When Was This Written and Who Was It Written About?

Read this quote. Then answer these questions: When was this written and who was it written about?

I know you'll Google it if I don't give it to you. So, I've provided a link to the answer at the bottom of the post. But, don't click it until you've read and answered my final question. Here's the quote:

There are several classes of these fanatics, according to the best observations that I have been able to make, and I have had many opportunities in the course of my fifty years' ministry. First. There are many that are truly awakened and soundly converted to God, and are pious; but instead of taking the word of God for their only infallible guide, and trying the spirits, and their impressions, or feelings, by that as a standard, they take all their impressions and sudden impulses of mind as inspirations from God, and act accordingly. If you oppose them, they say and believe you are fighting against God. If you try to reason them out of their visionary flights, and settle them down on the sure foundation, the word of God, they cry out, "Persecution"!

Secondly. There is another class of enthusiastic persons, that not only seem, but actually are, so supremely wrapped up in self, that all they do, or say, or perform, is to be seen of men; and if they can only get the ignorant multitude to run after them, and cry, "Hosannah I blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," they wrap themselves in their mantle of supreme self-complacence. They surely have not the fear of God before their eyes, and their fearful responsibilities seem not to enter into their calculations from first to last. Woe unto them! If they want to go to hell, they had better take the most obscure route to that dismal region, and single-handed and alone, than to draw the ignorant and gaping crowds, the riff-raff of all God's creation, after them; but all rebels against the government of God love company. The devil himself is a fearful witness of this fact, when, under his mutinous and revolting conspiracy against the eternal Majesty of Heaven, he drew the third part of the stars of heaven after him in his rebellion against God. It is impossible to calculate the mischief done by this class of fanatics, and the many souls they have ruined forever.

Here's my final question about this quote: Who, today, does this sound like it applies to?

The source for this quote can be found by clicking here.

Thanks to Phil Johnson for e-mailing this quote to me.

Comments

[David Kent]

This is a timeless issue. The name "Jesus" isn't explicitly mentioned so this could be as far back as BC days.