"I long to have Christians more ingaged," he wrote, "it seames as tho they were fast asleep and the Devil had enclosd them and buried them as it were in A drift of snow and they are afraid so much as to peek out and let the world know that they are on
xsts [Christ's] side." Neighbors claimed that Ely was mad, but it would be hard to imagine such a passionate defender of radical evangelicalism missing an opportunity to meet with Wheelock and hear Edwards's sermon a few miles downriver.