witnesseth in every city ......that bonds and afflictions abide me" (Acts xx. 23). I have verily thought that my soul and it have sometimes reasoned about the sore and sad estate of a banished and exiled condition—how they were exposed to hunger, to cold, to perils, to nakedness, to enemies and a thousand calamities, and at last, it may be, to die in a ditch like a poor and desolate sheep. But I thank God hitherto I have not been moved by these most delicate reasonings, but have rather by them more approved my heart to God.
333. I will tell you a pretty business. I was once above all the rest in a very sad and low condition for many weeks; at which time also, I being but a young prisoner, and not acquainted with the laws, I had this lying much upon my spirits, that my imprisonment might end at the gallows for ought that I could tell. Now, therefore, Satan laid hard at me to beat me out of heart by suggesting thus unto me: But how if, when you come indeed to die, you should be in this condition; that is, as not to savour the things of God, nor to have any evidence upon your soul for a better state hereafter?—for indeed at this time all the things of God were hid from my soul.
334. Wherefore, when I at first began to think of this, it was a great trouble to me, for I thought with myself that in the condition I now was in I was not fit to die; neither, indeed, did I think I could if I should be called to it. Besides, I thought with myself, if I should make a scrambling shift to clamber up the ladder, yet I should, either with quaking or other symptoms of fainting, give occasion to the enemy to reproach the way of God and his people for their timorousness. This, therefore, lay with great trouble upon me, for methought I was ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees in such a case as this.
335. Wherefore I prayed to God that he would comfort me, and give me strength to do and suffer what he should call me to; yet no comfort appeared, but all continued hid.
