1648-1649.—Begins to have great meetings—at Mansfield he is moved to pray—the Lord’s power so great the house is shaken—cannot pray in his own will—a temptation besets him that there is no God, which is dissipated by an inward voice—he afterwards disputes with and confounds some Atheists—goes to courts and steeple-houses, &c., to warn against oppression and oaths—reproves a notorious drunkard, who is reformed—sees who are the greatest deceivers—shows how people read and understand the Scriptures—various mysteries are revealed to him—he is sent to turn people to the Inward Light, Spirit, and Grace, the Divine Spirit which he infallibly knew would not deceive—priests and professors rage at these innovations—he cries for justice in courts and against various wrong things—denounces the trade of preaching—is sent to preach freely. In the year 1648, as I was sitting in a friend’s house in Nottinghamshire (for by this time the power of God had opened the hearts of some to receive the word of life and reconciliation,) I saw there was a great crack to go throughout the earth, and a great smoke to go as the crack went; and that after the crack there should be a great shaking: this was the earth in people’s hearts, which was to be shaken before the seed of God was raised out of the earth. And it was so; for the Lord’s power began to shake them, and great meetings we begun to have, and a mighty power and work of God there was amongst people, to the astonishment of both people and priests. And there was a meeting of priests and professors at a justice’s house, and I went among them. Here they discoursed how Paul said, “He had not known sin, but by the law, which said, Thou shalt not lust:” and they held that to be spoken of the outward law. But I told them, Paul spoke that after he was convinced; for he had the outward law before, and was brought up in it, when he was in the lust of persecution; but this was the law of God in his mind, which he served, and which the law in his members warred against; for that which he thought had been life to him, proved death. So the more sober of the priests and professors yielded, and consented that it was not the outward law, but the inward, which showed the inward lust which Paul spoke of after he was convinced: for the outward law took hold upon the outward action; but the inward law upon the inward lust.