♦4. For near a year, few weeks, nay, few days and nights, past over me without these struggles. But after King James’s army was overthrown, on July 27, 1689, I soon grew as remiss as before. All my remaining difficulty was to stifle my convictions, which I endeavoured partly by a more careful attendance on outward duties, partly by promising to abstain from those sins, which most directly crost my light, and partly by resolving to enquire farther into the will of God, and to comply with it _hereafter_. ♦ “3.” replaced with “4.” 5. But these courses afforded no solid repose. The first sin against light or omission of duty, shook all, and I was confounded at the thoughts of appearing before God in such a righteousness. Indeed, I had some ease when trials were at a distance; but it vanished on their approach. This was not gold tried in the fire; nor would it abide so much as a near view of danger; but at the very appearance of a storm, the foundation fell away. 6. The effects of my being thus exercised were: 1. I was brought to doubt of the truths of religion. Whenever I would have built on them in time of distress, a suspicion secretly haunted me; “What if these things are not so? Have I a certainty and evidence about them, answerable to the weight that is to be laid upon them?” Death and the trouble attending it, were certain things: but I was not so certain of the truths of religion. Still when, under apprehensions of death, I would have taken rest therein, but my mind began to waver. Not that I could give any reason for it; but _the way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble_. 2. I found plainly hereby that I could never have peace, till I came to another sort of certainty about religion. Death I saw was unavoidable and might be sudden; nor could I banish the thoughts of it. Therefore I concluded, “Unless I obtain such a conviction of religion, and such an interest in it, as will make me look death in the face, not only without fear, but with joy; good it were I had never been born.” But how or ♦where this was to be obtained I was utterly uncertain. Here I lay in great perplexity, under the melancholly sense that I had hitherto _spent my money for that which is not bread, and my labour for that which profiteth not_. 3. This perplexity was somewhat eased one day, while I was reading how Mr. _Robert Bruce_ was in a doubt, even concerning the being of God, who yet afterwards came to the fullest satisfaction. I then felt a secret hope, “That sometime in one way or other, God might thus satisfy _me_.” Here was the dawning of a light, which though if it was not soon cleared up, yet was never wholly put out again. A light which though as yet it was far from satisfying, yet kept me from utter despair. ♦ “were” replaced with “where” per Errata