"New-Year's Day arriving, and the ministers, to whom I wrote, remaining silent, I consider their silence as evidence, that they cannot prove what I said not to be from the Lord, and have therefore published as I was directed"
About this Quote
The New Year's timestamp matters. It's a ritual hinge, a moment when prophecy feels plausible because time itself is "turning over". Southcott harnesses that cultural charge: if God is going to speak, why not now? The calendrical urgency also pressures her opponents; any delay reads like evasion, and she frames publication as obedience to a higher schedule than clerical bureaucracy.
Subtextually, it's a power grab disguised as humility. "As I was directed" performs submission to God while sidestepping submission to church hierarchy. The ministers' "silence" is recoded as consent, and consent is recoded as confirmation. It's a neat rhetorical trap: engage her and you dignify her; ignore her and you validate her.
In context, this is how a working-class female prophet in late-18th-century England builds a platform in a culture suspicious of unauthorized female authority. Southcott doesn't argue theology so much as stage a public contest over who gets to decide what counts as revelation - and she turns the establishment's nonresponse into her loudest endorsement.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Southcott, Joanna. (2026, January 18). New-Year's Day arriving, and the ministers, to whom I wrote, remaining silent, I consider their silence as evidence, that they cannot prove what I said not to be from the Lord, and have therefore published as I was directed. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/new-years-day-arriving-and-the-ministers-to-whom-12032/
Chicago Style
Southcott, Joanna. "New-Year's Day arriving, and the ministers, to whom I wrote, remaining silent, I consider their silence as evidence, that they cannot prove what I said not to be from the Lord, and have therefore published as I was directed." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/new-years-day-arriving-and-the-ministers-to-whom-12032/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"New-Year's Day arriving, and the ministers, to whom I wrote, remaining silent, I consider their silence as evidence, that they cannot prove what I said not to be from the Lord, and have therefore published as I was directed." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/new-years-day-arriving-and-the-ministers-to-whom-12032/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
