hen comes the Spirit to our hut,
When fast the senses' doors are shut;
For so Divine and pure a guest
The emptiest rooms are furnished best.[496]

Or, in the words of one of the saintliest of the mediaeval mystics, 'In
the chamber of the heart God works. But what He works in the souls of
those with whom He holds direct converse none can say, nor can any man
give account of it to another; but he only who has felt it knows what it
is; and even he can tell thee nothing of it, save only that God in very
truth hath possessed the ground of his heart.'[497]

It may here be observed that what has been said of Quakerism, so far as
it was at one time representative of that mystic element which the
eighteenth century called enthusiasm, will be a sufficient reason for
passing all the more briefly over other branches of the same subject.
The idea of self-surrender to the immediate action of spiritual
influence is a bond of union far more potent than any external or
ecclesiastical differences. Whatever be the period, or Church, or state
of society in which it is found, mysticism is always very nearly the
same both in its strength and in its weakness. It exhibits, indeed, the
most varied phases, according to the direction and degree in which it
falls into those excesses to which it is peculiarly liable, but such
extravagances are very independent of the particular community in which
they happen to appear. Different as are the associations connected with
such names as Plato and Pythagoras, Plotinus and Dionysius, St. Bernard
and T. a Kempis, Eckhart and Tauler, More and Norris, Fenelon and Guyon,
Arndt and Spener, Law and Byrom, Quakers and Moravians, Schleiermacher
and Schelling, yet passages might be collected from each, often striking
and sometimes sublime, which show very close and essential points of
affinity. And just in proportion as each form of mysticism has relaxed
its hold upon steadying grounds of reason, the diversified dangers to
which it is subject uniformly recur. Every successive type of mystic
enthusiasm, if once it has passed its legitimate bounds, has produced
exactly analogous instances of pantheism, antinomianism, or fanaticism.

Early in the eighteenth century, when Quakerism was just beginning to
lose its influence, its wild assumptions of an earlier date were
paralleled by a new form of fanatical enthusiasm. In 1706 there arose,
says Calamy, 'a mighty noise as concerning new prophets.'[498] These