"Leaving all ancient miracles and revelation, I will come down to those of our own times, and in our own country.--Strange to tell, there is a sect of people now among us, who sprang up less than half a century ago, whose religion is professedly founded on miracles and revelation. On miracles wrought by the first founders of the sect, as by Christ and his apostles, and on a revelation also made directly to them, and through them to the believers, as by the inspired writers of the new testament. They appear to be something similar in sentiment, as it respects the person of Christ, to the ancient Arians; with this difference only, they conceived that as Christ made his first appearance in Jesus, the son of a _carpenter_, so he has made his second appearance in Ann, the daughter of a _blacksmith_, whom they call _mother_; and they consider their church the _New Jerusalem_, that holy city which was to come down from God out of Heaven.
In the year 1808, about the same time after their first rise as it was after the days of Jesus to the writing of the new testament, they published a history of their sect, in a work entitled '_Christ's second appearance,' or the New Jerusalem Church_, setting forth their rise, progress and present state; together with their principles, customs and mode of worship. This work contains an account of their mother _Ann_, and the first elders; and particularly an account of the miracles said to have been wrought by them. If my memory serves me, (as the book is not by me) there is an account of about _forty_ miracles, all of which are well attested, and though they acknowledge that most of them are inferior to those wrought by Jesus and his apostles, yet they contend that they are no more inferior to those than those are to the miracles wrought by Moses. They contend that for the plagues in Egypt, the dividing the red sea, bringing water out of the rock, feeding Israel forty years in the wilderness with bread from heaven, and that there should always fall a double portion on the sixth day, but none on the seventh, that that which fell on the sixth day, should keep two days, but on all other days it would keep but one, and that afterward, some of the same bread or manna was laid up in the ark of the covenant which kept for ages, as a memorial; also the dividing the waters of the river Jordan, and the fall of the walls of Jericho; yea most or all of these, according to reason or human appearance, are as much greater than the miracles wrought by Jesus and his apostles, as those are greater than those wrought by Ann and her elders! It is true, they did not pretend to raise the dead, but either these accounts are all fabrications and lies, or else they had among them the gift of healing, and that too miraculously. A woman who had fell with her horse, by the falling of a bridge, and had broken several of her ribs, besides being otherwise very much bruised, was cured in one evening, so that she joined in the dance! A boy who had cut his foot so that a person might have laid his finger into the wound, which bled very profusely, was cured in a few hours so that nothing was to be seen of the wound excepting a white streak, about the bigness of a common thread! and many others of a like kind, too numerous to be mentioned in this place.