In this image Hogarth ridicules secular and religious credulity, and questions the exaggerated religious “enthusiasm” of the Methodist movement. The print was originally engraved in 1761, with the title Enthusiasm Delineated, but never published. Hogarth reworked the engraving before publishing it on 15 March 1762 as Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism: A Medley.

It shows a preacher speaking to a church congregation from the top of a high pulpit. His text is opened at a page which reads “I speak as a fool”, and he is wearing a Harlequin jacket under his gown. The print includes visual references to more than a dozen reputed instances of witchcraft, possession and apparitions in England. In a box pew at the foot of the pulpit, another clergyman pushes an icon of the Cock Lane ghost down the shirt of a young lady in the throes of religious ecstasy. The “Poors Box” has grown cobwebs and to the right, standing on copies of John Westley’s Sermons, and Glanvill’s Book of Witches, a religious thermometer measures the emotional states of a brain. On top of the thermometer is an image of the Cock Lane ghost, and the Drummer of Tedworth.

The congregation are in various states of ecstasy, grief and horror. Another minister sings, accompanied by weeping cherubs. A shoe-black vomits nails and pins, a reference to the boy of Bilson, who ate metal items

This scene of madness is watched by a turbaned Turk, quietly smoking a pipe, and thanking the prophet that he is a Muslim.

Above the congregation is suspended “A New and Correct Globe of Hell by Romaine”. William Romaine being a leading figure of eighteenth-century Evangelicalism.

The scene takes place in the Royal Cockpit in Birdcage Walk near St James’s Park.

Cockfighting was a popular sport enjoyed by men from all levels of society. In the centre, the figure of the blind Lord Albermarle Bertie presides over the fight, taking bets as a thief steals one of his banknotes, whist diagonally opposite it the foreground watches a hangman. Two cocks are fighting on the left side of the cockpit; one foot of each feeder is visible at opposite ends of the fighting table. A shadow, is cast by a man suspended overhead in a basket who has been “exalted” He is an unlucky one who could not pay for a lost bet. According to the laws of the cockpit such one is put into a basket and drawn up to the ceiling. In this pitiful position the punished one is carried away by the common passion. He offers his watch for betting.

The royal arms hang on the brick wall at the back left of the image, inscribed with a broadside depicting Nan Rawlings the ‘Duchess of Deptford’ a cock-breeder and well-known figure on the fighting circuit. An oval medallion hangs in the centre foreground, inscribed with a cock crowing and the phrase “Royal Sport.” This medallion is named “Pit Ticket,” a word written on either side of it, and represents a token of admission to the cockfight.