“All this time the Spirit of God was powerfully at work with me; and I was inwardly pressed to relinquish all _self-confidence_, all hope of ever helping myself by any means whatsoever. The conviction of my lost estate was sometimes so clear and manifest before my eyes that it was as if it had been declared to me in so many words, “It is done, it is done, it is for ever impossible to deliver yourself.” For about three or four days my soul was thus greatly distressed. At some turns, for a few moments, I seemed to myself lost and undone; but then would shrink back immediately from the sight, because I dared not venture myself into the hands of God, as wholly helpless, and at the disposal of his sovereign pleasure. I dared not see that important truth concerning myself, that I was “dead in trespasses and sins.” But when I had, as it were, thrust away these views of myself at any time, I felt distressed to have the same discoveries of myself again; for I greatly feared being given over of God to final stupidity. When I thought of putting it off to a more “convenient season,” the conviction was so close and powerful, that the _present_ time was the best, and probably the _only_ time, that I dared not put it off. “It was the sight of truth concerning myself, truth respecting my state, as a creature fallen and alienated from God, and that consequently could make no demands on God for mercy, but was at his absolute disposal, from which my soul shrank away, and which I trembled to think of beholding. Thus, he that doeth evil, as all unregenerate men continually do, hates the light of truth, neither cares to come to it, because it will reprove his deeds, and show him his just deserts. John, 3:20. Sometime before, I had taken much pains, as I thought, to submit to the sovereignty of God; yet I mistook the thing, and did not once imagine, that seeing and being made experimentally sensible of this truth, which my soul now so much dreaded and trembled at, was the frame of soul which I had so earnestly desired. I had ever hoped that when I had attained to that _humiliation_ which I supposed necessary to precede faith, then it would not be fair for God to _cast me off_; but now I saw it was so far from any goodness in me, to own myself spiritually dead and destitute of all goodness, that on the contrary, my mouth would be for ever stopped by it; and it looked as dreadful to me, to see myself, and the relation I stood in to God—I a sinner and criminal, and he a great Judge and Sovereign—as it would be to a poor trembling creature to venture off some high precipice. Hence I put it off for a minute or two, and tried for better circumstances to do it in: either I must read a passage or two, or pray first, or something of the like nature; or else put off my submission to God with an objection, that I did not know how to submit. But the truth was, I could see no safety in owning myself in the hands of a sovereign