“About this time I did light on the dreadful story of that miserable mortal, Francis Spira. Every sentence in that book, every groan of that man, with all the rest of his actions in his dolors, as his tears, his prayers, his gnashing of teeth, his wringing of hands, his twisting, and languishing, and pining away, under the mighty hand of God that was upon him, was as knives and daggers to my soul; especially that sentence of his was frightful to me, ‘Man knows the beginning of sin, but who bounds the issues thereof!’ Then would the former sentence, as the conclusion of all, fall like a hot thunderbolt again upon my conscience, ‘For you know how, that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.’ Then should I be struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that at sometimes I could, for whole days together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of this dreadful judgment of God. “Now I should find my mind to flee from God as from the face of a dreadful judge; yet this was my torment, I could not escape his hand. ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the hiving God.’ But blessed be his grace, that scripture in these flying fits 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.’ This, I say, would come in upon my mind when I was fleeing from the face of God; for I did flee from his face, that is, my mind and spirit fled before him: by reason of his highness I could not endure. Then would that text cry, Return unto me; it would cry aloud, with a very great voice, Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee. Indeed this would make me make a little stop, and, as it were, look over my shoulder behind me, to see if I could discern that the God of grace did follow me with a pardon in his hand.