About this period his robust hardy frame gave way under the attack
of disease, and we have to witness his feelings when the king of
terrors appeared to be beginning his deadly work. Whether the fiery
trials, the mental tempest through which he had passed, were too
severe for his bodily frame, is not recorded. His narrative is, that,
'Upon a time I was somewhat inclining to a consumption, wherewith,
about the spring I was suddenly and violently seized, with much
weakness in my outward man; insomuch that I thought I could not
live.'[151] This is slightly varied in his account of this illness
in his Law and Grace. He there says, 'having contracted guilt upon
my soul, and having some distemper of body upon me, I supposed
that death might now so seize upon, as to take me away from among
men.[152] These serious considerations led to a solemn investigation
of his hopes. His having been baptized, his union to a church, the
good opinion of his fellow-men, are not in the slightest degree
relied upon as evidences of the new birth, or of a death to sin
and resurrection to holiness.' 'Now began I afresh to give myself
up to a serious examination after my state and condition for the
future, and of my evidences for that blessed world to come: for
it hath, I bless the name of God, been my usual course, as always,
so especially in the day of affliction, to endeavour to keep my
interest in the life to come, clear before my eye.

'But I had no sooner began to recall to mind my former experience
of the goodness of God to my soul, but there came flocking into my
mind an innumerable company of my sins and transgressions: amongst
which these were at this time most to my affliction, namely,
my deadness, dullness, and coldness in holy duties; my wanderings
of heart, my wearisomeness in all good things, my want of love to
God, his ways and people, with this at the end of all, "Are these