Old Portraits and Modern Sketches; Personal Sketches and Tributes; Historical Papers | Page 6

labor after and
shed so many tears for the things of this present life, how am I to be
bemoaned, pitied, and prayed for! My soul is dying, my soul is
damning. Were my soul but in a good condition, and were I but sure of
it, ah I how rich should I esteem myself, though blessed but with bread
and water! I should count these but small afflictions, and should bear
them as little burdens. 'A wounded spirit who can bear!'"
He looked with envy, as he wandered through the country, upon the
birds in the trees, the hares in the preserves, and the fishes in the
streams. They were happy in their brief existence, and their death was
but a sleep. He felt himself alienated from God, a discord in the
harmonies of the universe. The very rooks which fluttered around the
old church spire seemed more worthy of the Creator's love and care
than himself. A vision of the infernal fire, like that glimpse of hell
which was afforded to Christian by the Shepherds, was continually
before him, with its "rumbling noise, and the cry of some tormented,
and the scent of brimstone." Whithersoever he went, the glare of it
scorched him, and its dreadful sound was in his ears. His vivid but
disturbed imagination lent new terrors to the awful figures by which the
sacred writers conveyed the idea of future retribution to the Oriental
mind. Bunyan's World of Woe, if it lacked the colossal architecture and
solemn vastness of Milton's Pandemonium, was more clearly defined;

its agonies were within the pale of human comprehension; its victims
were men and women, with the same keen sense of corporeal suffering
which they possessed in life; and who, to use his own terrible
description, had "all the loathed variety of hell to grapple with; fire
unquenchable, a lake of choking brimstone, eternal chains, darkness
more black than night, the everlasting gnawing of the worm, the sight
of devils, and the yells and outcries of the damned."
His mind at this period was evidently shaken in some degree from its
balance. He was troubled with strange, wicked thoughts, confused by
doubts and blasphemous suggestions, for which he could only account
by supposing himself possessed of the Devil. He wanted to curse and
swear, and had to clap his hands on his mouth to prevent it. In prayer,
he felt, as he supposed, Satan behind him, pulling his clothes, and
telling him to have done, and break off; suggesting that he had better
pray to him, and calling up before his mind's eye the figures of a bull, a
tree, or some other object, instead of the awful idea of God.
He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, even in this dark and
clouded state, he was enabled to see the "vile and abominable things
fomented by the Quakers," to be errors. Gradually, the shadow wherein
he had so long
"Walked beneath the day's broad glare, A darkened man,"
passed from him, and for a season he was afforded an "evidence of his
salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals thereon hanging in his
sight." But, ere long, other temptations assailed him. A strange
suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour. His own
account of this hallucination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other
feeling than that of sympathy and sadness.
"I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine
eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come, Sell
Christ for this, or sell Christ for that; sell him, sell him.
"Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little as a hundred
times together, Sell him, sell him; against which, I may say, for whole

hours together, I have been forced to stand as continually leaning and
forcing my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some
wicked thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and
sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it;
but then I should be as tortured upon a rack, for whole days together.
"This temptation did put me to such scares, lest I should at sometimes, I
say, consent thereto, and be overcome therewith, that, by the very force
of my mind, my very body would be put into action or motion, by way
of pushing or thrusting with my hands or elbows; still answering, as
fast as the destroyer said, Sell him, I will not, I will not, I will not; no,
not for thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds; thus reckoning, lest
I should set too low a value on him, even until I scarce well knew
where I was, or how to be composed again.
"But to