myself. I beamed with gospel light; it shone through me. I was the
beacon of this latter age: a comet, sent to warn the wicked. I mean, I
was all this in my own imagination, which swelled and mounted to the
very acme of fanaticism.

Under the impulse of these wild dreams, in which my soul delighted, I
was sometimes tempted to rise up a prophet, preach salvation to the
poor, and confound the wise. Persecution I must expect, but in that I
should glory: it was the badge of blessedness, the mark of election,
the signing of the covenant. Elevated to these celestial heights, with
what contempt did I look down on the doctors, proctors, and preachers
of Baal (for such were all the unenlightened) and on their dignities,
paraphernalia, and many coloured robes. What were these but the types
of Babylon? the ensigns of the scarlet whore? the purple tokens of the
beast? In the most extravagant eccentricities of mind it is remarkable
what a mixture there is of truth and falsehood, and how nearly and
frequently they approach each other.

During the height of this paroxysm, a famous gospel preacher, a divine
man, on his way from Shropshire to London, came to hold forth in the
vicinity of Oxford: not in churches, they were shut upon him, but in
the fields; not to the rich, not to the worldy wise, not to the self
righteous, they were deaf, but to the poor in spirit, to the polluted,
the hardened reprobate, who wished by faith and repentance, though
dyed in sin like scarlet, to be washed white as wool. To hear this
teacher of the word, who set up his stool near a village on the Witney
road, I repaired: I and many a moaning old woman beside; watchful,
with our chorus of amen and our sobs and groans at every divine
ejaculation, to aid the heaving motions of the spirit, and take heaven
by storm.