John Bunyan — Grace Abounding

You dwell in the City of Destruction, the place also where I was born: I see it to be so; and, dying there, sooner or later, you will sink lower than the grave, into a place that burns with fire and brimstone.

I am a poor burdened sinner. I come from the City of Destruction, but am going to Mount Zion, that I may be delivered from the wrath to come.

This miry slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond.

Why, Sir, this burden upon my back is more terrible to me than all these things which you have mentioned; nay, methinks I care not what I meet with in the way, if so be I can also meet with deliverance from my burden.

I have sent you here enclosed, a drop of that honey that I have taken out of the carcase of a lion.

God did not play in tempting of me; neither did I play, when I sank as into the bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold upon me.