ed his birthright, but, like Esau, he
had sold it, and could not any more find place for repentance. True it
was said that 'all manner of sins and blasphemies should be forgiven
unto men,' but only such sins and blasphemies as had been committed in
the natural state. Bunyan had received grace, and after receiving it,
had sinned against the Holy Ghost.

It was done, and nothing could undo it. David had received grace, and
had committed murder and adultery after it. But murder and adultery,
bad as they might be, were only transgressions of the law of Moses.
Bunyan had sinned against the Mediator himself, 'he had sold his
Saviour.' One sin, and only one there was which could not be pardoned,
and he had been guilty of it. Peter had sinned against grace, and even
after he had been warned. Peter, however, had but denied his Master.
Bunyan had sold him. He was no David or Peter, he was Judas. It was,
very hard. Others naturally as bad as he had been saved. Why had he
been picked out to be made a Son of Perdition? A Judas! Was there any
point in which he was better than Judas? Judas had sinned with
deliberate purpose: he 'in a fearful hurry,' and 'against prayer and
striving.' But there might be more ways than one of committing the
unpardonable sin, and there might be degrees of it. It was a dreadful
condition. The old doubts came back.

'I was now ashamed,' he says, 'that I should be like such an ugly man
as Judas. I thought how loathsome I should be to all the saints at the
Day of Judgment. I was tempted to content myself by receiving some
false opinion, as that there should be no such thing as the Day of
Judgment, that we should not rise again, that sin was no such grievous
thing, the tempter suggesting that if these things should be indeed
true, yet to believe otherwise would yield me ease for the present. If
I must perish, I need not torment myself beforehand.'

Judas! Judas! was now for ever before his eyes. So identified he was
with Judas that he felt at times as if his breastbone was bursting. A
mark like Cain's was on him. In vain he searched again through the
catalogue of pardoned sinners. Manasseh had consulted wizards and
familiar spirits. Manasseh had burnt his children in the fire to
devils. He had found mercy; but, alas! Manasseh's sins had nothing of
the nature of selling the Saviour. To have sold the Saviour 'was a sin
bigger than the sins of a country, of a kingdom, or of the whole
world--not all of them to