Wesley Corpus

This being done seriously, their mind is so occupied, partly with sorrow and heaviness, partly with an earnest desire to be delivered from this danger of hell and damnation, that all desire of meat and drink is laid apart, and loathsomeness (or loathing) of all worldly things and pleasure cometh in place. So that nothing then liketh them, more than to weep, to lament, to mourn, and both with words and behaviour of body to show themselves weary of life.” Now, what, if your wife, or daughter, or acquaintance, after hearing one of these field-preachers, should come and tell you, that they saw damnation before them, and beheld with the eye of their mind the horror of hell? What, if they should “tremble and quake,” and be so taken up “partly with sorrow and heaviness, partly with an earnest desire to be delivered from this danger of hell and damnation, as to weep, to lament, to mourn, and both with words and behaviour to show themselves weary of life; ” would you scruple to say, that they were stark mad; that these fellows had driven them out of their senses; and that whatever writer it was that talked at this rate, he was fitter for Bedlam than any other place? You have overshot yourself now to some purpose. These are the very words of our own Church. You may read them, if you are so inclined, in the first part of the “Homily on Fasting.” And consequently, what you have peremptorily determined to be mere lunacy and distraction, is that “repentance unto life,” which, in the judgment both of the Church and of St. Paul, is “never to be repented of.” 13. I grant, Thirdly, that extraordinary circumstances have attended this conviction in some instances. A particular account of these I have frequently given. While the word of God was preached, some persons have dropped down as dead; some have been, as it were, in strong convulsions; some roared aloud, though not with an articulate voice; and others spoke the anguish of their souls. This, I suppose, you believe to be perfect madness. But it is easily accounted for, either on principles of reason or Scripture. First. On principles of reason.