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Quote by Alec Ryrie

“In the 1640s, a formerly pious London teenager named Sarah Wight suffered four years of spiritual agonies. As she recalled: ‘I could see nothing but Hell, and wrath: I was as desperate, as ever was any … I felt myself, soul and body, in fire and brimstone already.’ From that agonised conviction, it was only a short step to wonder if ‘there was no other Hell, but that which I felt’. At least that held out the hope that death would end her sufferings. On that basis she attempted suicide several times, thinking that ‘if I made away [with] myself, there was an end of my misery, and that there was no God, no Heaven; and no Hell’. But the very fact she had such thoughts convinced her that she ‘was damned already, being an unbeliever’.”

Quote by Alec Ryrie

Book:Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt
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Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt

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Alec Ryrie

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