Wesley Corpus

Sun. 28.--I went, (having been long importuned thereto,) about five in the evening, with four or five of my friends, to a house where was one of those commonly called French prophets. After a time, she came in. She seemed about four or five and twenty, of an agreeable speech and behaviour. She asked, why we came. I said, “ To try the spirits, whether they be of God.” Presently after shc leaned back in her chair, and seemed to have strong workings in her breast, with deep sighings intermixed. Her head and hands, and, by turns, every part of her body seemed also to be in a kind of convulsive motion. This continued about ten minutes, till, at six, she began to speak, {though the workings, sighings, and contortions of her body were so intermixed with her words, that she seldom spoke half a sentence together,) with a clear, strong voice, “ Father, thy will, thy will be done. ‘Thus saith the Lord, If of any of you that is a father, his child ask break, will he give him a stone? If he ask a fish, will he give him a scorpion? Ask bread of me, my children, and I will give you bread, I will not, will not give you a scorpion. By this judge of what ye shall now hear.” She spoke much (all as in the person of God, and mostly in Scripture words) of the fulfilling of the prophecies, the coming of Christ now at hand, and the spreading of the Gospel over all the earth. Then she exhorted us not to be in haste in judging her spirit, to be or not to be of God; but to wait upon God, and he would teach us, if we conferred not with flesh and blood. She added, with many enforcements, that we must watch and pray, and take up our cross, and be still before God. Two or three of our company were much affected, and believed she spoke by the Spirit of God. But this was in no wise clear to me. The motion might be either hysterical or artificial. And the same words, any person of a good understanding and well versed in the Scriptures might have spoken. But I let the matter alone; knowing this, that “ if it be not of God, it will come to nought.”