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that there would be no answer to me till I had entire purity of conscience, and no longer regarded any iniquity whatsoever in my heart. I saw that there were some secret affections still left in me, which, though they were not very bad perhaps in themselves, yet in a life of prayer such as I was attempting those remanent affections spoiled all. (3) _Eighteen Years of Misery in Prayer_.--It is not without very good reason that I have dwelt so long on this part of my life. It will give no one any pleasure to see any one so base as I was. And I wish all who read this to have me in abhorrence. I failed in all obedience, because I was not leaning on my strong pillar of prayer. I passed nearly twenty years of my life on this stormy sea, constantly tossed with tempest and never coming to harbour. It was the most painful life that can be imagined, because I had no sweetness in God, and certainly no sweetness in sin. I was often very angry with myself on account of the many tears I shed for my faults, when I could not but see how little improvement all my tears made in me. All my tears did not hold me back from sin when the opportunity returned. Till I came to look on my tears as little short of a delusion: and yet they were not. It was the goodness of the Lord to give me such compunction even when it was not as yet accompanied with complete reformation. But the whole root of my evil lay in my not thoroughly avoiding all occasions of sin, and in my confessors, who helped me at that time so little. If they had only told me what a dangerous road it was I was travelling in, and that I was bound to break off all occasions of sin, I do believe, without any doubt, that the matter would have been remedied at once. Nevertheless, I can trace distinctly the mercy of God to me in that all the time I had still the courage to pray. I say courage, because I know nothing in the whole world that requires greater courage than plotting treason against the King, knowing that He knows it, and yet continuing to frequent His presence in prayer. I spent more than eighteen years in that miserable attempt to reconcile God and my life of sin. The reason that I tell and repeat all this so often is that all who read what I write may understand how great is that grace God works in the soul when He gives it a disposition to pray on, even when it has not yet left off all sin. If that soul perseveres, in spite of sin, and temptation, and many
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