“People of every age, sex, sect, and condition appeared to be more or less affected with the disagreeable operations of these exercises, not only at their meetings, but in their daily employments….”
“As for jerking, dancing, & barking, they were only fungi, which grew out of the revival in its state of decay & ought never to be imputed to the work itself….”
“These strange exercises that have excited so much wonder in the western country came in toward the last of the revival, and were, in the estimation of some of the more pious, the chaff of the work. Now it was that the humiliating and often disgusting exercises of dancing, laughing, jerking, barking like dogs, or howling like wolves, and rolling on the ground, manifested themselves….”
“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….”
“[N]ow I left for cincinati again and on my way heard of the New light Presbytarians…and heard all sort of bad reports a bout them they said that…they would fall and lay for hours and…others jerk backwards and forwards with somuch force that a ladys hair wold crack like a wip….”
