him; but I found him like an empty hollow cask. I heard also of one
called Dr. Craddock of Coventry, and went to him. I asked him the
ground of temptations and despair, and how troubles came to be wrought
in man? He asked me, "Who was Christ's Father and Mother?" I told him
Mary was His Mother, and that He was supposed to be the son of Joseph,
but He was the Son of God. Now, as we were walking together in his
garden, the alley being narrow, I chanced, in turning, to set my foot
on the side of a bed, at which the man was in a rage, as if his house
had been on fire. Thus all our discourse was lost, and I went away in
sorrow, worse than I was when I came. I thought them miserable
comforters, and saw they were all as nothing to me; for they could not
reach my condition. After this I went to another, one Macham, a priest
in high account. He would needs give me some physic, and I was to have
been let blood; but they could not get one drop of blood from me,
either in arms or head (though they endeavoured to do so), my body
being, as it were, dried up with sorrows, grief and troubles, which
were so great upon me that I could have wished I had never been born,
or that I had been born blind, that I might never have seen wickedness
or vanity; and deaf, that I might never have heard vain and wicked
words, or the Lord's name blasphemed. When the time called Christmas
came, while others were feasting and sporting themselves, I looked out
poor widows from house to house, and gave them some money. When I was
invited to marriages (as I sometimes was) I went to none at all, but
the next day, or soon after, I would go to visit them; and if they
were poor, I gave them some money; for I had wherewith both to keep
myself from being chargeable to others, and to administer something to
the necessities of those who were in need.'

Three years passed in this way, and then at last the first streaks of
light began to dawn in the darkness. They came, not in any sudden or
startling way, but little by little his soul was filled with the hope
of dawn:

Silently as the morning
Comes on when night is done,
Or the crimson streak, on ocean's cheek,
Grows into the great sun.

He says, 'About the beginning of the year 1646, as I was going into
Coventry, a consideration arose in me how it was said, "All Christians
are believers, both Protestants and Papists," and the Lord opened to
me, that if all were believers, then they were all