In general, God was pleased to take this course with me:  First, to suffer me to be afflicted with temptations concerning the truths of the gospel, and then reveal them to me; as sometimes I should lie under great guilt for sin, even crushed to the ground therewith; and then the Lord would show me the death of Christ, yea, and so sprinkle my conscience with his blood, that I should find, and that before I was aware, that in that conscience where but just now did reign and rage the law, even there would rest and abide the peace and love of God through Christ.

Thus by the strange and unusual assaults of the tempter, my soul was like a broken vessel driven as with the winds, and tossed, sometimes headlong into despair, sometimes upon the covenant of works, and sometimes to wish that the new covenant and the conditions thereof might, so far forth as I thought myself concerned, be turned another way and changed.  But in all these, I was as those that jostle against the rocks; more broken, scattered, and rent.  Oh, the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors that are effected by a thorough application of guilt yielding to desperation.  This is the man that hath his dwelling among the tombs, with the dead—­that is always crying out, and cutting himself with stones.  But I say, all in vain; desperation will not comfort him, the old covenant will not save him:  nay, heaven and earth shall pass away before one jot or tittle of the word and law of grace will fail or be removed.  This I saw, this I felt, and under this I groaned.  Yet this advantage I got thereby, namely, a further confirmation of the certainty of the way of salvation, and that the Scriptures were the word of God.  Oh, I cannot now express what I then saw and felt of the steadfastness of Jesus Christ, the Rock of man’s salvation:  what was done could not be undone, added to, nor altered.

Often when I have been making towards the promise, John 6:30, I have seen as if the Lord would refuse my soul for ever; I was often as if I had run upon the pikes, and as if the Lord had thrust at me, to keep me from him, as with a flaming sword.  Then would I think of Esther, who went to petition the king contrary to the law.  I thought also of Benhadad’s servants, who went with ropes upon their heads to their enemies for mercy.  The woman of Canaan also, that would not be daunted though called a dog by Christ, and the man that went to borrow bread at midnight, were also great encouragements unto me.

I never saw such heights and depths in grace and love and mercy, as I saw after this temptation.  Great sins draw out great grace; and where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty.  When Job had passed through his calamity, he had twice as much as he had before.  Blessed be God for Jesus Christ our Lord.

If ever Satan and I did strive for any word of God in all my life, it was for this good word of Christ:  “Him that cometh to me, I will in nowise cast out;” he at one end, and I at the other.  Oh, what work we made.  It was for this, in John.6:30, I say, that we did so tug and strive:  he pulled, and I pulled; but, God be praised, I overcame him and got sweetness from it.