(The Second Conversion requires our own Endeavours also.)
3. This counsel I obeyed as well as I could, and it was well with me that I thus obeyed God, who had counselled me; but this was yet a gift from Him. Then collecting my thoughts as best I could, I closed my eyes, ears, mouth, nostrils, and abandoned all contact with external things. Then I entered into the innermost of my heart, and behold! everything therein was darkness. But when, with blinking eyes, I gaze a little around me, I behold a weak light that penetrated through the crevices; and I see above me, in the vaulting of this my little chamber, what appeared to me a large, round, glassy window; but it had been so much soiled and bedaubed that scarce any light came through it.
(Description of Corrupt Nature.)
4. Then, looking around me by means of this dim, scant light, I see on the walls certain small pictures of, as it seemed, sometime pretty work; but the colours had faded, and some portions of the pictures had been hewn off, or broken off. Approaching them more closely, I see on them inscriptions such as Prudence, Meekness, Justice, Chastity, Temperance, and so forth. Then in the middle of the chamber I see divers broken and damaged ladders, and pincers and ropes, that had been damaged and scattered about; item, large
