[In 1829, Thomas Cooper experienced a religious awakening]

[T]he earnestness of my prayers for holiness soon raised a flame around me.  Others began to pray for holiness.  And then, in company with a few earnest young men, I began to meet once a week in the house of a female class-leader who for many years had been noted for fervid devotion.

I read Bramwell [James Sigston’s Life of William Bramwell] on my knees by three in the morning.  I was swallowed up with the one thought of reaching “perfect love,”―of living without sin―of feeling I was always and fully in God’s favour.  I prayed for it―we all prayed for it―at the weekly meeting we held in the house of the devoted woman I spoke of.  One night we had sung “Wrestling Jacob,” the hymn which has so often been styled the masterpiece in the Wesleyan Hymn Book, commencing―

“Come, O thou traveller unknown.”

We had all sung the hymn with wrapt [sic] fervour, but I had sung one verse with an earnestness of feeling, and an agony of resolve, that I think I never sang another verse with in all my life― 

“In vain Thou strugglest to get free―
I never will unloose my hold!
Art Thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of Thy love unfold!
Wrestling, I will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy Name, Thy Nature know.”

We sang over and over again, on our knees, “Wrestling I will not let Thee go!”―till at last I sprang upon my feet, crying, “I will believe!  I do believe!” and the very saying of the words, with all the strength of resolve, seemed to lift me above the earth.  And I kept on believing, according to the lesson I had learned in the Life of Bramwell.