James Nayler brought much dishonour on the whole sect. The nineteenth century, with all its rationalism, has seen Joanna Southcote, and her numerous disciples. The seventeenth, with all its fanaticism, witnessed, in the greatest enthusiast of the age, less absurdity, and with him a smaller following than we have witnessed even in our own time. Though Nayler was a convert of George Fox, George Fox regarded Nayler with some suspicion, "struck with a fear," as he said, "and being, as it were, under a sense of some great disaster that was like to befal him."[386] Nayler's fall grieved the hearts of his own people, and filled the whole country with exaggerated reports of his shame. While a sufferer in Exeter gaol, his deluded followers addressed him as "the Everlasting Son, the Prince of Peace, the fairest among ten thousand." He fancied himself possessed of the Divine nature in some inexplicable way. Reports were circulated that he pretended to raise to life one Dorcas Erbery two days after her death. Liberated from gaol, he marched through Glastonbury and Wells, men and women walking before him, bareheaded, and strewing the ground with their clothes, in imitation of what was done at Christ's entrance into Jerusalem. At Bristol people shouted as he passed along, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Israel, Hosanna in the highest." In prison he received greetings from fanatics who sung hymns to him, and cried, in Scripture words: "Rise up, my love, my dove, my fair one, and come away: why sittest thou among the pots?" This national scandal, as the Parliament deemed it, could, in their judgment, be washed out only by pains and penalties; a fact which has received attention in our account of the second Protectorate Parliament. Although a fanatic, James Nayler demands justice. It has been rarely meted out to him. His fanaticism was mystical. He had a notion of some extraordinary indwelling of the Spirit within his soul, which he enjoyed, as he supposed, not in consequence of his own superiority, but entirely from abounding grace. Not himself, but the indwelling Lord, he deemed the object of the honours paid--honours, it would appear, volunteered by enthusiasts who were madder than himself. This point is largely noticed in his trial.[387] Things were laid to his charge which he denied, and he distinctly repudiated the pretence of raising the dead. Most important of all is the fact that he repented of his folly, and published a recantation of his errors in several forms.[388]