of a series of convictions, by which he hardened sinner was to
be fitted to receive the messages of mercy and love. In the midst
of his companions and of the spectators, Bunyan was struck with a
sense of guilt. How rapid were his thoughts--'Wilt thou leave thy
sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' With the
eye of his understanding he saw the Lord Jesus as 'hotly displeased.'
The tempter suggests it is 'too, too late' to seek for pardon,
and with a desperate resolution which must have cost his heart the
severest pangs, he continued his game. Still the impression remained
indelibly fixed upon his mind.

The next blow which fell upon his hardened spirit was still more
deeply felt, because it was given by one from whom he could the
least have expected it. He was standing at a neighbour's shop-window,
'belching out oaths like the madman that Solomon speaks of, who
scatters abroad firebrands, arrows, and death'[58] 'after his wonted
manner.' He exemplified the character drawn by the Psalmist. 'As
he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment: so let
it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.'
Here was a disease that set all human skill at defiance, but the
great, the Almighty Physician, cured it with strange physic. Had
any professor reproved him, it might have been passed by as a matter
of course; but it was so ordered that a woman who was notoriously
'a very loose and ungodly wretch,' protested that she trembled to
hear him swear and curse at that most fearful rate; that he was
the ungodliest fellow she had ever heard, and that he was able to
spoil all the youth in a whole town.[59] Public reproof from the
lips of such a woman was an arrow that pierced his inmost soul;
it effected a reformation marvelous to all his companions, and
bordering upon the miraculous. The walls of a fortified city were