When this last sacrifice had been made, he was, even when tried by
the maxims of that austere time, faultless. All Elstow talked of him as
an eminently pious youth. But his own mind was more unquiet than ever.
Having nothing more to do in the way of visible reformation, yet finding
in religion no pleasures to supply the place of the juvenile amusements
which he had relinquished, he began to apprehend that he lay under some
special malediction; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies
which seemed likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam.
At one time he took it into his head that all persons of Israelite blood
would be saved, and tried to make out that he partook of that blood; but
his hopes were speedily destroyed by his father, who seems to have had
no ambition to be regarded as a Jew.
At another time, Bunyan was disturbed by a strange dilemma: "If I have
not faith, I am lost; if I have faith, I can work miracles." He was
tempted to cry to the puddles between Elstow and Bedford, "Be ye dry,"
and to stake his eternal hopes on the event.
Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bedford and the
neighboring villages was passed; that all who were to be saved in that
part of England were already converted; and that he had begun to pray
and strive some months too late.
Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were not in the right,
and the Christians in the wrong. Then he was troubled by a maniacal
impulse which prompted him to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the
parish bull.
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