417-418.] STRAY FANATICS: THE MUGGLETONIANS:--Sometimes confounded with the Ranters, but really distinguishable, were some crazed men, whose crazes had taken a religious turn, and whose extravagances became contagious .-- Such was a John Robins, first heard of about 1650, when he went about, sometimes as God Almighty, sometimes as Adam raised from the dead, with the power of raising others from the dead.

He had raised Cain and Judas, and other personages of Scripture, forgiving their sins and blessing them; which personages, changed in character, but remembering their former selves quite well, went about in Robins's company and were seen and talked with by various people.

He could work miracles, and in dark rooms would exhibit himself surrounded with angels, and fiery serpents, and shining lights, or riding in the air.

He had been sent to Bridewell, and his supernatural powers had left him .-- One heard next, in 1652, of two associates, called John Reeve and Ludovick Muggleton, who professed to be "the two last Spiritual Witnesses (Rev.xi.) and alone true Prophets of the Lord Jesus Christ, God alone blessed to all eternity." They believed in a real man-shaped God, existing from all eternity, who had come upon earth as Jesus Christ, leaving Moses and Elijah to represent him in Heaven--also in the mortality of the soul till the resurrection of the body; and their chief commission was to denounce and curse all false prophets, and all who did not believe in Reeves and Muggleton.

They visited Robins in Bridewell and told _him_ to stop his preaching under pain of eternal damnation; but they favoured some eminent Presbyterian and Independent ministers of London with letters to the same effect.