reader acquainted with that which he was
some time in discovering.
    The insurgents had proceeded to hold their day of humiliation, which,
agreeably to the practice of the puritans during the earlier civil war, they
considered as the most effectual mode of solving all difficulties, and waiving
all discussions. It was usual to name an ordinary week-day for this purpose, but
on this occasion the Sabbath itself was adopted, owing to the pressure of the
time and the vicinity of the enemy. A temporary pulpit, or tent, was erected in
the middle of the encampment; which, according to the fixed arrangement, was
first to be occupied by the Reverend Peter Poundtext, to whom the post of honour
was assigned, as the eldest clergyman present. But as the worthy divine, with
slow and stately steps, was advancing towards the rostrum which had been
prepared for him, he was prevented by the unexpected apparition of Habakkuk
Mucklewrath, the insane preacher whose appearance had so much startled Morton at
the first council of the insurgents after their victory at London Hill. It is
not known whether he was acting under the influence and instigation of the
Cameronians, or whether he was merely compelled by his own agitated imagination,
and the temptation of a vacant pulpit before him, to seize the opportunity of
exhorting so respectable a congregation. It is only certain that he took
occasion by the forelock, sprung into the pulpit, cast his eyes wildly around
him, and, undismayed by the murmurs of many of the audience, opened the Bible,
read forth as his text from the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, »Certain men,
the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the
inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which you
have not known;« and then rushed at once into the midst of his subject.
    The harangue of Mucklewrath was as wild and extravagant as his intrusion was
unauthorised and untimely; but it was provokingly coherent, in so far as it
turned entirely upon the very subjects of discord, of which it had been agreed
to adjourn the consideration until some more suitable opportunity. Not a single
topic did he omit which had offence in it; and, after charging the moderate
party with heresy, with crouching to tyranny, with seeking to be at peace with
God's enemies, he applied to Morton, by name, the charge that he had been one of
those men of Belial, who, in the words of his text, had gone out from amongst
them, to withdraw the inhabitants of his city, and to go astray