Her experience assumed that unsettled phase which often
characterises the earlier stages of youthful piety. Now miserable
from a consciousness of having grieved the Spirit of God, and again
hopeful, confident, and happy. Sometimes she was driven even to
despair, and admitted the thought that the day of grace was past for
ever. One day while in this state of feeling she overheard her father
conversing with a friend on the awful case of Francis Spira,[Footnote:
"Francis Spira an advocate of Padua, Ann. 1545, that being desperate,
by no counsell of learned men could be comforted; he felt, as he said,
the pains of hell in his soule, in all other things he discoursed
aright; but in this most mad. Frismelica, Bullovat, and some other
excellent physicians, could neither make him eat, drink or sleep; no
persuasion could ease him. Never pleaded any man so well for himself,
as this man did against himself; and so he desperately died. Springer,
a lawyer, hath written his life."--_Burton's Anatomy of Melancholie_.]
her mind was filled with great horror, and she was constrained to
seek refuge in prayer. While she was pleading with God the words were
applied, "Turn ye at my reproof," and the snare was broken. During
this period of mental conflict she steadfastly maintained her
connexion with the church; and thus escaped that total loss of
spiritual feeling, into which many, in similar circumstances, plunge
themselves by withdrawing from the circle of religious influence.
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