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. The elect were assembled, and with them a greater number of the unconverted; heads were uncovered, a hymn was sung, and a long extempore string of intercessions, praying that the Lord would lay bare his arm and strike the guilty with terror; that Christ crucified would be among them; that they might be washed in the blood of the immaculate lamb; and that the holy spirit would breathe the God-man Jesus into all hearts, with many more absurdities, was uttered.