13. I was now reduced to the last extremity. My sins were set in order before me, and had taken such hold upon me, that I was not able to look up. They were set in order in the dreadfulness of their nature and aggravations; my excuses baffled, and _my mouth stopped before_ God. All the ways I had taken for my relief had deceived me; they were the staff of a broken reed; they pierced my arm when I essayed to lean upon them; and _I was ashamed, and even confounded, that I had hoped_. The wrath of God was likewise dropped into my soul, and _the poison of his arrows drunk up my spirits_. Add to this, that I was still unsatisfied about religion, and my enemies often told me, that even in God there was no succour for me. Yea, sometimes Satan, to entangle me the more, assaulted all the truths of religion at once; and then I was utterly confounded, when the Lord commanded that my enemies should close me in on every side. 14. By the extremity of this anguish, I was for some time, about the end of ninety-seven, and the beginning of ninety-eight, dreadfully cast down. I was weary of my life. Oft did I use _Job_’s words, _I loath it, I would not live alway_. And yet I was afraid to die. I had no rest; _My sore ran in the day, and in the night time it ceased not_. At night I wished for day, and in the day I wished for night. I said, _My couch shall comfort me; but then darkness was as the shadow of death_. I was often on the brink of despair. _He filled me with bitterness, he made me drunk with wormwood. He removed my soul far from peace: I forgat prosperity. I said my hope and my strength are perished from the Lord._ I wondered that I was not consumed; and though I dreaded destruction from the Almighty, yet I must have justified him if he had destroyed me. Thus I walked about dejected, weary and heavy laden: weary of my disease, and weary of my vain remedies; and utterly uncertain what to do next, or what course to take. CHAPTER II. _Of his deliverance from these temptations._