the Thing principally and first intended; and is come by degrees to signify a violent Passion, Commotion, and Ecstasy, venting it self in such sort of Expressions and Disorders, as other Passions do: and this regulated and defined, by such a Variety of Imaginations, that an ordinary Christian, with the utmost Sincerity in his Heart, is filled with nothing but eternal Suspicions, Doubts, and Perplexities, whether he hath any thing of the true Love of God, or not.
I have mentioned these particulars, not only to shew the Evil it self; and to how great a Degree the Nature of Things hath suffered in the Opinions of Men, by the Alteration of the Sense of the same Words and Sounds: but to give you Occasion to observe, that there can be no Cure for it, in Christians, but to go back to the New Testament it self; because there alone we shall find the Original Intention of such Words; or the Nature of the Things design'd to be signified by them, declared and fixed by our Lord, or his Apostles from him, by
