putterings 157 < 158 > 159 index
little signs and omens, devil’s providences they might be called
He [Charles H. Weld] was the first man among us who visited [Theophilus Ransom] Gates, and his favorable report gave great currency to Gates’s fall prophecies and anti-organization views. He inoculated all of us with Gates’s puttering attention to little signs and omens — devil’s providences they might be called. This spirit gave me unspeakable torment, and it was months before I was entirely cured.
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ex Chapter 29, “Repudiation of Former Leaders,” in Religious Experience of John Humphrey Noyes, Founder of the Oneida Community, Compiled and edited by George Wallingford Noyes (1923) : 297
John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886), “preacher, radical religious philosopher, and utopian socialist.”
wikipedia