At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange dilemma: "If I
have not faith, I am lost; if I have faith, I can work miracles."
He was tempted to cry to the puddles between Elstow and Bedford,
"Be ye dry," and to stake his eternal hopes on the event.

Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bedford and
the neighbouring villages was past: that all who were to be
saved in that part of England were already converted; and that he
had begun to pray and strive some months too late.

Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were not in the
right, and the Christians in the wrong. Then he was troubled by
a maniacal impulse which prompted him to pray to the trees, to a
broom-stick, to the parish bull. As yet, however, he was only
entering the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Soon the darkness
grew thicker. Hideous forms floated before him. Sounds of
cursing and wailing were in his ears. His way ran through stench
and fire, close to the mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to
be haunted by a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and
by a morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all
the forms which his disease took was a propensity to utter
blasphemy, and especially to renounce his share in the benefits
of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, at work,
evil spirits, as he imagined, were repeating close to his ear the
words, "Sell him, sell him." He struck at the hobgoblins; he
pushed them from him; but still they were ever at his side. He
cried out in answer to them, hour after hour: "Never, never; not
for thousands of worlds, not for thousands." At length, worn out
by this long agony, he suffered the fatal words to escape him,
"Let him go, if he will." Then his misery became more fearful