about, would bring me out of town without passing by those justices;
yet loth I was to go that way. Wherefore I stayed a pretty time, in
hopes they would have parted company, or removed to some other place
out of my way. But when I had waited until I was uneasy for losing
so much time, having entered into reasonings with flesh and blood,
the weakness prevailed over me, and away I went the back way, which
brought trouble and grief upon my spirit for having shunned the
cross.

But the Lord looked on me with a tender eye, and seeing my heart was
right to Him, and that what I had done was merely through weakness
and fear of falling, and that I was sensible of my failing therein,
and sorry for it, He was graciously pleased to pass it by, and speak
peace to me again. So that before I got home, as when I went in the
morning, my heart was full of breathing prayer to the Lord, that He
would vouchsafe to be with me, and uphold and carry me through that
day's exercise; so now at my return in the evening, my heart was
full of thankful acknowledgments and praises unto Him for His great
goodness and favour to me, in having thus far preserved and kept me
from falling into anything that might have brought dishonour to His
holy name, which I had now taken on me.

But notwithstanding that it was thus with me, and that I found peace
and acceptance with the Lord in some good degree, according to my
obedience to the convictions I had received by His holy Spirit in
me, yet was not the veil so done away, or fully rent, but that there
still remained a cloud upon my understanding with respect to my
carriage towards my father. And that notion which the enemy had
brought into my mind, that I ought to put such a difference between
him and all others as that, on account of the paternal relation, I