When God’s hand is bent to strike,“it is a fearful

thing to fall into the hands of the lining God”; but to

fall out of the hands of the living god is a horror beyond

our expression, beyond our imagination. That God should

let my soul fall out of his hand into a bottomless pit and

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roll an unremovable stone upon it and leave it to that

which it finds there (and it shall find that there which it

never imagined till it came thither) and never think more

of that soul, never have more to do with it; that of that

providence of God that studies the life of every weed

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and worm and ant and spider and toad and viper there should

never, never any beam flow out upon me; that that God

who looked upon me when I was nothing and called me

when I was not, as though I had been, out of the womb

and depth of darkness, will not look upon me now, when

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though a miserable and a banished and a damned creature,

yet I am his creature still and contribute something to his

glory even in my damnation; that that God who hath

often looked upon me in my foulest uncleanness and when

I had shut out the eye of the day, the sun, and the eye of

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the night, the taper, and the eyes of all the world with

curtains and windows and doors, did yet see me and see

me in mercy by making me se that he saw me and

sometimes brought me to a present remorse and (for that

time) to a forbearing of that sin, should so turn himself

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from me to his glorious saints and angels as that no saint

nor angel nor Christ Jesus himself should ever pray him

to look towards me, never remember him that such a

soul there is; that that God who hath so often said to my

soul, Quare morieris? why wilt thou die? And so often

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sworn to my soul, Vivit Dominus, as the Lord liveth, I

would not have thee die but live, will neither let me die

nor let me live, but die an everlasting life and live an

everlasting death; that that God who, when he could not

get into me by standing and knocking, by his ordinary

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means of entering, by his word, his mercies, hath applied

his judgments and hath shaked the house, this body, with

agues and palsies, and frighted the master of the house, my

soul, with horrors and heavy apprehensions and so made

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an entrance into me; that that God should frustrate all his

own purposes and practices upon me and leave me and

cast me away as though I had cost him nothing; that this

God at last should let this soul go away as a smoke, as

a vapor, as a bubble; and that then this soul cannot be a

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smoke, a vapor, not a bubble, but must lie in darkness

as long as the Lord of light is light itself, and never spark

of that light reach to my soul; what Tophet is not

paradise, what brimstone is not amber, what gnashing is not a

comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling,

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what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation to

be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight

of God?