questions about the being of God, Christ, the truth of the Word, and certainty of the world to come. I say, then I was greatly assaulted and tormented with atheism. But now the case was otherwise: now were God and Christ continually before my fate, though not in a way of comfort, but in a way of exceeding dread and terror. The glory of the holiness of God did at this time break me to pieces, and the bowels of compassion of Christ did break me as on the wheel; for I could not consider him but as a lost and rejected Christ, the remembrance of which was as the continual breaking of my bones.
245. The Scriptures also were wonderful things unto me. I saw that the truth and verity of them were the keys of the kingdom of heaven: those that the Scriptures favour, they must inherit bliss; but those that they oppose and condemn must perish for evermore. Oh, this word, "for the scripture cannot be broken," would rend the caul of my heart; and so would that other, "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John xx. 23). Now I saw the apostles to be the elders of the city of refuge. (Joshua xx. 4.) Those that they were to receive in were received to life; but those that they shut out were to be slain by the avenger of blood.
246. Oh, one sentence of the Scripture did more afflict and terrify my mind—I mean those sentences that stood against me, as sometimes I thought they every one did—more, I say, than an army of forty thousand men that might come against me. Woe be to him against whom the Scriptures bend themselves!
247. By this temptation I was made to see more into nature of the promises than ever I had before; for I lying now trembling under the mighty hand of God, continually torn and rent by the thundering of his justice, this made me, with careful heart and watchful eye, with great fearfulness to turn over every leaf, and with much diligence, mixed with
