write bitter things against itself, and as ready is the tempter to
whisper despairing thoughts. In the midst of this distress he 'saw
a glory in walking with God,' although a dismal cloud enveloped
him.

This misery was aggravated by reading the fearful estate of Francis
Spira, who had been persuaded to return to a profession of Popery,
and died in a state of awful despair.[113] 'This book' was to his
troubled spirit like salt rubbed into a fresh wound.

Bunyan now felt his body and mind shaking and tottering under the
sense of the dreadful judgment of God; and he thought his sin--of
a momentary and unwilling consent to give up Christ--was a greater
sin than all the sins of David, Solomon, Manasseh, and even than
all the sins that had been committed by all God's redeemed ones.
Was there ever a man in the world so capable of describing the
miseries of Doubting Castle, or of the Slough of Despond, as poor
John Bunyan?

He would have run from God in utter desperation; 'but, blessed
be his grace, that Scripture, in these flying sins, would call,
as running after me, "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy
transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me, for I have
redeemed thee"' (Isa 44:22).Still he was haunted by that scripture,
'You know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the
blessing, he found no place of repentance, though he sought it
carefully with tears.' Thus was he tossed and buffeted, involved in
cloudy darkness, with now and then a faint gleam of hope to save
him from despair. 'In all these,' he says, 'I was but as those
that justle against the rocks; more broken, scattered, and rent.