So
one day I walked to a neighbouring town, and sate 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 I sat my head, but methought I saw, as if the sun that
shineth in the heavens did grudge to give light; and as if the very
stones in the street, and tiles upon the houses, did bend
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, or be partaker of their benefits, because I
had sinned against the Saviour. O how happy now was every creature
over I was! For they stood fast, and kept their station, but I was
gone and lost.
188. Then breaking out in the bitterness of my soul, I said to
myself with a grievous sigh, How can God comfort such a wretch! I
had no sooner said it, but this returned upon me, as an echo doth
answer a voice: This sin is not unto death. At which I was, as if
I had been raised out of the grave, and cried out again, Lord, how
couldst Thou find out such a word as this! For I was filled with
admiration at the fitness, and at the unexpectedness of the
sentence; the fitness of the word, the rightness of the timing of
it; the power, and sweetness, and light, and glory that came with
it also, were marvellous to me to find: I was now, for the time,
out of doubt, as to that about which I was so much in doubt before;
my fears before were, that my sin was not pardonable, and so that I
had no right to pray, to repent, etc.
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