and had to clap his hands on his mouth to prevent it. In prayer, he
felt, as he supposed, Satan behind him, pulling his clothes, and telling
him to have done, and break off; suggesting that he had better pray to
him, and calling up before his mind's eye the figures of a bull, a tree,
or some other object, instead of the awful idea of God.

He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, even in this dark and
clouded state, he was enabled to see the "vile and abominable things
fomented by the Quakers," to be errors. Gradually, the shadow wherein he
had so long

"Walked beneath the day's broad glare,
A darkened man,"

passed from him, and for a season he was afforded an "evidence of his
salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals thereon hanging in his
sight." But, ere long, other temptations assailed him. A strange
suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour. His own
account of this hallucination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other
feeling than that of sympathy and sadness.

"I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine
eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come, Sell
Christ for this, or sell Christ for that; sell him, sell him.

"Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little as a hundred times
together, Sell him, sell him; against which, I may say, for whole hours
together, I have been forced to stand as continually leaning and forcing
my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some wicked
thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and