In our last episode we learned of the early religious influences on John Fawcett and then of his conversion. Under God, it came through the word of truth preached by an Anglican priest named George Whitfield. One of the great emphases in his preaching was the need to be born again. In the state-supported religion of the day, Christianity was often equated with morality. The law was given out but the gospel often came with little clarity. So the doctrine of regeneration was a thunderbolt that startled its hearers. Some ran to Christ for protection and others railed against the enthusiasm of such preaching. To be an enthusiast was to be mentally unbalanced or to use Jonathan Edward’s phrase from the same time period, to be “crack-brained”. But of course, it was no such thing. It was simply Jesus’ teaching about the new birth being presented to rationalistic and moralistic people, dead in their sins with minds darkened to how to be truly right with God.