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. When the Spirit brings light into our minds, it dispels darkness. We see it as we do that of
the sun at noon, and need not the twilight of reason to show it us. This light from heaven is strong, clear, and pure;
carries its own demonstration with it: and we may as naturally take a glow-worm to assist us to discover the sun,
as to examine the celestial ray by our dim candle, reason.
