The next day he left Leyden with a guinea in his pocket,
no clothes but those he stood in, and a flute in his hand. For the
rest you must see the story of the Philosophic Vagabond.
Evelyn records an amusing experience at Leyden in August, 1641:
"I was brought acquainted with a Burgundian Jew, who had married
an apostate Kentish woman. I asked him divers questions; he told
me, amongst other things, that the World should never end, that our
souls transmigrated, and that even those of the most holy persons did
penance in the bodies of brutes after death, and so he interpreted
the banishment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar; that all the Jews
should rise again, and be led to Jerusalem; that the Romans only were
the occasion of our Saviour's death, whom he affirmed (as the Turks
do) to be a great prophet, but not the Messiah. He showed me several
books of their devotion, which he had translated into English for the
instruction of his wife; he told me that when the Messiah came, all the
ships, barks, and vessels of Holland should, by the power of certain
strange whirlwinds, be loosed from their anchors, and transported in
a moment to all the desolate ports and havens throughout the world,
wherever the dispersion was, to convey their brethren and tribes to the
Holy City; with other such-like stuff.
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