d that
those who were dearest to them were descending into everlasting fire,
must have often experienced pangs compared with which the torments of
the martyr were insignificant. The confident assertions of the Methodist
preacher and the ghastly images he continually evoked poisoned their
imaginations, haunted them in every hour of weakness or depression,
discolored all their judgments of the world, and added a tenfold horror
to the darkness of the grave. Sufferings of this description, though
among the most real and the most terrible that superstition can inflict,
are so hidden in their nature that they leave few traces in history; but
it is impossible to read the journals of Wesley without feeling that
they were most widely diffused. Many were thrown into paroxysms of
extreme, though usually transient, agony; many doubtless nursed a secret
sorrow which corroded all the happiness of their lives, while not a few
became literally insane. On one occasion Wesley was called to the
bedside of a young woman at Kingswood. He tells us:

She was nineteen or twenty years old, but, it seems, could not
write or read. I found her on the bed, two or three persons
holding her. It was a terrible sight. Anguish, horror, and
despair above all description appeared in her pale face. The
thousand distortions of her whole body showed how the dogs of
hell were gnawing at her heart. The shrieks intermixed were
scarce to be endured. But her stony eyes could not weep. She
screamed out as soon as words could find their way, "I am
damned, damned, lost forever: six days ago you might have
helped me. But it is past. I am the devil's now.... I will go
with him to hell. I cannot be saved." They sang a hymn, and for
a time she sank to rest, but soon broke out anew in incoherent
exclamations, "Break, break, poor stony hearts! Will you not
break? What more can be done for stony hearts? I am damned that
you may be saved!"... She then fixed her eyes in the corner of
the ceiling, and said, "There he is, ay, there he is! Come,
good devil, come! Take me away."... We interrupted her by
calling again on God, on which she sank down as before, and
another young woman began to roar out as loud as she had done.

For more than two hours Wesley and his brother continued praying over
her. At last the paroxysms subsided and the patient joined in a hymn of
praise.

In the i