Page:The Pilgrim's Progress, the Holy War, Grace Abounding Chunk3.djvu/41

Rh then uncleanness, blasphemies, and despair would hold me a captive there; if I had been reading, then sometimes I had sudden thoughts to question all I read; again, my mind would be so strangely snatched away that I have neither known, nor regarded, nor remembered so much as the sentence that but now I have read.

107. In prayer, also, I have been greatly troubled at this time; sometimes I have thought I have felt him behind me pull my clothes. He would be also continually at me in time of prayer, to have done: "Break off, make haste, you have prayed enough, and stay no longer"—still drawing my mind away. Sometimes, also, he would cast in such wicked thoughts as these, that I must pray to him or for him: I have thought sometimes of that Fall down, or, "If thou wilt fall down and worship me" (Matt. iv. 9).

108. Also, when I have had wandering thoughts, I have laboured to compose my mind, and fix it upon God; then with great force hath the tempter laboured to distract and confound me, and to turn away my mind, by presenting to my heart and fancy the form of a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like, as if I should pray to these: to these he would also, at some times especially, so hold, my mind that I was as if I could think of nothing else, or pray to nothing else but to these or such as they.

109. Yet at times I should have some strong and heart-affecting apprehensions of God, and the reality of the truth of this gospel; but oh, how would my heart at such times put forth itself with inexpressible groanings! My whole soul was then in every word; I should cry with pangs after God that he would be merciful unto me. But then I should be daunted again with such conceits as these: I should think that God did meek: at these my prayers; saying, and that in the audience of the holy angels, This poor, simple wretch doth banker after me, as if I had nothing to do with my mercy but bestow it on such as he. Alas, poor soul, how