that there would be no answer to me
till I had entire purity of conscience, and no longer regarded any
iniquity whatsoever in my heart. I saw that there were some secret
affections still left in me, which, though they were not very bad perhaps
in themselves, yet in a life of prayer such as I was attempting those
remanent affections spoiled all.

(3) _Eighteen Years of Misery in Prayer_.--It is not without very good
reason that I have dwelt so long on this part of my life. It will give
no one any pleasure to see any one so base as I was. And I wish all who
read this to have me in abhorrence. I failed in all obedience, because I
was not leaning on my strong pillar of prayer. I passed nearly twenty
years of my life on this stormy sea, constantly tossed with tempest and
never coming to harbour. It was the most painful life that can be
imagined, because I had no sweetness in God, and certainly no sweetness
in sin. I was often very angry with myself on account of the many tears
I shed for my faults, when I could not but see how little improvement all
my tears made in me. All my tears did not hold me back from sin when the
opportunity returned. Till I came to look on my tears as little short of
a delusion: and yet they were not. It was the goodness of the Lord to
give me such compunction even when it was not as yet accompanied with
complete reformation. But the whole root of my evil lay in my not
thoroughly avoiding all occasions of sin, and in my confessors, who
helped me at that time so little. If they had only told me what a
dangerous road it was I was travelling in, and that I was bound to break
off all occasions of sin, I do believe, without any doubt, that the
matter would have been remedied at once. Nevertheless, I can trace
distinctly the mercy of God to me in that all the time I had still the
courage to pray. I say courage, because I know nothing in the whole
world that requires greater courage than plotting treason against the
King, knowing that He knows it, and yet continuing to frequent His
presence in prayer. I spent more than eighteen years in that miserable
attempt to reconcile God and my life of sin. The reason that I tell and
repeat all this so often is that all who read what I write may understand
how great is that grace God works in the soul when He gives it a
disposition to pray on, even when it has not yet left off all sin. If
that soul perseveres, in spite of sin, and temptation, and many