11. “But you drive them out of their senses. You make them mad.” Nay, then they are idle with a vengeance. This objection therefore being of the utmost importance, deserves our deepest consideration.
And first, I grant, it is my earnest desire to drive all the world, into what you probably call madness: (I mean, inward religion) to make them just as mad, as Paul was when he was so accounted by Festus.
The counting all things on earth but dung and dross, so we may win Christ; the [♦]trampling under foot all the pleasures of the world, the seeking no treasure but in heaven; the having no desire of the praise of men, a good character, a fair reputation; the being exceeding glad when men revile us, and persecute us, and say all manner of evil against us falsely; the giving God thanks, when our father and mother forsake us, when we have neither food to eat, nor raiment to put on, nor a friend but what shoots out bitter words, nor a place where to lay our head: this is utter distraction in your account; but in God’s it is sober, rational religion: the genuine fruit, not of a distempered brain, not of a sickly imagination, but of the power of God in the heart, of victorious love, and of a sound mind.
[♦] “trampleing” replaced with “trampling”
12. I grant, secondly, It is my endeavour to drive all I can, into what you may term another species of madness, which is usually preparatory to this, and which I term repentance or conviction.
I cannot describe this better than a writer of our own has done. I will therefore transcribe his words.
“When men feel in themselves the heavy burden of sin, see damnation to be the reward of it, and behold with the eye of their mind the horror of hell; they tremble, they quake, and are inwardly touched with sorrowfulness of heart, and cannot but accuse themselves, and open their grief unto Almighty God, and call unto him for mercy. 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 shew 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 shew 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 destruction, 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.