omfort and cheer me, that
I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded,
whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever it
may seem) I protest before the eternal God is true, neither am I any way
superstitiously deceived therein, since I did not only clearly hear the
noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud,
did to my thinking see the place from whence it came."--ED.]

Such minds identified themselves with their visions! If we pass them over
by asserting that they were insane, we are only cutting the knot which we
cannot untie. We have no right to deny what some maintain, that a sympathy
of the corporeal with the incorporeal nature of man, his imaginative with
his physical existence, is an excitement which appears to have been
experienced by persons of a peculiar organization, and which
metaphysicians in despair must resign to the speculations of enthusiasts
themselves, though metaphysicians reason about phenomena far removed from
the perceptions of the eye. The historian of the mind cannot omit this
fact, unquestionable, however incomprehensible. According to our own
conceptions, this state must produce a strange mysterious personage: a
concentration of a human being within himself, endowed with inward eyes,
ears which listen to interior sounds, and invisible hands touching
impalpable objects, for whatever they act or however they are acted on, as
far as respects themselves all must have passed within their own minds.
The Platonic Dr. MORE flattered himself that he was an enthusiast without
enthusiasm, which seems but a suspicious state of convalescence. "I must
ingenuously confess," he says, "that I have a natural touch of enthusiasm,
in my complexion, but such as I thank God was ever governable enough, and
have found at length perfectly subduable. In virtue of which victory I
know better what is in enthusiasts than they themselves; and therefore was
able to write with life and judgment, and shall, I hope, contribute not a
little to the peace and quiet of this kingdom thereby." Thus far one of
its votaries: and all that he vaunts to have acquired by this mysterious
faculty of enthusiasm is the having rendered it "at length perfectly
subduable." Yet those who have written on "Mystical devotion," have
declared that, "it is a sublime state of mind to which whole sects have
aspired, and some individuals appear to have attained."[A] The histories
of gr