XIV. There is now in London an understanding, sober, pious man, oft one of my hearers, who hath an elder brother, a gentleman of considerable rank, who having formerly seemed pious, of late years doth oft fall into the sin of drunkenness.
He oft lodgeth long together here, in this his brother’s house. And whenever he is drunken, and hath slept himself sober, something knocks at his bed’s head, as if one knock’d on a wainscot; when they remove his bed, it followeth him.
Besides loud noises on other parts where he is, that all the house heareth. They have oft watched, and kept his hands, lest he should do it himself. His brother hath oft told it me, and brought his wife (a discreet woman) to attest it; who avers moreover, that as she watched him, she has seen his shoes under the bed taken up, and nothing visible touch them.
They brought to me the man himself, and when we ask him how he dare so sin again, after such a warning, he has no excuse. But being persons of quality, for some special reason of worldly interest, I must not name him.
Two things are remarkable in this instance: –
1. What a powerful thing temptation and fleshly concupiscence is, and what a hardened heart sin brings men to. If one rose from the dead, to warn such sinners, it would not of itself persuade them.
2. It poseth me to think what kind of spirit this is, that has such a care of this man’s soul (which makes me hope he will recover). Do good spirits dwell so near us? or are they sent on such messages? or is it his guardian angel? or is it the soul of some dead friend that suffers, and yet, retaining love to him, as Dives to his brethren, would have him saved? God yet keeps such things from us in the dark.
The certainty of the world of spirits fully evinced (p26). By Richard Baxter (1691).