Wesley Corpus

10. You proceed to what you account a fifth instance of enthusiasm: ‘With regard to people's falling in fits, it is plain, you look upon both the disorders and removals of them to be supernatural.’ (ibid.). It is not quite plain. I look upon some of these cases as wholly natural; on the rest as mixed, both the disorder and the removal being partly natural and partly not. Six of these you pick out from, it may be, two hundred; and add, ‘From all which, you leave no room to doubt, that you would have these cases considered as those of the demoniacs in the New Testament; in order, I suppose, to parallel your supposed cures of them with the highest miracles of Christ and his disciples.’ I should once have wondered at your making such a supposition; but I now wonder at nothing of this kind. Only be pleased to remember, till this supposition is made good, it is no confirmation at all of my enthusiasm. You then attempt to account for those fits by ‘obstructions or irregularities of the blood and spirits, hysterical disorder, watchings, fastings, closeness of rooms, great crowds, violent heat.’ And, lastly, by ‘terrors, perplexities, and doubts, in weak and well-meaning men;’ which, you think, in many of the cases before us, have ‘quite overset their understandings.’ As to each of the rest, let it go as far as it can go. But I require proof of the last way whereby you would account for these disorders. Why, ‘The instances," you say, "of religious madness have much increased since you began to disturb the world.’ (Remarks, pp. 68, 69.) I doubt the fact. Although, if these instances had increased lately, it is easy to account for them another way. ‘Most have heard of, or known, several of the Methodists thus driven to distraction.’ You may have heard of five hundred; but how many have you known Be pleased to name eight or ten of them. I cannot find them, no, not one of them to this day, either man, woman, or child. I find some indeed, whom you told, they would be distracted if they ‘continued to follow these men,’ and whom, at that time, you threw into much doubt, and terror, and perplexity. But though they did continue to hear them ever since, they are not distracted yet.