🚀 go-pugleaf

a willingness to leave father and mother and
all things in the world, to go and be with Christ; some persons having
had such longing desires after Christ, or which have risen to such
degree, as to take away their natural strength. Some have been so
overcome with a sense of the dying love of Christ to such poor,
wretched, and unworthy creatures, as to weaken the body. Several persons
have had so great a sense of the glory of God, and excellency of Christ,
that nature and life seemed almost to sink under it; and in all
probability, if God had showed them a little more of Himself, it would
have dissolved their frame. I have seen some, and conversed with them in
such frames, who have certainly been perfectly sober, and very remote
from any thing like enthusiastic wildness. And they have talked, when
able to speak, of the glory of God's perfections, the wonderfulness of
His grace in Christ, and their own unworthiness, in such a manner as
cannot be perfectly expressed after them. Their sense of their exceeding
littleness and vileness, and their disposition to abase themselves
before God, has appeared to be great in proportion to their light and
joy.

Such persons amongst us as have been thus distinguished with the most
extraordinary discoveries, have commonly nowise appeared with the
assuming, self-conceited, and self-sufficient airs of enthusiasts, but
exceedingly the contrary. They are eminent for a spirit of meekness,
modesty, self-diffidence, and a low opinion of themselves. No persons
appear so sensible of their need of instruction and so eager to receive
it, as some of them; nor so ready to think others better than
themselves. Those that have been considered as converted amongst us,
have generally manifested a longing to lie low and in the dust before
God;