HKB
him, while I was in his presence. Oh! now I saw a glory in walking with God, and what a mercy it was to have a good conscience before Him.
I was much about that time tempted to content myself by receiving some false opinion; as, that there should be no such thing as a day of judgment; that we should not rise again; and that sin was no such grievous thing: the tempter suggesting thus: For if these things should indeed be true*, yet to believe otherwise would yield you ease for the present. If you must perish, never torment yourself so much beforehand: drive the thoughts of damning out of your mind, by possessing your mind with some such conclusions that Atheists *and Ranters use to help themselves withal.
But oh! when such thoughts have led through my heart, how, as it were, within a step, hath death and judgment been in my view! methought the judge stood at the door; I was as if it was come already; so that such things could have no entertainment. But methinks, I see by this, that Satan will use any means to keep the soul from Christ; he loveth not an awakened frame of spirit; security, blindness, darkness, and error, is the very kingdom and habitation of the wicked one.
I found it a hard work now to pray to God, because despair was swallowing me up; I thought I was as with a tempest driven away from God; for always when I cried to God for mercy, this would come in, ’Tis too late*, I am lost, God hath let me fall; not to my correction, but condemnation: my sin is unpardonable; and I know, *concerning Esau, how that after he had sold his birthright, he would have received the blessing*, *but was rejected. About this time I did light on that dreadful story of that miserable mortal Francis Spira; a book that was to my troubled spirit, as salt, when rubbed into a fresh wound: every sentence in that book, every groan of that man, with all the rest of his actions in his dolours, as his tears, his prayers, his gnashing of teeth, his wringing of hands, his twining and twisting, and languishing, and pining away under that mighty hand of God that was upon him, were as knives and daggers in my soul; especially that sentence of his was frightful to me, Man knows the beginning of sin? but who bounds the issues thereof? Then would the former sentence, as the conclusion of all, fall like an hot thunderbolt again upon my conscience; For you know how that afterwards*, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, *though he sought it carefully with tears.
Then should I be struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that at sometimes I could, for whole days together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of this dreadful judgment of God, that should fall on those that have sinned that most fearful and unpardonable sin. I felt also such a clogging and heat at my stomach, by reason of this my terror, that I was, especially at some times, as if my breast-bone would split asunder; then I thought of that concerning Judas, who by falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. Acts i. 18.
I feared also that this was the mark that the Lord did set on Cain, even continual fear and trembling, under the heavy load of guilt that he had charged on him for the blood of his brother Abel. Thus did I wind, and twine, and shrink under the burthen that was upon me; which burthen also did so oppress me, that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet.