sold his birthright; for ye know,
how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was
rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it
carefully with tears."

For two years and a half, as he informs us, that awful scripture sounded
in his ears like the knell of a lost soul. He believed that he had
committed they unpardonable sin. His mental anguish 'was united with
bodily illness and suffering. His nervous system became fearfully
deranged; his limbs trembled; and he supposed this visible tremulousness
and agitation to be the mark of Cain. 'Troubled with pain and
distressing sensations in his chest, he began to fear that his breast-
bone would split open, and that he should perish like Judas Iscariot. He
feared that the tiles of the houses would fall upon him as he walked in
the streets. He was like his own Man in the Cage at the House of the
Interpreter, shut out from the promises, and looking forward to certain
judgment. "Methought," he says, "the very sun that shineth in heaven did
grudge to give me light." And still the dreadful words, "He found no
place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," sounded
in the depths of his soul. They were, he says, like fetters of brass to
his legs, and their continual clanking followed him for months.
Regarding himself elected and predestined for damnation, he thought that
all things worked for his damage and eternal overthrow, while all things
wrought for the best and to do good to the elect and called of God unto
salvation. God and all His universe had, he thought, conspired against
him; the green earth, the bright waters, the sky itself, were written
over with His irrevocable curse.

Well was it said by Bunyan's contemporary, the excellent Cudworth, in his
eloquent sermon before the Long Parliament, that "We are nowhere
commanded to pry into the secrets of God, but the wholesome advice given
us is this: 'To make our calling and election sure.' We have no warrant
from Scripture to peep into the hidden rolls of eternity, to spell out
our names among the stars." "Must we say that God sometimes, to exercise
His uncontrollable dominion, delights rather in plunging wretched souls
down into infernal night and everlasting darkness? What, then, shall we
make the God of the whole world? Nothing but a cruel and dreadful
_Erinnys_, with curled fiery snakes about His head, and firebrands in His
hand; thus governing the wor