the Shadow of Death, suggested blasphemies to him, which he thought
had proceeded from his own mind. 'Satan troubled him with his
stinking breath. How many strange, hideous, and amazing blasphemies
have some that are coming to Christ had injected upon their spirits
against him.'[99] 'The devil is indeed very busy at work during
the darkness of a soul. He throws in his fiery darts to amazement,
when we are encompassed with the terrors of a dismal night; he is
bold and undaunted in his assaults, and injects with a quick and
sudden malice a thousand monstrous and abominable thoughts of God,
which seem to be the motions of our own minds, and terribly grieve
and trouble us.'[100]

What makes those arrows more penetrating and distressing is, that
Satan, with subtle art, tips them with sentences of Scripture. 'No
place for repentance'; 'rejected'; 'hath never forgiveness,' and
other passages which, by the malignant ingenuity of the fiend, are
formed by his skill as the cutting and barbed points of his shafts.
At one time Bunyan concluded that he was possessed of the devil;
then he was tempted to speak and sin against the Holy Ghost. He
thought himself alone in such a tempest, and that no one had ever
felt such misery as he did. When in prayer, his mind was distracted
with the thought that Satan was pulling his clothes; he was even
tempted to fall down and worship him. Then he would cry after God,
in awful fear that eventually Satan would overcome him. During all
this time he was struggling against the tempter; and, at length,
the dayspring visited him in these words, 'I am persuaded that
nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.'
Again he was cast down with a recollection of his former blasphemies.
What reason can I have to hope for an inheritance in eternal life?
The questions was answered with that portion of Scripture, 'If God