Ghost, the Lord would show it to me; and being now ready to sink with fear; suddenly there was, as if there had rushed in at the window, the noise of wind upon me, but very pleasant, and as if I heard a voice speaking, 'Didst ever refuse to be justified by the blood of Christ?' And withal my whole life of profession past was, in a moment opened to me, wherein I was made to see that designedly I had not. So my heart answered groaningly, 'no!' Then fell with power, that word of God upon me, 'See that ye refuse not

Him that speaketh!"* This made a strange seizure upon my spirit; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my heart of all those tumultuous thoughts that before did use, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise within me. It showed me also that Jesus Christ had yet a word of grace and mercy for me; that he had not, as I had feared, quite forsaken and cast off my soul. Yea, this was a kind of chide for my proneness to desperation; a kind of threatening of me, if I did not, notwithstanding my sins and the heinousness of them, venture my salvation upon the Son of God. But as to my determining about this strange dispensation, what it was, I know not; or from whence it came, I know not; I have not yet in twenty years time been able to make a judgment of it; I thought then here what I should be loath to speak. But verily that sudden rushing wind was as if an angel had come upon me: but both it and the salvation, I will leave until the Day of Judgment. Only this I say, it commanded a great calm in my soul; it persuaded me there might be hope; it showed me, as I thought, what the sin unpardonable was; and that my soul had yet the blessed privilege to flee to Jesus Christ for mercy. But, I say, concerning this dispensation, I know not what yet to say unto it; which was also in truth the cause that at first I did not speak of it in the book. I do now also leave it to be thought on by men of sound judgment. I lay not the stress of my salvation thereupon, but upon the Lord Jesus, in the promise: yet seeing I am here unfolding of my secret things, I thought it might not be altogether inexpedient to let this also show itself, though I cannot now relate the matter as there I did experience it."

The "savour" of this lasted about three or four days, and then he began to mistrust and to despair again! Struggling nevertheless against despair, he determined that if he must die it should be at the feet of Christ in prayer: and pray he did, though the saying about Esau was ever at his heart "like a flaming sword, to keep the way of the tree of life, lest he should taste thereof and live." "Oh," he exclaims, "who knows how hard a thing I found it to come to God in prayer!" He desired the prayers of those whom he calls the people of God, meaning Mr. Gifford's little congregation, and the handful of persons within his circuit who were in communion with them: yet he dreaded lest they should receive this answer to their prayers in his behalf "pray not for him, for I have rejected him." He met indeed with cold consolation from an ancient Christian," to whom he opened his case and said he was afraid he had committed the sin against the Holy Ghost; this man like one of Job's comforters, replied, he thought so too; but Bunyan comforted himself, by

Hebrews xii. 25.

finding upon a little further conversation that this friend of his, “though a good man, was a stranger to much combat with the devil." So he betook himself again to prayer, as well as he could, but in such a state of mind, that "the most free and full and gracious words of the Gospel," only made him the more miserable. "Thus was he always sinking whatever he could do." "So one day I walked to a neighbouring town," he says, "and sat down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep pause, about the most fearful state my sin had brought me to: and after long musing I lifted up my head, but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give me light; and as if the very stones in the street and tiles upon the houses, did band themselves against me. Methought that they all combined together to banish me out of the world! I was abhorred of them, and unfit to dwell among them, because I had sinned against the Saviour. Oh how happy now was every creature over I was! for they stood fast and kept their station; but I was gone and lost!" In this mood breaking out in the bitterness of his soul, he said to himself with a grievous sigh, "how can God comfort such a wretch ?" And he had no sooner said this, than quick as the return of an echo, he was answered "this sin is not unto death." He says not that this seemed to be spoken audibly, but that it came to him with power and sweetness and light and glory; that it was a release to him from his former bonds, and a shelter from his former storms. On the following evening this supportation as he calls it began to fail; and under many fears, he had recourse to prayer, his soul crying with strong cries, "O Lord, I beseech thee show me that thou hast loved me with an everlasting love!" and like an echo the words returned upon him "I have loved thee, with an everlasting love."* That night he went to bed in quiet; and when he awoke in the morning, "it was fresh upon my soul," he says, "and I believed it."

Being thus, though not without many misgivings, brought into "comfortable hopes of pardon," the love which he bore towards his Saviour worked in him at this time "a strong and hot desire of revengement" upon himself, for the sin which he had committed; and had it been the Romish superstition which Bunyan had imbibed he might now have vied with St. Dominic the Cuirassier, or the Jesuit Joam d'Almeida in inflicting torments upon his own miserable body. A self-tormentor he continued still to be, vacillating between hope and fear sometimes thinking that he was set at liberty from his guilt, sometimes that he had left himself "neither foot-hold, nor hand-hold among all the stays and props in the precious word of life." One day, when earnestly in prayer, this Scripture fastened on his heart: "O man, great is thy faith!" 66 even," he says, "as if one had clapped me on the back, as I was on my knees before God." At another time, when doubting whether the blood of Christ was sufficient to save his soul, and dreading lest that doubt should not be removed, the inward voice for which he listened sounded suddenly within his heart, "He is able."+" But methought this word able was spoke loud unto me; it showed a great word; it seemed to be writ in great letters, and gave such a justle to my fear and doubt for the time it tarried with me, as I Jeremiah xxxi 3. ↑ Hebrews vii. 25.

never had all my life either before or after." But it tarried only about a day. Next, when he was trembling in prayer under a fear that no word of God could help him, this part of a sentence darted in upon him, "My grace is sufficient." A little while before he had looked at that very text, and thrown down the book, thinking it could not come near his soul with comfort; "then I thought it was not large enough for me; no, not large enough;—but now it was as if it had arms of grace so wide, that it could not only enclose me, but many more besides." In such conflicts he says "peace would be in and out, sometimes twenty times a day; comfort now and trouble presently; peace now, and before I could go a furlong, as full of fears and guilt as ever heart could hold! For this about the sufficiency of grace, and that of Esau's parting with his birthright, would be like a pair of scales within my mind: sometimes one end would be uppermost, and sometimes again the other, according to which would be my peace or troubles." He prayed therefore to God for help to apply the whole sentence which of himself he was not as yet able to do. He says, "that he gave, that I gathered, but further I could not go, for as yet it only helped me to hope there might be mercy for me; 'my Grace is sufficient ;' it answered his question that there was hope; but he was not contented because for thee was left out, and he prayed for that also. It was at a meeting with his fellow-believers, when his fears again were prevailing, that the words for which he longed, according to his own expression "broke in" upon him, "My Grace is sufficient for thee, my Grace is sufficient for thee, my Grace is sufficient for thee,”—three times together. He was then as though he had seen the Lord look down from heaven upon him, แ 'through the tiles and direct these words to him. It sent him mourning home; it broke his heart, and filled him full of joy, and laid him low as the dust. And now he began to venture upon examining "those most fearful and terrible Scriptures," on which till now he scarcely dared cast his eyes, ("yea had much ado a hundred times to forbear wishing them out of the Bible :") he began "to come close to them, and read them and consider them, and to weigh their scope and tendency." The result was a clear perception that he had not fallen quite away; that his sin, though devilish, had not been consented to, and put in practice, and that after deliberation-not public and open; that the texts which had hitherto so appalled him were yet consistent with those which proffered forgiveness and salvation. "And now remained only the hinder part of the tempest, for the thunder was gone past; only some drops did still remain." And when one day in the field, the words, "Thy righteousness is in heaven," occurred to him, "methought withal," he says, "I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand-there, I say, as my righteousness-for my righteousness was Christ himself, the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.'"* Then his chains fell off in very deed: he was loosed from his affliction, and his temptations fled away.

This was after two years and a half of incessant agitation and wretchedness. Bunyan thought he could trace the cause of this long temptation to a sin which he had committed, and to a culpable omission. He had, during the

Hebrews xiii. 8.

time when doubt and unbelief assailed him, tempted the Lord by asking of him a sign whereby it might appear that the secret thoughts of the heart were known to him; and he had omitted when praying earnestly for the removal of present troubles, and for assurances of faith, to pray that he might be kept from temptation. "This," he says "I had not done, and therefore was thus suffered to sin and fall.-And truly this very thing is to this day of such weight and awe upon me, that I dare not when I come before the Lord, go off my knees, until I entreat him for help and mercy against the temptations that are to come; and I do beseech thee, Reader, that thou learn to beware of my negligence, by the affliction that for this thing I did, for days and months and years, with sorrow undergo." Far more satisfactorily could he trace in himself the benefits which he derived from this long and dreadful course of suffering under which a weaker body must have sunk, and from which it is almost miraculous that any mind should have escaped without passing into incurable insanity. Before that trial, his soul had been, "perplexed with unbelief, blasphemy, hardness of heart, questions about the being of God, Christ, the truth of the word, and certainty of the world to come."" Then,” he says, "I was greatly assaulted and tormented with atheism; but now the case was otherwise; now was God and Christ continually before my face, though not in a way of comfort, but in a way of exceeding dread and terror. The glory of the holiness of God did at this time break me to pieces; and the bowels and compassion of Christ did break me as on the wheel; for I could not consider him but as a lost and rejected Christ, the remembrance of which was as the continnal breaking of my bones. The Scriptures also were wonderful things unto me; I saw that the truth and verity of them were the keys of the kingdom of heaven; those that the Scriptures favour, they must inherit bliss; but those that they oppose and condemn, must perish for ever→ more.-Oh! one sentence of the Scripture did more afflict and terrify my mind, I mean those sentences that stood against me (as sometimes I thought they every one did)-more, I say, than an army of forty thousand men that might come against me. Wo be to him against whom the Scriptures bend

themselves!"

But this led him to search the Bible and dwell upon it with an earnestness and intensity which no determination of a calmer mind could have commanded. "This made me," he says, "with careful heart and watchful eye, with great fearfulness, to turn over every leaf, and with much diligence mixed with its natural force and latitude. By this also I was greatly holden off my former foolish practice of putting by the word of promise when it came into my mind for now, though I could not suck that comfort and sweetness from the promise as I had done at other times, yea, like to a man a-sinking, I should catch at all I saw; formerly I thought I might not meddle with the promise, unless I felt its comfort; but now 'twas no time thus to do, the Avenger of Blood too hardly did pursue me." If in the other writings of Bunyan, and especially in that which has made his name immortal, we discover none of that fervid language, in which his confusions and self-examination are recorded-none of those " thoughts that breathe and words that burn,"-none of

that passion in which the reader so far participates as to be disturbed and distressed by it—here we perceive how he acquired that thorough and familiar acquaintance with the Scriptures which in those works is manifested. "Now therefore was I glad,” he says, “to catch at that Word, which yet I had no ground or right to own; and even to leap into the bosom of that promise, that yet I feared did shut its heart against me. Now also I should labour to take the word as God hath laid it down, without restraining the natural force of one syllable thereof. Oh! what did I now see in that blessed sixth of John, "and him that comes to me I will in nowise cast out!"* Now I began to consider with myself, that God hath a bigger mouth to speak with, than I had a heart to conceive with. I thought also with myself, that he spake not his words in haste, or in an unadvised heat, but with infinite wisdom and judgment, and in very truth and faithfulness. I should in these days, often in my greatest agonies, even flounce toward the promise, (as the horses do towards sound ground, that yet stick in the mire,) concluding, (though as one almost bereft of his wits through fear,) on this I will rest and stay, and leave the fulfilling of it to the God of heaven that made it!' Oh, many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for that blessed sixth of John! I did not now, as at other times, look principally for comfort, (though, O how welcome would it have been unto me!) but now, a word, a word to lean a weary soul upon, that it might not sink for ever! 'twas that I hunted for! Yea, often when I have been making to the promise, I have seen as if the Lord would refuse my soul for ever: I was often as if I had run upon the pikes, and as if the Lord had thrust at me, to keep me from him, as with a flaming sword!"

When Bunyan passed from this horrible condition into a state of happy feeling, his mind was nearly overthrown by the transition. "I had two or three times," he says, "at or about my deliverance from this temptation, such strange apprehensions of the grace of God, that I could hardly bear up under it; it was so out of measure amazing when I thought it could reach me, that I do think if that sense of it had abode long upon me, it would have made me uncapable of business." He had not however yet attained that selfcontrol which belongs to a sane mind; for after he had been formally admitted into fellowship with Gifford's little congregation, and had been by him baptized accordingly, by immersion, probably in the river Ouse, (for the Baptists at that time sought rather than shunned publicity on such occasions,) he was for nearly a year pestered with strange and villanous thoughts whenever he communicated at the meeting. These however left him. When threatened with consumption at one time, he was delivered from the fear of dissolution, by faith, and the strong desire of entering upon eternal life; and in another illness, when the thought of approaching death for awhile overcame him, "behold," he says, "as I was in the midst of those fears the words of the Angels carrying Lazarus into Abraham s posom, darted in upon me, as who should say, 'so shall it be with thee when thou dost leave this world!' This did sweetly revive my spirits, and help me to hope in God; which when I had with comfort mused on awhile, that word fell with great weight upon my