anxious days, it was not any one sin, nor any particular class of
sins, which made him so fearful and unhappy. He felt that he was a
sinner, and as a sinner he wanted a perfect righteousness to present
him faultless before God. This righteousness, he also knew, was
nowhere to be found except in the person of Jesus Christ. "My
original and inward pollution,--that was my plague and affliction.
THAT I saw at a dreadful rate, always putting forth itself within
me,--that I had the guilt of to amazement; by reason of that I was
more loathsome in mine own eyes than a toad; and I thought I was so
in God's eyes too. Sin and corruption, I said, would as naturally
bubble out of my heart as water would out of a fountain. I thought
now that every one had a better heart than I had. I could have
changed hearts with any body. I thought none but the devil himself
could equalize me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. I
fell, therefore, at the sight of my own vileness, deeply into
despair; for I concluded that this condition that I was in could not
stand with a state of grace. Sure, thought I, I am forsaken of God;
sure I am given up to the devil and a reprobate mind. And thus I
continued a long while, even for some years together."

During these painful apprehensions regarding his own state, it is no
marvel that he looked on secular things with an apathetic eye.
"While thus afflicted with the fears of my own damnation, there were
two things would make me wonder: the one was, when I saw old people
hunting after the things of this life, as if they should live here
always; the other was, when I found professors much distressed and
cast down when they met with outward losses, as of husband, wife,
child, &c. Lord, thought I, what a-do is here about such little
things as these! What seeking after carnal things by some, and what
grief in others for the loss of them! If they so much labour after,