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in 1831, and now, in less than twenty years, the sect numbers 30,000 people in Great Britain, and about five times that number in America. They are the principal inhabitants of a territory in the latter country, to which they have given the name of "Deseret," a word that occurs in their new Bible, or Book of Mormon, and which is said to signify a "honeybee."
They expect in a short time, by means of emigration from Great Britain, and by the gathering together of their people, to muster a sufficient number in Deseret, to claim formal admission into the American Union.
HUTCHINSONIANS.
Hutchinsonians, the followers of John Hutchinson, born in Yorkshire, 1674, and who in the early part of life served the Duke of Somerset in the capacity of a steward. The Hebrew Scriptures, he says, comprise a perfect system of natural philosophy, theology, and religion. In opposition to Dr. Woodward's Natural History of the earth, Mr. Hutchinson, in 1724, published the first part of his curious book, called, Moses's Principia. Its second part was presented to the public in 1727, which contains, as he apprehends, the principles of the scripture philosophy, which are a plenum and the air. So high an opinion did he entertain of the Hebrew language, that he thought the Almighty must have employed it to communicate every species of knowledge, and that accordingly every species of knowledge is to be found in the Old Testament. Of his mode of philosophising the following specimen is brought forward to the reader's attention. "The air (he supposes) exists in three conditions, fire, light, and spirit, the two latter are the finer and grosser parts of the air in motion: from the earth to the sun, the air is finer and finer till it becomes pure light near the confines of the sun, and fire in the orb of the sun, or solar focus. From the earth towards the circumference of this system, in which he includes the fixed stars, the air becomes grosser and grosser till it becomes stagnant, in which condition it is at the utmost verge of this system; from whence (in his opinion) the expression of outer darkness, and blackness of darkness, used in the New Testament, seems to be taken."
The followers of Mr. Hutchinson are numerous, and among others the Rev. Mr. Romaine, Lord Duncan Forbes of Culloden, and the late amiable Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich, who published an Abstract of Mr. Hutchinson's writings. They have never formed themselves into any distinct church or society.
