sharp for Bunyan. The fierce acid which had been
poured into his wounds set them all festering again. He frankly admits
that he was now farther from conversion than before. His heart, do
what he would, refused to leave off desiring forbidden pleasures, and
while this continued, he supposed that he was still under the law, and
must perish by it. He compared himself to the child who, as he was
being brought to Christ, was thrown down by the devil and wallowed
foaming. A less healthy nature might have been destroyed by these
artificially created and exaggerated miseries. He supposed he was
given over to unbelief and wickedness, and yet he relates with
touching simplicity:--

'As to the act of sinning I was never more tender than now. I durst
not take up a pin or a stick, though but so big as a straw, for my
conscience now was sore and would smart at every touch. I could not
tell how to speak my words for fear I should misplace them.'

But the care with which he watched his conduct availed him nothing. He
was on a morass 'that shook if he did but stir,' and he was 'there
left both of God and Christ and the Spirit, and of all good things.'
'Behind him lay the faults of his childhood and youth, every one of
which he believed to be recorded against him. Within were his
disobedient inclinations, which he conceived to be the presence of the
Devil in his heart. If he was to be presented clean of stain before
God he must have a perfect righteousness which was to be found only in
Christ, and Christ had rejected him. 'My original and inward
pollution,' he writes, 'was my plague and my affliction. I was more
loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad, and I thought I was so in
God's eyes too. I thought every one had a better heart than I had. I
could have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but the Devil
himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution. Sure,
thought I, I am given up to the Devil and to a reprobate mind; and
thus I continued for a long while, even for some years together.'

And all the while the world went on so quietly; these things over
which Bunyan was so miserable not seeming to trouble anyone except
himself; and, as if they had no existence except on Sundays and in
pious talk. Old people were hunting after the treasures of this life,
as if they were never to leave the earth. Professors of religion
complained when they lost fortune or health; what were fortune and
health to the awful possibilit