and by whom it is received--would hail him as a brother. Gifted in
prayer, full of sound and wholesome counsel drawn from holy writ,
he must have been a peculiar blessing to the distressed, and to all
the members who stood in need of advice and assistance. Such were
the men intended by the apostles, 'men of honest report, full
of the Holy Ghost and wisdom' (Acts 6:3), whom the church were to
select, to relieve the apostles from the duties of ministration to
the wants of the afflicted members, in the discharge of which they
had given offence.

While thus actively employed, he was again visited with a severe
illness, and again was subject to a most searching and solemn
investigation as to his fitness to appear before the judgment-seat
of God. 'All that time the tempter did beset me strongly, labouring
to hide from me my former experience of God's goodness; setting
before me the terrors of death, and the judgment of God, insomuch
that at this time, through my fear of miscarrying for ever, should
I now die, I was as one dead before death came; I thought that
there was no way but to hell I must.'[157]

'A wounded spirit who can bear.' Well might the apostle say, 'If
in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
miserable' (1 Cor 15:19). Bunyan had enjoyed holy emotions full of
glory, and now the devil was threatening him, not only with the loss
of heaven, but the terrors of hell. The Puritan, Rogers, describes
religious melancholy as 'the worst of all distempers, and those sinking
and guilty fears which it brings along with it are inexpressibly
dreadful; what anguish, what desolation! I dare not look to heaven;
there I see the greatness of God, who is against me. I dare not
look into his Word; for there I see all his threats, as so many