“I was lately informed by a neighbour of mine, just returned from the Miami country, where Mr. McNamaar is now settled (he lately moved from Kentucke) that at such meetings there, they who fall down are strongly convulsed, and so violently agitated, that it will require two or three to hold one of them….”
“Am I an opposer of a revival of religion, when I say the jirks, dancing &c. are not God’s instituted means of Grace, nor Scriptural evidences of true religion? and that when they are voluntary, they are a corruption of God’s worship?”
“We ought, however, to have remembered that bodily convulsions, the jirks, &c. are never mentioned in scripture, as evidences of a graceless state, or a delusion of the devil; nor yet as evidences of a work of God’s grace. In a religious view, we ought to have thought but little of them….”
“The phenomenon of…suddenly falling or sinking down, under religious exercises, has not been uncommon in times of great excitement…. But the bodily agitation called the jerks is a very different affection….”
