17. *Ah poor self-deceivers! Christians ye are not. But you are _Enthusiasts_ in a high degree. Physicians, heal yourselves. But first, know your disease: your whole life is _Enthusiasm_: as being all suitable to the imagination, that you have received that grace of God which you have not. In consequence of this grand mistake, you blunder on, day by day, speaking and acting under a character, which does in no wise belong to you. Hence arises that palpable, glaring inconsistency, that runs thro’ your whole behaviour: which is an aukward mixture of real Heathenism and imaginary Christianity. Yet still, as you have so vast a majority on your side, you will always carry it by mere dint of numbers, “That you are the only men in your senses, and all are lunaticks who are not as you are.” But this alters not the nature of things. In the sight of God and his holy angels, yea, and all the children of God upon earth, you are mere madmen, mere _Enthusiasts_ all. Are you not? Are you not _walking in a vain shadow_, a shadow of religion, a shadow of happiness? Are you not still _disquieting yourselves in vain_? With misfortunes as imaginary as your happiness or religion? Do you not fancy yourselves great or good? Very knowing, and very wise! How long? Perhaps till death brings you back to your senses; to bewail your folly for ever and ever! 18. A second sort of _Enthusiasm_, is that of those, who imagine they have such _gifts_ from God as they have not. Thus some have imagined themselves to be endued with a power of working miracles, of healing the sick by a word or a touch, of restoring sight to the blind; yea, even of raising the dead, a notorious instance of which is still fresh in our own history. Others have undertaken to prophesy, to foretel things to come, and that with the utmost certainty and exactness. But a little time usually convinces these _Enthusiasts_. When plain facts run counter to their predictions, experience performs what reason could not, and sinks them down into their senses.