Page:The works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford (IA worksofrevjohnwe3wesl).pdf/121

 languages, was because men were no better agreed, concerning the meaning than concerning the derivation of it. They therefore adopted the Greek word, because they did not understand it: they did not translate it into their own tongues, because they knew not how to translate it: it having been always a word of a loose, uncertain sense, to which no determinate meaning was affixed.

8. It is not therefore at all surprizing, that it is so variously taken at this day: different persons understanding it in different senses, quite inconsistent with each other. Some take it in a good sense, for a divine impulse or impression, superior to all the natural faculties, and suspending for the time, either in whole or in part, both the reason and the outward senses. In this meaning of the word, both the prophets of old, and the apostles were proper Enthusiasts: being at divers times so filled with the Spirit, and so influenced by him who dwelt in their hearts, that the exercise of their own reason, their senses, and all their natural faculties being suspended, they were wholly actuated by the power of God, and spoke only as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

9. Others take the word in an indifferent sense, such as is neither morally good nor evil. Thus they speak of the Enthusiasm of the poets; of Homer and Virgil in particular. And this a late eminent writer extends so far as to assert,