8. Enthusiasm accepts its supposed illumination without search and
proof. Though the odd opinions and extravagant actions enthusiasm
has run men into were enough to warn them against this wrong
principle, so apt to misguide them both in their belief and conduct:
yet the love of something extraordinary, the ease and glory it is to
be inspired, and be above the common and natural ways of knowledge, so
flatters many men's laziness, ignorance, and vanity, that, when once
they are got into this way of immediate revelation, of illumination
without search, and of certainty without proof and without
examination, it is a hard matter to get them out of it. Reason is lost
upon them, they are above it: they see the light infused into their
understandings, and cannot be mistaken; it is clear and visible there,
like the light of bright sunshine; shows itself, and needs no other
proof but its own evidence: they feel the hand of God moving them
within, and the impulses of the Spirit, and cannot be mistaken in what
they feel. Thus they support themselves, and are sure reasoning hath
nothing to do with what they see and feel in themselves: what they
have a sensible experience of admits no doubt, needs no probation.
Would he not be ridiculous, who should require to have it proved to
him that the light shines, and that he sees it? It is its own proof,
and can have no other.
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