word of Christ.  However," The Revelation cannot adequately be described as a long prophetic poem (in which God/Christ is the speaking subject) interspersed with brief prose remarks by the amanuensis.  First of all, four of Wentworth's revelations  (I, XI, XII, and XVI) are completely written in prose and contain both herself and Christ as speaking subjects.  Secondly, within the revelations that do consist of a prose introduction followed by verse, Wentworth's voice is not limited to expression within the prose and Christ's voice is not limited to expression within the poetry.   For example, in many of the revelations, Wentworth relates Christ's admonitory, Scripturally imitative words to her in the introduction, prior to their expression in the poetry.  Moreover, Wentworth's voice often slips into the verses, resulting in much confusion over the identity of the poem's speaker.   For example, in "Revelation VIII,"  she says in her prose introduction, "And then the Lord spake thus in verses," as though she were going to abandon her own subjectivity for God's in the following poem.  She proceeds, however, to posit herself as the speaking subject of the verses:  "Full eighteen years in sorrow did I lye, / Then the Lord Jesus came to hear my cry."  Several lines later, Christ becomes the speaking subject, and Wentworth becomes the object of his speech:  "They do know how I the Lord did make thee whole, / But they see not the spirit of God in thee burn like a Coal."  Though the slipping identity of speakers in "The Revelation"  may simply appear to be sloppy literary craftsmanship on the part of Wentworth, it may also stem from a cultural dilemma that women prophets like Wentworth faced.  Like Fifth Monarchist prophet Anna Trapnel, Wentworth may have consciously posited herself as both the speaker and as the object of speech in her prophetic writings to represent the "problematic position of women in language" (Purkiss 142).  According to Diane Purkiss in her article, "Producing the voice, consuming the body:  Women prophets of the seventeenth century,"  Anna Trapnel in her prophetic writings often awards herself full subjectivity as the first-person speaker "I" in one part of a sentence, and then revokes it in the next part by referring to herself as the third-person object "her," thereby "becoming the object and not the subject of her own speaking" (Purkiss 142).   Because Trapnel often quickly exchanges her subject position for an object position in her writing, Purkiss says that Trapnel "is using the conventions of prophecy to represent th[e] marginal position" of women in language, a position in which women are forced to relinquish their own speaking abilities in order to be the silent objects of male expression (Purkiss 142).  Though Wentworth never exchanges her position of subjectivity for one of objectivity within single sentences, she does do so within single poems.  In the aforementioned "Revelation VIII," for example, she begins the poem by speaking about herself, but then quickly relinquishes the subject position to God and becomes the object of His discourse.  Like Anna Trapnel, Wentworth may have represented the seventeenth-century woman's "fractured speaking voice" (Purkiss 142) when she posited herself as the speaker of the poems one moment, only to posit herself as the object of God's speech the next.  Even if Trapnel and Wentworth did not actively try to represent this speaking voice, their unconscious use of it in and of itself evidences its existence as a woman's mode of speech within seventeenth-century culture.  "Fractures" in the subjectivity of women's prophetic texts, therefore, should be understood as an authorial strategy, not as sloppy literary craftsmanship.     Whereas the cultural "fracturing" of Wentworth's speaking voice may account for the slipping identity of the speakers in "The Revelation", there is no particular cultural or gender-specific reason why Wentworth's poetic lines in this text possess little formal regularity other than falling into couplets ending in masculine rhymes.   In fact, women prophet-poets in the seventeenth-century, including Wentworth herself, wrote both loose and highly-wrought poetic lines.   According to Nigel Smith in his book "Perfection Proclaimed:  Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640-1660, "the simplicity, the crudeness, the lack of metre, and the obvious rhymes" characterize the verse of Baptist prophet Katherine Sutton in her tract "A Christian Womans Experiences of the glorious working of Gods free grace.  Smith also notes, however, that the Baptist prophet Susanna Bateman wrote her prophetic tract" I matter not how I appear to Man in iambic pentameter (Smith 332-note 55).  Anna Trapnel also wrote highly-wrought poetry; for instance, she composed her prophetic tract" A lively voice for the King of Saints and Nations, etc.; in alternating lines of iambic trimeter and iambic tetrameter.  Like Trapnel, Wentworth herself employed this highly regular metrical form in the poetic addendum to "A Vindication .  There is no obvious reason, cultural or otherwise, why Wentworth composed the poetry of" The Revelation with little formal regularity.Apocalyptic Imagery and Themes and the Discourse of "Holy Violence"     Though "The Revelation"  possesses no traditional plot structure and little metrical regularity, its imagery and themes are consistently apocalyptic.  Like many other sixteenth and seventeenth-century apocalyptic writers, Wentworth derives much of this imagery from the Biblical "Book of Revelation.  In Wentworth's text, Christ assigns the name "Babylon" to England, thereby comparing it to the corrupt kingdom that suffers God's destructive wrath during the Apocalypse.  Just like God in the Biblical Revelation, Christ in Wentworth's text also personifies Babylon as a "whore" who spreads her contamination throughout the land.  Also as in its Biblical analogue, the exact date of the arrival of the Apocalypse in "The Revelation" remains ambiguous, though there is a repeated emphasis on its imminence.     Besides borrowing its imagery, Wentworth also appropriates "The Book of Revelation's punitive language for her own "Revelation.  For example, in both texts, the Lord says He will send plagues, burn the land, command the angels to slay the faithless people, and condemn sinners to the bottomless pit.  Wentworth also borrows the metaphors and language of violence from elsewhere in the" Bible to describe the wrath of God and Christ upon Babylon and its inhabitants.  For instance, in "The Revelation" Wentworth alludes to Christ's admonitory parable of the barren fig tree ("Luke 13:10-17) when she narrates Him saying that He will destroy sinners who are spiritually barren and who therefore merely "cumber the ground" ("The Revelation" 15, C2 recto); she alludes several times to Christ's graphic assertion in "Matthew 18:6 that it would be better for sinners to drown themselves than to incur His wrath ("The Revelation" 13, C1 recto & 15, C2 recto); moreover, she often appropriates descriptive phrases of God's wrath from the Old Testament, phrases such as His "anger [was] kindled against" sinners and He will "cut them off."  To enhance the imagery of Christ's wrath during the Apocalypse, Wentworth, then, invokes a discourse of "holy violence," a type of language which Nigel Smith argues was common to radical religious writings of the seventeenth-century (321).   Smith argues that, by denouncing an enemy with Biblical language, the radical religious writer could maintain "the sense of direct inspiration from the divine" in his/her text even as he/she vilified his/her enemies (Smith 321).  In other words, a vindicatory, prophetic writer like Wentworth could use the discourse of "holy violence" to avoid having the vilification of her enemies compromise the sense of her text as God's word.  Smith also claims that radical religious writers often did not contextualize the violent Scriptural phrases they appropriated, and relied instead upon the reader's Biblical knowledge to complete his/her understanding of the meaning and force of the writer's derogatory, Scripturally-based phraseology (Smith 322).  Wentworth falls into this particular category of writers of "holy violence" in that, most often, she appropriates violent Biblical language without contextualizing it within its Scriptural framework or citing its Scriptural location.  As the footnotes to the text indicate, comparing her use of violent Biblical terminology to its actual Biblical analogue generally reveals allusive meaning in her denunciations.   For instance, when Christ says that Babylon will "sink like a Mill-stone" in "The Revelation"  ("The Revelation" 15, C2 recto), Wentworth is, in fact, denouncing her enemies in particular for persecuting her, a powerless, innocent servant of the Lord, for, in "Matthew 18:6, Christ suggests that persecutors of his "little ones" would be better off drowning with a Mill-stone tied about their necks than suffering His wrath.  Wentworth, then, freely appropriating one phrase of "holy violence" after another without ever stopping to explain the full semantic import of her Scriptural allusions, expects her audience to be able to fill these semantic gaps with Biblical knowledge.  Modern readers unfamiliar with Scripture can easily overlook the full affective power of her denunciations and the violent nature of her Apocalyptic vision.The Woman Prophet's Discourse of Personal Weakness     As noted previously in this introduction, the activities of seventeenth-century women prophets challenged gender hierarchies and were thus met with much anxiety and resistance.  Since women prophets faced such hostility and skepticism, it is not surprising that they generated and extensively employed various techniques within their writings to authenticate their prophesying.  Specifically, they posited themselves as mere amanuenses of God who lacked voices of their own that might interfere with or contaminate God's word.  They further emphasized their lack of agency by  portraying themselves as physically weak or ill.  Finally, to lend Scriptural authority to their acquired prophetic capabilities, they often cited Biblical passages in which the weak are empowered by God.  In doing so, seventeenth-century women prophets engaged in what could be entitled a "discourse of weakness" to validate their prophetic writings.  In "Virtue of Necessity:  English Women's Writing 1646-1688, Elaine Hobby claims that Quaker women prophets paradoxically gained the power to prophesy by acting weak.  This assertion applies to seventeenth-century women prophets in general:...the achievements of all these women were made possible by the power they obtained through being identified as the weak recipients of God's word.  Within the confines of femininity, they were able to negotiate a space that allowed for decidedly unfeminine activities (Hobby 38).  To posit themselves as mere recipients of God's word, women prophets like Wentworth continually emphasized their lack of volition in the prophetic writing process.  In "The Revelation", the anonymous author of the "Advertisement" narrates the procedural aspects of Wentworth's passive reception and forced transmission of God's message:  ...in the Night, when others are asleep; then doth she hear the Voice of God, which is very sweet and pleasant to her, but having no opportunity then, to write down what is spoken to her, as soon as she is risen, she begs of God, that if it be his will, that the words, he spake to her, should be made known, that he would be pleased to bring it fresh again to her memory, if any thing be forgot by her:  and upon her request the Lord is used to pour it down upon her, as a mighty Stream, that she cannot rest, nor mind any thing in the World, nor speak to any, nor understand what others say to her, until she have put all in writing, and so answered the mind of God ("The Revelation" A2 verso).From the outset of "The Revelation", Wentworth is described as having no real voice of her own in the text.  She herself is a dumb instrument through which God speaks.   Indeed, Wentworth herself emphasizes her instrumentality throughout the text proper of "The Revelation".  For example, in "Revelation I" she asks, "...why do ye then me so hate...What cause do I give, but that Gods commands I keep?" ("The Revelation" 2, A3 verso).  In "Revelation VI" she says, "But the Lord sent me forth, and he brought me home. / To go on such an Errand, it was no pleasing thing, / And be so much abused, but I must obey my King" ("The Revelation" 6, B1 verso).  Finally, in "Revelation XVI," she reminds her enemies that "That Spirit [Christ]...hath dictated the Verses in this Book," she has not composed them herself ("The Revelation" 19, C4 recto).  Such assertions of  personal voicelessness and lack of authorial control prevail in writings by seventeenth-century prophetic women (Ludlow 105):  Jane Lead, for example, calls herself an "earthen and empty vessel" through which God speaks (quoted in Purkiss 141); Fifth Monarchist Mary Cary says, " I am a very weak, and unworthy instrument, and have not done this work by any strength of my own...that I could do no more herein...of my self, than a pencil or pen can do, when no hand guides it" (quoted in Mack 111);  and Anna Trapnel asserts that her prophetic voice is under the complete control of God when she tells Bridewell prison officials that she cannot silence her prophesying because "what the Lord utters in me, I must speak" (quoted in Otten 72).  Phyllis Mack asserts that the cultural distrust of women's speech required the constant description of women prophets as personally mute.  Specifically, she argues that, because the talking woman became associated with female temptresses, the female prophet needed to be perceived as personally silent for her prophecies to appear to have divine authority:  Given these perceptions of the actual physical power and potential danger of women's speech, it is not surprising that the successful female prophet was invariably described, paradoxically, as dumb; 'dumb' meaning both stupid and mute, empty of everything but God (Mack 32).These descriptions of female prophets as "dumb" often came from the prophets themselves, and eventually became conventional parts of their texts.  To emphasize their passivity in the prophetic process, seventeenth-century women prophets often described themselves as physically weak or ill.  In her article "Producing the voice, consuming the body:  Women prophets of the seventeenth century," Diane Purkiss notes that female prophets like Anna Trapnel validated their prophesying by positing themselves as stereotypically weak or dying women who lacked the physical strength to contaminate God's word with their own:  In the seventeenth century, illness and bodily weakness were feminized.  Women were thought to be particularly prone to illness, and illness and weakness were in turn negative signs of femininity, underwriting women's subordination.  In Trapnel's writings, this gender difference is at once reinforced and undermined:  the attributes used in the dominant discourse to signify feminine inadequacy are privileged as factors of verbal empowerment.  Illness and physical incapacity stage the body as the passive prey of external forces, hence an authentic site of divine intervention (Purkiss 144).Unlike Trapnel and other women prophets such as Sarah Wight and Martha Hatfield, Wentworth does not claim in" The Revelation to receive her prophecies during periods of sickness.    However, she does assert that she initially became prophetic as the result of Christ's healing of her 18-year-long illness.  Specifically, in "A true Account, Wentworth likens herself to the woman from "Luke 13:11 who is healed after God exorcises the evil spirit from her:...having an Hectiff Fever, which came by so great oppression, and sorrow of heart; and wanting vent, and smothering it so long in my own brest, grew so hot, and burnt so strong, that I was past all cure of man, and given over by them, and lay at the point of death, being bowed together with my infirmity of 18 years, and could in no wise lift up my self:  then at that inch and nick of time the great Physitian of value came, the good Samaritan passing by, and seeing me lye wounded, and bleeding to death, even as it were at the last gasp:  then he spake as he did to the woman, "Luke 13.11. and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity; and he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God:  and I was as immediately restored as she ("A true account 9, B2 recto).Wentworth, then, prophesies from a healed rather than an ailing state.  Nevertheless, as in the case of other women prophets, her sickness plays a crucial part in the illustration of her purity as a vessel for God's word.  Whereas other prophets use their sickness to underscore their lack of female agency and thus their inability to contaminate God's voice, Wentworth uses her ailment and subsequent cure to posit herself as purged by God of all evil and faithlessness and, therefore, as a purified mouthpiece for His word.  Wentworth continues to rely on this validatory discourse of physical weakness in "The Revelation" when she alludes again to herself as the woman from "Luke 13:11 in "Revelation IX":Full eighteen years in sorrow I did lye,Then the Lord "Jesus came to hear my cry;In one nights time he did me heal,From head to foot he made me well.With Ointment sweet he did me anoint,And this work he then did me appoint ("The Revelation" 9, B3 recto).     By citing a Biblical precedent for God choosing her, a weak, sick woman, to glorify Him, Wentworth Scripturally validates her prophetic power.  Seventeenth-century women prophets, in fact, commonly justified their prophetic capabilities by alluding to God's special protection and empowerment of the weak in Scripture.  According to Phyllis Mack, these women appealed to the "ancient Christian notion of paradox, which held that the last--the poor, the ignorant, the diseased and despised--shall ultimately be first" (Mack 172).  Besides comparing herself to the woman in "Luke 13:11, for example, Wentworth quotes "Psalm 8:2 and 1 "Corinthians 1:27-28 at the very beginning of" The Revelation, thus positing herself as one of the "babes and sucklings" and one of the "foolish things of the world" who will be given strength to outwit and overcome the mighty ("The Revelation"  A1 verso) .  Wentworth also refers to herself throughout the text as one of Christ's "little ones," a common Biblical phrase that Christ uses to describe the helpless and innocent who fall under His special protection and who will be exalted by Him.  In her chapter of "Visionary Women entitled "Female Symbolism and Female Prophecy," Phyllis Mack provides examples of other women prophets, including Mary Pope, Antonia Bourignon, and Elizabeth Avery, whose prophetic empowerment is justified by themselves or others as having Scriptural precedent.  Mary Pope, for instance, Scripturally justified her prophetic activity when she reminds her readers that "...David held it no disparagement, though a king, to take the advice of a woman, (I "Sam. 25.33) and seeing that God himself, hath in many great acts honored women as well as men, and above men" (quoted in Mack 108-original parentheses).  Antonia Bourignon reminds her readers that "they ought to let God speak by a woman, if it be his pleasure, since he spoke in former times to a prophet by a beast" (quoted in Mack 111).  Finally, an editor of a treatise written by Elizabeth Avery argues...the power of God doth appear in [this work] in respect of the weakness and contemptibleness of the instrument whom he doth here employ; as formerly it hath been his course in doing great things by weakest means, and so by such foolishness he doth bring to nought the wisdom of the wise (quoted in Mack 118--Mack's brackets).When, to validate her prophesying, Wentworth alludes to many Biblical illustrations of the empowerment of the weak, she clearly employs a conventional justificatory technique used by women prophets who wrote using a "discourse of weakness."The Revelation of Jesus ChristJer. 13. 15.  Hear ye, and give ear, be not proud; for the Lord hath spoken.Psal. 8. 2.  Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.I Cor. 1. 27, 28.  God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world, to confound the things which are mighty:  And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen; yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:	That no flesh should glory in his presence.Psal. 9. 3, 4.  When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall and perish at thy presence.  For thou hast maintained my right and my cause; thou satest in the throne judging right.Mat. 12. 37.  By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.Here are presented to thee [reader] 1A handwritten insertion by an anonymous source at the top of page A2 recto. a few Verses, written by the hand of Anne Wentworth, who thought not to have published any thing this way, till she had made ready her whole Testimony, given her by the Lord Jesus, to declare to the world; but some of these Verses falling into the hand of one, that was once an Enemy to her, they so wrought upon her, that she resolved to have them Printed:  but being advised by a Friend, to acquaint Mrs. Wentworth first with it, to the end, it might be done without offence; which she did accordingly, desiring leave of her, to make it this way publick, for the good of Souls.  Mrs. Wentworth desired two or three days time, to consider of it; during which time, (as her usual manner is) she in prayer enquired of the Lord, what she should do in this thing:  and the Lord answered her, it was his will, that it should be made publick, and therefore bad her, not to oppose it, for it should convince some, who had shamefully reproached, and bitterly reviled, and persecuted her, for obeying the voice of the Lord, and keeping the Commandments of Christ, and that this warning should leave all others without excuse, and that therefore she should not stop it.  So when the party came again, she had Mrs. Wentworths free consent:  adding, that whoever did question the truth of what is here Printed, she would not be ashamed to own it, as being well assured, that she had received it from the Lord, who hath made her many gracious promises, and hath already fulfilled divers of them; as many that fear the Lord can witness, how wonderfully he hath owned her, though she be rejected by all her Relations, and left by them to shift for her self, yet is not she left by the Lord, who doth wonderfully support and supply her in all her wants, because she hath been obedient to the Divine Revelation, though this obedience of  [hers hath been the only cause of her being forsaken (and) reviled] 2A handwritten insertion by an anonymous source at the end of the introductory material to indicate a missing sentence where the text was cropped at the top of page A2 verso.  The word "and" is left out of the handwritten insertion. and reproached.  But I hope, that these things will have a better effect upon thee, whosoever thou art, which that it may shall be the prayer of thy Souls well-wisher.  ADVERTISEMENTThis short account I received from Mrs. Wentworth, which I give unto the World, that they may know in what manner the Lord usually speaks to her; his time of teaching her is, for the most part, in the Night, when others are asleep; then doth she hear the Voice of God, which is very sweet and pleasant to her, but having no opportunity then, to write down what is spoken to her, as soon as she is risen, she begs of God, that if it be his will, that the words, he spake to her, should be made known, that he would be pleased to bring it fresh again to her memory, if any thing be forgot by her:  and upon her request the Lord is used to pour it upon her, as a mighty Stream, that she cannot rest, nor mind any thing in the World, nor speak to any, nor understand what others say to her, until she have put all in writing, and so answered the mind of God.  And she declares, that if it were to gain the whole World, she cannot write in Verse at any other time, but when the Lord teacheth her, and poureth down his Spirit upon her.  Anno 1677.Revelation I.  Sept. 6.A Cry to the City of LondonAnno 1677.Revelation I.  Sept. 6.A Cry to the City of London Prepare, to see that, which never was, nor never will be again;  prepare, to meet the Lord.  Have a care of despising, censuring and false speaking, for no Lyar shall enter into the Kingdom of God5In Revelation 21:8, liars are included among those who will be punished in Hell..    Some are guilty of so much, that they cannot enter, except God give them repentance.  Make Haste6This is a common Biblical phrase.  See, for example, Psalm 40:13 and Luke 19:5.! fly to the Ark7This is a reference to Noah's Ark.  See Genesis 6, 7, and 8.!   outside-profession Fig-leaves will not serve8Wentworth alludes to Genesis 3:07 in which Adam and Eve try to hide their genitals and, thus, their sin with fig-leaves.  Wentworth may be equating "outside-profession," that is, externally declaring one's faith in God without having an inner faith in Him, with trying to hide one's sin with fig-leaves; as God will still recognize Adam and Eve's transgression regardless of the presence of the fig-leaves, He will also recognize one's lack of true faith regardless of one's external profession of faith..    Look well to your selves;  take no thought, nor be concerned for me, but let me alone.  England had never such cause to weep!  England is under a great woe!  O England, the anger of the Lord is turned against thee!  England is guilty of that, which hath wrought its doom!  A most doleful stroke is a coming, and no way to escape it.  Perillous times are at hand.  Satan is upon his last legs.  Proud Pharisees and Hypocrites cannot stand9Throughout Matthew 23, Jesus says,"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"  As the editors of the Dictionary of the Bible indicate, both the Pharisees and the Hypocrites were denounced as being outward followers of religious forms who lacked inner religious faith:  "The Pharisees also drew the antagonism of Jesus and His disciples...they were branded as bigoted formalists, hair-splitting legalists, and crafty hypocrites, devoid of charity and spirituality" (761); "Thus all who play the part of religion, whether consciously or unconsciously, without being religious, are hypocrites" (409).  Wentworth, then, uses the terms "Pharisees" and "hypocrites" as metaphors for Englishmen and Englishwomen who lack faith even as they practice religion.  Thus, this metaphor introduces the theme of the final statement of "Revelation I" that "it is not form, but power, that will secure you from the wrath of God in the evil day."  See James Hastings, ed., Dictionary of the Bible (New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963) 409 & 761. .    Foolish Virgins will appear and be known;  and the door will be shut against them10The story of the wise and foolish virgins appears in Matthew 25.  The wise virgins take oil with which to fill their lamps when they wait to "wed" Christ and the foolish virgins do not.  When Christ calls out to the virgins at midnight to come to Him, the foolish virgins have to go buy oil for their lamps whereas the wise virgins may proceed directly to the marriage feast.  To the foolish virgins who arrive late, Christ says, "I do not know you" and He shuts the doors of the feast against them (Matthew 25:12).  Wentworth, then, uses the story of wise and foolish virgins to underscore the importance of preparing for the Apocalypse.  A similar allusion to the story of the wise and foolish virgins occurs in Wentworth's A true Account:  "[do not] deceive your own selves by thinking either moral honesty, or formality, or any thing of our own righteousness, or going as far as the five foolish Virgins, just to Heavens Gate, and yet could not enter into eternal bliss" (14, B4 verso).  The prophet Lady Eleanor Douglas also employs an allusion to this Biblical story to emphasize the importance of preparing for God's coming when she tells the people of England to keep "oyl in their lamps, or watchful."   See Lady Eleanor Douglas, Apocalyps, Chapter 11 (n.p.,  164?) 8, A4.verso..    Hearken to this all you, that are in forms of Religion;  for it is not form, but power, that will secure you from the wrath of God in the evil day.Revelation II March 22. .11Though "Revelation II" is placed under revelations written in 1677, it is more likely that it was written in 1678 because all of the other revelations except this one appear in chronological order.  The printer may have simply erred in placing "Anno 1678" after, rather than before, "Revelation II."  Thus the Lord spake, and said unto me:  I stand ready, to execute my righteous Judgments upon England, for their abominations are great.  And seeing they will not believe, that I the Lord did send thee, they shall know with a witness, it is I the Lord  [that sent thee to speak unto them & for their disregarding of] 12A handwritten insertion by an unknown source at the end of the introductory prose to "Revelation II" which indicates a missing sentence where the text was cropped at the top of page 2, A3 verso.  my word, and great contempt of thee, my Messenger;  and gross abuse, and great neglect of thee, whilst thou art in my service, I am risen.  Their sins are so great, that my hand and rod shall be heavy upon them. 
Woe to England!  for she will now smart,Who wounded thee deep unto the heart.Woe unto England!  for she will bleed,For Gods commands they will not heed. Woe to England!  that doth not love God,< LB >Therefore shall she feel King Jesus Rod.< LB >Woe to England!  that love themselves more than him,   Therefore he will severely scourge all of them;  Who preach, and pray, and do call upon his Name,  When no love to God is in doing of the same.  For if you love God, why do ye then me so hate?  And why so high, will not repent, before it be too late?  What cause do I give, but that Gods commands I keep?And why are you so angry at this, to make me oft to weep?Is there any other cause I have given unto thee,To be so angry, but because the Love of God is great to me?There is little of sound Christianity for to be seen,But very much of cruelty a long time hath been.And because Englands Christianity is grown so cool,It will make sweet  England13Compositor's error.  "England" should be in the possessive case. Passing-Bell14According to the OED, "passing-bell" has a figurative definition of "that which forebodes or signalizes the death or passing away of anything."  Wentworth uses the phrase "England['s] passing-bell to toll" as a metaphor for England's destruction during the Apocalypse. to toll.  It doth begin to ring, and calls unto the GraveFor those, that no mercy to their fellow Creatures have.Heark!  Heark!  do you not hear the great Bell ring?Will you not hear, nor believe, until you see the King?And hear him speak in wrath and anger unto all you,And then alas!  how will ye answer?  or what will you do?If he should once say, Depart away from him15This may be a reference to Matthew 7:23, "And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you:  depart from me, ye that work iniquity," to Matthew 25:41, "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," or to Luke 13:27, "But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity."   Wentworth again emphasizes the fact that many people only practice the outward forms of religion without follow ing the laws of God, and that these people will be damned.,  How can you offer any more to come to him again?Do you think with all your Lyes, that you will enter thenInto Heaven?  when he saith, No Liar there shall come16In Revelation 21:8, liars are included among those who will be punished in Hell.?  Will you sleep unto death, and not see King Jesus on his Throne?Will you not awake, and trim your Lamps, to meet the Bridegroom17The story of the wise and foolish virgins appears in Matthew 25.  The wise virgins take oil with which to fill their lamps when they wait to "wed" Christ and the foolish virgins do not.  When Christ calls out to the virgins at midnight to come to Him, the foolish virgins have to go buy oil for their lamps whereas the wise virgins may proceed directly to the marriage feast.  To the foolish virgins who arrive late, Christ says, "I do not know you" and He shuts the doors of the feast against them (Matthew 25:12).  Wentworth, then, uses the story of wise and foolish virgins to underscore the importance of preparing for the Apocalypse.  A similar allusion to the story of the wise and foolish virgins occurs in Wentworth's A true Account:  "[do not] deceive your own selves by thinking either moral honesty, or formality, or any thing of our own righteousness, or going as far as the five foolish Virgins, just to Heavens Gate, and yet could not enter into eternal bliss" (14, B4 verso).  The prophet Lady Eleanor Douglas also employs an allusion to this Biblical story to emphasize the importance of preparing for God's coming when she tells the people of England to keep "oyl in their lamps, or watchful."   See Lady Eleanor Douglas, Apocalyps, Chapter 11 (n.p., 164?) 8, A4.verso.?  Will you not hear, until the great Thunder-clap18Throughout Revelation, thunder accompanies the apocalyptic actions of God.  According to the editors of the Dictionary of the Bible, thunder "is the expression of His resistless power...and of His inexorable vengeance" throughout the Bible.  See Hastings, ed., The Dictionary of the Bible, 999. doth come?  Will you not awake, to hear him roar aloud out of Zion19In the Bible, Zion refers both to the fortress of Jerusalem and to Jerusalem as a whole.  Wentworth uses the term to refer to the metaphorical "church" of true believers to which she belongs.  See Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, 1058.?  Will you not see, how it is now the dead time of the night20This is a likely reference to Mark 13:35-36:  "Watch ye therefore:  for ye know not when the master of the house cometh [Christ], at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:  lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping" (brackets added). Will you not see the Lord come in the Clouds21An anonymous source has inserted a handwritten, inscrutable symbol between "Clouds" and "you."[?]22In Revelation 1:07, John says that God will come with the clouds.  In Revelation 14:14-16, the Son of Man makes his appearance during the Apocalypse while sitting on a cloud.   you fright?  If you will neither hear, nor see, how can I help it then?What need I say any more unto you, that are wise men?If you will not hear the words of the Lord,It is sure, my words you will not regard;But slight all, as heretofore you have done,So now I leave all to God, and let you alone,For him and you to fight out the Battel23This is a reference to the great battle between God's and Satan's forces during the Apocalypse which John prophesies in Revelation 19:19. begun,And he will not give out, or go back until he have done. Anno 1678.Revelation III.  April 6.  The Lord shewed me how he did hate the abominations of the people, in what they had done, in loving Man, more than God:  And said, The words and ways of the people are loathsome in my sight, and do wound and pierce me.  And then he spake thus in verse, causing me to write down. 
The English people they have a God,And who is that?  it is but a man,They love above God;  so he will whip by his Rod,And now to prevent him no one can.If any reason would but have satisfied them,If they had not gone so long in their shame,Then some hopes there would have been,That so great Judgment would not been seen,As now will come swiftly upon the Land,Poured down by the Lords own hand.For when a People is given up for destruction,They must be blind and hardened in their corruption.And when the Lord bids his Angels kill and slay24Revelation 9:15:  "And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.",Then all the World his hand cannot stay.And sinners, they will not hear, until he do come,But Saints, do ye hear, for he for you will make room.To live, and rejoyce, and praise his most holy Name,Who by his own Bloud wrought for you the same.But the Hypocrites25Throughout Matthew 23, Jesus says,"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"  As the editors of the Dictionary of the Bible indicate, both the Pharisees and the Hypocrites were denounced as being outward followers of religious forms who lacked inner religious faith:  "The Pharisees also drew the antagonism of Jesus and His disciples...they were branded as bigoted formalists, hair-splitting legalists, and crafty hypocrites, devoid of charity and spirituality" (761); "Thus all who play the part of religion, whether consciously or unconsciously, without being religious, are hypocrites" (409).  Wentworth, then, uses the terms "Pharisees" and "hypocrites" as metaphors for Englishmen and Englishwomen who lack faith even as they practice religion.  Thus, this metaphor introduces the theme of the final statement of "Revelation I" that "it is not form, but power, that will secure you from the wrath of God in the evil day."  See James Hastings, ed., Dictionary of the Bible (New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963) 409 & 761. in Zion they will all mourn,All the wicked, proud in heart, that did so scorn,When they see the Battel26This is a reference to the great battle between God's and Satan's forces during the Apocalypse which John prophesies in Revelation 19:19. of the Lord to be fought,  And how it was the Lord alone, that me taught,And in his strength I was by Grace enabled to stand,Against all my Enemies, with his Battel-ax in my hand27In Jeremiah 51:20, the Lord says:  "Thou art my battle-axe and weapons of war:  for with thee will I break in pieces the nations."   According to The Anchor Bible:  Jeremiah, "thou" in this passage refers to Babylon, and in verses 24-26 of this chapter, God indicates that Babylon, though previously Yahweh's "agent of judgment," will "herself be judged."   Wentworth envisions the battle-axe falling on England rather than being wielded by England in this passage.  See John Bright, ed., The Anchor Bible:  Jeremiah (Garden City, NY:  Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1965) 356., To wound, kill, amaze, put to flight, and cut them down And when they are in their Graves, I shall wear a Crown28Elaine Hobby glosses the image of Wentworth wielding a battle ax and destroying her enemies as an "Amazonian" one through which Wentworth envisions herself as empowered by God.  See Hobby, The Virtue of Necessity, 52.  However, Wentworth not only seems to envision herself as becoming empowered by God here, but describes herself as actually becoming part of the Godhead; after all, Wentworth imagines herself as wielding "his" (God's) battle ax  and wearing "his"   (God's/Christ's) crown (Christ wears a crown in Revelation 14:14 when he arrives on earth to purge it of evil, which is exactly what Wentworth fantasizes herself as doing).  Wentworth, then, assumes God's tool of vengeance and Christ's crown of victory, thereby merging her own identity with that of the Father and Son.   In effect, Wentworth deifies herself here. .  O this God!  so great in power!  wonderful is his Name!Who will exalt those of low degree, & give his Enemies shame,When the time, to advance poor Mordecai, was come,Then was the time, for to hang up proud Haman29Wentworth associates herself with Mordecai from the Book of Esther.  Haman, as "the enemy of the Jews" (Esther 3:10), attempts to destroy Mordecai and the Jews when Mordecai will not prostrate himself before Haman's power.  Due to Esther's intervention and King Ahasue'rus gratitude to Mordecai for revealing a plot against the King's life, Mordecai is saved and Haman is hanged on the same gallows constructed for Mordecai's execution (Esther 7:10).  By comparing her own situation with that of Mordecai, Wentworth posits herself as a potential victim whose righteousness is eventually rewarded with salvation and whose enemies are punished.  Wentworth employs the story of Mordecai and Haman similarly in her works A true Account (12, B3 verso) and A Vindication  (10, B1 verso). .  Come all Saints, come sing and rejoyce with me,At Babylons30Babylon suffers God's destructive wrath in Revelation.  Wentworth applies the term to England because it is populated with disbelievers and filled with corruption. fall, and the glorious days, which ye shall see:When the great Battel31This is a reference to the great battle between God's and Satan's forces during the Apocalypse which John prophesies in Revelation 19:19. is fought, the day past, and all done,Then all Honour, Glory and Praise to God must be sung.Rejoyce, ye Heavens and Prophets, for God avengeth your Cause32In Revelation 16:5-6, an angel commends the Lord for punishing those who have persecuted the saints and prophets:   "Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.  For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy."  Wentworth implies that she is a persecuted prophet and her mistreatment will be avenged upon her enemies during the Apocalypse as well.,  That Babylon would have deprived you of by her unjust Laws.This is a great Mysterie, who now can this read?And know it rightly, and in so narrow a path doth tread?Who is able to bear, to have whole Babylon come down?Who can endure to hear, that they are in Babylon?Who doth think, that in England is the painted Whore33This is a reference to the Whore of Babylon from Revelation 17.?  Who did think, they should ever hear of me any more?When they sit as Queen, and say, they shall have no sorrow,I am raised up again, and freed from all their horror.When they thought, to put me in the Grave, & have me slain,I am raised up more strong, and brought to Life again.  Revelation IV.  October 8.Came the word of the Lord unto me, and said thus: 
When Judgments are come to the door,Babylon 
 will be burnt, that painted Whore!All in a Fire and great Flame34God sets fire to Babylon in Revelation 8:7:  "The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth:  and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up." will she be,Her Plagues35This is a reference to the plagues unleashed by God to torment sinners during the Apocalypse (Revelation 9:20; 11:6). come, and they will not see.  They stop their Ears, they shut their EyesAgainst the Truth, and are deceived by Lyes:And when they are called, to come out of her,The voice of God they do not mind, but it abhor.Rase her down root and branch36Malachi 4:1:  "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble:  and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."  For other instances where Wentworth uses this phrase to describe the complete destruction of her enemies, see also "Revelation XVII" in this text and A true Account, 19, C3. flat to the ground, All Europe over will the Lord do it round.In Scotland Judgments first there begun,37It is likely that Wentworth alludes to the 1679 Covenanters Rebellion here.  Those Scottish Presbyterians who refused to worship within the Church of Scotland after Anglican elements were introduced into it openly rebelled against the government in June 1679.  They were defeated at Bothwell Bridge.  See Ian Donnachie and George Hewitt, A Companion to Scottish History From the Reformation to the Present (London:  B.T. Batsford, Ltd., 1989) 51-52. But upon England greater now will come.Ireland surely will also deeply suffer then,England also shall lose her brave men.Hol38Wentworth's personal abbreviation for "Holland."  "Hol" does not appear in the OED. and, France, Italy, and also Spain,By all our loss they will not gain.All Nations will suffer round about,For the Whore hath spread her self throughout.Where shall Gods Children now then hide,When God is so very angry, and doth chide?No safety upon Earth, but to get within the Ark,In the Covenant of Grace, and from God have a mark.Make ready, get Oyl to your Lamp39The story of the wise and foolish virgins appears in Matthew 25.  The wise virgins take oil with which to fill their lamps when they wait to "wed" Christ and the foolish virgins do not.  When Christ calls out to the virgins at midnight to come to Him, the foolish virgins have to go buy oil for their lamps whereas the wise virgins may proceed directly to the marriage feast.  To the foolish virgins who arrive late, Christ says, "I do not know you" and He shuts the doors of the feast against them (Matthew 25:12).  Wentworth, then, uses the story of wise and foolish virgins to underscore the importance of preparing for the Apocalypse.  A similar allusion to the story of the wise and foolish virgins occurs in Wentworth's A true Account:  "[do not] deceive your own selves by thinking either moral honesty, or formality, or any thing of our own righteousness, or going as far as the five foolish Virgins, just to Heavens Gate, and yet could not enter into eternal bliss" (14, B4 verso).  The prophet Lady Eleanor Douglas also employs an allusion to this Biblical story to emphasize the importance of preparing for God's coming when she tells the people of England to keep "oyl in their lamps, or watchful."   See Lady Eleanor Douglas, Apocalyps, Chapter 11 (n.p., 164?) 8, A4.verso.,  That God may hide you in his Camp.Give up to God our all, and wholly in him let us trust;Fear not Men, nor Devils, but yield to God we must, Revelation V.  October 8.When I had writ this, then the Lord said further concerning the King, 
Woe to England, when the Kings Life is gone!All may pray, that no hurt to him may be done. Now the Plot40Wentworth refers to the Popish Plot of 1678-79 which was fabricated by a Catholic named Titus Oates.   Oates falsely claimed that there was a Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II, massacre Protestants, and reinstitute Catholicism with the help of a French army.  Oates' claims were believed throughout England, the Protestant populous panicked, and many prominent Catholics were executed.  It wasn't until 1680 that the English courts began to disregard accusations made against Catholics by false informants.  Wentworth illustrates her own anxiety over the existence of this plot in this revelation.  See F.J.C.  Hearnshaw, et.al., eds., The Dictionary of English History (London:  Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1928) 859-60. is found out, all yet is not past,  For it's well, if that his Life do escape at last. He now warning hath, if he will notice of it take, We may pray hard for his Life, for Englands sake! Anno 1679. 
Revelation VI.  March 8.The Lord spake to me in these Verses, which follow.A great wonder from Heaven will be wrought,And no Creature upon Earth hath me taught.The Promises, that five years ago the Lord made to me,He will fulfil openly for my Friends to see:And the reason why it came no sooner to be seen,I was not strong enough in Spirit, nor they ripe enough in Sin.I was not at all deceived about New-years-day41 In 1677, Wentworth predicted that the Apocalypse would begin before New Year's Day, 1678.  She wrote to King Charles II and the Lord Mayor of London informing them directly of His coming, and published her prophecy in A Vindication.  See F.H. Blackburne Daniell, ed., Calendar of State Papers Domestic Series  (London:  His Majesty's Stationery Office,1677) 279-80.  See also A Vindication, 13, B3 recto., For all the Lord revealed to me, came to pass in his own way.It was their own blindness made them rail like mad,To bring such woes on themselves, that will be very sad.Those that will divide my Message, and not take it all,But an Angel of wrath they will still me call,They had better be silent, and speak nothing,For over all Europe will their shame and sin ring.For my message is Truth, and in it there is no Lye,But Mercy and Judgment, that is still the Cry.You may take it or leave it, that is all one to me,For Judgments will come, good and bad, you will see:For with the Nation God is exceeding wroth,That the Vials of his wrath he will pour forth42This is a reference to the "seven golden vials full of the wrath of God" that the seven angels pour on Babylon during the Apocalypse (Revelation 15:8)..  For it is the will of God, which I now have done,And as for my own will, of that I have none:For on this message I would not have gone,But the Lord sent me forth, and he brought me home.To go on such an Errand, it was no pleasing thing,And be so much abused, but I must obey my King43Here, the "King" refers to the Lord, not to King Charles II.. Revelation VII.  March 29.To my loving Friends. 
Keep waking and watching, upon your Guard now stand,Girt about with Truth, and Sword of the Spirit44Ephesians 6:10, 17,18,19:  "Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.  Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil...And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of Spirit, which is the word of God:  praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit...and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel."   It is not surprising that Wentworth alludes to a passage in which the prophet Paul reminds the Ephesians to heed the Word of God and asks them to pray for Paul's ability to deliver that Word to them.  Wentworth thus implies that she, like Paul, is a conduit for the true word of God and that people should pray for her prophetic capabilities and heed her prophecies as well. in your hand.  Make ready to hear the shriks and doleful criesOf those, that act in their cruelty and lies.Expect to hear a great and mighty shout,For with Enemies you are beset about.Awake, and now arise, and sleep no more,Lest ye all die with the painted Strumpet and great Whore.All now prepare, and stand upon your Watch,Lest grim Death and Hell do you now catch.Look to see a most terrible black dismal day,That will sweep the lives of thousands away:And when your Bodies are dead, and all gone,For to help you then, there will be none.And this dreadful time is come so very near,That will make the dead to rise, and deaf to hear45Matthew 11:4-5:  "Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see:  the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deafhear, the dead are raised up, and the poor shall have the gospel preached to them."  See also Luke 7:22:  "Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached."  Wentworth reappropriates the phraseology of Christ's miracles to emphasize His dreadful power rather than to emphasize His mercy..  You warning had, but no warning would ye take,But hate the Messenger, for the Message sake.Ye would not hear the words of God, but hate me,And how justly God will return, you will see.For the words of God you did slight and scorn,So he aloud will sound his Trumpet and his Horn46 God gives  the seven angels in Revelations seven trumpets to blow before releasing the woes upon Babylon (Revelation 8, 9).  When the sixth angel blows the trumpet in Revelation 8:13, a "voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God"  orders that angel to release the four angels who will slay one-third of mankind..  Because you did disdain his Word and slight him,He now with great Thunderbolts47Throughout Revelation, thunder accompanies the apocalyptic actions of God.  According to the editors of the Dictionary of the Bible, thunder "is the expression of His resistless power...and of His inexorable vengeance" throughout the Bible.  See Hastings, ed., The Dictionary of the Bible, 999. will come:  For when the Lord of Life sends in love to warn you,Ye slight his Word, because his Voice ye never knew.So rise up in Arms, and you will fight with him,  
And he now comes to fight with you all again48In Revelation 9:14-19, God sends four angels to slay one-third of mankind..  For his Message was in faithfulness, and most true,That all, that did refuse to hear, they now will rueThat ever they were so barbarous, and so hardly did useHis Messenger, like Turks  and Heathens did ye me abuse.No mercy from your Formal Professors49According to Nigel Smith, when certain seventeenth-century sectarians denigrated formalists, they not only criticized "anyone who stressed external ritual and sacraments," but also "anyone who ignores the indwelling 'divine majesty' for the sake of biblical literalism."  See Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed:  Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640-1660 (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1989) 326.   In A true Account, Wentworth says that, before God "healed" her and converted her to a true faith in him, she was once a "formal professor":  "...for I can speak by sad experience, for 20 years being a dark, blind, formal professor, what a dry, barren soul  had" (14, B4 verso).  Thus, Wentworth seems to define Formalists according to the second half of the dual definition Smith explains, that is, as those who behave according to the letter, not the spirit, of God's word.  In other words, Wentworth's "formal professors" are those who say they have faith in God and who seemingly adhere to Christian doctrine and ritual, but who lack a feeling of divine grace within. could I find,  But all your Acts were only cruel and unkind:I will as soon, put trust in Heathens, or in the Turk,As in Formal Professors to own me in the Lords work;As much mercy from them may I expect then,As from the Formal-professing Englishmen.But their little Christianity from Age to Age will be heard,And the God of Heaven will not them regard:He will say unto them, All you I do not know50This may be a reference to Matthew 7:23, "And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you:  depart from me, ye that work iniquity," to Matthew 25:41, "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," or to Luke 13:27, "But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity."   Wentworth again emphasizes the fact that many people only practice the outward forms of religion without follow ing the laws of God, and that these people will be damned.,  That no mercy unto my little one would show:But into the Judgment-seat51The "judgment seat" is a common Biblical metaphor for both Christ's and secular leaders' power to judge.  See, e.g., Romans 14:10 and 2 Corinthians 5:10 respectively., ye all would climb;  But I the Lord will pull you down betime,And lay you low as the Earth, and as small as the dust;Men shall not rule o're my Children, but I must,Who am their Captain, their Lord, and King,My Name is Jesus, and I will do this thing.And I will send Vapour and Smoak, Sword, Fire and Blood52In Acts 2:17-19, Peter reminds the men of Judea of Joel's prophecy:  "And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh:  and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy...and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: and I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke."   Wentworth's allusion to the last part of this passage indicates that she probably has the first part in mind as well; this implies that she considers her own prophesying, as one of God's "daughters" or "handmaidens," to be an apocalyptic sign just like the blood, fire, vapor, and smoke will be.,  But Love and Peace I hold forth to all that are good.All humble Christians, that love God above all,Lie at the Throne of Grace53Hebrews 4:16:  "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.", and upon him for mercy call  For the Hypocrites in Zion, they all will mourn,Being proud, high, lofty, and full of scorn.A midnight cry54The ten virgins in Matthew 25:1-13 hear a "midnight cry" announcing the arrival of the bridegroom.  The cry does not instil fear in them, though.  Wentworth implies that the next time this cry is heard, it will announce the Apocalypse and will, indeed, terrify the faithless. you all will come to hear,That will you fright, and put you in great fear. But be still and look up into God above,For his Name is written All Mercy and LoveUnto his chosen Elect, and most precious Seed55Psalms 126:5-6:  "They that sow in tears / shall reap in joy.  They that goeth forth and weepeth, / bearing precious seed, / shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, / bringing his sheaves with him."  Wentworth, then, uses the phrase "precious seed" as an epithet for the "Elect" whereas in Psalm 126 the phrase refers to the metaphorical seeds that the Elect sow.  Nevertheless, Wentworth's allusion to this Psalm emphasizes the theme that she is God's chosen one who sows the "precious seed" of His Word among the people and, though she suffers for her activities now, He will shortly save her from her current persecution., For to help them in their greatest time of need.  What means these people?  will they never be content?Unless I turn my back on God, and to them repent?Who are as dead as Stocks56According to the OED, "stocks" had the same definition as "stalks" in the seventeenth-century.  Wentworth refers here to the lifeless portion, or stalks, of plants., and harder than Stones57In Zechariah 7:11-12, the Lord says that the people of Jerusalem hardened their hearts and refused to listen to the words He sent them through the prophets, which aroused His great anger:  "Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in his Spirit by the former prophets:  therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of hosts."  It seems probable that Wentworth alludes to this Biblical passage in this sentence, and thus suggests that the people of England have hardened their hearts not only to her prophetic words but to her persecution, and will, subsequently, suffer God's wrath.;  But it is thou, O my God, that hearest all my groans,And seest, no flesh and blood such a thing could bear,That would rent a Stone, if it could but hear.  Quickly arise, O Lord!  and speak aloud for me,Behold all my Adversaries that are before thee. Revelation IX.  April 3.  In the morning, as I lay still in my Bed, the Lord spake thus unto me with Power and great Authority, and in much fury, concerning these four persons by name.Wentworth, Hicks, and Dicks, and also Knowles, 60This is a reference to Wentworth's four great enemies:  her husband, two of her husband's church brethren (Thomas Hicks and William Dicks from her "Revelation XVI"), and the Anabaptist preacher Hanserd Knollys.  Wentworth has evidently had an adversarial relationship with Hicks and Dicks at least since 1676 when she wrote A true Account, and it is in this tract that she identifies them as members of the same congregation to which her husband belongs:  "...and let now Thomas Hicks and William Dix draw up their Bill, and all the rest of my husband's brethren what it is they have to charge me with of all they have against me in misbehaviour in life and conversation, or neglect of my duty to their Brother" (16, C1 verso). If they repent not, they shall lose their Souls:  And they are so stout, so proud, and very high,  They will hardly repent before they die:  And there is no repentance in the Grave,  Would they from God no mercy have?  What have they done now all this while,  But their own poor Souls cheat and beguile?  In setting the people all to rage at thee,  When I the Lord their sin and wickedness see:  And do not forget, what in this House was done,  For I did remember it, when I sent thee home.  Let those four men this thing now hear,  To try if yet they will regard the Lord, and him fear.  And thou must not fear none of these four men,  For if they come to hurt thee, I will help thee then:  If they any more fright, or with their tongues wound thee,  Then I the Lord say, sad with them it shall be,  And he, that is the Ring-leader61Wentworth never states which of her four enemies is the "Ring-leader." of them all,    He first shall feel my hand, and into the pit62This is a reference to the "bottomless pit" of Revelation 9. fall,    Which they have digged very deep for thee,  But shall fall therein themselves thou shalt see.  Be thou bold, for to declare this thing,  How they are Traytors unto Jesus thy Lord, and King.  A company of Priests, murther in the way by consent,  For to kill the Spirit of God in all, is their intent.  [But bid them now stop, they have done their worst,] 63This line is horizontally cropped in half on the top of page 11, B4 recto.  From the parts of the letters that do appear, combined with the handwritten marginalia, the line appears to read as such. And the day, these four men set on thee, is for ever curs'd;  Like unto the barren, and unfruitful Fig-tree64In Mark 11:12-14, on his way into Jerusalem, Jesus curses a fig-tree.  On his way back out of Jerusalem, the fig-tree has withered (Mark 11:21-24).  Wentworth indicates that Christ will similarly destroy her four enemies, as well as  Idolatry, Hypocrisie, and Formality.,    So shall Idolatry, Hypocrisie, and Formality be:  Never Fruit to grow in their Garden any more,  For now they have run themselves all on shore.  And in their own colours they all now appear,  How cruelly they oppress my Elect, that is clear:  And would alway oppress my Children all my own,  If I the Lord will but alway let them alone.  As I live, saith the Lord, I will come, for I cannot bear  No longer, to hear the groans of my Children dear:  Who am their Rock, and their hiding-place65In Psalm 32:7, David calls God "my hidingplace." too,  And I the Lord will all their yokes and bonds undo.  My Love, my Dove66 In the Song of Solomon 5:2, the bridegroom comes to the door of the bride and says "Open to me, my sister, my love, /  my dove, my undefiled."  Wentworth imagines God (the bridegroom) delivering her (the bride) from Babylon (England).  In A Vindication, she says that she and God "were married" at the time of her "healing" in 1670:  "Then was the full communion between Christ and my Soul, the Love knot, the comly bands of Marriage; then did he espouse me unto himself for ever" (12, B2 verso).  According to Nigel Smith, the leitmotif "my love, my dove" is repeatedly used throughout the texts of Ranters Joseph Salmon and Abiezer Coppe.  See Smith,  Perfection Proclaimed, 337., my Spouse, make haste and come away,  Out of Babylon, and do not thou there stay:  Shake off thy rotten Rags, and all thy old Attire67This is likely a reference to Zechariah 3:  "Now Joshua was wearing filthy clothes as he stood before the angel; and the angel turned and said to those in attendance on him, 'Take off his filthy clothes.'  Then he turned to him and said, 'See how I have taken away your guilt from you; I will clothe you in fine vestments.'",  That I may cloath thee anew, and thee admire.  My Spouse, my Church and I, we both are one,  And none, but my beloved Church will I own.  I am their Head and Shepherd, and them will I keep,  They are my Lambs, my Body, and my Sheep.  I the Lord of Life am the chief corner-stone68In Ephesians 2:20, Christ is called the "chief corner stone.",  And for any other Body I the Lord have none:  Bu[t] 69Compositor's error.  The text should read "but." these, that follow me, and my Commands do keep,   I will wipe away their tears70Of the saints in Revelation 7:17, one of the elders tells John, "God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes.", that they no more do weep:    But the devouring  Wolves71"Wolves" is a common descriptive term for the enemies of God in the Bible.  See, e.g., Matthew 7:15 and Ezekiel 21:27. I the Lord do not love,    But will cast them away, and build my church above.  Revelation X.  April 23.  As I was sitting alone, came the word of the Lord unto me, and said:The Heavens frown, and Earth doth mourn,  And yet the people despise and scorn.  What shall the God of all mercy do?  For they will not look up, but pore below:  Nor [?]72The text is cropped here and the inserted handwritten marginalia is largely inscrutable. Nor for his warning they do not care:  Though he speaks aloud, and doth call  Upon sinners, to repent before they fall  Into the Pit, where they cannot return,  But will be swallowed up for all your scorn.  Unto this Nation God would shew love,  But they will not look up to him above:  What could the Lord now have done more,  Then to send, to warn all people, and the painted Whore?  But when he in love sends to warn them,  They rise up in Arms, to fight against him:  So the Lord will kill, and strike them dead  With his Sword, that hangs over their head:  He will smite, and give a most fatal blow,  For rejecting of him, they shall know,  How angry the Lord is at them all,  That did slight and scorn, when he did call:  He will kill, and slay with his own hand,  When he lets the French73This is a reference to the Popish Plot of 1678-79 in which the French supposedly conspired to help English Catholics overthrow Charles II and the Anglican Church in England. into our Land:    For the Nations sins are deep dyed in blood,  But for all his Saints surely it will be good74In Revelation 7, God's saints are rewarded..    Great patience the Lord hath now had,  But now he comes, to make his Children glad:  Which Babylon would have pressed down,  But the Saints shall sing, and wear the Crown:  And no joy like that, which God will send  Unto his Saints for ever unto the end.  Fear not, little Flock, your joy doth come,  For our Father will give us the Kingdom75Luke 12:32:  "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.. Revelation XI.  July 15.  A Lamentation for a sort of people in the Nation, who the Lord saith unto me, are a proud, blind, scornful, lying, oppressing, persecuting, hard-hearted people in England.  And the Lord let me see, who they are, and I know them by Name.  And the Lord said unto me further, Now out of my favour they are gone they are gone;  undone, undone is this poor bleeding Nation;  thou must weep, and mourn for them, that of a thousand there will escape but one, when the great calamity doth come:  Then I the Lord will mock and laugh at them that reject my Word, and abuse my Messengers, my own Children, and make light of me, and will take no warning;  for this I the Lord am angry, and I  remember, what they have done to thee. Revelation XII.  July 20.  Early in the morning, when I awaked, the Lord minded me of that man, who had been over-night to see me, and asked me, what News;  and the next morning, as soon as I awaked, the Lord said unto me:  If any ask thee for News, thou must tell them, that thou hast none, that will please any but only the little Flock of Christ, which are few in number, in respect of the great multitude76A "greatmultitude" is a common descriptive term for a crowd or a large number of people in the Old and New Testaments.  See, e.g., 2 Chronicles 28:5 and Matthew 14:14.,   that go in the broad way77In Christ's "Sermon on the Mount," He tells His followers, "Enter ye in at the strait gate:  for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat" (Matthew 7:13)., which leads down to Hell.  This morning the Lord did confirm it more fully unto me, why his anger was so highly kindled against78Often it is said of God in the Old Testament that his "anger was kindled against" sinners.  See, e.g., Zechariah 10:3 and Numbers 24:10.   these people in England, the Formalists, and Hypocrites, and foolish Virgins, which have overspread the Land;  but that he will purge, prune and weed it:  And said further unto me:  Because thou art a true Child of God, and art my Little one, and my Messenger, to declare my mind and will, which thou hast performed:  and I the Lord gave a sign unto the Nation, and fulfilled it;  I have made good my word unto thee, nay have been better than my word unto thee:  And yet those sottish, conceited, sleepy people will not awake, to behold the wonders of the Lord;  they will not regard the Word, which I the Lord speak unto thee, nor will they mind my doings:  wherefore I the Lord have sworn by my Holiness, that these people, of all others, shall not go unpunished79Jeremiah 49:12:  "Behold, they whose judgment was not to drink of the cup have assuredly drunken; and art thou he that shall altogether go unpunished?  thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt surely drink of it."; for I will severely punish them, that have reviled, scorned, reproached, falsly accused, mocked and oppressed thy Soul and Conscience, to make it bleed in secret before me, many a time;  notwithstanding that whosoever offends one of Christs little ones, it were better a Millstone were hanged about their necks, and they cast into the midst of the Sea80 In Matthew 18:6, Christ says, "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone was hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."  Wentworth again posits herself as the humble, innocent, childlike "little one" as she does in "Revelation VII," thereby emphasizing the particular injustice of her persecution and the surety of her persecutors' damnation.: For what they have done to thee, I take as done to me81 In Matthew 25:40, the persecutors of the faithful are warned that Christ will deal harshly with them on Judgment Day:  "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."  Wentworth again warns her persecutors that they will be punished for their abuse of her.: so that my anger is highly kindled against them82Often it is said of God in the Old Testament that his "anger was kindled against" sinners.  See, e.g., Zechariah 10:3 and Numbers 24:10., that abuse my Messenger, reject my Word, and do despite to the Spirit of Grace.  Some in particular, I the Lord have marked out, to bear my severe wrath;  and now thou must write it down, and be a witness how I will fulfill my Word upon them.  I the Lord say unto thee, That I will severly punish thy Husband, and William Dicks, for their sin is great.  And I the Lord say unto thee, That I will severely punish Hanserd Knollys83Hanserd Knollys, the Anabaptist preacher, who is also referred to in "Revelation IX" as "Knowles.", and his Church, for hardning of thy Husbands heart against thee, and for making of thee as an Heathen and Publican, for no other cause but for thy obeying of my Word, in coming out of their Church, when I the Lord did call thee out, and command thee to leave them.  And I the Lord say unto thee, That I will severely punish some of thy Kindred, for their unnaturalness unto thee, whilst thou was imployed in my Service;  but who they are, and what it is, that I will do, I leave that to thee, whether thou wilt speak that or no, for they cannot bear it from thee.  And I the Lord say unto thee, That I will severely punish Philip Barder, for his calling of thee, to repent of the Lords work; and for his refusing of thee for his Tenant, when I the Lord sent thee;  and for his being unwilling, to take my word, when he was ready, to take a mans word, a poor, blind, ignorant, dark Soul, that knows not me, nor what I am a doing;  and he talked to the grief of thine heart, as others did wound and pierce thee, my faithful Servant84This is a likely reference to the parable of the "faithful servant" in Matthew 24:45 & 25:21-23.. Revelation XIII.  July 24.  The Lord said unto me, Though the people be a little awakned85"Awakned" is a compositor's error., and afraid of Judgments, yet they repent not, neither forsake their sins, which bring down those Judgments;  and none are so sensible, as they should be, of my near approaching and coming.But I the Lord upon my Children now do call,  That in Faith and Prayer you now do keep:  Then shall my Angels now guard you all,  If you with others now do not sleep.  My promises, that I the Lord to you have made,  Now trust in my word for all your aid,  And you shall see whole Babylon fall,  That would kill and destroy you all:  That painted Whore, that decks her self so very fine,  And paints her face so fair, to make it shine;  That the poor Souls may cheat and delude,  She surely will fall, you may conclude.  For to Babylon I the Lord have no more to say,  Seeing they are resolved, to go on in their own way,  And run a whoring after their own Idol God86In Ezekiel 6:9, the Lord tells Ezekiel that he will destroy the children of Israel, who "go whoring after their idols.",    Until I the Lord plague them with my own Rod;  And say, No longer shall they cumber the ground87In Luke 13:6-9, the parable of the barren fig tree, Christ asks the dresser of the vineyard, "Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none:  cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?"  The vineyard dresser answers that he will fertilize and tend the tree for one year, and, if it still does not bear fruit, Christ may cut it down.  Wentworth suggests that the people of England are spiritually barren, and the Lord will consequently destroy them.  Wentworth may also allude to this passage because of its proximity to Luke 13:10-17, in which her Scriptural analogue, the woman suffering from an 18-year-long infirmity, is healed by Christ., I the Lord will cut them off88When the Lord says that he will destroy his enemies, he often says he will "cut them off."  See, for example, Exodus 23:23 and Psalm 54:5. before the year go round.   Awake!  Awake!  my dear Children, and sleep no more;  Now come, see the fall of the great Whore:  And when she is burnt, then will you hear her cry;  How she will say, Alas !  alas !  we dye !  we dye ! And when we thought, others this cup should have, 89Jeremiah 49:12:  "For thus saith the Lord; Behold, they whose judgment was not to drink of the cup have assuredly drunken; and art thou he that shall altogether go unpunished?  thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt surely drink of it." It falls upon our selves, and we go to the Grave.    This will be the portion of whole Babylon,  To cry and weep, and she sink like a Mill-stone90In Matthew 18:6, Christ says, "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone was hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."  Wentworth again posits herself as the humble, innocent, childlike "little one" as she does in "Revelation VII," thereby emphasizing the particular injustice of her persecution and the surety of her persecutors' damnation.. Thousands ready to fall I the Lord see stand, Thousands and thousands undone in poor England;  That into the bottomless Pit91This is a reference to the "bottomless pit" of Revelation 9. will now fall,  Which will devour, and swallow them up all.  Against them all will I the Lord shut the door92The story of the wise and foolish virgins appears in Matthew 25.  The wise virgins take oil with which to fill their lamps when they wait to "wed" Christ and the foolish virgins do not.  When Christ calls out to the virgins at midnight to come to Him, the foolish virgins have to go buy oil for their lamps whereas the wise virgins may proceed directly to the marriage feast.  To the foolish virgins who arrive late, Christ says, "I do not know you" and He shuts the doors of the feast against them (Matthew 25:12).  Wentworth, then, uses the story of wise and foolish virgins to underscore the importance of preparing for the Apocalypse.  A similar allusion to the story of the wise and foolish virgins occurs in Wentworth's A true Account:  "[do not] deceive your own selves by thinking either moral honesty, or formality, or any thing of our own righteousness, or going as far as the five foolish Virgins, just to Heavens Gate, and yet could not enter into eternal bliss" (14, B4 verso).  The prophet Lady Eleanor Douglas also employs an allusion to this Biblical story to emphasize the importance of preparing for God's coming when she tells the people of England to keep "oyl in their lamps, or watchful."   See Lady Eleanor Douglas, Apocalypse, Chapter 11 (n.p., 164?) 8, A4.verso.,   Where they can never enter in any more:  For I the Lord do not know any of them,  That would kill and slay my own Children:  Would starve them to death with hunger and cold,  As I the Lord do see, and did it oft behold:  They would destroy my Church, even whole Zion,  But I the Lord am come to save my own:  And those that follow me, and my commands do keep,  They shall with me for ever most sweetly sleep.  Come now whole Zion, come now and sing,  All Honour and Glory unto your God and King,  Who will deliver them, and set thee free,  I the Lord will do for them, as I have done for thee.  Revelation XIV.  July 24.  When I had ended this, and laid it by, and was retired alone in my Chamber, the same day the Lord spake to me again thus:I the Lord take up the Cudgels93According to the OED, a cudgel is a "short thick stick used as a weapon; a club." to fight with wicked men,  Who fight and make War with the Lamb then: The false Prophets, and the great blind Beast94In Revelation 20:10, the "beast" and the "false prophet" are already in Hell when the devil is cast down into it.,  That comes from North and South, and the East; That are so blind, they can neither see nor hear95In Deuteronomy 4:28, Moses says that the Lord will punish those who worship graven images by scattering them among heathens to "serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell."  See also Daniel 5:23 and Revelation 9:20 for further descriptions of false gods as blind and deaf.  Wentworth suggests here that the people of England are not worshiping the "God of Heaven," but false gods, and are following "false prophets" as well.,  Nor the God of Heaven they do not regard nor fear: But would spread their Errors96Jeremiah refers to the construction of graven images as "the work of errors"  (Jeremiah 10:15 & 51:18).  Wentworth continues to emphasize the fact that the English are worshiping false gods. all over the Land,  But with their falshoods before me the Lord cannot stand. My Church, my Spouse without spot must she be, My beloved Bride must be all fair for me: In Purple and Scarlet, cloathed all in white, That to the World she may give her light. It is I the Lord, who to thee now do speak, And yet they will not regard, nor my word take: By my Spirit I spake unto my Servants of old, As by my Prophets I have you all foretold. And I the Lord change not, but am still the same,Who speak to thee my Daughter again and again. And I the Lord now tell thee, that I will destroy, And preserve thy Name, and record thy Loyalty: When I cut off97When the Lord says that he will destroy his enemies, he often says he will "cut them off."  See, for example, Exodus 23:23 and Psalm 54:5. oppressors, and lying wicked men,  When they feel my hand, they will believe then: And know, that it is I the Lord, who does all for thee, Because thou art faithful in suffering for me: Thy Name shall live, when thy Enemies are gone, Because thou stoodst for Truth, when thou was alone. Revelation XV.  August 3.  The night of the late terrible Thunder, I lay awake a great part of the night, and after the Thunder did cease, the word of the Lord came unto me, and said:Zion, and Babylon they did fight it out,  And Zion did whole Babylon rout:  And wounded Babylon very deep,  That Zion might rejoyce and no more weep.  This is the thing, that I must proclaim,  How it was, and how it came:  Mercy and Judgment98In Psalm 101:1 & 8, David says that he will rule with "mercy and judgment" and "destroy all the wicked of the land."  Wentworth imagines God initiating a similar rule over England. they did meet,  
  And with a holy Kiss99Several times in the Bible, the brethren of Christian congregations are told to greet one another with a "holy kiss."  See, e.g., Romans 16:16 and 1 Corinthians 13:12. each other greet:  Justice and Equity100In Proverbs 1:3, "justice" and "equity" are listed as qualities which the Proverbs of Solomon will elucidate. took Mercies part,    And Mercy stabbed Babylon to the heart:  That Babylon did bleed unto death; 
 Then the Lord put his Sword in his sheath101In John 18:11 Simon Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest's servant as Jesus is being arrested.  Jesus tells Simon Peter, "put up thy sword into the sheath:  the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?"  Wentworth seems to have this passage in mind here, though she places the sword in God's hand and envisions God's personified victim, Babylon, as bleeding to death rather than as simply losing an ear.  Wentworth, then, uses the sheathed sword to suggest the completion of God's vengeance against His enemies, whereas  in John the sheathed sword is used to symbolize Christ's submission to His enemies..  When this monstrous Whore is dead and gone,  That would not leave a Saint not one; 
 Makes her self drunk with the Saints Blood,  This great Whore did never do any good;  But doth all the mischief, that she can;  And the people makes a God of proud Man. 
 Away with their false ways altogether,  For Saints love God, and will love no other:  In Spirit and Truth the Holy God will we obey,  And let all forms and shadows flee away: 
 Let Babylon drink the dregs of the Cup102In Psalm 75:8, the Lord pours all of the red wine out of a cup but the dregs, which the wicked shall be forced to drink.  In Isaiah 51:17, the people of Jerusalem are first forced to drink from "the cup of his [God's] fury" even to the dregs.  In Isaiah 51:22-23, the Lord says he will take the cup from their hands and force those who afflict them to drink it.,   Of which Gods Children did so often sup;  And tasted the bitterness of wrath, then  Given to Saints by the hand of wretched men.  But Jesus hath purchased Redemption for all  His own Elect, and reign with him they shall. Come out of Babylon, the Lord calleth them  To make haste, and come to worship him.  Those that are deaf at this call, and will not hear, 
 The Lord will plague them all among them there.  And his pure Spiritual Church the Lord will plant,  For to destroy all 
Babylon the Lord doth grant:  And to his Angels he hath given his Commission forth,  Because with whole 
Babylon he is wroth:  And will cut her Name off, and make her stink,  Because they all together are so fast linkt:  For that evil Spirit in every place joyns hand in hand,  For to cut off Gods Children out of the Land.  The Church of Christ hath suffered very long,  But now his Church his Spouse is very strong; 
 And Babylon is weak, and very feeble brought,  Because of God, our God, she will not be taught:  For she scorns to learn in Christs School, 
 But saith, Every one that follows God, & obeys him, is a Fool. 
 All Babylon are so wise in their own Eyes, 
 Nothing will please them but only Lyes:  Envy and malice riseth up to work very high,  But envy and malice must come down, and in Ashes lye. 
 The Spiritual Church, all of living 
Stones103In 1 Peter 2:4-5, Christ is called a "living stone" and the new priests are called 'lively stones' who will be built up into a "spiritual house.", will stand, 
 When Babylon and all her Brats, are purg'd out of the Land.  I see a great number of men stand like Trees104In Mark 8:24, when Christ touches the blind man's eyes, the latter sees "men as trees, walking."  The second time Christ touches the blind man's eyes, the latter sees clearly.  Wentworth seems to suggest that God is in the process of healing or saving her., 
 And I see them swarm about the Nation like Bees105 In Psalm 118:10 &12, the pagan nations are described as swarming around the speaker like bees:  "All nations compassed me about...They compassed me about like bees."  The speaker vows to destroy them.  Wentworth similarly envisions these "bees," i.e., the ungodly people of England, being destroyed.:  But their number will be ere long very small, 
 When the great Gulf doth swallow them up all: 
 For one shall ten thousand chace, 
 And Zion she shall win the Race. Revelation XVI.  August 14.  Whereas the Lord has made way, to bring forth into the World his Revelations sooner, than I expected or thought of, and commanded me very earnestly, to add thereunto, what I have suffered and suffer for being his Messenger, in bearing his Testimony to the World:  And I endeavoured, to put it by, for shame's sake.  There fear and trembling came upon me, that I could not withstand it, but was forced to declare herewith openly, how for obeying the Word of the Lord, and his Commandments, I am reproached as a proud, wicked, deceived, deluded, lying Woman;  a mad, melancholy, crackbrained, self willed, conceited Fool, and black Sinner, led by whimsies, notions, and knif-knafs106Though the OED does not list "knif-knafs" as a variation of "knick-knacks,"  Wentworth seems to use the term in this manner.  When Elaine Hobby quotes this sentence, she changes "knif-knafs" to "knick-knacks."  See Hobby, Virtue of Necessity, 52. of my own head; one that speaks blasphemy, not fit to take the Name of God in her mouth;  an Heathen and Publican, a Fortune-teller, an Enthusiast, and the like much more, whereof I appeal to God, to judge:  And then let all slanderers challenge their own words.  Thus we stand ready before the Lord, and attend upon him, to pass sentence, and to give a visible Testimony from Heaven, which of these two Spirits he will own?  That Spirit, which hath dictated the Verses in this Book;  or that, which speaks all those evil Words and Defamations:  For God cannot own both.  And when it cometh to pass, that you Slanderers are found not only false Accusers and Persecutors, but also Rebukers, Controlers and Blasphemers107In 2 Timothy 3:1-3, Paul tells Timothy "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.  For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, falseaccusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good."  Wentworth suggests that her persecution is a sign that England is in its "last days."  against the Holy Ghost, and that therefore God shall make your Name to stink and rot upon the Earth, and put you to eternal shame for what you have done and said falsly of me since you well know your selves, that whosoever loveth and maketh a Lye, must stand without with the Dogs and Sorcerers, and Whoremongers, and Murderers, and Idolaters108In Revelation 22:14-15, an angel says to John, "Blessed are that do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.  For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.".  How is it then possible, that you, knowing this, can think to go unpunished by the just, true and holy God, who judgeth righteously?  Therefore let all mark, how the Lord will fall upon you, and how quickly he will begin:  For your lying words have made the Lords anger to burn hot against you; Ezek.  24.27.  In that day shall my mouth be opened up to him, which is escaped, and I shall speak, and be no more reviled, no more abused, no more persecuted:  But you shall be a sign unto all people, and they shall know, that it is the Lord, that spake by me unto you, and all the People of England.  Ezek. 24.25, 26.    Shall it not be, saith the Lord, in the day, when I take from them their strength, (N B. New-years day!) the joy of their Glory, the desire of their Eyes, and that whereupon they set their minds; that he, that escaped that day, shall come unto thee, and take thee by the hand, to cause thee, to hear it with thine Ears?  And as concerning my Husbands Behaviour towards me in this Case of the Lords, He the Lord will also judge betwixt Him and Me, and make known, whether I am an impudent Hussy, a disobedient Wife to him, one that run away from her Husband, and the like.  Or whether He is the Man, that will not suffer me to live with him, that will not receive me into his Habitation, unless I deny the Lord, and his Message, and avow to be deluded by a lying Spirit.  And therefore he takes no care of me, nor once looks after me these almost two years.  These things the Lord will judge and bring to light, that all People shall know, how He likes of their encouraging my Husband against me, in making me the Butt of their malice;  but my Husband, they make the patient, meek Lamb, and strengthen him thus against the Lord.  Therefore all that have done, and do so, shall feel the Rod of an angry God, as there is Hanserd Knollys with his Church, and Nehemiah Cocks, my Husbands Pastor, Thomas Hicks, William Dicks, Philip Barder, my Relations, and hundreds more, that have a hand in setting my Husband against me, so that he will not own me:  And then they go on to blame and defame me, and say, that I am run away from him!  So far it is the will of God, that the World should know the true reason, why I must live alone and apart from my said Husband, which (as it will stand before God) is no other, but that I cannot deny the Testimony of Jesus, but keep the Commandments of God,  being obedient to all his Wills.  And this is the thing, the only thing, that makes my Husband and hundreds more, to be wroth with me, and endeavour to take away my good Name, in spreading abroad, that I keep Men company, and have my Rogues come to me, and live a scandalous life in an Alms-house.  But as the Pharisees of old said of the Son of God, that he was a gluttonous man, a Wine-bibber, a Friend of Publicans and Sinners109Matthew 11:19:  "The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners."  See also Luke 7:34:  "The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!"  Wentworth compares the accusations made against her to the accusations that the Pharisees made against Christ., and one that hath the Devil;  and yet he bore it patiently:  So shall I wait in patience, how the LordJesus doth love and like of their thus defaming me, which will be seen and known openly, for to be recorded to Generations to come.  After I had written this, the Word of the Lord came unto me, and said:  My anger is greatly kindled, against all thy malicious lying Enemies, and I will appear a swift Witness against them, and pour out the Vials of my wrath upon them:  And I will make my self known by the Judgment, which I will execute against them, by ensnaring them in the Works of their own Hands;  even whilst they are in their wicked way of lying, and bold in their sin, I the Lord will appear with my Judgment against them.  Moreover, the Lord said, The great Disappointment and Overturning shall surely be accomplished, which did begin before New-years day 1677.  for then was the beginning of what will now very shortly follow.  And then they shall all know, saith the Lord, how falsly they have accused thee in that matter:  And that they have spoken from a blind, dark, lying Spirit:  And they shall see, that thou wast not deceived, or deluded, as they say, but that thou hast spoken the Truth in soberness, and in the fear of God:  And I will decide the Controversie. Revelation XVII.  August 18.In the morning upon my Bed the Lord spake thus unto me, and made me write it down, as soon as I was up, before I was ready;  Thus he said:
If thy Enemies be angry at my Word,     Then angry they must be still;  For in Judgment will I the Lord     Meet them and do what is my will.For their rejecting my Word, and fighting with me,  I the Lord will fight with all of them for thee,  And leave neither Root nor Branch110Malachi 4:1:  "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble:  and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."  For other instances where Wentworth uses this phrase to describe the complete destruction of her enemies, see also "Revelation XVII" in this text and A true Account, 19, C3. to stand,    But cut them off out of the Land:  If they do not quickly repent,  No Life to them shall be lent.  ConclusionIn conclusion hereof, I thought fit to acquaint the pious Reader, how after that Mrs. Wentworth, by the contrivance of her Husband, was turned out of her House, which he did lett unknown to her;  and then, she being commanded by the Lord not to quit it, he took away all, not a Stool to sit upon, not a Bed, nor any thing else left;  and afterwards sent three of her Cosins, who took her out the House by force at Midsummer 1677.  But in the year 1678.  April 26.  the Word of the Lord came unto her, saying, That he would return her, at Midsummer next following, into the same House again, notwithstanding all oppositions of men whatsoever, in despight of their Malice.  And though her Husband would let her have no Houshold-stuff, Bedding, and the like;  yet he, the Lord, would provide her with all suitable conveniencies, and Money too for her maintenance and House-Rent, by such as she never saw before:  And that should be for a sign, that he, the Lord hath sent her, to give warning to the Nation, that an unheard-of overturn was coming upon them, unless they repent.  Now all this, according to the Word of the Lord, is come to pass;  for though all manner of oppositions from all sides, directly and indirectly, have been made, yet when the time, appointed by the Lord, was come, the Door of the House was opened to her, (by whom, God knows, for to this day she knows it not) and she entrd111Compositor's error.  freely and took possession.  Soon after Beds were brought in, Chairs, Tables, and all manner of useful Furniture;  Money also was and is not wanting to this day:  yea more bountiful has been, and still is the Lord, then he promised, even to the astonishment of all that have been, and are eye-witnesses of it.  Thus wonderfully doth the Lord own, that he hath sent her.  Whereof if any desires further satisfaction, he may have it from her self;  whilst the whole thing it self, being of a larger extent, then to be crowded in here, is making ready to be published.FINIS Wentworth BibliographyBibliography: Primary Sources.Anonymous.  "Letter from the friends of Anne Wentworth to her husband."Calendar of State Papers Domestic-1677.  ? October 1677.Ed. F.H. Blackburne Daniell.London:His Majesty's Stationery Office,1911.435-36.Barnes, T."To ______."Letter in Calendar of State Papers Domestic-1677.21 October 1677.Ed. F.H. Blackburne Daniell.London:His Majesty's Stationery Office,1911.411-12.______."To ______."Letter in Calendar of State Papers Domestic-1677.30 November 1677.Ed. F.H. Blackburne Daniell.London:His Majesty's Stationery Office,1911.477-78.______."To ______."Letter in Calendar of State Papers Domestic-1677.26 December 1677.Ed. F.H. Blackburne Daniell.London:His Majesty's Stationery Office,1911.528-29.Wentworth, Anne."Anne Wentworth to the King."Letter in Calendar of State Papers Domestic-1677.31 July 1677.Ed. F.H. Blackburne Daniell.London:His Majesty's Stationery Office,1911.279._____."Anne Wentworth to the Lord Mayor."Letter in Calendar of State Papers Domestic-1677.31 July 1677?Ed. F.H. Blackburne Daniell.London:His Majesty's Stationery Office,1911.279-80._____."Anne Wentworth to dear Christian friends."Letter in Calendar of State Papers Domestic-1677.? October 1677.Ed. F.H. Blackburne Daniell.London:His Majesty's Stationery Office,1911.434-35._____.Englands spiritual pill.London:1678?No Wing number._____.The Revelation of Jesus Christ.London:1679.W1355._____.A true Account.London:1676.W1355A._____.A Vindication of Anne Wentworth.London:1677.W1356.Bibliography: Secondary Sources Containing Direct References to Wentworth.Bell, Maureen, et. al., eds.A Biographical Dictionary of English Women Writers 1580-1720.Boston:G.K. Hall & Co.,1990.See 210-11 & 280.Blain, Virginia, et. al., eds.The Feminist Companion to Literature in English:  Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present.New Haven:Yale University Press,1990.See 1148.Hobby, Elaine.Virtue of Necessity:  English Women's Writing 1646-1688.London:Virago Press,1988.See 49-53.Ludlow, Dorothy P."Shaking Patriarchy's Foundations:  Sectarian Women in England, 1641-1700."Triumph over Silence:  Women in Protestant History.Ed.  Richard L. Greaves.Westport Connecticut:Greenwood Press,1985.93-123.Otten, Charlotte F., ed.English Women's Voices, 1540-1700.Miami:Florida International University Press,1992.See 19-20 & 41-42.Thomas, Keith.Religion and the Decline of Magic.New York:Charles Scribner's Sons,1971.See 144.Bibliography: Secondary Sources Without References to Wentworth.Capp, B.S. The Fifth Monarchy Men:  A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism.London:Faber and Faber,1972.Cohen, Alfred."Prophecy and Madness:  Women Visionaries During the Puritan Revolution."The Journal of Psychohistory 11.3(Winter 1984):411-30.Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down:  Radical Ideas During the English Revolution.Middlesex, England:Penguin Books,1972.Mack, Phyllis.Visionary Women:  Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England.Berkeley:University of California Press,1992.Matchinske, Megan."Holy Hatred:  Formations of the Gendered Subject in English Apocalyptic Writing, 1625-1651."English Literary History 60.2(Summer 1993):349-77.Power, M.J."The social topography of Restoration London." London:  1500-1700:  The making of the metropolis.Ed. A.L. Beier and Roger Finlay.London & New York:Longman,1986.Smith, Nigel. Perfection Proclaimed:  Language and Literature in English Radical Religion 1640-1660.Oxford:Clarendon Press,1989.