Note 198 — Chapter XXIII
Reading edition
On the 13th of July, Mr. Romaine and Mr. Madan went, with Mr. Berridge and Mr. Hicks, to Tablow, in Cambridgeshire. Great numbers, feeling the arrows of conviction, fell to the ground, some of whom seemed dead, and others in the agonies of death; the violence of their bodily convulsions exceeding all description. There was also a great crying and agonizing in prayer, mixed with deep and deadly groans on every side.
At Harlston, Mr. Berridge was greatly fatigued and dejected, and said, “I am now so weak, I must leave off field-preaching.” Nevertheless, he cast himself on the Lord, and preached with amazing energy to upwards of three thousand hearers. At Stapleford, where he had been curate for five or six years, at Grandchester, at Driplow, Orwell, and other places, the like effects followed. At Everton, the next Sunday, about two hundred persons, chiefly men, cried aloud for mercy; but many more were affected, perhaps as deeply, though in a calmer way.
On these extraordinary manifestations Mr. Ralph Erskine observes:—“What influence sudden and sharp awakenings may have upon the body I pretend not to explain. But I make no question Satan, so far as he gets power, may exert himself on such occasions, partly to hinder the good work in the persons who are thus touched with sharp arrows of conviction, and partly to disparage the work of God, as if it tended to lead the people to distraction.”