Wesley Corpus

by this ‘new and living way,” many of those that heard began to call] upon God with strong cries and tears. Some sunk down, and there remained no strength in them; others exceedingly trembled and quaked: some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and that so violently, that often four or five persons could not hold one of them. I have seen many hysterical and many epileptic fits; but none of them were like these, in many respects. I immediately prayed, that God would not suffer those who were weak to be offended. But one woman was offended greatly ; being sure they might help it if they would ;--no one should persuade her to the contrary ; and was got three or four yards, when she also dropped down, in as violent an agony as the rest. Twenty-six of those who had been thus affected (most of whom during the prayers which were made for them, were in a moment filled with peace and joy) promised to call upon me the next day. But only eighteen came; by talking closely with whom, I found reason to believe that some of them had gone home to their house justified. The rest seemed to be waiting patiently for it. Sat. 16.--We met at Fetter-lane, to humble ourselves before God, and own he had justly withdrawn his Spirit from us, for our manifold unfaithfulness. We acknowledged our having grieved him by our divisions; ‘one saying, I am of Paul; another, I am of Apollos :” by our leaning again to our own works, and trusting in them, instead of Christ ; by our resting in those little beginnings of sanctification, which it had pleased him to work in our souls; and, above all, by blaspheming his work among us, imputing it either to nature, to the force of imagination and animal spirits, or even to the delusion of the devil. In that hour, we found God with us as at the first. Some fell prostrate upon the ground. Others burst out, as with one consent, into loud praise and thanksgiving.’ And many openly testified, there had been no such day as this since January the first preceding.