These disturbances continued for some four months and then subsided, except that some members of the family were annoyed by them for several years.
Mr. Wesley was frequently urged to quit the parsonage. His reply was eminently characteristic: "No," said he, "let the devil flee from me. I will never flee from the devil."
Every effort was made to discover the cause of these disturbances, but without satisfactory results, save that all believed they were preternatural. The whole family were unanimous in the belief that it was satanic.
A full account of these noises was prepared from the most authentic sources by John Wesley and published in the Arminian Magazine. Dr. Priestley, an unbeliever, confessed it to have been the best-authenticated and best-told story of the kind that was anywhere extant; and yet, so strongly wedded was he to his materialistic views, he could not accept them, nor find what might be regarded as a commonsense solution of them. He thought it quite probable that it was a trick of the servants, assisted by some of the neighbors, and that nothing was meant by it except puzzling the family and amusing themselves. But Mrs. Wesley and other members of the household declared that the noises were heard above and beneath them when all the family were in the same room.
Dr. Southey, though he does not express an opinion of these noises in his Life of Wesley, in a letter to Mr. Wilberforce avows his belief in their preternatural character. In his Life of Wesley he does say, "The testimony upon which it rests is far too strong to be set aside because of the strangeness of the relation."
Dr. Priestley observes in favor of the story that all the parties seemed to have been sufficiently void of fear, and also free from credulity, except the general belief that such things were supernatural. But he claims that "where no good end is answered we may safely conclude that no miracle was wrought."
Mr. Southey replies to Priestley thus: "The former argument would be valid if the term 'miracle' were applicable to the case; but by 'miracle' Mr. Priestley intends a manifestation of divine power, and in the present case no such meaning is supposed, any more than in the appearance of departed spirits. Such things may be preternatural and yet not miraculous; they may be in the ordinary course of nature, and yet imply no alteration of its laws. And in regard to the good end which it may be supposed to answer, it would be end sufficient if sometimes one of those unhappy persons, who, looking through the dim glass of infidelity, sees something beyond this life and the narrow sphere of mortal existence, should, from the well-established truth of such a story (trifling and objectless as it may appear), be led to conclude that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy."[M]
Mr. Coleridge finds a satisfactory solution of this knotty question in attributing the whole thing to "a contagious nervous disease" with which he judged the whole family to have been afflicted, "the acme or intensest form of which is catalepsy." The poor dog, it would seem, was as badly afflicted as the rest.
This notion does not need refutation. Dr. Adam Clarke, who collected all the accounts of these disturbances and published them in his Wesley Family, claims that they are so circumstantial and authentic as to entitle them to the most implicit credit. The eye and ear witnesses were persons of strong understanding and well-cultivated minds, untinctured by superstition, and in some instances rather skeptically inclined.