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Works of John Bunyan — Volume 01

by John Bunyan · English · Gutenberg #6046 · 4,752,771 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Works of John Bunyan — Volume 01

Author: John Bunyan

Editor: George Offor


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6046]
                Most recently updated: August 17, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6046

Credits: Charles Aldarondo


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF JOHN BUNYAN — VOLUME 01 ***




The Works of John Bunyan

WITH AN
INTRODUCTION TO EACH TREATISE, NOTES,
AND A
SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND CONTEMPORARIES.

VOLUME FIRST.

EXPERIMENTAL, DOCTRINAL, AND PRACTICAL.

EDITED BY
GEORGE OFFOR, ESQ.


Contents

 MEMOIR OF JOHN BUNYAN
 GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEF OF SINNERS
 A RELATON OF THE IMPRISONMENT OF MR. JOHN BUNYAN
 THE JERUSALEM SINNER SAVED
 THE GREATNESS OF THE SOUL
 THE WORK OF JESUS CHRIST AS AN ADVOCATE
 CHRIST A COMPLETE SAVIOUR
 COME AND WELCOME TO JESUS CHRIST
 JUSTIFICATION BY AN IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS
 SAVED BY GRACE
 THE STRAIT GATE
 LIGHT FOR THEM THAT SIT IN DARKNESS
 A TREATISE OF THE FEAR OF GOD
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE LAW AND GRACE UNFOLDED
 ISRAEL’S HOPE ENCOURAGED
 A DISCOURSE TOUCHING PRAYER
 THE SAINTS’ PRIVILEGE AND PROFIT
 THE ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE
 PAUL’S DEPARTURE AND CROWN
 THE DESIRE OF THE RIGHTEOUS GRANTED




MEMOIR OF JOHN BUNYAN


THE FIRST PERIOD.


THIS GREAT MAN DESCENDED FROM IGNOBLE PARENTS—BORN IN POVERTY—HIS
EDUCATION AND EVIL HABITS—FOLLOWS HIS FATHER’S BUSINESS AS A
BRAZIER—ENLISTS FOR A SOLDIER—RETURNS FROM THE WARS AND OBTAINS AN
AMIABLE, RELIGIOUS WIFE—HER DOWER.


‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the
power may be of God, and not of us.’—2 Cor 4:7

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,
saith the Lord.’—Isaiah 55:8.

‘Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a
dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.’—Psalm
68:13.

When the Philistine giant, Goliath, mocked the host of Israel, and
challenged any of their stern warriors to single combat, what human
being could have imagined that the gigantic heathen would be
successfully met in the mortal struggle by a youth ’ruddy and of a fair
countenance?’ who unarmed, except with a sling and a stone, gave the
carcases of the hosts of the Philistines to the fouls of the air, and
to the wild beasts of the earth.’

Who, upon seeing an infant born in a stable, and laid in a manger, or
beholding him when a youth working with his father as a carpenter,
could have conceived that he was the manifestation of the Deity in
human form, before whom every knee should bow, and every tongue confess
Him to be THE ETERNAL?

Father Michael, a Franciscan friar, on a journey to Ancona, having lost
his way, sought direction from a wretched lad keeping hogs—deserted,
forlorn, his back smarting with severe stripes, and his eyes suffused
with tears. The poor ragged boy not only went cheerfully with him to
point out his road, but besought the monk to take him into his convent,
volunteering to fulfill the most degrading services, in the hope of
procuring a little learning, and escaping from ’those filthy hogs.’ How
incredulously would the friar have listened to anyone who could have
suggested that this desolate, tattered, dirty boy, might and would fill
a greater than an imperial throne! Yet, eventually that swine-herd was
clothed in purple and fine linen, and, under the title of Pope Sixtus
V., became one of those mighty magicians who are described in Rogers
Italy, as

‘Setting their feet upon the necks of kings,
And through the worlds subduing, chaining down
The free, immortal spirit—theirs a wondrous spell.’ [1]


A woman that was ’a loose and ungodly wretch’ hearing a tinker lad most
awfully cursing and swearing, protested to him that ’he swore and
cursed at that most fearful rate that it made her tremble to hear him,’
’that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing that ever she heard in
all her life,’ and ’that he was able to spoil all the youth in a whole
town, if they came in his company.’ This blow at the young reprobate
made that indelible impression which all the sermons yet he had heard
had failed to make. Satan, by one of his own slaves, wounded a
conscience which had resisted all the overtures of mercy. The youth
pondered her words in his heart; they were good seed strangely sown,
and their working formed one of those mysterious steps which led the
foul-mouthed blasphemer to bitter repentance; who, when he had received
mercy and pardon, felt impelled to bless and magnify the Divine grace
with shining, burning thoughts and words. The poor profligate, swearing
tinker became transformed into the most ardent preacher of the love of
Christ—the well-trained author of The Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or Good
News to the Vilest of Men.

How often have the Saints of God been made a most unexpected blessing
to others. The good seed of Divine truth has been many times sown by
those who did not go out to sow, but who were profitably engaged in
cultivating their own graces, enjoying the communion of Saints, and
advancing their own personal happiness! Think of a few poor, but pious
happy women, sitting in the sun one beautiful summer’s day, before one
of their cottages, probably each one with her pillow on her lap,
dexterously twisting the bobbins to make lace, the profits of which
helped to maintain their children. While they are communing on the
things of God, a traveling tinker draws near, and, over-hearing their
talk, takes up a position where he might listen to their converse while
he pursued his avocation. Their words distil into his soul; they speak
the language of Canaan; they talk of holy enjoyments, the result of
being born again, acknowledging their miserable state by nature, and
how freely and undeservedly God had visited their hearts with pardoning
mercy, and supported them while suffering the assaults and suggestions
of Satan; how they had been borne up in every dark, cloudy, stormy day;
and how they contemned, slighted, and abhorred their own righteousness
as filthy and insufficient to do them any good. The learned discourses
our tinker had heard at church had casually passed over his mind like
evanescent clouds, and left little or no lasting impression. But these
poor women, ’methought they spake as actually did make them speak; they
speak with such pleasant as of Scripture language, and with such
appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they
had found a new world, as if they were people that dwelt alone, and
were not to be reckoned among their neighbors’ (Num 23:9).

O! how little did they imagine that their pious converse was to be the
means employed by the Holy Spirit in the conversion of that poor
tinker, and that, by their agency, he was to be transformed into one of
the brightest luminaries of heaven; who, when he had entered into rest
would leave his works to follow him as spiritual thunder to pierce the
hearts of the impenitent, and as heavenly consolation to bind up the
broken-hearted; liberating the prisoners of Giant Despair, and
directing the pilgrims to the Celestial City. Thus were blessings in
rich abundance showered down upon the church by the instrumentality, in
the first instance, of a woman that was a sinner, but most eminently by
the Christian converse of a few poor but pious women.

This poverty-stricken, ragged tinker was the son of a working mechanic
at Elstow, near Bedford. So obscure was his origin that even the
Christian name of his father is yet unknown:[2] he was born in 1628, a
year memorable as that in which the Bill of Rights was passed. Then
began the struggle against arbitrary power, which was overthrown in
1688, the year of Bunyan’s death, by the accession of William III. Of
Bunyan’s parents, his infancy, and childhood, little is recorded. All
that we know is from his own account, and that principally contained in
his doctrine of the Law and Grace, and in his extraordinary development
of his spiritual life, under the title of Grace Abounding to the Chief
of Sinners. His birth would have shed a luster on the wealthiest
mansion, and have imparted additional grandeur to any lordly palace.
Had royal or noble gossips, and a splendid entertainment attended his
christening, it might have been pointed to with pride; but so obscure
was his birth, that it has not been discovered that he was christened
at all; while the fact of his new birth by the Holy Ghost is known over
the whole world to the vast extent that his writings have been
circulated. He entered this world in a labourer’s cottage of the
humblest class, at the village of Elstow, about a mile from Bedford.[3]
His pedigree is thus narrated by himself:—‘My descent was of a low and
inconsiderable generation, my father’s house being of that rank that is
meanest and most despised of all the families in the land.’[4] Bunyan
alludes to this very pointedly in the preface to A Few Sighs from
Hell:—‘I am thine, if thou be not ashamed to own me, because of my low
and contemptible descent in the world.’[5] His poor and abject
parentage was so notorious, that his pastor, John Burton, apologized
for it in his recommendation to The Gospel Truths Opened:—‘Be not
offended because Christ holds forth the glorious treasure of the gospel
to thee in a poor earthen vessel, by one who hath neither the greatness
nor the wisdom of this world to commend him to thee.’[6] And in his
most admirable treatise, on The Fear of God, Bunyan observes—‘The poor
Christian hath something to answer them that reproach him for his
ignoble pedigree, and shortness of the glory of the wisdom of this
world. True may that man say I am taken out of the dunghill. I was born
in a base and low estate; but I fear God. This is the highest and most
noble; he hath the honour, the life, and glory that is lasting.’[7] In
his controversy with the Strict Baptists, he chides them for reviling
his ignoble pedigree:—‘You closely disdain my person because of my low
descent among men, stigmatizing me as a person of THAT rank that need
not be heeded or attended unto.’[8] He inquired of his father—‘Whether
we were of the Israelites or no? for, finding in the Scripture that
they were once the peculiar people of God, thought I, if I were one of
this race, my soul must needs be happy.’[9] This somewhat justifies the
conclusion that his father was a Gipsy tinker, that occupation being
then followed by the Gipsy tribe. In the life of Bunyan appended to the
forged third part of the Pilgrim’s Progress, his father is described as
‘an honest poor labouring man, who, like Adam unparadised, had all the
world before him to get his bread in; and was very careful and
industrious to maintain his family.’[10]

Happily for Bunyan, he was born in a neighbourhood in which it was a
disgrace to any parents not to have their children educated. With
gratitude he records, that ‘it pleased God to put it into their hearts
to put me to school to learn both to read and to write.’ In the
neighbourhood of his birthplace, a noble charity diffused the blessings
of lettered knowledge.[11] To this charity Bunyan was for a short
period indebted for the rudiments of education; but, alas, evil
associates made awful havoc of those slight unshapen literary
impressions which had been made upon a mind boisterous and impatient of
discipline. He says—‘To my shame, I confess I did soon lose that little
I learned, and that almost utterly.’[12] This fact will recur to the
reader’s recollection when he peruses Israel’s Hope Encouraged, in
which, speaking of the all-important doctrine of justification, he
says—‘It is with many that begin with this doctrine as it is with boys
that go to the Latin school; they learn till they have learned the
grounds of their grammar, and then go home and forget all.’[13]

As soon as his strength enabled him, he devoted his whole soul and body
to licentiousness—‘As for my own natural life, for the time that I was
without God in the world, it was indeed according to the course of this
world, and the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
It was my delight to be taken captive by the devil at his will: being
filled with all unrighteousness; that from a child I had but few
equals, both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy
name of God.’[14]

It has been supposed, that in delineating the early career of Badman,
‘Bunyan drew the picture of his own boyhood.’[15] But the difference is
broadly given. Badman is the child of pious parents, who gave him a
‘good education’ in every sense, both moral and secular;[16] the very
reverse of Bunyan’s training. His associates would enable him to draw
the awful character and conduct of Badman, as a terrible example to
deter others from the downward road to misery and perdition.

Bunyan’s parents do not appear to have checked, or attempted to
counteract, his unbridled career of wickedness. He gives no hint of the
kind; but when he notices his wife’s father, he adds that he ‘was
counted godly’; and in his beautiful nonsectarian catechism, there is a
very touching conclusion to his instructions to children on their
behaviour to their parents:—‘The Lord, if it be his will, convert our
poor parents, that they, with us, may be the children of God.’[17]
These fervent expressions may refer to his own parents; and, connecting
them with other evidence, it appears that he was not blessed with pious
example. Upon one occasion, when severely reproved for swearing, he
says—‘I wished, with all my heart, that I might be a little child
again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way
of swearing.’[18] In his numerous confessions, he never expresses pain
at having, by his vicious conduct, occasioned grief to his father or
mother. From this it may be inferred, that neither his father’s example
nor precept had checked this wretched propensity to swearing, and that
he owed nothing to his parents for moral training; but, on the
contrary, they had connived at, and encouraged him in, a course of life
which made him a curse to the neighbourhood in which he lived.

In the midst of all this violent depravity, the Holy Spirit began the
work of regeneration in his soul—a long, a solemn, yea, an awful
work—which was to fit this poor debauched youth for purity of
conduct—for communion with heaven—for wondrous usefulness as a minister
of the gospel—for patient endurance of sufferings for righteousness’
sake—for the writing of works which promise to be a blessing to the
Church in all ages—for his support during his passage through the black
river which has no bridge—to shine all bright and glorious, as a star
in the firmament of heaven. ‘Wonders of grace to God belong.’

During the period of his open profligacy, his conscience was ill at
ease; at times the clanking of Satan’s slavish chains in which he was
hurrying to destruction, distracted him. The stern reality of a future
state clouded and embittered many of those moments employed in
gratifying his baser passions. The face of the eventful times in which
he lived was rapidly changing; the trammels were loosened, which, with
atrocious penalties, had fettered all free inquiry into religious
truth. Puritanism began to walk upright; and as the restraints imposed
upon Divine truths were taken off, in the same proportion restraints
were imposed upon impiety, profaneness, and debauchery. A ringleader in
all wickedness would not long continue without reproof, either
personally, or as seen in the holy conduct of others. Bunyan very
properly attributed to a gracious God, those checks of conscience which
he so strongly felt even while he was apparently dead in trespasses and
sins. ‘The Lord, even in my childhood, did scare and affright me with
fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions.’[19] ‘I often
wished that there had been no hell, or that I had been a devil to
torment others.’ A common childish but demoniac idea. His mind was as
‘the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and
dirt.’ ‘A while after, these terrible dreams did leave me; and with
more greediness, according to the strength of nature, I did let loose
the reins of my lusts, and delighted in all transgression against the
law of God.’ ‘I was the very ringleader of all the youth that kept me
company, into ALL MANNER of vice and ungodliness.’[20]

Dr. Southey and others have attempted to whiten this blackamore, but
the veil that they throw over him is so transparent that it cannot
deceive those who are in the least degree spiritually enlightened. He
alleges that Bunyan, in his mad career of vice and folly, ‘was never so
given over to a reprobate mind,’[21] as to be wholly free from
compunctions of conscience. This is the case with every depraved
character; but he goes further, when he asserts that ‘Bunyan’s heart
never was hardened.’[22] This is directly opposed to his description of
himself:—‘I found within me a great desire to take my fill of sin,
still studying what sin was yet to be committed; and I made as much
haste as I could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should die
before I had my desire.’ He thus solemnly adds, ‘In these things, I
protest before God, I lie not, neither do I feign this sort of speech;
these were really, strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the
good Lord, whose mercy is unsearchable, forgive me my transgressions.’
The whole of his career, from childhood to manhood, was, ‘According to
the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’ (Eph
2:2).

These reminiscences are alluded to in the prologue of the Holy War:—

‘When Mansoul trampled upon things Divine,
And wallowed in filth as doth a swine,
Then I was there, and did rejoice to see
Diabolus and Mansoul so agree.’


The Laureate had read this, and yet considers it the language of a
heart that ‘never was hardened.’ He says that ‘the wickedness of the
tinker has been greatly overcharged, and it is taking the language of
self-accusation too literally to pronounce of John Bunyan, that he was
at any time depraved. The worst of what he was in his worst days is to
be expressed in a single word, the full meaning of which no
circumlocution can convey; and which, though it may hardly be deemed
presentable in serious composition, I shall use, as Bunyan himself (no
mealy-mouthed writer) would have used it, had it in his days borne the
same acceptation in which it is now universally understood;—in that
word then, he had been a blackguard.

The very head and front of his offending
Hath this extent—no more.’[23]


The meaning of the epithet is admirably explained; but what could Dr.
Southey imagine possible to render such a character more vile in the
sight of God, or a greater pest to society? Is there any vicious
propensity, the gratification of which is not included in that
character? Bunyan’s estimate of his immorality and profaneness prior to
his conversion, was not made by comparing himself with the infinitely
Holy One, but he measured his conduct by that of his more moral
neighbours. In his Jerusalem Sinner Saved, he pleads with great
sinners, the outwardly and violently profane and vicious, that if HE
had received mercy, and had become regenerated, they surely ought not
to despair, but to seek earnestly for the same grace. He thus describes
himself:—‘I speak by experience; I was one of those great sin-breeders;
I infected all the youth of the town where I was born; the neighbours
counted me so, my practice proved me so: wherefore, Christ Jesus took
me first; and, taking me first, the contagion was much allayed all the
town over. When God made me sigh, they would hearken, and inquiringly
say, What’s the matter with John? When I went out to seek the bread of
life, some of them would follow, and the rest be put into a muse at
home. Some of them, perceiving that God had mercy upon me, came crying
to him for mercy too.’[24] Can any one, in the face of such language,
doubt that he was most eminently ‘a brand snatched from the fire’; a
pitchy burning brand, known and seen as such by all who witnessed his
conduct? He pointedly exemplified the character set forth by James,
‘the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, set on fire of hell’ (James
3:6). This was as publicly known before his conversion, as the effects
of the wondrous change were openly seen in his Christian career
afterwards. He who, when convinced of sin, strained his eyes to see the
distant shining light over the wicket-gate, after he had gazed upon

—‘The wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,’


became a luminous beacon, to attract the vilest characters to seek
newness of life; and if there be hope for them, no one ought to
despair. Far be it from us to cloud this light, or to tarnish so
conspicuous an example. Like a Magdalene or a thief on the cross, his
case may be exhibited to encourage hope in every returning prodigal.
During this period of his childhood, while striving to harden his heart
against God, many were the glimmerings of light which from time to time
directed his unwilling eyes to a dread eternity. In the still hours of
the night ‘in a dream God opened’ his ears[25]—the dreadful vision was
that ‘devils and wicked spirits laboured to draw me away with them.’
These thoughts must have left a deep and alarming impression upon his
mind; for he adds, ‘of which I could never be rid.’[26]

The author of his life, published in 1692, who was one of his personal
friends, gives the following account of Bunyan’s profligacy, and his
checks of conscience:—‘He himself hath often, since his conversion,
confessed with horror, that when he was but a child or stripling, he
had but few equals for lying, swearing, and blaspheming God’s holy
name—living without God in the world; the thoughts of which, when he,
by the light of Divine grace, came to understand his dangerous
condition, drew many showers of tears from his sorrowful eyes, and
sighs from his groaning heart. The first thing that sensibly touched
him in this his unregenerate state, were fearful dreams, and visions of
the night, which often made him cry out in his sleep, and alarm the
house, as if somebody was about to murder him, and being waked, he
would start, and stare about him with such a wildness, as if some real
apparition had yet remained; and generally those dreams were about evil
spirits, in monstrous shapes and forms, that presented themselves to
him in threatening postures, as if they would have taken him away, or
torn him in pieces. At some times they seemed to belch flame, at other
times a continuous smoke, with horrible noises and roaring. Once he
dreamed he saw the face of the heavens, as it were, all on fire; the
firmament crackling and shivering with the noise of mighty thunders,
and an archangel flew in the midst of heaven, sounding a trumpet, and a
glorious throne was seated in the east, whereon sat one in brightness,
like the morning star, upon which he, thinking it was the end of the
world, fell upon his knees, and, with uplifted hands towards heaven,
cried, O Lord God, have mercy upon me! What shall I do, the day of
judgment is come, and I am not prepared! When immediately he heard a
voice behind him, exceeding loud, saying, Repent. At another time he
dreamed that he was in a pleasant place, jovial and rioting, banqueting
and feasting his senses, when a mighty earthquake suddenly rent the
earth, and made a wide gap, out of which came bloody flames, and the
figures of men tossed up in globes of fire, and falling down again with
horrible cries, shrieks, and execrations, whilst some devils that were
mingled with them, laughed aloud at their torments; and whilst he stood
trembling at this sight, he thought the earth sunk under him, and a
circle of flame enclosed him; but when he fancied he was just at the
point to perish, one in white shining raiment descended, and plucked
him out of that dreadful place; whilst the devils cried after him, to
leave him with them, to take the just punishment his sins had deserved,
yet he escaped the danger, and leaped for joy when he awoke and found
it was a dream.’

Such dreams as these fitted him in after life to be the glorious
dreamer of the Pilgrim’s Progress, in which a dream is told which
doubtless embodies some of those which terrified him in the night
visions of his youth.

In the interpreter’s house he is ‘led into a chamber where there was
one rising out of bed, and as he put on his raiment he shook and
trembled. Then said Christian, Why doth this man thus tremble? The
Interpreter then bid him tell to Christian the reason of his so doing.
So he began and said, This night, as I was in my sleep I dreamed, and
behold the heavens grew exceeding black; also it thundered and
lightened in most fearful wise, that it put me into an agony. So I
looked up in my dream, and saw the clouds rack at an unusual rate, upon
which I heard a great sound of a trumpet, and saw also a man sit upon a
cloud, attended with the thousands of heaven—they were all in flaming
fire; also the heavens were in a burning flame. I heard then a voice
saying, “Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment;” and with that the rocks
rent, the graves opened, and the dead that were therein came forth.
Some of them were exceeding glad, and looked upward; and some sought to
hide themselves under the mountains. Then I saw the man that sat upon
the cloud open the book, and bid the world draw near. Yet there was, by
reason of a fierce flame which issued out and came from before him, a
convenient distance betwixt him and them, as betwixt the judge and
prisoners at the bar. I heard it also proclaimed, “Gather together the
tares, the chaff, and stubble, and cast them into the burning lake”;
and with that the bottomless pit opened just whereabout I stood, out of
the mouth of which there came, in an abundant manner, smoke and coals
of fire, with hideous noises. It was also said, “Gather my wheat into
the garner”; and with that I saw many catched up and carried away into
the clouds, but I was left behind. I also sought to hide myself, but I
could not, for the man that sat upon the cloud still kept his eye upon
me; my sins also came into my mind, and my conscience did accuse me on
every side. Upon that I awaked from my sleep.’

No laboured composition could have produced such a dream as this. It
flows in such dream-like order as would lead us to infer, that the
author who narrates it had, when a boy, heard the twenty-fifth chapter
of Matthew read at church, and the solemn impression following him at
night assisted in producing a dream which stands, and perhaps will ever
stand, unrivalled.

Awful as must have been these impressions upon his imagination, they
were soon thrown off, and the mad youth rushed on in his desperate
career of vice and folly. Is he then left to fill up the measure of his
iniquities? No, the Lord has a great work for him to do. HIS hand is
not shortened that he cannot save. Bunyan has to be prepared for his
work; and if terrors will not stop him, manifested mercies in judgments
are to be tried.

‘God did not utterly leave me, but followed me still, not now with
convictions, but judgments; yet such as were mixed with mercy. For once
I fell into a creek of the sea, and hardly escaped drowning. Another
time I fell out of a boat into Bedford river, but mercy yet preserved
me alive. Besides, another time, being in the field with one of my
companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway, so I,
having a stick in my hand, struck her over the back; and having stunned
her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out
with my fingers; by which act, had not God been merciful unto me, I
might by my desperateness have brought myself to my end.

‘This also have I taken notice of, with thanksgiving. When I was a
soldier, I, with others, were drawn out to go to such a place to
besiege it; but when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired
to go in my room, to which, when I had consented, he took my place; and
coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot into the head
with a musket bullet, and died.’[27]

In addition to these mercies recorded by his own pen, one of his
friends asserts that he acknowledged his deep obligations to Divine
mercy for being saved when he fell into an exceeding deep pit, as he
was traveling in the dark; for having been preserved in sickness; and
also for providential goodness that such a sinner was sustained with
food and raiment, even to his own admiration.

Bunyan adds, ‘Here were judgments and mercy, but neither of them did
awaken my soul to righteousness’; wherefore I sinned still, and grew
more and more rebellious against God, and careless of mine own
salvation.’[28]

That such a scape-grace should enter the army can occasion no surprise.
His robust, hardy frame, used to exposure in all weathers—his daring
courage, as displayed in his perilous dealing with the adder, bordering
upon fool-hardiness—his mental depravity and immoral habits, fitted him
for all the military glory of rapine and desolation. In his Grace
Abounding he expressly states that this took place before his marriage,
while his earliest biographer places this event some years after his
marriage, and even argues upon it, as a reason why he became a soldier,
that ‘when the unnatural civil war came on, finding little or nothing
to do to support himself and small family, he, as many thousands did,
betook himself to arms.’[29] The same account states that, ‘in June,
1645, being at the siege of Leicester, he was called out to be one who
was to make a violent attack upon the town, vigorously defended by the
King’s forces against the Parliamentarians, but appearing to the
officer who was to command them to be somewhat awkward in handling his
arms, another voluntarily, and as it were thrust himself into his
place, who, having the same post that was designed Mr. Bunyan, met his
fate by a carbine-shot from the wall; but this little or nothing
startled our too secure sinner at that time; for being now in an army
where wickedness abounded, he was the more hardened.’

Thus we find Bunyan engaged in military affairs. There can be no doubt
but that he was a soldier prior to his marriage, and that he was
present at the siege of Leicester; but it is somewhat strange (if true)
that he should have preferred the Parliamentary to the Royal army.
Although this is a question that cannot be positively decided without
further evidence than has yet been discovered, there are strong reasons
for thinking that so loyal a man joined the Royal army, and not that of
the Republicans.

The army into which Bunyan entered is described as being ‘where
wickedness abounded,’ but, according to Hume, in this year the
Republican troops were generally pious men.

Bunyan’s loyalty was so remarkable as to appear to be natural to him;
for even after he had so severely suffered from the abuse of kingly
power, in interfering with the Divine prerogative of appointing modes
of worship, he, who feared the face of no man—who never wrote a line to
curry favour with any man or class of men—thus expresses his loyal
feelings—‘I do confess myself one of the old-fashioned professors, that
covet to fear God, and honour the king. I also am for blessing of them
that curse me, for doing good to them that hate me, and for praying for
them that despitefully use me and persecute me; and have had more peace
in the practice of these things than all the world are aware of.’ ‘Pray
for the long life of the king.’ ‘Pray that God would discover all plots
and conspiracies against his person and government.’[30] ‘Will you
rebel against the king? is a word that shakes the world.’[31] ‘Pray for
all that are in authority; reproach not the governor, he is set over
thee; all his ways are God’s, either for thy help or the trial of thy
graces—this is duty, will render thee lovely to thy friends, terrible
to thine enemies, serviceable as a Christian.’[32] ‘Let kings have that
fear, honour, reverence, worship that is due to their place, their
office and dignity.’ ‘I speak it to show my loyalty to the king, and my
love to my fellow-subjects.’[33] With such proofs of his peaceful
submission to government in all things that touched not the
prerogatives of God; it would have been marvelous indeed if he had
taken up arms against his king. His infatuated delight in swearing, and
roisterous habits, were ill suited to the religious restraints of the
Parliamentarians, while they would render him a high prize to Rupert’s
dragoons. Add to this, the remarkable fact, that Leicester was besieged
and stormed with terrible slaughter by the king, but not by the army of
the Parliament. The taking of Leicester by the king in person was
attended with great cruelties. The abbey was burnt by the cavaliers.
Rupert’s black flag was hoisted on the gate which had been
treacherously given up. Every Scotchman found in the town was murdered.
The mace and town seals were carried off as plunder; and, if the
account given by Thoresby in his History of Leicester is correct, the
scene of carnage was quite enough to sicken Bunyan of a military life.
He knew the mode in which plunder taken from the bodies of the slain
was divided by the conquerors:—

‘Or as the soldiers give unto
Each man the share and lot,
Which they by dint of sword have won,
From their most daring foe;
While he lies by as still as stone,
Not knowing what they do.’[34]


‘The king’s forces having made their batteries, stormed Leicester;
those within made stout resistance, but some of them betrayed one of
the gates; the women of the town laboured in making up the breaches,
and in great danger. The king’s forces having entered the town, had a
hot encounter in the market-place; and many of them were slain by shot
out of the windows, that they gave no quarter, but hanged some of the
committee, and cut others to pieces. Some letters say that the kennels
ran down with blood; Colonel Gray the governor, and Captain Hacker,
were wounded and taken prisoners, and very many of the garrison were
put to the sword, and the town miserably plundered. The king’s forces
killed divers who prayed quarter, and put divers women to the
sword,[35] and other women and children they turned naked into the
streets, and many they ravished. They hanged Mr. Reynor and Mr. Sawyer
in cold blood; and at Wighton they smothered Mrs. Barlowes, a
minister’s wife, and her children.’[36]

Lord Clarendon admits the rapine and plunder, and that the king
regretted that some of his friends suffered with the rest.[37] Humphrey
Brown deposed that he was present when the garrison, having surrendered
upon a promise of quarter, he saw the king’s soldiers strip and wound
the prisoners, and heard the king say—‘cut them more, for they are mine
enemies.’ A national collection was made for the sufferers, by an
ordinance bearing date the 28th October, 1645, which states
that—‘Whereas it is very well known what miseries befell the
inhabitants of the town and county of Leicester, when the king’s army
took Leicester, by plundering the said inhabitants, not only of their
wares in their shops, but also all their household goods, and their
apparel from their backs, both of men, women, and children, not
sparing, in that kind, infants in their cradles; and, by violent
courses and tortures, compelled them to discover whatsoever they had
concealed or hid, and after all they imprisoned their persons, to the
undoing of the tradesmen, and the ruin of many of the country.’

Can we wonder that ‘the king was abused as a barbarian and a murderer,
for having put numbers to death in cold blood after the garrison had
surrendered; and for hanging the Parliament’s committee, and some Scots
found in that town?’ The cruelties practiced in the king’s presence
were signally punished. He lost 709 men on that occasion, and it
infused new vigour into the Parliament’s army. The battle of Naseby was
fought a few days after; the numbers of the contending forces were
nearly equal; the royal troops were veterans, commanded by experienced
officers; but the God of armies avenged the innocent blood shed in
Leicester, and the royal army was cut to pieces; carriages, cannon, the
king’s cabinet, full of treasonable correspondence, were taken, and
from that day he made feeble fight, and soon lost his crown and his
life. The conquerors marched to Leicester, which surrendered by
capitulation. Heath, in his Chronicle, asserts that ‘no life was lost
at the retaking of Leicester.’ Many of Bunyan’s sayings and proverbs
are strongly tinged with the spirit of Rupert’s dragoons—‘as we say,
blood up to the ears.’[38] ‘What can be the meaning of this
(trumpeters), they neither sound boot and saddle, nor horse and away,
nor a charge?’[39] In his allegories when he alludes to fighting, it is
with the sword and not with the musket;[40] ‘rub up man, put on thy
harness.’[41] ‘The father’s sword in the hand of the sucking child is
not able to conquer a foe.’[42]

Considering his singular loyalty, which, during the French Revolution,
was exhibited as a pattern to Dissenters by an eminent Baptist
minister; [43] considering also his profligate character and military
sayings, it is very probable that Bunyan was in the king’s army in
1645, being about seventeen years of age. It was a finishing school to
the hardened sinner, which enabled him, in his account of the Holy War,
so well to describe every filthy lane and dirty street in the town of
Mansoul.

Whether Bunyan left the army when Charles was routed at the battle of
Naseby, or was discharged, is not known. He returned to his native town
full of military ideas, which he used to advantage in his Holy War. He
was not reformed, but hardened in sin, and, although at times alarmed
with convictions of the danger of his soul, yet in the end, the flesh
pleading powerfully, it prevailed; and he made a resolution to indulge
himself in such carnal delights and pleasures as he was accustomed to,
or that fell in his way. ‘His neglecting his business, and following
gaming and sports, to put melancholy thoughts out of his mind, which he
could not always do, had rendered him very poor and despicable.’[44]

In this forlorn and miserable state, he was induced, by the persuasion
of friends, under the invisible guidance of God, to enter into the
marriage state. Such a youth, then only twenty years of age, would
naturally be expected to marry some young woman as hardened as himself,
but he made a very different choice. His earliest biographer says, with
singular simplicity, ‘his poverty, and irregular course of life, made
it very difficult for him to get a wife suitable to his inclination;
and because none that were rich would yield to his allurements, he
found himself constrained to marry one without any fortune, though very
virtuous, loving, and conformably obedient and obliging, being born of
good, honest, godly parents, who had instructed her, as well as they
were able, in the ways of truth and saving knowledge.’[45] The idea of
his seeking a rich wife is sufficiently droll; he must have been
naturally a persuasive lover, to have gained so good a helpmate. They
were not troubled with sending cards, cake, or gloves, nor with the
ceremony of receiving the visits of their friends in state; for he
says, that ‘This woman and I came together as poor as poor might be,
not having so much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us
both.’[46] His wife had two books, The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven,
and The Practice of Piety; but what was of more importance than wealth
or household stuff, she had that seed sown in her heart which no thief
could steal.[47] She enticed and persuaded him to read those books. To
do this he by application ‘again recovered his reading, which he had
almost lost.’ His wife became an unspeakable blessing to him. She
presents a pattern to any woman, who, having neglected the apostolic
injunction not to be unequally yoked, finds herself under the dominion
of a swearing dare devil. It affords a lovely proof of the insinuating
benign favour of female influence. This was the more surprising, as he
says, ‘the thoughts of religion were very grievous to me,’ and when
‘books that concerned Christian piety were read in my hearing, it was
as it were a prison to me.’ In spite of all obstacles, his rugged heart
was softened by her tenderness and obedience, he ‘keeping on the old
course,’[48] she upon every proper season teaching him how her father’s
piety secured his own and his family’s happiness. Here was no
upbraiding, no snubbing, no curtain lectures; all was affectionate,
amiable mildness. At first, he became occasionally alarmed for his
soul’s salvation; then with the thought of having sinned away the day
of grace, he plunged again into sin with greediness; anon a faint hope
of mercy would fill him with fear and trembling. But this leads us to
the wondrous narrative of his new birth.

THE SECOND PERIOD.

THE INTERNAL CONFLICT, OR BUNYAN’S CONVICTIONS AND CONVERSION.


All nature is progressive; if an infant was suddenly to arrive at
manhood, how idiotic and dangerous he would be! A long training is
essential to fit the human being for the important duties of life; and
just so is it in the new birth to spiritual existence—first a babe,
then the young man; at length the full stature, and at last the
experienced Christian.

The narrative of Bunyan’s progress in his conversion is, without
exception, the most astonishing of any that has been published. It is
well calculated to excite the profoundest investigation of the
Christian philosopher. Whence came those sudden suggestions, those
gloomy fears, those heavenly rays of joy? Much learning certainly did
not make him mad. The Christian dares not attribute his intense
feelings to a distempered brain. Whence came the invisible power that
struck Paul from his horse? Who was it that scared Job with dreams, and
terrified him with visions? What messenger of Satan buffeted Paul? Who
put ‘a new song’ into the mouth of David? We have no space in this
short memoir to attempt the drawing a line between convictions of sin
and the terrors of a distempered brain. Bunyan’s opinions upon this
subject are deeply interesting, and are fully developed in his Holy
War. The capabilities of the soul to entertain vast armies of thoughts,
strong and feeble, represented as men, women, and children, are so
great as almost to perplex the strongest understanding. All these
multitudes of warriors are the innumerable thoughts—the strife—in ONE
soul. Upon such a subject an interesting volume might be written. But
we must fix our attention upon the poor tinker who was the subject of
this wondrous war.

The tender and wise efforts of Mrs. Bunyan to reclaim her husband, were
attended by the Divine blessing, and soon led to many resolutions, on
his part, to curb his sinful propensities and to promote an outward
reformation; his first effort was regularly to attend Divine worship.

He says, ‘I fell in very eagerly with the religion of the times, to
wit, to go to church twice a-day, and that too with the foremost; and
there should very devoutly both say and sing as others did, yet
retaining my wicked life; but withal, I was so overrun with a spirit of
superstition, that I adored, and that with great devotion, even all
things, both the high-place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what
else belonging to the Church; counting all things holy that were
therein contained, and especially, the priest and clerk most happy, and
without doubt greatly blessed, because they were the servants, as I
then thought,[49] of God, and were principal in the holy temple, to do
his work therein. This conceit grew so strong in little time upon my
spirit, that had I but seen a priest, though never so sordid and
debauched in his life,[50] I should find my spirit fall under him,
reverence him, and knit unto him; yea, I thought, for the love I did
bear unto them, supposing they were the ministers of God, I could have
lain down at their feet, and have been trampled upon by them; their
name, their garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me.’

All this took place at the time when The Book of Common Prayer, having
been said to occasion ‘manifold inconveniency,’ was, by an Act of
Parliament, ‘abolished,’[51] and by a subsequent Act[52] prohibited,
under severe penalties, from being publicly used. The ‘manifold
inconveniences’ to which the Act refers, arose from differences of
opinion as to the propriety of the form which had been enforced,
heightened by the enormous cruelties practiced upon multitudes who
refused to use it. Opposition to the English Liturgy as more combined
in Scotland, by a covenant entered into, June 20, 1580, by the king,
lords, nobles, and people, against Popery; and upon Archbishop Laud’s
attempt, in 1637, to impose the service-book upon our northern
neighbours, tumults and bloodshed ensued; until, in 1643, a new and
very solemn league and covenant was entered into, which, in 1645,
extended its influence to England, being subscribed by thousands of our
best citizens, with many of the nobility—‘wherein we all subscribe, and
each with his own hands lifted up to the Most High God, doe swear’;
that being the mode of taking an oath, instead of kissing the cover of
a book, as is now practiced. To the cruel and intemperate measures of
Laud, and the zeal of Charles, for priestly domination over conscience,
may be justly attributed the wars which desolated the country, while
the solemn league and covenant brought an overwhelming force to aid the
Parliament in redressing the grievances of the kingdom. During the
Commonwealth there was substituted, in place of the Common Prayer, A
directory for the Publique Worship of God, and the uniformity which was
enjoined in it was like that of the Presbyterians and Dissenters of the
present day. The people having assembled, and been exhorted to
reverence and humility, joined the preacher in prayer. He then read
portions of Scripture, with or without an exposition, as he judged it
necessary, but not so as to render the service tedious. After singing a
psalm, the minister prayed, leading the people to mourn under a sense
of sin, and to hunger and thirst after the grace of God, in Jesus
Christ; an outline or abstract is given of the subject of public
prayer, and similar instructions are given as to the sermon or
paraphrase. Immediately after the sermon, prayer was again offered up,
and after the outline that is given of this devotional exercise, it is
noted, ‘And because the prayer which Christ taught his disciples, is
not only a pattern of prayer, but itself a most comprehensive prayer,
we recommend it also to be used in the prayers of the Church.’ This
being ended, a psalm was sung, and the minister dismissed the
congregation with a solemn blessing.[53] Some of the clergy continued
the use of prayers, contained in the liturgy, reciting, instead of
reading them—a course that was not objected to. This was the form of
service which struck Bunyan with such awe and reverence, leaving a very
solemn impression upon his mind, which the old form of common prayer
had never produced.

Bunyan was fond of athletic sports, bell-ringing, and dancing; and in
these he had indulged, so far as his worldly calling allowed. Charles
I, whether to promote Popery—to divert his subjects from political
grievances—or to punish the Puritans, had endeavoured to drown their
serious thoughts in a vortex of dissipation, by re-publishing the Book
of Sports, to be used on Sundays. That ‘after Divine service our good
people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from dancing, either
men or women; archery, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless
recreations; May games, Whitsun-ales, Morris dances, May poles, and
other sports.’ But this was not all, for every ‘Puritan and Precisian
was to be constrained to conformity with these sports, or to leave
their country.’ The same severe penalty was enforced upon every
clergyman who refused to read from his pulpit the Book of Sports, and
to persuade the people thus to desecrate the Lord’s-day. ‘Many hundred
godly ministers were suspended from their ministry, sequestered, driven
from their livings, excommunicated, prosecuted in the high commission
court, and forced to leave the kingdom for not publishing this
declaration.’[54] A little gleam of heavenly light falls upon those
dark and gloomy times, from the melancholy fact that nearly eight
hundred conscientious clergymen were thus wickedly persecuted. This was
one of the works of Laud, who out-bonnered Bonner himself in his
dreadful career of cruelty, while making havoc of the church of Christ.
Even transportation for refusing obedience to such diabolical laws was
not the greatest penalty; in some cases it was followed by the death of
the offender. The punishments inflicted for nonconformity were
accompanied by the most refined and barbarous cruelties. Still many of
the learned bowed their necks to this yoke with abject servility: thus,
Robert Powell, speaking of the Book of Sports, says, ‘Needless is it to
argue or dispute for that which authority hath commanded, and most
insufferable insolence to speak or write against it.’[55] These Sunday
sports, published by Charles I, in 1633, had doubtless aided in
fostering Bunyan’s bad conduct in his youthful days. In 1644, when The
Book of Common Prayer was abolished, an Act was passed for the better
observance of the Lord’s-day; all persons were prohibited on that day
to use any wrestlings, shooting, bowing, ringing of bells for pastime,
masques, wakes, church-ales, dancing, game, sports or pastime whatever;
and that ‘the Book of Sports shall be seized, and publicly burnt.’
During the civil war this Act does not appear to have been strictly
enforced; for, four years after it was passed, we find Bunyan and his
dissolute companions worshipping the priest, clerk, and vestments on
the Sunday morning, and assembling for their Sabbath-breaking sports in
the afternoon. It was upon one of these occasions that a most
extraordinary impression was fixed upon the spirit of Bunyan. A
remarkable scene took place, worthy the pencil of the most eminent
artist. This event cannot be better described than in his own words:—

‘One day, amongst all the sermons our parson made, his subject was, to
treat of the Sabbath-day, and of the evil of breaking that, either with
labour, sports, or otherwise; now I was, notwithstanding my religion,
one that took much delight in all manner of vice, and especially that
was the day that I did solace myself therewith; wherefore I fell in my
conscience under his sermons, thinking and believing that he made that
sermon on purpose to show me my evil doing. And at that time I felt
what guilt was, though never before, that I can remember; but then I
was, for the present, greatly loaden therewith, and so went home, when
the sermon was ended, with a great burthen upon my spirit.

‘This, for that instant, did benumb the sinews of my best delights, and
did imbitter my former pleasures to me; but behold it lasted not for
before I had well dined, the trouble began to go off my mind, and my
heart returned to its old course. But O! how glad was I, that this
trouble was gone from me, and that the fire was put out, that I might
sin again without control! Wherefore, when I had satisfied nature with
my food, I shook the sermon out of my mind, and to my old custom of
sports and gaming I returned with great delight.

‘But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game at cat, and having
struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the
second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which
said, “Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and
go to hell?” At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore leaving
my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had,
with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down
upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if he did
severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for these and other
my ungodly practices.

‘I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, but, suddenly, this
conclusion was fastened on my spirit, for the former hint did set my
sins again before my face, that I had been a great and grievous sinner,
and that it was now too late for me to look after heaven; for Christ
would not forgive me, nor pardon my transgressions. Then I fell to
musing upon this also; and while I was thinking on it, and fearing lest
it should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding it was too
late; and therefore I resolved in my mind I would go on in sin: for,
thought I, if the case be thus, my state is surely miserable; miserable
if I leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them; I can but be
damned, and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins, as
be damned for few.

‘Thus I stood in the midst of my play, before all that then were
present: but yet I told them nothing. But I say, I having made this
conclusion, I returned desperately to my sport again; and I well
remember, that presently this kind of despair did so possess my soul,
that I was persuaded I could never attain to other comfort than what I
should get in sin; for heaven was gone already; so that on that I must
not think.’[56]

How difficult is it, when immorality has been encouraged by royal
authority, to turn the tide or to stem the torrent. For at least four
years, an Act of Parliament had prohibited these Sunday sports. Still
the supineness of the justices, and the connivance of the clergy,
allowed the rabble youth to congregate on the Green at Elstow, summoned
by the church bells to celebrate their sports and pastimes, as they had
been in the habit of doing on the Lord’s day.[57]

This solemn warning, received in the midst of his sport, was one of a
series of convictions, by which the hardened sinner was to be fitted to
receive the messages of mercy and love. In the midst of his companions
and of the spectators, Bunyan was struck with a sense of guilt. How
rapid were his thoughts—‘Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or
have thy sins and go to hell?’ With the eye of his understanding he saw
the Lord Jesus as ‘hotly displeased.’ The tempter suggests it is ‘too,
too late’ to seek for pardon, and with a desperate resolution which
must have cost his heart the severest pangs, he continued his game.
Still the impression remained indelibly fixed upon his mind.

The next blow which fell upon his hardened spirit was still more deeply
felt, because it was given by one from whom he could the least have
expected it. He was standing at a neighbour’s shop-window, ‘belching
out oaths like the madman that Solomon speaks of, who scatters abroad
firebrands, arrows, and death’[58] ‘after his wonted manner.’ He
exemplified the character drawn by the Psalmist. ‘As he clothed himself
with cursing like as with his garment: so let it come into his bowels
like water, and like oil into his bones.’ Here was a disease that set
all human skill at defiance, but the great, the Almighty Physician,
cured it with strange physic. Had any professor reproved him, it might
have been passed by as a matter of course; but it was so ordered that a
woman who was notoriously ‘a very loose and ungodly wretch,’ protested
that she trembled to hear him swear and curse at that most fearful
rate; that he was the ungodliest fellow she had ever heard, and that he
was able to spoil all the youth in a whole town.[59] Public reproof
from the lips of such a woman was an arrow that pierced his inmost
soul; it effected a reformation marvelous to all his companions, and
bordering upon the miraculous. The walls of a fortified city were once
thrown down by a shout and the tiny blast of rams’-horns (Josh 6:20);
and in this instance, the foundations of Heart Castle, fortified by
Satan, are shaken by the voice of one of his own emissaries. Mortified
and convicted, the foul-mouthed blasphemer swore no more; an outward
reformation in words and conduct took place, but without inward
spiritual life. Thus was he making vows to God and breaking them,
repenting and promising to do better next time; so, to use his own
homely phrase, he was ‘feeding God with chapters, and prayers, and
promises, and vows, and a great many more such dainty dishes, and
thinks that he serveth God as well as any man in England can, while he
has only got into a cleaner way to hell than the rest of his neighbours
are in.’[60]

Such a conversion, as he himself calls it, was ‘from prodigious
profaneness to something like moral life.’[61] ‘Now I was, as they
said, become godly, and their words pleased me well, though as yet I
was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite.’ These are hard words, but,
in the most important sense, they were true. He was pointed out as a
miracle of mercy—the great convert—a wonder to the world. He could now
suffer opprobrium and cavils—play with errors—entangle himself and
drink in flattery. No one can suppose that this outward reform was put
on hypocritically, as a disguise to attain some sinister object; it was
real, but it arose from a desire to shine before his neighbours, from
shame and from the fear of future punishment, and not from that love to
God which leads the Christian to the fear of offending him. It did not
arise from a change of heart; the secret springs of action remained
polluted; it was outside show, and therefore he called himself a
painted hypocrite. He became less a despiser of religion, but more
awfully a destroyer of his own soul.

A new source of uneasiness now presented itself in his practice of
bell-ringing, an occupation requiring severe labour, usually performed
on the Lord’s-day; and, judging from the general character of
bell-ringers, it has a most injurious effect, both with regard to
morals and religion. A circumstance had recently taken place which was
doubtless interpreted as an instance of Divine judgment upon
Sabbath-breaking. Clark, in his Looking-Glass for Saints and Sinners,
1657, published the narrative:—‘Not long since, in Bedfordshire, a
match at football being appointed on the Sabbath, in the afternoon
whilst two were in the belfry, tolling of a bell to call the company
together, there was suddenly heard a clap of thunder, and a flash of
lightning was seen by some that sat in the church-porch coming through
a dark lane, and flashing in their faces, which must terrified them,
and, passing through the porch into the belfry, it tripped up his heels
that was tolling the bell, and struck him stark dead; and the other
that was with him was so sorely blasted therewith, that shortly after
he died also.’[62] Thus we find that the church bells ministered to the
Book of Sports, to call the company to Sabbath-breaking. The
bell-ringers might come within the same class as those upon whom the
tower at Siloam fell, still it was a most solemn warning, and accounts
for the timidity of so resolute a man as Bunyan. Although he thought it
did not become his newly-assumed religious character, yet his old
propensity drew him to the church tower. At first he ventured in, but
took care to stand under a main beam, lest the bell should fall and
crush him; afterwards he would stand in the door; then he feared the
steeple might fall; and the terrors of an untimely death, and his
newly-acquired garb of religion, eventually deterred him from this mode
of Sabbath-breaking. His next sacrifice made at the shrine of
self-righteousness was dancing: this took him one whole year to
accomplish, and then he bade farewell to these sports for the rest of
his life.[63] We are not to conclude from the example of a man who in
after-life proved so great and excellent a character, that, under all
circumstances, bell-ringing and dancing are immoral. In those days,
such sports and pastimes usually took place on the Lord’s-day; and
however the Church of England might then sanction it, and proclaim by
royal authority, in all her churches, the lawfulness of sports on that
sacred day, yet it is now universally admitted that it was commanding a
desecration of the Sabbath, and letting loose a flood of vice and
profaneness. In themselves, on days proper for recreation, such sports
may be innocent; but if they engender an unholy thought, or occupy time
needed for self-examination and devotion, they ought to be avoided as
sinful hindrances to a spiritual life.

Bunyan was now dressed in the garb of a religious professor, and had
become a brisk talker in the matters of religion, when, by Divine
mercy, he was stripped of all his good opinion of himself; his want of
holiness, and his unchanged heart, were revealed to his surprise and
wonder, by means simple and efficacious, but which no human forethought
could have devised. Being engaged in his trade at Bedford, he overheard
the conversation of some poor pious women, and it humbled and alarmed
him. ‘I heard, but I understood not; for they were far above, out of my
reach. Their talk was about a new birth, the work of God on their
hearts, also how they were convinced of their miserable state by
nature; how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord
Jesus, and with what words and promises they had been refreshed,
comforted, and supported against the temptations of the devil.
Moreover, they reasoned of the suggestions and temptations of Satan in
particular; and told to each other by which they had been afflicted,
and how they were borne up under his assaults. They also discoursed of
their own wretchedness of heart, of their unbelief; and did contemn,
slight, and abhor their own righteousness, as filthy and insufficient
to do them any good. And methought they spake as if joy did make them
speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and
with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as
if they had found a new world; as if they were people that dwelt alone,
and were not to be reckoned among their neighbours (Num 23:9).

‘At this I felt my own heart began to shake, as mistrusting my
condition to be nought; for I saw that in all my thoughts about
religion and salvation, the new birth did never enter into my mind;
neither knew I the comfort of the Word and promise, nor the
deceitfulness and treachery of my own wicked heart. As for secret
thoughts, I took no notice of them; neither did I understand what
Satan’s temptations were, nor how they were to be withstood, and
resisted.

‘Thus, therefore, when I heard and considered what they said, I left
them, and went about my employment again, but their talk and discourse
went with me; also my heart would tarry with them, for I was greatly
affected with their words, both because by them I was convinced that I
wanted the true tokens of a truly godly man, and also because by them I
was convinced of the happy and blessed condition of him that was such a
one.’[64]

The brisk talker of ‘talkative,’ was confounded—he heard pious godly
women mourning over their worthlessness instead of vaunting of their
attainments. They exhibited, doubtless to his great surprise, that
self-distrust and humility are the beginnings of wisdom.

These humble disciples could have had no conception that the Holy
Spirit was blessing their Christian communion to the mind of the
tinker, standing near them, pursuing his occupation. The recollection
of the converse of these poor women led to solemn heart-searching and
the most painful anxiety; again and again he sought their company, and
his convictions became more deep, his solicitude more intense. This was
the commencement of an internal struggle, the most remarkable of any
upon record, excepting that of the psalmist David.

It was the work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating and preparing an
ignorant and rebellious man for extraordinary submission to the sacred
Scriptures, and for most extensive usefulness. To those who never
experienced in any degree such feelings, they appear to indicate
religious insanity. It was so marvelous and so mysterious, as to be
mistaken by a poet laureate, who profanely calls it a being ‘shaken
continually by the hot and cold fits of a spiritual ague’: ‘reveries’:
or one of the ‘frequent and contagious disorders of the human
mind,’[65] instead of considering it as wholesome but bitter medicine
for the soul, administered by the heavenly Physician. At times he felt,
like David, ‘a sword in his bones,’ ‘tears his meat.’ God’s waves and
billows overwhelmed him (Psa 43). Then came glimmerings of
hope—precious promises saving him from despair—followed by the shadow
of death overspreading his soul, and involving him in midnight
darkness. He could complain in the bitterness of his anguish, ‘Thy
fierce wrath goeth over me.’ Bound in affliction and iron, his ‘soul
was melted because of trouble.’ ‘Now Satan assaults the soul with
darkness, fears, frightful thoughts of apparitions; now they sweat,
pant, and struggle for life. The angels now come (Psa 107) down to
behold the sight, and rejoice to see a bit of dust and ashes to
overcome principalities, and powers, and might, and dominion.’[66] His
mind was fixed on eternity, and out of the abundance of his heart he
spoke to one of his former companions; his language was that of
reproof—‘Harry, why do you swear and curse thus? what will become of
you if you die in this condition?’[67] His sermon, probably the first
he had preached, was like throwing pearls before swine—‘He answered in
a great chafe, what would the devil do for company, if it were not for
such as I am.’[68]

By this time he had recovered the art of reading, and its use a little
perplexed him, for he became much puzzled with the opinions of the
Ranters, as set forth in their books. It is extremely difficult to
delineate their sentiments; they were despised by all the sects which
had been connected with the government, because, with the Quakers and
Baptists, they denied any magisterial or state authority over
conscience, and refused maintenance to ministers; but from the
testimony of Bunyan, and that of the early Quakers, they appear to have
been practical Antinomians, or at least very nearly allied to the new
sect called Mormonites. Ross, who copied from Pagitt, describes them
with much bitterness—‘The Ranters are unclean beasts—their maxim is
that there is nothing sin but what a man thinks to be so—they reject
the Bible—they are the merriest of all devils—they deny all obedience
to magistrates.’[69]

This temptation must have been severe. The Ranters were like the black
man with the white robe, named Flatterer, who led the pilgrims into a
net,[70] under the pretence of showing them the way to the celestial
city; or like Adam the first, who offered Faithful his three daughters
to wife[71]—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride
of life—if he would dwell with him in the town of Deceit. ‘These
temptations,’ he says, ‘were suitable to my flesh,’[72] I being but a
young man, and my nature in its prime; and, with his characteristic
humility, he adds, ‘God, who had, as I hope, designed me for better
things, kept me in the fear of his name, and did not suffer me to
accept such cursed principles.’ Prayer opened the door of escape; it
led him to the fountain of truth. ‘I began to look into the Bible with
new eyes. Prayer preserved me from Ranting errors. The Bible was
precious to me in those days.’[73] His study of the Holy Oracles now
became a daily habit, and that with intense earnestness and prayer. In
the mist of the multitude of sects with which he was on all sides
surrounded, he felt the need of a standard for the opinions which were
each of them eagerly followed by votaries, who proclaimed them to be
THE TRUTH, the way, and the life. He was like a man, feeling that if he
erred in the way, it would be attended with misery, and, but for Divine
interference, with unutterable ruin—possessed of a correct map, but
surrounded with those who, by flattery, or threats, or deceit, and
armed with all human eloquence, strove to mislead him. With an enemy
within to urge him to accept their wily guidance, that they might lead
him to perdition—inspired by Divine grace, like Christian in his
Pilgrim, he ‘put his fingers in his ears, and ran on, crying Life,
life, eternal life.’ He felt utter dependence upon Divine guidance,
leading him to most earnest prayer, and an implicit obedience to Holy
Writ, which followed him all through the remainder of his pilgrimage.
‘The Bible’ he calls ‘the scaffold, or stage, that God has builded for
hope to play his part upon in this world.’[74] Hence the Word was
precious in his eyes; and with so immense a loss, or so magnificent a
gain, the throne of grace was all his hope, that he might be guided by
that counsel that cannot err, and that should eventually insure his
reception to eternal glory.

While in this inquiring state, he experienced much doubt and
uncertainty arising from the apparent confidence of many professors. In
his own esteem he appeared to be thoroughly humbled; and when he
lighted on that passage—‘To one is given by the spirit the word of
wisdom, to another, knowledge, and to another, faith’ (1 Cor 12:8,9),
his solemn inquiry was, how it happened that he possessed so little of
any of these gifts of wisdom, knowledge, or faith—more especially of
faith, that being essential to the pleasing of God. He had read (Matt
21:21), ‘If ye have faith and doubt not, ye shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be
done’; and (Luke 17:6), ‘If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye
might say to this sycamore tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be
thou planted in the sea, and it shall obey you’; and (1 Cor 13:2),
‘Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains.’ The poor
tinker, considering these passages in their literal import, imagined
they were meant as tests to try whether the believer possessed faith or
not. He was a stranger to the rules of Hebrew rhetoric; nor did he
consider that they were addressed to the apostles, who had the power to
work miracles. He had no idea that the removing a mountain, or planting
a sycamore tree in the sea, were figures of speech conveying to us the
fact that, aided by faith, mountainous difficulties might and would be
overcome. Anxious for some ocular demonstration that he had faith, he
almost determined to attempt to work a miracle—not to convert or
confirm the faith of others, but to satisfy his own mind as to his
possessing faith. He had no such magnificent idea as the removal of a
mountain, for there were none in his neighbourhood, nor to plant a tree
in the sea, for Bedfordshire is an inland county; but it was of the
humblest kind—that some puddles on the road between Elstow and Bedford
should change places with the dry ground. When he had thought of
praying for ability, his natural good sense led him to abandon the
experiment.[75] This he calls ‘being in my plunge about faith, tossed
betwixt the devil and my own ignorance.’[76] All this shows the
intensity of his feelings and his earnest inquiries.

It may occasion surprise to some, that a young man of such
extraordinary powers of mind, should have indulged the thought of
working a miracle to settle or confirm his doubts; but we must take
into account, that when a boy he had no opportunity of acquiring
scriptural knowledge; no Sunday schools, no Bible class excited his
inquiries as to the meaning of the sacred language. The Bible had been
to him a sealed book until, in a state of mental agony, he cried, What
must I do to be saved? The plain text was all his guide; and it would
not have been surprising, had he been called to bottle a cask of new
wine, if he had refused to use old wine bottles; or had he cast a loaf
into the neighbouring river Ouse, expecting to find it after many days.
The astonishing fact is, that one so unlettered should, by intense
thought, by earnest prayer, and by comparing one passage with another,
arrive eventually at so clear a view both of the external and internal
meaning of the whole Bible. The results of his researches were more
deeply impressed upon his mind by the mistakes which he had made; and
his intense study, both of the Old and New Testaments, furnished him
with an inexhaustible store of things new and old—those vivid images
and burning thoughts, those bright and striking illustrations of Divine
truth, which so shine and sparkle in all his works. What can be more
clear than his illustration of saving faith which worketh by love, when
in after-life he wrote the Pilgrim’s Progress. Hopeful was in a similar
state of inquiry whether he had faith. ‘Then I said, But, Lord, what is
believing?’ And then I saw from that saying, He that cometh to me shall
never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst, that
believing and coming was all one, and that he that came, that is, ran
out in his heart and affections after salvation by Christ, he indeed
believed in Christ (John 6:25).[77]

In addition to his want of scriptural education, it must be remembered
that, when he thought of miraculous power being an evidence of faith,
his mind was in a most excited state—doubts spread over him like a huge
masses of thick black clouds, hiding the Sun of Righteousness from his
sight. Not only is he to be pardoned for his error, but admired for the
humility which prompted him to record so singular a trial, and his
escape from ‘this delusion of the tempter.’ While ‘thus he was tossed
betwixt the devil and his own ignorance,’[78] the happiness of the poor
women whose conversation he had heard at Bedford, was brought to his
recollection by a remarkable reverie or day dream:—

‘About this time, the state and happiness of these poor people at
Bedford was thus, in a dream or vision, represented to me. I saw as if
they were set on the sunny side of some high mountain, there refreshing
themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, while I was shivering
and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds.
Methought also, betwixt me and them, I saw a wall that did compass
about this mountain; now through this wall my soul did greatly desire
to pass, concluding that if I could, I would go even into the very
midst of them, and there also comfort myself with the heat of their
sun.

‘About this wall I thought myself to go again and again, still prying,
as I went, to see if I could find some way or passage, by which I might
enter therein; but none could I find for some time. At the last I saw,
as it were, a narrow gap, like a little doorway in the wall, through
which I attempted to pass; but the passage being very strait and
narrow, I made many efforts to get in, but all in vain, even until I
was well nigh quite beat out, by striving to get in; at last, with
great striving, methought I at first did get in my head, and after
that, by a sidling striving, my shoulders, and my whole body; then I
was exceeding glad, and went and sat down in the midst of them, and so
was comforted with the light and heat of their sun.

‘Now this mountain, and wall, was thus made out to me: The mountain
signified the church of the living God; the sun that shone thereon, the
comfortable shining of his merciful face on them that were therein; the
wall I thought was the Word, that did make separation between the
Christians and the world; and the gap which was in this wall, I
thought, was Jesus Christ, who is the way to God the Father (John 14:6;
Matt 7:14). But forasmuch as the passage was wonderful narrow, even so
narrow that I could not, but with great difficulty, enter in thereat,
it showed me, that none could enter into life, but those that were in
downright earnest, and unless also they left this wicked world behind
them; for here was only room for body and soul, but not for body and
soul and sin.[79]

‘This resemblance abode upon my spirit many days; all which time I saw
myself in a forlorn and sad condition, but yet was provoked to a
vehement hunger and desire to be one of that number that did sit in the
sunshine. Now also I should pray wherever I was; whether at home or
abroad, in house or field, and should also often, with lifting up of
heart, sing that of the fifty-first Psalm, “O Lord, consider my
distress.”[80]

In this striking reverie we discover the budding forth of that great
genius which produced most beautiful flowers and delicious fruit, when
it became fully developed in his allegories.

While this trial clouded his spirits, he was called to endure
temptations which are common to most, if not all, inquiring souls, and
which frequently produce much anxiety. He plunged into the university
problems of predestination, before he had completed his lower
grammar-school exercises on faith and repentance. Am I one of the
elect? or has the day of grace been suffered to pass by never to
return? ‘Although he was in a flame to find the way to heaven and
glory,’ these questions afflicted and disquieted him, so that the very
strength of his body was taken away by the force and power thereof.
‘Lord, thought I, what if I should not be elected! It may be you are
not, said the tempter; it may be so, indeed thought I. Why then, said
Satan, you had as good leave off, and strive no farther; for if indeed
you should not be elected and chosen of God, there is no talk of your
being saved; “for it is neither of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.”

‘By these things I was driven to my wit’s end, not knowing what to say,
or how to answer these temptations. Indeed, I little thought that Satan
had thus assaulted me, but that rather it was my own prudence thus to
start the question: for that the elect only obtained eternal life; that
I without scruple did heartily close withal; but that myself was one of
them, there lay all the question.’[81]

Thus was he for many weeks oppressed and cast down, and near to ‘giving
up the ghost of all his hopes of ever attaining life,’ when a sentence
fell with weight upon his spirit—‘Look at the generations of old and
see; did ever any trust in the Lord and was confounded’ (Ecclesiasticus
2:10). This encouraged him to a diligent search from Genesis to
Revelation, which lasted for above a year, and although he could not
find that sentence, yet he was amply rewarded for this diligent
examination of the Holy Oracles, and thus he obtained ‘yet more
experience of the love and kindness of God.’ At length he found it in
the Apocrypha, and, although not the language of inspiration, yet as it
contained the sum and substance of the promises, he took the comfort of
it, and it shone before his face for years. The fear that the day of
grace had passed pressed heavily upon him; he was humbled, and bemoaned
the time that he had wasted. Now he was confronted with that
‘grim-faced one, the Captain Past-hope, with his terrible standard,’
carried by Ensign Despair, red colours, with a hot iron and a hard
heart, and exhibited at Eye-gate.[82] At length these words broke in
upon his mind, ‘compel them to come in, that my house may be filled—and
yet there is room.’ This Scripture powerfully affected him with hope,
that there was room in the bosom and in the house of Jesus for his
afflicted soul.

His next temptation was to return to the world. This was that terrible
battle with Apollyon, depicted in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and it is
also described at some length in the Jerusalem Sinner Saved. Among many
very graphic and varied pictures of his own experience, he introduces
the following dialogue with the tempter, probably alluding to the
trials he was now passing through. Satan is loath to part with a great
sinner. ‘This day is usually attended with much evil towards them that
are asking the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward. Now the devil
has lost a sinner; there is a captive has broke prison, and one run
away from his master. Now hell seems to be awakened from sleep, the
devils are come out. They roar, and roaring they seek to recover their
runaway. Now tempt him, threaten him, flatter him, stigmatize him,
throw dust into his eyes, poison him with error, spoil him while he is
upon the potter’s wheel, anything to keep him from coming to
Christ.’[83] ‘What, my true servant,’ quoth he, ‘my old servant, wilt
thou forsake me now? Having so often sold thyself to me to work
wickedness, wilt thou forsake me now? Thou horrible wretch, dost not
know, that thou hast sinned thyself beyond the reach of grace, and dost
thou think to find mercy now? Art not thou a murderer, a thief, a
harlot, a witch, a sinner of the greatest size, and dost thou look for
mercy now? Dost thou think that Christ will foul his fingers with thee?
It is enough to make angels blush, saith Satan, to see so vile a one
knock at heaven-gates for mercy, and wilt thou be so abominably bold to
do it?’ Thus Satan dealt with me, says the great sinner, when at first
I came to Jesus Christ. And what did you reply? saith the tempted. Why,
I granted the whole charge to be true, says the other. And what, did
you despair, or how? No, saith he, I said, I am Magdalene, I am
Zaccheus, I am the thief, I am the harlot, I am the publican, I am the
prodigal, and one of Christ’s murderers; yea, worse than any of these;
and yet God was so far off from rejecting of me, as I found afterwards,
that there was music and dancing in his house for me, and for joy that
I was come home unto him. O blessed be God for grace (says the other),
for then I hope there is favour for me. Yea, as I told you, such a one
is a continual spectacle in the church, for every one by to behold
God’s grace and wonder by.[84] These are the ‘things the angels desire
to look into’ (1 Peter 1:12), or as Bunyan quaintly says, this is the
music which causes ‘them that dwell in the higher orbs to open their
windows, put out their heads, and look down to see the cause of that
glory’ (Lev 15:7,10).[85]

As he became less agitated with fear, and drew consolation more
frequently from the promises, with a timid hope of salvation, he began
to exhibit singular powers of conception in spiritualizing temporal
things. His first essay was to find the hidden meaning in the division
of God’s creatures into clean and unclean. Chewing the cud, and parting
the hoof, he conceived to be emblematical of our feeding upon the Word
of God, and parting, if we would be saved, with the ways of ungodly
men.[86] It is not sufficient to chew the cud like the hare—nor to part
the hoof like the swine—we must do both; that is, possess the word of
faith, and that be evidenced by parting with our outward pollutions.
This spiritual meaning of part of the Mosaic dispensation is admirably
introduced into the Pilgrim’s Progress, when Christian and Faithful
analyse the character of Talkative.[87] This is the germ of that
singular talent which flourished in after-life, of exhibiting a
spiritual meaning drawn from every part of the Mosaic dispensation, and
which leads one of our most admired writers[88] to suggest, that if
Bunyan had lived and written during the early days of Christianity, he
would have been the greatest of the fathers.

Although he had received that portion of comfort which enabled him to
indulge in religious speculations, still his mind was unsettled, and
full of fears. He now became alarmed lest he had not been effectually
called to inherit the kingdom of heaven.[89] He felt still more humbled
at the weakness of human nature, and at the poverty of wealth. Could
this call have been gotten for money, and ‘could I have given it; had I
a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times over for this.’ In
this he was sincere, and so he was when he said, I would not lose one
promise, or have it struck out of the Bible, if in return I could have
as much gold as would reach from London to York, piled up to the
heavens. In proportion to his soul’s salvation, honour was a worthless
phantom, and gold but glittering dust. His earnest desire was to hear
his Saviour’s voice calling him to his service. Like many young
disciples, he regretted not having been born when Christ was manifest
in the flesh. ‘Would I had been Peter or John!’ their privations,
sufferings, martyrdom, was nothing in comparison to their being with,
and hearing the voice of the Son of God calling them to his service.
Strange, but general delusion! as if Christ were not the same
yesterday, to day, and for ever. Groaning for a sense of pardon, he was
comforted by Joel—‘I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed,
for the Lord dwelleth in Zion’ (Joel 3:21), and he was led to seek
advice and assistance from a neighbouring minister, and from pious
persons.

The poor women in Bedford, whose conversation had been blessed to his
thorough awakening, were sought for, and to them he unfolded his
sorrows. They were members of a Baptist church, under the pastoral care
of John Gifford, a godly, painstaking, and most intelligent minister,
whose history is very remarkable. In early life he had been, like
Bunyan, a thoroughly depraved character; like him had entered the army,
and had been promoted to the rank of a major in the royal forces.
Having made an abortive attempt to raise a rebellion in his native
county of Kent,[90] he and eleven others were made prisoners, tried by
martial law, and condemned to the gallows. On the night previous to the
day appointed for his execution, his sister found access to the prison.
The guards were asleep, and his companions drowned in intoxication. She
embraced the favourable moment, and set him at liberty. He lay
concealed in a ditch for three days, till the heat of the search was
over, and in disguise escaped to London, and thence to Bedford, where,
aided by some great people who favoured the royal cause, he commenced
business as a doctor. Here his evil habits followed him,
notwithstanding his merciful deliverance. Swearing, drunkenness,
gambling, and other immoral practices, rendered him a curse to others,
especially to the Puritans, whom he bitterly persecuted. One night he
lost fifteen pounds at play, and, becoming outrageous, he cast angry
reproaches upon God. In this state he took up a book by R. Bolton—he
read, and his conscience was terror-stricken. Distress, under
conviction of sin, followed him. He searched his Bible, and found
pardon and acceptance. He now sought acquaintance with those whom
before he had persecuted, but, like Paul, when in similar
circumstances, ‘they were all afraid of him.’ His sincerity soon became
apparent; and, uniting with eleven others, they formed a church. These
men had thrown off the fetters of education, and were, unbiased by any
sectarian feeling, being guided solely by their prayerful researches
into divine truth as revealed in the Bible. Their whole object was to
enjoy Christian communion—to extend the reign of grace—to live to the
honour of Christ—and they formed a new, and at that time unheard-of,
community. Water-baptism was to be left to individual conviction; they
were to love each other equally, whether they advocated baptism in
infancy, or in riper years. The only thing essential to
church-fellowship, in Mr. Gifford’s opinion, was—‘UNION WITH CHRIST;
this is the foundation of all saints’ communion, and not any judgment
about externals.’ To the honour of the Baptists, these peaceable
principles appear to have commenced with two or three of their
ministers, and for the last two centuries they have been, like heavenly
leaven, extending their delightful influence over all bodies of
Christians.

Such was the man to whom Bunyan was introduced for religious advice and
consolation; and he assisted in forming those enlarged and nonsectarian
principles which made his ministry blessed, and will render his Works
equally acceptable to all evangelical Christians in every age of the
church. Introduced to such a minister, and attending social meetings
for prayer and Christian converse, he felt still more painfully his own
ignorance, and the inward wretchedness of his own heart. ‘His
corruptions put themselves forth, and his desires for heaven seemed to
fail.’ In fact, while he compared himself with his former self, he was
a religious giant; in comparison with these pious, long-standing
Christians, he dwindled into a pigmy; and in the presence of Christ he
became, in his own view, less than nothing, and vanity. He thus
describes his feelings:—‘I began to sink—my heart laid me low as hell.
I was driven as with a tempest—my heart would be unclean—the Canaanites
would dwell in the land.’[91] He was like the child which the father
brought to Christ, who, while he was coming to Him, was thrown down by
the devil, and so rent and torn that he lay and wallowed, foaming. His
heart felt so hard, that with many a bitter sigh he cried, ‘Good Lord!
break it open. Lord, break these gates of brass, and cut these bars of
iron asunder’ (Psa 107:16). Little did he then think that his
bitterness of spirit was a direct answer to such prayers. Breaking the
heart was attended with anguish in proportion as it had been hardened.
During this time he was tender and sensitive as to the least sin; ‘now
I durst not take a pin or a stick, my conscience would smart at every
touch.’ ‘O, how gingerly did I then go in all I said or did!’[92]
‘Still sin would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would
bubble out of a fountain.’ He felt surprised when he saw professors
much troubled at their losses, even at the death of the dearest
relative. His whole concern was for his salvation. He imagined that he
could bear these small afflictions with patience; but ‘a wounded spirit
who can bear?’

In the midst of all these miseries, and at times regretting that he had
been endowed with an immortal spirit, liable to eternal ruin, he was
jealous of receiving comfort, lest it might be based upon any false
foundation. Still as his only hope he was constant in his attendance
upon the means of grace, and ‘when comforting time was come,’ he heard
one preach upon two words of a verse, which conveyed strong consolation
to his weary spirit; the words were, ‘my love’ (Song 4:1). From these
words the minister drew the following conclusions:—1. That the church,
and so every saved soul, is Christ’s love, even when loveless; 2.
Christ’s love is without a cause; 3. They are Christ’s love when hated
of the world; 4. Christ’s love when under temptation and under
desertion; 5. Christ’s love from first to last.[93] Now was his heart
filled with comfort and hope. ‘I could believe that my sins should be
forgiven me’; and, in a state of rapture, he thought that his trials
were over, and that the savour of it would go with him through life.
Alas! his enjoyment was but for a season—the preparation of his soul
for future usefulness was not yet finished. In a short time the words
of our Lord to Peter came powerfully into his mind—‘Satan hath desired
to have you’; and so strong was the impression they made, that he
thought some man addressed them to him; he even turned his head to see
who it was that thus spoke to him. This was the forerunner of a cloud
and a storm that was coming upon him. It was the gathering up of
Satan’s mighty strength, to have, if possible, overwhelmed him. His
narrative of this internal tempest in his soul—this last great struggle
with the powers of darkness—is very striking.

‘About the space of a month after, a very great storm came down upon
me, which handled me twenty times worse than all I had met with before;
it came stealing upon me, now by one piece, then by another. First, all
my comfort was taken from me; then darkness seized upon me; after
which, whole floods of blasphemies, both against God, Christ, and the
Scriptures, were poured upon my spirit, to my great confusion and
astonishment. These blasphemous thoughts were such as also stirred up
questions in me against the very being of God, and of his only beloved
Son. As, whether there were in truth a God or Christ, or no? And
whether the Holy Scriptures were not rather a fable, and cunning story,
than the holy and pure Word of God.

‘These suggestions, with many others, which at this time I may not,
dare not utter, neither by word nor pen, did make such a seizure upon
my spirit, and did so overweigh my heart, both with their number,
continuance, and fiery force, that I felt as if there were nothing else
but these from morning to night within me, and as though indeed there
could be room for nothing else; and also concluded, that God had, in
very wrath to my soul, given me up unto them, to be carried away with
them as with a mighty whirlwind.

‘Only by the distaste that they gave unto my spirit, I felt there was
something in me that refused to embrace them.’[94]

Here are the facts which are allegorized in the history of Christian,
passing through the Valley of Humiliation, and fighting with the Prince
of the power of the air. ‘Then Apollyon, espying his opportunity, began
to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a
dreadful fall; and with that Christian’s sword flew out of his hand.’
This was the effect of his doubts of the inspiration of the
Scriptures—the sword of the Spirit. ‘I am sure of thee now, said
Apollyon; and with that he had almost pressed him to death, so that
Christian began to despair of life; but as God would have it, while
Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, Christian nimbly stretched out
his hand for his sword, and caught it, saying, “Rejoice not against me,
O mine enemy, when I fall I shall arise” (Matt 7:8), and with that gave
him a deadly thrust, which made him give back as one that had received
his mortal wound. Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying,
“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that
loved us”; and with that Apollyon spread forth his dragon wings, and
sped him away.’[95] What an awful moment, when he fell unarmed before
his ferocious enemy! ‘Faith now has but little time to speak to the
conscience—it is now struggling for life—it is now fighting with
angels—with infernals—all it can do now is to cry, groan, sweat, fear,
fight, and gasp for life.’[96] How desperate the conflict—the mouth of
hell yawning to swallow him—man cannot aid the poor warrior, all his
help is in God. Is it not a wonder to see a poor creature, who in
himself is weaker than the moth, to stand against and overcome all
devils—all the world—all his lusts and corruptions; or, if he fall, is
it not a wonder to see him, when devils and guilt are upon him, to rise
again, stand upon his legs, walk with God again, and persevere in faith
and holiness?[97]

This severe conflict lasted for about a year. He describes his feelings
at times as resembling the frightful pangs of one broken on the wheel.
The sources of his misery were fears that he had sinned against the
Holy Ghost; and that through his hardness of heart and impatience in
prayer—he should not persevere to the end. During all this time,
occasional visits of mercy kept him from despair; and at some intervals
filled him with transports of joy. At one time so delightfully was his
burden removed that he could not tell how to contain himself. ‘I
thought I could have spoken of his love and of his mercy to me, even to
the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they
been capable to have understood me.’[98] Thus his feelings were
controlled by reason, very different to the poor madman who, in olden
time, is represented as preaching to the fish. With Bunyan it was a
hallowed joy—a gush of holy gladness, in which he wished all creation
to participate. his heart was baptized in hope. ‘I know that my
Redeemer liveth’; and with holy Job, he wished to perpetuate his joy by
a memorial not in rock, but in a book of resemblance. ‘I would I had a
pen and ink here to write it down.’ This is the first desire that he
expressed to proclaim or publish to others the great Saviour he had
found: but he was not yet prepared; he must pass through deeper depths,
and possess a living knowledge of Divine truth, burnt into his soul by
satanic fires.

Very soon after this, he was harassed with fear lest he should part
with Christ. The tempter, as he did with Christian in the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, suggested blasphemies to him, which he thought had
proceeded from his own mind. ‘Satan troubled him with his stinking
breath. How many strange, hideous, and amazing blasphemies have some
that are coming to Christ had injected upon their spirits against
him.’[99] ‘The devil is indeed very busy at work during the darkness of
a soul. He throws in his fiery darts to amazement, when we are
encompassed with the terrors of a dismal night; he is bold and
undaunted in his assaults, and injects with a quick and sudden malice a
thousand monstrous and abominable thoughts of God, which seem to be the
motions of our own minds, and terribly grieve and trouble us.’[100]

What makes those arrows more penetrating and distressing is, that
Satan, with subtle art, tips them with sentences of Scripture. ‘No
place for repentance’; ‘rejected’; ‘hath never forgiveness,’ and other
passages which, by the malignant ingenuity of the fiend, are formed by
his skill as the cutting and barbed points of his shafts. At one time
Bunyan concluded that he was possessed of the devil; then he was
tempted to speak and sin against the Holy Ghost. He thought himself
alone in such a tempest, and that no one had ever felt such misery as
he did. When in prayer, his mind was distracted with the thought that
Satan was pulling his clothes; he was even tempted to fall down and
worship him. Then he would cry after God, in awful fear that eventually
Satan would overcome him. During all this time he was struggling
against the tempter; and, at length, the dayspring visited him in these
words, ‘I am persuaded that nothing shall separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus.’ Again he was cast down with a recollection of his
former blasphemies. What reason can I have to hope for an inheritance
in eternal life? The questions was answered with that portion of
Scripture, ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’ These were visits
which, like Peter’s sheet, of a sudden were caught up to heaven
again.[101] At length the Sun of Righteousness arose, and shone upon
him with healing influence. ‘He hath made peace through the blood of
his cross,’ came with power to his mind, followed by the consoling
words of the apostle, ‘Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers
of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same;
that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death,
that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all
their lifetime subject to bondage’ (Heb 2:14,15). This was the key that
opened every lock in Doubting Castle. The prisoner escaped to breathe
the air of hope, and joy, and peace. ‘This,’ said he, ‘was a good day
to me, I hope I shall not forget it.’ ‘I thought that the glory of
those words was then so weighty on me, that I was, both once and twice,
ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy
and peace.’

His mind was now in a fit state to seek for church fellowship, as a
further means of advance in his knowledge of Divine love. To effect
this object, he was naturally led to the Baptist church at Bedford, to
which those pious women belonged whose Christian communion had been
blessed to him. I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose
doctrine, by God’s grace, was much for my stability.[102] Although his
soul was led from truth to truth, his trials were not over—he passed
through many severe exercises before he was received into communion
with the church.[103]

At length he determined to become identified with a body of professed
Christians, who were treated with great scorn by other sects because
they denied infant baptism, and he became engaged in the religious
controversies which were fashionable in those days. We have noticed his
encounter with the Ranters, and he soon had to give battle to persons
called Quakers. Before the Society of Friends was formed, and their
rules of discipline were published, many Ranters and others, some of
whom were bad characters and held the wildest opinions, passed under
the name of Quakers. Some of these denied that the Bible was the Word
of God; and asserted that the death of Christ was not a full atonement
for sin—that there is no future resurrection, and other gross errors.
The Quakers, who were afterwards united to form the Society of Friends,
from the first denied all those errors. Their earliest apologist,
Barclay, in his theses on the Scriptures, says, ‘They are the doctrines
of Christ, held forth in precious declarations, spoken and written by
the movings of God’s Spirit.’ Whoever it was that asserted the
heresies, to Bunyan the investigation of them, in the light of Divine
truth, was attended with great advantages. It was through ‘this narrow
search of the Scriptures that he was not only enlightened, but greatly
confirmed and comforted in the truth.’[104]

He longed to compare his experience with that of some old and eminent
convert, and ‘God did cast into his hand’ Luther On the Galatians, ‘so
old that it was ready to fall piece from piece, if I did but turn it
over.’[105] The commentary of this enlightened man was a counterpart to
his own feelings. ‘I found,’ says Bunyan, ‘my condition, in his
experience so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been
written out of my own heart. I prefer the book before all others as
most fit for a wounded conscience.’ This was the ‘voice of a man’ that
Christian ‘heard as going before him in the Valley of the Shadow of
Death,’ and was glad that some who feared God were in this valley as
well as himself, who could say, ‘I will fear no evil for thou art with
me.’[106] In many things Luther and Bunyan were men of similar
temperament. Like Emmanuel’s captains, in the Holy War, they were ‘very
stout rough-hewn men; men that were fit to break the ice, and to make
their way by dint of sword.’[107] They were animated by the same
principles, and fought with the same weapons; and although Luther
resided in a castle protected by princes, was furnished with profound
scholastic learning, and became a terror to Popery; yet the voice of
the unlettered tinker, issuing from a dreary prison, bids fair to be
far more extensively heard and blessed than that of this most
illustrious reformer.[108]

Bunyan’s happiness was now very great; his soul, with all its
affections, clave unto Christ: but lest spiritual pride should exalt
him beyond measure, and lest he should be scared to renounce his
Saviour, by the threat of transportation and death, his heart was again
wounded, and quickly after this his ‘love was tried to purpose.’

The tempter came in upon him with a most grievous and dreadful
temptation; it was to part with Christ, to exchange him for the things
of this life; he was perpetually tormented with the words ‘sell
Christ.’ At length, he thought that his spirit gave way to the
temptation, and a dreadful and profound state of despair overpowered
him for the dreary space of more than two years.[109] This is the most
extraordinary part of this wonderful narrative, that he, without
apparent cause, should thus be tempted, and feel the bitterness of a
supposed parting with Christ. There was, doubtless, a cause for every
pang; his heavenly Father afflicted him for his profit. We shall soon
have to follow him through fiery trials. Before the justices, allured
by their arguments, and particularly by the sophistry of their clerk,
Mr. Cobb, and then dragged from a beloved wife and from children to
whom he was most fondly attached—all these fiery trials might be
avoided, if he would but ‘sell Christ.’ A cold damp dungeon was to
incarcerate his body for twelve tedious years of the prime of his life,
unless he would ‘sell Christ.’ His ministering brother and friend, John
Child, a Bedford man, who had joined in recommending Bunyan’s
Vindication of Gospel Truths,[110] fell under this temptation, and
fearing temporal ruin and imprisonment for life, conformed, and then
fell into the most awful state of despair, suffering such agonies of
conscience, that, to get rid of present trouble, he hurried himself
into eternity. Probably Bunyan alludes to this awful instance of fell
despair in his Publican and Pharisee: ‘Sin, when appearing in its
monstrous shape and hue, frighteth all mortals out of their wits, away
from God; and if he stops them not, also out of the world.’[111] To arm
Bunyan against being overcome by a fear of the lions in the way to the
house Beautiful—against giving way, under persecution—he was visited
with terrors lest he should sell or part with Christ. During these sad
years he was not wholly sunk in despair, but had at times some
glimmerings of mercy. In comparing his supposed sin with that of Judas,
he was constrained to find a difference between a deliberate intention
to sell Christ and a sudden temptation.[112] Through all these
searchings of heart and inquiries at the Word, he became fixed in the
doctrine of the final perseverance of God’s saints. ‘O what love, what
care, what kindness and mercy did I now see mixing itself with the most
severe and dreadful of all God’s ways to his people; he never let them
fall into sin unpardonable.’ ‘But these thoughts added grief and horror
to me; I thought that all things wrought for my eternal overthrow.’ So
ready is the tender heart to write bitter things against itself, and as
ready is the tempter to whisper despairing thoughts. In the midst of
this distress he ‘saw a glory in walking with God,’ although a dismal
cloud enveloped him.

This misery was aggravated by reading the fearful estate of Francis
Spira, who had been persuaded to return to a profession of Popery, and
died in a state of awful despair.[113] ‘This book’ was to his troubled
spirit like salt rubbed into a fresh wound.

Bunyan now felt his body and mind shaking and tottering under the sense
of the dreadful judgment of God; and he thought his sin—of a momentary
and unwilling consent to give up Christ—was a greater sin than all the
sins of David, Solomon, Manasseh, and even than all the sins that had
been committed by all God’s redeemed ones. Was there ever a man in the
world so capable of describing the miseries of Doubting Castle, or of
the Slough of Despond, as poor John Bunyan?

He would have run from God in utter desperation; ‘but, blessed be his
grace, that Scripture, in these flying sins, would call, as running
after me, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions,
and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me, for I have redeemed thee”
(Isa 44:22).Still he was haunted by that scripture, ‘You know how that
afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he found no
place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.’ Thus
was he tossed and buffeted, involved in cloudy darkness, with now and
then a faint gleam of hope to save him from despair. ‘In all these,’ he
says, ‘I was but as those that justle against the rocks; more broken,
scattered, and rent. Oh! the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears,
and terrors, that are effected by a thorough application of
guilt.’[114] ‘Methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens
did grudge to give light, and as if the very stones in the street, and
tiles upon the houses, did bend themselves against me.’[115] Here we
find him in that doleful valley, where Christian was surrounded by
enemies that ‘cared not for his sword,’ he put it up, and places his
dependence upon the more penetrating weapon, ‘All Prayer.’ Depending
upon this last resource, he prayed, even when in this great darkness
and distress. To whom could he go? his case was beyond the power of men
or angels. His refuge, from a fear of having committed the unpardonable
sin, was that he had never refused to be justified by the blood of
Christ, but ardently wished it; this, in the midst of the storm, caused
a temporary clam. At length, he was led to look prayerfully upon those
scriptures that had tormented him, and to examine their scope and
tendency, and then he ‘found their visage changed, for they looked not
so grimly on him as before he thought they did.’[116] Still, after such
a tempest, the sea did not at once become a calm. Like one that had
been scared with fire, every voice was fire, fire; every little touch
hurt his tender conscience.[117]

All this instructive history is pictured by a few words in the
Pilgrim’s Progress. At the Interpreter’s house the pilgrim is shown ‘a
fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting
much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and
hotter.’[118] As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him again. The
threatening and the promise were like glittering swords clashing
together, but the promise must prevail.

His entire relief at last was sudden, while meditating in the field
upon the words, ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ Hence he drew the
conclusion, that his righteousness was in Christ, at God’s right hand,
ever before him, secure from all the powers of sin and Satan. Now his
chains fell off; he was loosed from his affliction and irons; his
temptation fled away. His present supply of grace he compared to the
cracked groats and fourpence half-pennies,[119] which rich men carry in
their pockets, while their treasure is safe in their trunks at home, as
his was in the store-house of heaven.

This dreary night of awful conflict lasted more than two years; but
when the day-spring from on high visited him, the promises spangled in
his eyes, and he broke out into a song, ‘Praise ye the Lord. Praise God
in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him
for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent
greatness.’[120]

Bunyan’s opinion as to the cause of this bitter suffering, was his want
of watchfulness, his not coming boldly to the throne of grace, and that
he had tempted God. The advantages he considered that he had gained by
it were, that it confirmed his knowledge of the existence of God, so
that he lost all his temptations to unbelief, blasphemy, and hardness
of heart, Doubts as to the truth of the Word, and certainty of the
world to come, were gone for ever.

He found no difficulty as to the keys of the kingdom of heaven. ‘Now I
saw the apostles to be the elders of the city of refuge, those that
they were to receive in, were received to life, but those that they
were to shut out, were to be slain by the avenger of blood.’ Those were
to enter who, with Peter, confessed to Jesus, ‘Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God’ (Matt 16:16). This is simply an authority to
proclaim salvation or condemnation to those who receive or reject the
Saviour. It is upon his shoulder the key of the house is laid (Isa
22:22). Christ only has the key, no MAN openeth or shutteth (Rev 1:18,
3:7). All that man can do, as to binding or loosening, is to warn the
hardened and to invite the contrite.

By these trials, the promises, became more clear and invaluable than
ever. He never saw those heights and depths in grace, and love, and
mercy, as he saw them after this severe trial—‘great sins drew out
great grace’; and the more terrible and fierce guilt was, the more high
and mighty did the mercy of God in Christ appear. These are Bunyan’s
own reflections; but may we not add to them, that while he was in God’s
school of trial, every groan, every bitter pang of anguish, and every
gleam of hope, were intended to fit him for his future work as a
preacher and writer? Weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, there
was not a jot too little, or an iota too much. Every important subject
which embarrasses the convert, was most minutely investigated,
especially faith, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the divinity of
Christ, and such essential truths. He well knew every dirty lane, and
nook, and corner of Mansoul, in which the Diabolonians found shelter,
and well he knew the frightful sound of Diabolus’ drum.[121] Well did
his pastor, John Burton, say of him, ‘He hath through grace taken these
three heavenly degrees, to wit, union with Christ, the anointing of the
Spirit, and experience of the temptations of Satan, which do more fit a
man for that mighty work of preaching the gospel, than all the
university learning and degrees that can be had.’[122]

Preserved in Christ Jesus, and called—selected from his associates in
sin, he was taken into this school, and underwent the strictest
religious education. It was here alone that his rare talent could be
cultivated, to enable him, in two immortal allegories, to narrate the
internal discipline he underwent. It was here he attained that habitual
access to the throne of grace, and that insight into the inspired
volume, which filled his writings with those solemn realities of the
world to come; while it enabled him to reveal the mysteries of
communion with the Father of spirits, as he so wondrously does in his
treatise on prayer. To use the language of Milton—‘These are works that
could not be composed by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren
daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich
with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim, with the
hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he
pleases, without reference to station, birth, or education.’ The
tent-maker and tinker, the fisherman and publican, and even a friar or
monk,[123] became the honoured instruments of his choice.

Throughout all Bunyan’s writings, he never murmurs at his want of
education, although it is often a source of humble apology. He honoured
the learned godly as Christians, but preferred the Bible before the
library of the two universities.[124] He saw, what every pious man must
see and lament, that there is much idolatry in human learning, and that
it was frequently applied to confuse and impede the gospel. Thus he
addresses the reader of his treatise on The Law and Grace—‘If thou find
this book empty of fantastical expressions, and without light, vain,
whimsical, scholar-like terms, it is because I never went to school, to
Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up at my father’s house, in a very
mean condition, among a company of poor countrymen. But if thou do find
a parcel of plain, yet sound, true, and home sayings, attribute that to
the Lord Jesus his gifts and abilities, which he hath bestowed upon
such a poor creature as I am and have been.’[125] His maxim was—‘Words
easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones
do only pierce the air. He also that speaks to the weakest may make the
learned understand him; when he that striveth to be high, is not only
of the most part understood but of a sort, but also many times is
neither understood by them nor by himself!’[126] This is one of
Bunyan’s maxims, well worthy the consideration of the most profoundly
learned writers, and also of the most eloquent preachers and public
speakers.

Bunyan was one of those pioneers who are far in advance of the age in
which they live, and the narrative of his birth and education adds to
the innumerable contradictions which the history of man opposes to the
system of Mr. Owen and the Socialists, and to every scheme for making
the offspring of the poor follow in leading-strings the course of their
parents, or for rendering them blindly submissive to the dictates of
the rich, the learned, or the influential. It incontestably proves the
gospel doctrine of individuality, and, that native talent will rise
superior to all impediments. Our forefathers struggled for the right of
private judgment in matters of faith and worship—their descendants will
insist upon it, as essential to salvation, personally to examine every
doctrine relative to the sacred objects of religion, limited only by
Holy Writ. This must be done with rigorous impartiality, throwing aside
all the prejudices of education, and be followed by prompt obedience to
Divine truth, at any risk of offending parents, or laws, or resisting
institutions, or ceremonies which he discovers to be of human
invention. All this, as we have seen in Bunyan, was attended with great
mental sufferings, with painstaking labour, with a simple reliance upon
the Word of God, and with earnest prayer. If man impiously dares to
submit his conscience to his fellow-man, or to any body of men called a
church, what perplexity must he experience ere he can make up his mind
which to choose! Instead of relying upon the ONE standard which God has
given him in his Word; should he build his hope upon a human system he
could be certain only that man is fallible and subject to err. How
striking an instance have we, in our day, of the result of education,
when the mind does not implicitly follow the guidance of the revealed
Word of God. Two brothers, named Newman, educated at the same school,
trained in the same university, brought up under the same religious
system—all human arts exhausted to mould their minds into strict
uniformity, yet gradually receding from the same point in opposite
directions, but in equally downward roads; one to embrace the most
puerile legends of the middle ages, the other to open infidelity. Not
so with those who follow the teachings of the Word of God, by which,
and not by any church, they are to be individually judged at the great
day: no pontiff, no priest, no minister, can intervene or mediate for
them at the bar of God. There it will be said, ‘I know you, by your
prayers for Divine guidance and your submission to my revealed will’;
or, ‘I know you not,’ for you preferred the guidance of frail, fallible
men, to me, and to my Word—a solemn consideration, which, as it proved
a source of solid happiness and extensive usefulness to Bunyan in his
pilgrimage, so it insured to him, as it will to all who follow his
course, a solid foundation on which to stand at the great and terrible
day, and thus enable them to live as well as die in the sure and
certain hope of a triumphant entry into the celestial city.

THE THIRD PERIOD.


BUNYAN IS BAPTIZED, AND ENTERS INTO COMMUNION WITH A CHRISTIAN CHURCH
AT BEDFORD—IS SET APART TO FILL THE DEACON’S OFFICE, AND SENT OUT AS AN
ITINERANT PREACHER IN THE NEIGHBOURING VILLAGES.


Man is naturally led to seek the society of his fellow-men. His
personal progress, and the great interests of civilization, depend upon
the nature of his friendly intercourse and his proper associations. So
is it with the Christian, but in a much higher degree. Not only does he
require companions with whom he can enjoy Christian communion—of
sufferings and of pleasures—in seasons of depressing trials, and in
holy elevations—but with whom he may also form plans to spread the
genial influence of Christianity, which has blessed and so boundlessly
enriched his own soul. Christian fellowship and communion has received
the broad seal of heaven. ‘The Lord hearkened,’ when they that feared
him spake often to one another, ‘and a book of remembrance was written
before him for them that feared the Lord’ (Mal 3:16).

Bunyan possessed a soul with faculties capable of the highest enjoyment
of the communion of saints in church order. His ideas of mutual
forbearance—that ‘in lowliness of mind should each esteem others better
than themselves’—he enforces with very peculiar power, and, at the same
time, with delicate sensibility. After the pilgrims had been washed by
Innocence in the Interpreter’s bath, he sealed them, which ‘greatly
added to their beauty,’ and then arrayed them in white raiment of fine
linen; and ‘when the women were thus adorned, they seemed to be a
terror one to the other, for that they could not see that glory each
one on herself which they could see in each other. Now, therefore, they
began to esteem each other better than themselves.’[127] ‘The
Interpreter led them into his garden, where was great variety of
flowers. Then said he, Behold, the flowers are diverse in stature, in
quality and colour, and smell and virtue, and some are better than
some; also, where the gardener hath set them, there they stand, and
quarrel not with one another.’[128] ‘When Christians stand every one in
their places, and do their relative work, then they are like the
flowers in the garden that grow where the gardener hath planted them,
and both honour the gardener and the garden in which they are
planted.’[129] In the same treatise on Christian Behaviour, similar
sentiments are expressed in language extremely striking and beautiful.
‘The doctrine of the gospel is like the dew and the small rain that
distilleth upon the tender grass, wherewith it doth flourish and is
kept green (Deut 32:2).Christians are like the several flowers in a
garden that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which, being
shaken with the wind, they let fall their dew at each other’s roots,
whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of one
another. For Christians to commune savourly of God’s matters one with
another, it is as if they opened to each other’s nostrils boxes of
perfume.’[130] Similar peaceful, heavenly principles, flow through
Bunyan’s Discourse of the Building, &c., of the House of God and its
inmates;[131] and blessed would it be if in all our churches every
believer was baptized into such motives of forbearance and brotherly
love. These sentiments do honour to the head and heart of the prince of
allegorists, and should be presented in letters of gold to every
candidate for church fellowship. A young man entertaining such opinions
as these, however rude his former conduct, being born again to
spiritual enjoyments, would become a treasure to the Christian society
with which he might be connected.

In ordinary cases, the minister or people who have been useful to a
young convert, lead him in his first choice of Christian associates;
but here we have no ordinary man. Bunyan, in all things pertaining to
religion, followed no human authority, but submitted himself to the
guidance of the inspired volume. Possessing a humble hope of salvation,
he would read with deep interest that ‘the Lord added to the church
such as should be saved.’ The question which has so much puzzled the
learned, as to a church or the church, would be solved without
difficulty by one who was as learned in the Scriptures as he was
ignorant of the subtle distinctions and niceties of the schools. He
found that there was one church at Jerusalem (Acts 8:1), another at
Corinth (1 Cor 1:2), seven in Asia (Rev 1:4), and others distributed
over the world; that ‘the visible church of Christ is a (or every)
congregation of faithful men.’[132] He well knew that uniformity is a
fool’s paradise; that though man was made in the image of God; it
derogates not from the beauty of that image that no two men are alike.
The stars show forth God’s handy work, yet ‘one star different from
another star in glory’ (1 Cor 15:41). Uniformity is opposed to every
law of nature, for no two leaves upon a majestic tree are alike. Who
but an idiot or a maniac would attempt to reduce the mental powers of
all men to uniformity? Every church may have its own order of public
worship while the Scriptures form the standard of truth and morals.
Where differences of opinion occur, as they most certainly will, as to
the observance of days or abstinence from meats—whether to stand, or
sit, or kneel, in prayer—whether to stand while listening to some pages
of the inspired volume, and to sit while others are publicly
read—whether to call Jude a saint, and refuse the title to Isaiah—are
questions which should bring into active exercise all the graces of
Christian charity; and, in obedience to the apostolic injunction, they
must agree to differ. ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own
mind’ (Rom 14:5). Human arts have been exhausted to prevent that mental
exercise or self-persuasion which is essential to a Christian
profession. The great object of Satan has ever been to foster
indifference, that deadly lethargy, by leading man to any source of
information rather than prayerful researches into the Bible. Bunyan’s
severe discipline in Christ’s school would lead him to form a judgment
for himself; he was surrounded by a host of sects, and, with such a
Bible-loving man, it is an interesting inquiry what party he would
join.

He lived in times of extraordinary excitement. England was in a
transition state. A long chain of events brought on a crisis which
involved the kingdom in tribulation. It was the struggle between the
unbridled despotism of Epsicopacy, and the sturdy liberty of
Puritanism. For although the immediate cause of the civil wars was
gross misgovernment—arbitrary taxation without the intervention of
Parliament, monopolies and patents, to the ruin of trade; in fact,
every abuse of the royal power—still, without the additional spur of
religious persecution, the spirit of the people would never have proved
invincible and overpowering. The efforts of Archbishop Laud, aided by
the queen and her popish confessor, Panzani, to subjugate Britain to
the galling yoke of Rome, signally failed, involving in the ruin the
life of the king and his archbishop, and all the desolating calamities
of intestine wars, strangely called ‘civil.’ In this strife many of the
clergy and most of the bishops took a very active part, aiding and
abetting the king’s party in their war against the parliament—and they
thus brought upon themselves great pains and penalties. The people
became suddenly released from mental bondage; and if the man who had
been born blind, when he first received the blessing of sight, ‘saw men
as trees walking,’ we cannot be surprised that religious speculations
were indulged in, some of which proved to be crude and wild, requiring
much vigorous persuasive pruning before they produced good fruit.
Bunyan was surrounded by all these parties; for although the rights of
conscience were not recognized—the Papists and Episcopalians, the
Baptists and Unitarians, with the Jews, being proscribed—yet the hand
of persecution was comparatively light. Had Bunyan chosen to associate
with the Episcopalians, he would not have passed through those severe
sufferings on which are founded his lasting honours. The Presbyterians
and Independents received the patronage of the state under the
Commonwealth, and the great mass of the clergy conformed to the
directory, many of them reciting the prayers they had formerly read;
while a considerable number, whose conscience could not submit to the
system then enforced by law, did, to their honour, resign their
livings, and suffer the privations and odium of being Dissenters. Among
these were necessarily included the bishops.[133]

Of all sects that of the Baptists had been the most bitterly written
against and persecuted. Even their first cousins, the Quakers, attacked
them in language that would, in our peaceful days, be considered
outrageous. ‘The Baptists used to meet in garrets, cheese-lofts,
coal-holes, and such like mice walks,’—‘theses tumultuous,
blood-thirsty, covenant-breaking, government-destroying
Anabaptists.’[134] The offence that called forth these epithets was,
that in addressing Charles II on his restoration, they stated that
“they were no abettors of the Quakers.” Had royal authority possessed
the slightest influence over Bunyan’s religious opinions, the question
as to his joining the Baptists would have been settled without
investigation. Among other infatuations of Charles I, had been his
hatred of any sect that professed the right and duty of man to think
for himself in choosing his way to heaven. In 1639 he published his
‘Declaration concerning the tumults in Scotland,’ when violence was
resorted to against the introduction of the Common Prayer in which he
denounced voluntary obedience because it was not of constraint, and
called it ‘damnable’; he calls the principles of the Anabaptists, in
not submitting their consciences to human laws, ‘furious frenzies,’ and
‘madness’; all Protestants are ‘to detest and persecute them’; ‘these
Anabaptists raged most in their madness’; ‘the scandal of their
frenzies’; ‘we are amazed at, and aggrieved at their horrible
impudence’; ‘we do abhor and detest them all as rebellious and
treasonable.’[135] This whole volume is amusingly assuming. The king
claims his subjects as personal chattels, with whose bodies and minds
he had a right to do as he pleased. Bunyan owed no spiritual submission
to man, ‘whose breath is in his nostrils’; and risking all hazards, he
became one of the denounced and despised sect of Baptists. To use the
language of his pilgrim, he passed the lions, braving all the dangers
of an open profession of faith in Christ, and entered the house called
Beautiful, which ‘was built by the Lord of the hill, on purpose to
entertain such pilgrims in.’[136] He first gains permission of the
watchman, or minister, and then of the inmates, or church members. This
interesting event is said to have taken place about the year 1653.[137]
Mr. Doe, in The Struggler, thus refers to it, Bunyan ‘took all
advantages to ripen his understanding in religion, and so he lit on the
dissenting congregation of Christians at Bedford, and was, upon
confession of faith, baptized about the year 1653,’[138] when he was in
the twenty-fifth year of his age. No minutes of the proceedings of this
church, prior to the death of Mr. Gifford in 1656,[139] are extant, or
they would identify the exact period when Bunyan’s baptism and
admission to the church took place. The spot where he was baptized is a
creek by the river Ouse, at the end of Duck Mill Lane. It is a natural
baptistery, a proper width and depth of water constantly fresh;
pleasantly situated; sheltered from the public highway near the High
Street. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated in a large room in which the
disciples met, the worship consecrating the place.[140]

Religious feelings and conduct have at all times a tendency to promote
the comfort, and elevate the character of the poor. How often have we
seen them thus blessed; the ragged family comfortably clothed, the
hungry fed, and the inmates of a dirty miserable cottage or hovel
become a pattern of cleanly happiness. One of Bunyan’s biographers, who
was an eye-witness, bears this testimony. ‘By this time his family was
increased, and as that increased God increased his stores, so that he
lived now in great credit among his neighbours.’ He soon became a
respectable member of civil as well as religious society; for, by the
time that he joined the church, his Christian character was so fully
established, that, notwithstanding the meanness of his origin and
employment, he was considered worthy of uniting in a memorial to the
Lord Protector. It was to recommend two gentlemen to form part of the
council, after Cromwell had dissolved the Long Parliament. It is a
curious document, very little known, and illustrative of the peculiar
style of these eventful times.

Letter from the people of Bedfordshire to the Lord Generall Cromwell,
and the Councell of the army.


May 13th, 1653.


May it please your Lordship, and the rest of the council of the army.
We (we trust) servants of Jesus Christ, inhabitants in the county of
Bedford, haveing fresh upon our hearts the sadde oppressions we have (a
long while) groan’d under from the late parlayment, and now eyeing and
owning (through grace) the good hand of God in this great turne of
providence, being persuaded that it is from the Lord that you should be
instrument in his hand at such a time as this, for the electing of such
persons whoe may goe in and out before his people in righteousnesse,
and governe these nations in judgment, we having sought the Lord for
yow, and hopeing that God will still doe greate things by yow,
understanding that it is in your hearte through the Lord’s assistance,
to establish an authority consisting of men able, loveing truth,
feareing God, and hateing covetouseness; and we having had some
experience of men with us, we have judged it our duty to God, to yow,
and to the rest of his people, humbly to present two men, viz.,
Nathaniell Taylor, and John Croke, now Justices of Peace in our County,
whom we judge in the Lord qualified to manage a trust in the ensuing
government. All which we humbly referre to your serious considerations,
and subscribe our names this 13th day of May, 1653—

John Eston, Clement Berridge, Isaac Freeman, John Grewe, John Bunyan,
William Dell, John Gifford, William Baker, junr., William Wheelar, Ja.
Rush, Anth. Harrington, John Gibbs, Tho. Varrse, Richard Spensley, John
Donne, Michael Cooke, Edward Covinson, Tho. Gibbs, John Ramsay, John
Hogge, Edward White, Robert English, John Jeffard, John Browne, John
Edridge, John Ivory, John White, George Gee, Daniell Groome, Charles
Peirse, Ambrose Gregory, Luke Parratt, Thomas Cooke, William Page,
Thomas Knott, Thomas Honnor. These to the Lord Generall Cromwell, and
the rest of the councell of the army, present.[141]


Bunyan’s daughter Elizabeth was born at Elstow, April 14, 1654, and a
singular proof of his having changed his principles on baptism appears
in the church register. His daughter Mary was baptized in 1650, but his
Elizabeth in 1654 is registered as born, but no mention is made of
baptism.

The poor harassed pilgrim having been admitted into communion with a
Christian church, enjoyed fully, for a short season, his new
privileges. He thus expresses his feelings:—‘After I had propounded to
the church that my desire was to walk in the order and ordinances of
Christ with them, and was also admitted by them: while I thought of
that blessed ordinance of Christ, which was his last supper with his
disciples before his death, that scriptures, “this do in remembrance of
me,” was made a very precious word unto me; for by it the Lord came
down upon my conscience with the discovery of his death for my sins:
and as I then felt, did as if he plunged me in the virtue of the
same.’[142]

In this language we have an expression which furnishes a good sample of
his energetic feelings. He had been immersed in water at his baptism,
and doubtless believed it to be a figure of his death to sin and
resurrection to holiness; and when he sat at the Lord’s table he felt
that he was baptized into the virtue of his Lord’s death; he is plunged
into it, and feels the holy influence covering his soul with all its
powers.

His pastor, John Gifford, was a remarkably pious and sensible man,
exactly fitted to assist in maturing the mind of his young member.
Bunyan had, for a considerable time, sat under his ministry, and had
cultivated acquaintance with the members of his church; and so
prayerfully had he made up his mind as to this important choice of a
church, with which he might enter into fellowship, that, although
tempted by the most alluring prospects of greater usefulness,
popularity, and emolument, he continued his church fellowship with
these poor people through persecution and distress, imprisonment and
the threats of transportation, or an ignominious death, until he
crossed the river ‘which has no bridge,’ and ascended to the celestial
city, a period of nearly forty years. Of the labours of his first
pastor, John Gifford, but little is known, except that he founded the
church of Christ at Bedford, probably the first, in modern times, which
allowed to every individual freedom of judgment as to water baptism;
receiving all those who decidedly appeared to have put on Christ, and
had been received by him; but avoiding, with godly jealousy, any
mixture of the world with the church. Mr. Gifford’s race was short,
consistent, and successful. Bunyan calls him by an appellation, very
probably common in his neighbourhood and among his flock, ‘holy Mr.
Gifford’;[143] a title infinitely superior to all the honours of
nobility, or of royalty. He was a miracle of mercy and grace, for a
very few years before he had borne the character of an impure and
licentious man—an open enemy to the saints of God. His pastoral letter,
left upon record in the church-book, written when drawing near the end
of his pilgrimage, is most admirable; it contains an allusion to his
successors, Burton or Bunyan, and must have had a tendency in forming
their views of a gospel church. Even Mr. Southey praises this puritanic
epistle as exemplifying ‘a wise and tolerant and truly Christian
spirit’: and as it has not been published in any life of Bunyan, I
venture to introduce it without abridgement:—

To the Church over which God made me an overseer when I was in the
world.

I beseech you, brethren beloved, let these following words (wrote in my
love to you, and care over you, when our heavenly Father was removing
me to the kingdom of his dear Son), be read in your church-gatherings
together. I shall not now, dearly beloved, write unto you about that
which is the first, and without which all other things are as nothing
in the sight of God, viz., the keeping the mystery of the faith in a
pure conscience; I shall not, I say, write of these things, though the
greatest, having spent my labours among you, to root you and build you
up in Christ through the grace you have received; and to press you to
all manner of holiness in your conversations, that you may be found of
the Lord, without spot, and blameless, at His coming. But the things I
shall speak to you of, are about your CHURCH AFFAIRS, which I fear have
been little considered by most of you; which things, if not mended
aright, and submitted unto, according to the will of God, will by
degrees bring you under divisions, distractions, and at last, to
confusion of that gospel order and fellowship which now, through grace,
you enjoy. Therefore, my brethren, in the first place, I would not have
any of you ignorant of this, that every one of you are as much bound
now to walk with the church in all love; and in the ordinances of Jesus
Christ our Lord, as when I was present among you: neither have any of
you liberty to join yourselves to any other society, because your
pastor is removed from you; for you were not joined to the ministry,
but to Christ, and the church; and this is and was the will of God in
Christ to all the churches of the saints, read Acts 2:42; and compare
it with Acts 1:14, 15. And I charge you before the Lord, as you will
answer it at the coming of our Lord Jesus, that none of you be found
guilty herein.

Secondly. Be constant in your church assemblies. Let all the work which
concerns the church be done faithfully among you; as admission of
members, exercising of gifts, election of officers, as need requires,
and all other things as if named, which the Scriptures being searched,
will lead you into, through the Spirit; which things, if you do, the
Lord will be with you, and you will convince others that Christ is your
head, and your dependency is not upon man; but if you do the work of
the Lord negligently, if you mind your own things and not the things of
Christ, if you grow of indifferent spirits, whether you mind the work
of the Lord in his church or no, I fear the Lord by degrees will suffer
the comfort of your communion to be dried up, and the candlestick which
is yet standing to be broken in pieces; which God forbid.

Now, concerning your admission of members, I shall leave you to the
Lord for counsel, who hath hitherto been with you; only thus much I
think expedient to stir up your remembrance in; that after you are
satisfied in the work of grace in the party you are to join with, the
said party do solemnly declare (before some of the church at least),
That Union with Christ is the foundation of all saints’ communion; and
not any ordinances of Christ, or any judgment or opinion about
externals; and the said party ought to declare, whether a brother or
sister, that through grace they will walk in love with the church,
though there should happen any difference in judgment about other
things. Concerning separation from the church about baptism, laying on
of hands, anointing with oil, psalms, or any externals, I charge every
one of you respectively, as you will give an account for it to our Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall judge both quick and dead at his coming, that
none of you be found guilty of this great evil; which, while some have
committed, and that through a zeal for God, yet not according to
knowledge, they have erred from the law of the love of Christ, and have
made a rent from the true church, which is but one. I exhort you,
brethren, in your comings together, Let all things be done decently,
and in order, according to the Scriptures. Let all things be done among
you without strife and envy, without self-seeking and vain-glory. Be
clothed with humility, and submit to one another in love. Let the gifts
of the church be exercised according to order. Let no gift be concealed
which is for edification; yet let those gifts be chiefly exercised
which are most for the perfecting of the saints. Let your discourses be
to build up one another in your most holy faith, and to provoke one
another to love and good works: if this be not well-minded, much time
may be spent and the church reap little or no advantage. Let there be
strong meat for the strong, and milk for babes. In your assemblies
avoid all disputes which gender to strife, as questions about
externals, and all doubtful disputations. If any come among you who
will be contentious in these things, let it be declared that you have
no such order, nor any of the churches of God. If any come among you
with any doctrine contrary to the doctrine of Christ, you must not
treat with such an one as with a brother, or enter into dispute of the
things of faith with reasonings (for this is contrary to the
Scriptures); but let such of the brethren who are the fullest of the
Spirit, and the word of Christ, oppose such an one steadfastly face to
face, and lay open his folly to the church, from the Scriptures. If a
brother through weakness speak anything contrary to any known truth of
God (though not intended by him), some other brother of the church must
in love clear up the truth, lest many of the church be laid under
temptation. Let no respect of persons be in your comings-together; when
you are met as a church there’s neither rich nor poor, bond nor free in
Christ Jesus. ’Tis not a good practice to be offering places or seats
when those who are rich come in; especially it is a great evil to take
notice of such in time of prayer, or the word; then are bowings and
civil observances at such times not of God. Private wrongs are not
presently to be brought unto the church. If any of the brethren are
troubled about externals, let some of the church (let it not be a
church business) pray for and with such parties.

None ought to withdraw from the church if any brother should walk
disorderly, but he that walketh disorderly must bear his own burden,
according to the Scriptures. If any brother should walk disorderly, he
cannot be shut out from any ordinance before church censure. Study
among yourselves what is the nature of fellowship, as the word,[144]
prayer, and breaking of bread; which, whilst few, I judge, seriously
consider, there is much falling short of duty in the churches of
Christ. You that are most eminent in profession, set a pattern to all
the rest of the church. Let your faith, love, and zeal, be very
eminent; if any of you cast a dim light, you will do much hurt in the
church. Let there be kept up among you solemn days of prayer and
thanksgiving; and let some time be set apart, to seek God for your
seeds, which thing hath hitherto been omitted. Let your deacons have a
constant stock by them, to supply the necessity of those who are in
want. Truly, brethren, there is utterly a fault among you that are
rich, especially in this thing, ’tis not that little which comes from
you on the first day of the week that will excuse you. I beseech you,
be not found guilty of this sin any longer. He that sows sparingly will
reap sparingly. Be not backward in your gatherings-together; let none
of you willingly stay till part of the meeting be come,[145] especially
such who should be examples to the flock. One or two things are omitted
about your comings-together, which I shall here add. I beseech you,
forbear sitting in prayer, except parties be any way disabled; ’tis not
a posture which suits with the majesty of such an ordinance. Would you
serve your prince so? In prayer, let all self-affected expressions be
avoided, and all vain repetitions. God hath not gifted, I judge, every
brother to be a mouth to the church. Let such as have most of the
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, shut up all your
comings-together, that ye may go away with your hearts comforted and
quickened.

Come together in time, and leave off orderly; for God is a God of order
among his saints. Let none of you give offence to his brethren in
indifferent things, but be subject to one another in love. Be very
careful what gifts you approve of by consent for public service.

Spend much time before the Lord, about choosing a pastor, for though I
suppose he is before you,[146] whom the Lord hath appointed, yet it
will be no disadvantage to you, I hope, if you walk a year or two as
you are before election; and then, if you be all agreed, let him be set
apart, according to the Scriptures. Salute the brethren who walk not in
fellowship with you, with the same love and name of brother or sister
as those who do.

Let the promises made to be accomplished in the latter days, be often
urged before the Lord in your comings-together; and forget not your
brethren in bonds. Love him much for the work’s sake, who labours over
you in the word and doctrine. Let no man despise his youth.[147] Muzzle
not the mouth of the ox that treads out the corn to you. Search the
Scriptures; let some of them be read to you about this thing. If your
teacher at any time be laid aside, you ought to meet together as a
church, and build up one another. If the members at such a time will go
to a public ministry, it must first be approved of by the church.
Farewell; exhort, counsel, support, reprove one another in love.

Finally, brethren, be all of one mind, walk in love one to another,
even as Christ Jesus hath loved you, and given himself for you. Search
the Scriptures for a supply of those things wherein I am wanting. Now
the God of peace, who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead,
multiply his peace upon you, and preserve you to his everlasting
kingdom by Jesus Christ. Stand fast: the Lord is at hand.

That this was written by me, I have set my name to it, in the presence
of two of the brethren of the church.

John Gifford.[148]

Bunyan was now settled under the happiest circumstances, and doubtless
looked forward to much religious enjoyment. A pious wife—peace in his
soul—a most excellent pastor, and in full communion with a Christian
church. Alas! his enjoyments were soon interrupted; again a tempest was
to agitate his mind, that he might be more deeply humbled and prepared
to become a Barnabas or son of consolation to the spiritually
distressed.

It is a remarkable fact, that upon the baptism of our Lord, after that
sublime declaration of Jehovah—‘this is my beloved Son,’ ‘Jesus was led
into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil.’ As it was with their
leader, so it frequently happens to his followers. After having
partaken, for the first time, of the holy enjoyments of the Lord’s
table—tending to exalt and elevate them, they are often abased and
humbled in their own esteem, by the assaults of Satan and his
temptations, aided by an evil heart of unbelief. Thus Christian having
been cherished in the house called Beautiful, and armed for the
conflict, descended into the Valley of Humiliation, encountered
Apollyon in deadly combat, and walked through the Valley of the Shadow
of Death. ‘For three quarters of a year, fierce and sad temptations did
beset me to blasphemy, that I could never have rest nor ease. But at
last the Lord came in upon my soul with that same scripture, by which
my soul was visited before; and after that, I have been usually very
well and comfortable in the partaking of that blessed ordinance; and
have, I trust, therein discerned the Lord’s body, as broken for my
sins, and that his precious blood hath been shed for my
transgressions.’[149] This is what Bunyan calls, ‘the soul killing to
itself its sins, its righteousness, wisdom, resolutions, and the things
which it trusted in by nature’; and then receiving ‘a most glorious,
perfect, and never-fading life.’ The life of Christ in all its purity
and perfections imputed to me—‘Sometimes I bless the Lord my soul hath
had this life not only imputed to me, but the very glory of it upon my
soul—the Son of God himself in his own person, now at the right hand of
his Father representing me complete before the mercy-seat in his
ownself.’ ‘There was my righteousness just before the eyes of Divine
glory.’[150]

About this period his robust hardy frame gave way under the attack of
disease, and we have to witness his feelings when the king of terrors
appeared to be beginning his deadly work. Whether the fiery trials, the
mental tempest through which he had passed, were too severe for his
bodily frame, is not recorded. His narrative is, that, ‘Upon a time I
was somewhat inclining to a consumption, wherewith, about the spring I
was suddenly and violently seized, with much weakness in my outward
man; insomuch that I thought I could not live.’[151] This is slightly
varied in his account of this illness in his Law and Grace. He there
says, ‘having contracted guilt upon my soul, and having some distemper
of body upon me, I supposed that death might now so seize upon, as to
take me away from among men.[152] These serious considerations led to a
solemn investigation of his hopes. His having been baptized, his union
to a church, the good opinion of his fellow-men, are not in the
slightest degree relied upon as evidences of the new birth, or of a
death to sin and resurrection to holiness.’ ‘Now began I afresh to give
myself up to a serious examination after my state and condition for the
future, and of my evidences for that blessed world to come: for it
hath, I bless the name of God, been my usual course, as always, so
especially in the day of affliction, to endeavour to keep my interest
in the life to come, clear before my eye.

‘But I had no sooner began to recall to mind my former experience of
the goodness of God to my soul, but there came flocking into my mind an
innumerable company of my sins and transgressions: amongst which these
were at this time most to my affliction, namely, my deadness, dullness,
and coldness in holy duties; my wanderings of heart, my wearisomeness
in all good things, my want of love to God, his ways and people, with
this at the end of all, “Are these the fruits of Christianity? Are
these the tokens of a blessed man?”

‘At the apprehension of these things my sickness was doubled upon me,
for now was I sick in my inward man, my soul was clogged with guilt;
now also was my former experience of God’s goodness to me quite taken
out of my mind, and hid as if it had never been, nor seen. Now was my
soul greatly pinched between these two considerations, “Live I must
not, die I dare not.” Now I sunk and fell in my spirit, and was giving
up all for lost; but as I was walking up and down in my house, as a man
in a most woeful state, that word of God took hold of my heart, Ye are
“justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus
Christ” (Rom 3:24). But O! what a turn it made upon me!

‘Now was I as one awakened out of some troublesome sleep and dream; and
listening to this heavenly sentence, I was as if I had heard it thus
expounded to me:—“Sinner, thou thinkest, that because of thy sins and
infirmities, I cannot save thy soul; but behold my Son is by me, and
upon him I look, and not on thee, and will deal with thee according as
I am pleased with him.” At this I was greatly lightened in my mind, and
made to understand, that God could justify a sinner at any time; it was
but his looking upon Christ, and imputing of his benefits to us, and
the work was forthwith done.’[153]

‘Now was I got on high, I saw myself within the arms of grace and
mercy; and though I was before afraid to think of a dying hour, yet now
I cried, Let me die. Now death was lovely and beautiful in my sight,
for I saw that we shall never live indeed, till we be gone to the other
world. I saw more in those words, “Heirs of God” (Rom 8:17), than ever
I shall be able to express. “Heirs of God,” God himself is the portion
of his saints.’[154]

As his mental agitation subsided into this delicious calm, his bodily
health was restored; to use his own figure, Captain Consumption, with
all his men of death, were[155] routed, and his strong bodily health
triumphed over disease; or, to use the more proper language of an
eminent Puritan, ‘When overwhelmed with the deepest sorrows, and that
for many doleful months, he who is Lord of nature healed my body, and
he who is the Father of mercies and God of all grace has proclaimed
liberty to the captive, and given rest to my weary soul.’[156] Here we
have a key to the most eventful picture in the Pilgrim’s Progress—The
Valley of the Shadow of Death—which is placed in the midst of the
journey. When in the prime of life, death looked at him and withdrew
for a season. It was the shadow of death that came over his spirit.

The church at Bedford having increased, Bunyan was chosen to fill the
honourable office of a deacon. No man could have been better fitted for
that office than Bunyan was. He was honesty itself, had suffered severe
privations, so as to feel for those who were pinched with want; he had
great powers of discrimination, to distinguish between the poverty of
idleness, and that distress which arises from circumstances over which
human foresight has no control, so as to relieve with propriety the
pressure of want, without encouraging the degrading and debasing habit
of depending upon alms, instead of labouring to provide the necessaries
of life. He had no fine clothes to be spoiled by trudging down the
filthiest lanes, and entering the meanest hovels to relieve suffering
humanity. The poor—and that is the great class to whom the gospel is
preached, and by whom it is received—would hail him as a brother.
Gifted in prayer, full of sound and wholesome counsel drawn from holy
writ, he must have been a peculiar blessing to the distressed, and to
all the members who stood in need of advice and assistance. Such were
the men intended by the apostles, ‘men of honest report, full of the
Holy Ghost and wisdom’ (Acts 6:3), whom the church were to select, to
relieve the apostles from the duties of ministration to the wants of
the afflicted members, in the discharge of which they had given
offence.

While thus actively employed, he was again visited with a severe
illness, and again was subject to a most searching and solemn
investigation as to his fitness to appear before the judgment-seat of
God. ‘All that time the tempter did beset me strongly, labouring to
hide from me my former experience of God’s goodness; setting before me
the terrors of death, and the judgment of God, insomuch that at this
time, through my fear of miscarrying for ever, should I now die, I was
as one dead before death came; I thought that there was no way but to
hell I must.’[157]

‘A wounded spirit who can bear.’ Well might the apostle say, ‘If in
this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
miserable’ (1 Cor 15:19). Bunyan had enjoyed holy emotions full of
glory, and now the devil was threatening him, not only with the loss of
heaven, but the terrors of hell. The Puritan, Rogers, describes
religious melancholy as ‘the worst of all distempers, and those sinking
and guilty fears which it brings along with it are inexpressibly
dreadful; what anguish, what desolation! I dare not look to heaven;
there I see the greatness of God, who is against me. I dare not look
into his Word; for there I see all his threats, as so many barbed
arrows to strike me to the heart. I dare not look into the grave;
because thence I am like to have a doleful resurrection; in this
doleful night the soul hath no evidence at all of its former
grace.’[158] Bunyan’s experience reminds us of the impressive language
of Job—a book full of powerful imagery and magnificent ideas, in which
Bunyan delighted, calling it ‘that blessed book.’[159] Job goes on,
from step to step, describing his mental wretchedness, until he rises
to a climax, God ‘runneth upon me like a giant’ (16:7-22). ‘Thou
huntest me as a fierce lion’ (10:16). ‘The arrows of the Almighty are
within me; they drink up my spirit: the terrors of God do set
themselves in array against me’ (6:4). Poor Bunyan, in the depth of his
distress, cried unto God, and was heard and relieved from these soul
troubles. He recollected the joyful ascent of Lazarus from the extreme
of human misery to the height of celestial enjoyments. His spirit was
sweetly revived, and he was enabled, with delight, to hope yet in God,
when that word fell with great weight upon his mind, ‘O death, where is
thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’ ‘At this he became both well
in body and mind at once; his sickness did presently vanish, and he
again walked comfortably in his work for God.’[160] The words, ‘by
grace are ye saved,’ followed him through the rest of his pilgrimage.
His consolation was, that ‘a little true grace will go a great way;
yea, and do more wonders than we are aware of. If we have but grace
enough to keep us groaning after God, it is not all the world that can
destroy us.’[161] He had now become deeply instructed in the school of
Christ, and was richly furnished with the weapons of spiritual warfare;
‘a scribe instructed into the kingdom of heaven, like unto a man that
is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new
and old’ (Matt 13:12). Or, as ‘the man of God, perfected, thoroughly
furnished unto all good works’ (2 Tim 3:17). It was powerfully
impressed upon his mind that all his inward conflicts were to be made
use of in preparing him to instruct others. All the events of his
Saviour’s life passed before his mind as if he had stood by as a
witness to his birth—his walking with his disciples; his wondrous
parables and stupendous miracles; his mental and bodily sufferings; his
sacrifice, burial, ascension, intercession, and final judgment; all
passed in vivid review before the eye of his mind; and then, he says,
‘as I was musing with myself what these things should mean, methought I
heard such a word in my heart as this, I have set thee down on purpose,
for I have something more than ordinary for thee to do’; which made me
the more to marvel, saying, ‘What, my Lord, such a poor wretch as
I?’[162] Such was his inward call to the ministry; and it being
attended with the three requisites usually insisted on among
Dissenters—ability, inclination, and opportunity—he was sent out as an
itinerant preacher in the surrounding villages in 1655, and laid the
foundation of many churches, which now flourish to the praise of the
glory of Divine grace. In some of these villages the gospel had never
before been preached; they were strongholds of Satan. These were fit
places for the full display of his intrepid energy.

After thus preaching and much suffering, for fifteen years, he was
appointed to the pastoral office, or eldership.[163] Can a man enter
upon the work of the ministry from a better school than this? Deeply
versed in scriptural knowledge; thoroughly humbled by the assaults of
sin and Satan; aware of his devices; with a keen perception of the
value of the soul; its greatness; and, if lost, the causes and the
unspeakable extent of its loss. Solemnly devout and fluent in prayer;
ready in conversation upon heavenly things; speaking the truth without
fear of consequences, yet avoiding unnecessary offence; first speaking
in the church-meeting, and then more extensively in barns, or woods, or
dells, to avoid the informers.[164] Such was his training; and the
result was, that, when permitted to proclaim the gospel publicly,
thousands hung upon his words with intense feeling; numerous converts
were by his means added to the church; the proud became broken-hearted,
and the lowly were raised, and blessings abounded; the drunkards were
made sober; thieves and covetous were reclaimed; the blasphemers were
made to sing the praises of God; the desert bid fair to blossom and
bring forth fruit as a garden. But, alas! his early labours were
contrary to acts of parliament; the spirit of intolerance and
persecution soon troubled, and eventually consigned him to a prison.

Before we bid a final farewell to Bunyan’s extraordinary mental
struggles with unbelief, it may be well to indulge in a few sober
reflections. Are the narratives of these mighty tempests in his spirit
plain matters of fact? No one can read the works of Bunyan and doubt
for a moment his truthfulness. His language is that of the heart,
fervent but not exaggerated, strong but a plain tale of real feelings.
He says, and he believed it, ‘My sins have appeared so big to me, that
I thought one of my sins have been as big as all the sins of all the
men in the nation; ay and of other nations too, reader; these things be
not fancies, for I have smarted for this experience. It is true that
Satan has the art of making the uttermost of every sin; he can blow it
up, make it swell, make every hair of its head as big as a cedar;[165]
but yet the least stream of the heart blood of Jesus hath vanished all
away and hath made it to fly, to the astonishment of such a poor
sinner, and hath delivered me up into sweet and heavenly peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost.’[166] Some have supposed the narrative to be
exaggerated, while others have attributed the disturbed state of his
mind to disease; my humble belief is that the whole is a plain
unvarnished account of facts; that those facts occurred while he was in
full possession of all the faculties of his mind. To ascribe such
powers to the invisible world by which we are constantly surrounded,
does not agree with the doctrines of modern philosophers. Those holy or
unholy suggestions suddenly injected, would by the world be set down as
the hallucinations of a distempered imagination. Carnal relations
attributed Christian’s alarm to ‘some frenzy distemper got into his
head,’ and Southey, following their example, ascribes Bunyan’s hallowed
feelings to his want of ‘sober judgment,’ ‘his brutality and extreme
ignorance,’ a ‘stage of burning enthusiasm,’ and to ‘an age in which
hypocrisy was regnant, and fanaticism rampant throughout the
land.’[167] What a display of reigning hypocrisy and rampant fanaticism
was it to see the game at cat openly played by men on Sunday, the
church bells calling them to their sport!!! Had Southey been
poet-laureate to Charles II, he might with equal truth have concealed
the sensuality, open profaneness, and debauchery of that profligate
monarch and his court of concubines, and have praised him as ‘the
Lord’s anointed.’ Bunyan was an eye-witness of the state of the times
in which he lived, and he associated with numbers of the poor in
Bedfordshire and the adjoining counties. So truthful a man’s testimony
is of great value, and he proves that no miraculous reformation of
manners had taken place; no regnant hypocrisy nor rampant fanaticism.
In 1655, that being the brightest period of the Commonwealth, he thus
‘sighs’ over the state of his country:—‘There are but a few places in
the Bible but there are threatenings against one sinner or another;
against drunkards, swearers, liars, proud persons, strumpets,
whoremongers, covetous, railers, extortioners, thieves, lazy persons.
In a word, all manner of sins are reproved, and there is a sore
punishment to be executed on the committers of them; and all this made
mention of in the Scriptures. But for all this, how thick, and by
heaps, do these wretches walk up and down our streets? Do but go into
the ale-houses, and you shall see almost every room besprinkled with
them, so foaming out their own shame that it is enough to make the
heart of a saint to tremble.’[168] This was a true character of the
great masses of the labouring and trading portions of the commonwealth.
Let us hear his testimony also as to the most sacred profession, the
clergy, in 1654:—

‘A reason why delusions do so easily take place in the hearts of the
ignorant, is, because those that pretend to be their teachers, do
behave themselves so basely among them. And indeed I may say of these,
as our Lord said of the Pharisees in another case, the blood of the
ignorant shall be laid to their charge. They that pretend they are sent
of the Lord, and come, saying, Thus saith the Lord; we are the servants
of the Lord, our commission is from the Lord by succession; I say,
these pretending themselves to be the preachers of truth, but are not,
do, by their loose conversation, render the doctrine of God, and his
Son Jesus Christ, by whom the saints are saved, contemptible, and do
give the adversary mighty encouragement, to cry out against the truths
of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of their wicked waling. For the most
part of them, they are the men that at this day do so harden their
hearers in their sins by giving them such ill examples, that none goeth
beyond them for impiety. As, for example, would a parishioner learn to
be proud, he or she need look no farther than to the priest, his wife,
and family; for there is a notable pattern before them. Would the
people learn to be wanton? they may also see a pattern among their
teachers. Would they learn to be drunkards? they may also have that
from some of their ministers; for indeed they are ministers in this, to
minister ill example to their congregations. Again, would the people
learn to be covetous? they need but look to their minister, and they
shall have a lively, or rather a deadly resemblance set before them, in
both riding and running after great benefices, and parsonages by night
and by day. Nay, they among themselves will scramble for the same. I
have seen, that so soon as a man hath but departed from his benefice as
he calls it, either by death or out of covetousness of a bigger, we
have had one priest from this town, and another from that, so run, for
these tithe-cocks and handfuls of barley, as if it were their proper
trade, and calling, to hunt after the same. O wonderful impiety and
ungodliness! are you not ashamed of your doings? Read Romans 1 towards
the end. As it was with them, so, it is to be feared, it is with many
of you, who knowing the judgments of God, that they who do such things
are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure also in
them that do them. And now you that pretend to be the teachers of the
people in verity and truth, though we know that some of you are not, is
it a small thing with you to set them such an example as this? Were
ever the Pharisees so profane; to whom Christ said, Ye vipers, how can
ye escape the damnation of hell? Doth not the ground groan under you?
surely, it will favour you no more than it favoured your fore-runners.
Certainly the wrath of God lies heavy at your doors, it is but a very
little while, and your recompense shall be upon your own head. And as
for you that are indeed of God among them, though not of them, separate
yourselves. Why should the righteous partake of the same plagues with
the wicked? O ye children of the harlot! I cannot well tell how to have
done with you, your stain is so odious, and you are so senseless, as
appears by your practices.’[169]

The testimony of George Fox as to England’s fashions in 1654, is very
pointed and extremely droll:—Men and women are carried away with
fooleries and vanities; gold and silver upon their backs,[170] store of
ribbands hanging about the waist, knees, and feet—red or white, black
or yellow; women with their gold; their spots on their faces, noses,
cheeks, foreheads; rings on their fingers, cuffs double, like a
butcher’s white sleeves; ribbands about their hands, and three or four
gold laces about their clothes; men dressed like fiddlers’ boys or
stage players; see them playing at bowls, or at tables, or at
shovel-board, or each one decking his horse with bunches of ribbands on
his head, as the rider hath on his own. These are gentlemen, and brave
fellows, that say pleasures are lawful, and in their sports they should
like wild asses. This is the generation carried away with pride,
arrogancy, lust, gluttony, and uncleanness; who eat and drink and rise
up to play, their eyes full of adultery, and their bodies of the
devil’s adorning.[171] Such quotations from the writings of men of
undoubted veracity, and who lived during that period, might be
multiplied to fill a volume.

Is this the regnant hypocrisy and rampant fanaticism which prevailed in
England, and which Southey supposes to have influenced Bunyan and
deranged his sober judgment? It is true that the Protector and his
council discountenanced vice and folly, and that there was more piety
and virtue in the kingdom at that time than it had ever before
witnessed. But it would have been the greatest of miracles, had the
people been suddenly moralized, after having been baptized in brutality
for ages. Not a century had elapsed since the autos da fe had blazed
throughout the country, burning the most pious, moral, and enlightened
of her citizens. A century of misery to the professors of religions had
passed, in which the persecutions of Papists and Puritans, hanging,
transporting, murdering by frightful imprisonments all those who dared
to dissent from the church of England. All this must have produced a
debasing effect upon public morals. Even among professors Bunyan
discovered pride, covetousness, impiety and uncleanness.[172]

Bunyan’s religious impressions did not, as Southey states, arise from
his ignorance, brutal manners, low station, nor from the fanaticism of
the age in which he lived. Did the similar feeling of Job or David
spring from these polluted fountains? He is a stranger to Christ’s
school that confounds its discipline with mental drunkenness, or with
the other depraved sources alluded to by Southey. The luxurious
imagination which ruled over him, must be curbed and brought into
subjection to Christ. He must be weaned from a reliance upon sudden
impulses to rely upon Divine truth. The discovery of errors by
scriptural investigation was putting on armour of proof.
Self-confidence was gradually swallowed up by dependence upon the
word—the result of the severest spiritual training. Those painful
exercises produced a life of holiness and usefulness. Can the thistle
produce grapes, or the noxious weeds corn? Never! His experience came
from heaven, in mercy to his soul, and to make him a blessing to
millions of his race. By this he was made truly wise, civilized,
enlightened, and elevated. Every painful feeling was measured by Divine
rule—weighed in the sanctuary balance—not one iota too much or too
little to form his noble character. He has been compared with Lord
Byron, one of our most impassioned thinkers and writers; but the noble
poet’s heart-griefs were on the wrong side. Judging of his own feelings
by those painted on his heroes—they fight for freedom only to gratify
lust, pride, and ambition, while the future appeared in dark, dreary
uncertainty. But Bunyan strives to be released from the slavery of sin
and Satan, that he might enjoy the liberty of being a servant of
Christ, whose service is perfect freedom, with a glorious vista of
eternity occasionally breaking in upon his soul.

Well may it be said of him:—Simple, enchanting man! what does not the
world owe to thee and to the great Being who could produce such as
thee? Teacher alike of the infant and of the aged; who canst direct the
first thought and remove the last doubt of man; property alike of the
peasant and the prince; welcomed by the ignorant and honoured by the
wise; thou hast translated Christianity into a new language, and that a
universal one! Thou art the prose poet of all time!

THE FOURTH PERIOD.


BUNYAN ENTERS INTO CONTROVERSY—BECOMES AN AUTHOR—OFFENDS A PERSECUTING
MAGISTRACY, AND IS PROCEEDED AGAINST AT THE SESSIONS UNDER AN ACT OF
THE COMMONWEALTH—IS ACCUSED OF REPORTING A STRANGE CHARGE OF
WITCHCRAFT—PUBLICLY DISPUTES WITH THE QUAKERS.


In proportion as a man becomes a public character, especially if
eminent for talent and usefulness in the church, so will his enemies
increase. The envy of some and the malice of others will invent
slanders, or, what is worse, put an evil construction upon the most
innocent conduct, in the hope of throwing a shade over that brightness
which reveals their own defects. In this they are aided by all the
craft, and cunning, and power of Satan, the archenemy of man. The
purity of gospel truth carries with it the blessed fruits of the
highest order of civilization; the atmosphere in which it lives is
‘good will to man.’ Salvation is a free gift, direct from God to the
penitent sinner. It cannot be obtained by human aid, nor for all the
gold in the universe. It cannot possibly be traded in, bought, or sold,
but is bestowed without money or price. Hence the opposition of
Antichrist. The cry or groan of the contrite enters heaven and brings
down blessings, while the most elegant and elaborately-composed prayer,
not springing from the heart, is read or recited in vain. Human
monarchs must be approached by petitions drawn up in form, and which
may be accepted, although the perfection of insincerity and hypocrisy.
The King of kings accepts no forms; he knows the heart, and requires
the approach of those who worship him to be in sincerity and in truth;
the heart may plead without words, God accepteth the groans and sighs
of those that fear him. These were the notions that Bunyan had drawn
from the Holy Oracles, and his conversation soon made him a favourite
with the Puritans, while it excited feelings of great hostility among
the neighbouring clergy and magistrates.

Bunyan’s conversion from being a pest to the neighbourhood to becoming
a pious man, might have been pardoned had he conformed to the
Directory; but for him to appear as a Dissenter and a public teacher,
without going through the usual course of education and ordination, was
an unpardonable offence. The opinions of man gave him no concern; all
his anxiety was to have the approbation of his God, and then to walk
accordingly, braving all the dangers, the obloquy, and contempt that
might arise from his conscientious discharge of duties, for the
performance of which he knew that he alone must give a solemn account
at the great day.

He entered upon the serious work of the ministry with fear and
trembling, with much heart-searching, earnest prayer, and the advice of
the church to which he was united, not with any pledge to abide by
their decision contrary to his own conviction, but to aid him in his
determination. His own account of these important inquiries is very
striking:—‘After I had been about five or six years awakened, and
helped myself to see both the want and worth of Jesus Christ our Lord,
and also enabled to venture my soul upon him, some of the most able
among the saints with us, for judgment and holiness of life, as they
conceived, did perceive that God had counted me worthy to understand
something of his will in His holy and blessed Word, and had given me
utterance, in some measure, to express what I saw to others for
edification; therefore they desired me, and that with much earnestness,
that I would be willing at some times to take in hand, in one of the
meetings, to speak a word of exhortation unto them. The which, though
at the first it did much dash and abash my spirit, yet being still by
them desired and entreated, I consented to their request, and did
twice, at two several assemblies in private, though with much weakness
and infirmity, discover my gift amongst them; at which they did
solemnly protest, as in the sight of the great God, they were both
affected and comforted, and gave thanks to the Father of mercies for
the grace bestowed on me.

‘After this, sometimes, when some of them did go into the country to
teach, they would also that I should go with them; where, though as yet
I did not, nor durst not, make use of my gift in an open way, yet more
privately, as I came amongst the good people in those places, I did
sometimes speak a word of admonition unto them also, the which they, as
the other, received with rejoicing at the mercy of God to me-ward,
professing their souls were edified thereby.

‘Wherefore at last, being still desired by the church, after some
solemn prayer to the Lord, with fasting, I was more particularly called
forth, and appointed to a more ordinary and public preaching of the
word, not only to and amongst them that believed, but also to offer the
gospel to those who had not yet received the faith thereof.’[173]

The ministry of Bunyan’s pastor, whom he affectionately called holy Mr.
Gifford, must have been wonderfully blessed. In 1650 only twelve pious
men and women were formed into a Christian church, and, although
subject to fierce persecution, they had so increased that in 1672 ten
members had been solemnly set apart for the work of the ministry, and
they became a blessing to the country round Bedford. The benighted
state of the villages was a cause of earnest prayer that men might be
sent out, apt to teach, and willing to sacrifice liberty, and even
life, to promote the peaceful reign of the Redeemer. The names of the
men who were thus set apart were—John Bunyan, Samuel Fenn, Joseph
Whiteman, John Fenn, Oliver Scott, Luke Ashwood, Thomas Cooper, Edward
Dent, Edward Isaac, and Nehemiah Coxe.[174] Four of these were
permitted to fulfil their course without notoriety; the others were
severely persecuted, fined and imprisoned, but not forsaken.

Encouraged by the opinion of the church which had been so prayerfully
formed, that it was his duty to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation,
Bunyan entered upon his important work, and was soon encouraged by a
hope that his labours were useful to his fellow-men. ‘About this time,’
he narrates, ‘I did evidently find in my mind a secret pricking forward
thereto, though, I bless God, not for desire of vain glory, for at that
time I was most sorely afflicted with the fiery darts of the devil
concerning my eternal state. But yet I could not be content unless I
was found in the exercise of my gift; unto which also I was greatly
animated, not only by the continual desires of the godly, but also by
that saying of Paul to the Corinthians, “I beseech you, brethren [ye
know the household of Stephanas, that it is the first-fruits of Achaia,
and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints],
that ye submit yourselves unto such, and to every one that helpeth with
us, and laboureth” (1 Cor 16:15,16).

‘By this text I was made to see that the Holy Ghost never intended that
men, who have gifts and abilities, should bury them in the earth, but
rather did command and stir up such to the exercise of their gift, and
also did commend those that were apt and ready so to do.

‘Wherefore, though of myself, of all the saints the most unworthy, yet
I, but with great fear and trembling at the sight of my own weakness,
did set upon the work, and did according to my gift, and the proportion
of my faith, preach that blessed gospel that God had showed me in the
holy Word of truth; which, when the country understood, they came in to
hear the Word by hundreds, and that from all parts. And I thank God he
gave unto me some measure of bowels and pity for their souls, which did
put me forward to labour with great diligence and earnestness, to find
out such a word as might, if God would bless it, lay hold of and awaken
the conscience, in which also the good Lord had respect to the desire
of his servant; for I had not preached long before some began to be
touched, and be greatly afflicted in their minds at the apprehension of
the greatness of their sin, and of their need of Jesus Christ.

‘But I at first could not believe that God should speak by me to the
heart of any man, still counting myself unworthy; yet those who were
thus touched would love me, and have a particular respect for me; and
though I did put it from me that they should be awakened by me, still
they would confess it, and affirm it before the saints of God. They
would also bless God for me, unworthy wretch that I am! and count me
God’s instrument that showed to them the way of salvation.

‘Wherefore, seeing them in both their words and deeds to be so
constant, and also in their hearts so earnestly pressing after the
knowledge of Jesus Christ, rejoicing that ever God did send me where
they were; then I began to conclude that it might be so, that God had
owned in his work such a foolish one as I; and then came that word of
God to my heart with much sweet refreshment, “The blessing of him that
was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to
sing for joy” (Job 29:13).

‘At this therefore I rejoiced; yea, the tears of those whom God did
awaken by my preaching would be both solace and encouragement to me. I
thought on those sayings, “Who is he that maketh me glad, but the same
that is made sorry by me” (2 Cor 2:2). And again, “Though I be not an
apostle to others, yet doubtless I am unto you: for the seal of my
apostleship are ye in the Lord” (1 Cor 9:2). These things, therefore,
were as an another argument unto me, that God had called me to, and
stood by me in this work.

‘In my preaching of the Word I took special notice of this one thing,
namely, that the Lord did lead me to begin where his Word begins with
sinners; that is, to condemn all flesh, and to open and allege, that
the curse of God by the law doth belong to, and lay hold on all men as
they come into the world, because of sin. Now this part of my work I
fulfilled with great feeling, for the terrors of the law, and guilt for
my transgressions, lay heavy on my own conscience. I preached what I
felt, what I smartingly did feel, even that under which my poor soul
did groan and tremble to astonishment. Indeed, I have been as one sent
to them from the dead; I went myself in chains to preach to them in
chains; and carried that fire in my own conscience that I persuaded
them to beware of.[175] I can truly say, that when I have been to
preach, I have gone full of guilt and terror even to the pulpit-door,
and there it hath been taken off, and I have been at liberty in my mind
until I have done my work, and then, immediately, even before I could
get down the pulpit stairs, I have been as bad as I was before: yet God
carried me on with a strong hand, for neither guilt nor hell could take
me off my work. Thus I went on for the space of two years, crying out
against men’s sins, and their fearful state because of them.’[176]

A man so much in earnest soon became a most acceptable and popular
preacher. He studied his sermons carefully, and wrote such memorandums
and notes as might refresh his memory before going into the pulpit,
although his intensity of feeling, his ready utterance, and natural
eloquence which charmed his hearers, and his extensive usefulness as a
preacher, render it quite improbable that he restricted himself to
notes while publicly engaged in sacred services. They must have aided
him when he did not enjoy liberty of utterance. ‘At times when I have
begun to speak the Word with much liberty, I have been presently so
straitened in speech that I scarcely knew what I was about, or as if my
head had been in a bag.’[177] They were valuable, also, as a proof that
all he said had its exclusive reference to the world to come, without
the mixture of politics, which might have given offence to the
Government. Thus, when he was apprehended for neglecting to attend the
church service and for preaching the gospel, in his conversation with
Mr. Cobb, the magistrate’s clerk, he said ‘that, to cut off all
occasions of suspicion from any, as touching the harmlessness of my
doctrine, in private I would willingly take the pains to give any one
the notes of all my sermons, for I do sincerely desire to live quietly
in my country, and to submit to the present authority.’[178] In such
troublesome times these would afford abundant proof that he was
desirous of submitting to all the political institutions of his
country, while he dared not conform to human laws affecting his faith
or his mode of worshipping God, for which he alone was to stand
answerable at the great day.

The employment of his time in earning a maintenance for his family, and
his constant engagements to preach, interfered with the proper
fulfillment of his duties as a deacon of the church. His resignation of
this important office is thus recorded in the minutes of the church—‘At
a meeting held on the 27th of the 6th month, 1657, the deacon’s office
was transferred from John Bunyan to John Pernie, because he could no
longer discharge its duties aright, in consequence of his being so much
employed in preaching.’

We cannot wonder that his time was incessantly employed. His was no
ordinary case. He had to recover and improve upon the little education
he had received, and lost again by dissipated habits. He must have made
every effort, by his diligent study of the Bible, to gain that
spiritual knowledge which alone could enable him to proclaim the
unsearchable riches of Christ, and that profound internal converse with
the throne of God which appears in all his writings. In addition to all
this, he was engaged in continual controversy with a variety of sects,
which, in his sober judgment, opposed the simplicity of the gospel.
Among these the Ranters, or Sweet Singers, were very conspicuous. It is
difficult to discover what were their opinions, but they appear to have
been nearly like the Dutch Adamites; they were severely persecuted, by
public authority, under the Commonwealth, for blasphemy. George Fox
found some of them in prison at Coventry in 1649, and held a short
disputation with them. They claimed each one to be GOD, founding their
notion on such passages as 1 Corinthians 14:25, ‘God is in you of a
truth.’ Fox quaintly asked them whether it would rain the next day; and
upon their answering that they could not tell, ‘Then said I unto them,
God can tell.’[179] Strange as it may appear, the Ranters had many
followers, while numerous pious people were troubled by their impudence
and perversion of Scripture, but more especially by their being a
persecuted people. Taking advantage of the inquiries that were excited
by these strange doctrines, Bunyan determined to become an author, that
he might set forth more extensively than he could do by preaching, the
truths of the gospel in their native purity, simplicity, and beauty, as
an antidote to fanaticism. The learned and eloquent looked with
contempt upon the follies of the Ranters, Familists, and some loose
Quakers, ‘and only deigned to abuse them with raillery, while the poor
unlettered tinker wrote against them.’ To indite a work would be to him
a pleasant recreation, but writing a book must have been extremely
difficult, and have required extraordinary patience. This will be
better seen by a specimen of his handwriting, now in the Bedford
Library, found in Fox’s Book of Martyrs, the three volumes of which
beguiled many of his tedious hours when in prison.

To write a volume, containing about twenty-five thousand words, must
have been a serious task to such a scribe.

It is interesting to trace his improvement in calligraphy while
recovering his lost education, and advancing in proficiency in an art
so essential to his constantly extending usefulness. The next is a more
useful running hand, however defective in orthography and grammar; it
is from the first page of a copy of Bishop Andrews’ sermons[180]—

The inscription in a copy of his Holy City, 1665, in Dr. Williams’ or
the Dissenter’s Library, Red Cross Street, is in a still more useful
hand, as good as that of most authors of that day—

The autograph in Powell’s Concordance, in the library of the Baptist
Academy, Bristol, is in a fair hand—

His autograph is in possession of the Society of Antiquaries. The
document to which it is subscribed is written in a remarkably neat
hand, addressed to the Lord Protector. The signatures appear to be
written as if in the writer’s best style.[181]

Signature to the deed of gift[182]—

In addition to the motives which have been noticed as inducing him to
become an author, it appears, that in the course of his itinerating
labours, he was much grieved with the general depravity which had
overspread all classes of society. Evil communications had corrupted
the great mass, and occasioned an aversion to hear the gospel, which
plunged the people into carnal security. When roused by his preaching
they too often found refuge in despair, or in vain attempts to impose
upon God their unholy self-righteousness, endeavouring ‘to earn heaven
with their fingers’ ends’;[183] anything rather than submit to receive
salvation as the free gift of God, and thus be led to consecrate all
their powers to his glory and the comfort of society. A few who
appeared to have thought on this solemn subject, without any change of
conduct, are called by Bunyan ‘light notionists, with here and there a
legalist,’[184] or those who relied upon a creed without the fruits of
righteousness, and some of these imbibed notions of the strangest
kind—that the light within was all-sufficient, without any written
revelation of the will of God—that the account of Christ’s personal
appearance on earth was a myth, to represent his residence in the
persons of believers, in whom he suffers, is crucified, buried, and
raised again to spiritual life—that such persons might do whatever
their inclinations led them to, without incurring guilt or sin; in
short, many sinned that grace might abound!! Some of them professed to
be the Almighty God manifest in the flesh. All this took place in what
was called a Christian country, upon which millions of treasure had
been spent to teach religion by systems, which had persecuted the
honest, pious professors of vital Christianity to bonds, imprisonment,
and death. This had naturally involved the kingdom in impiety and gross
immorality. The discovery of the awful state of his country, while he
was engaged in preaching in the villages round Bedford induced him, in
the humble hope of doing good, to become an author, and with trembling
anxiety he issued to the world the first production of his pen, in
1656, under the title of Some Gospel Truths Opened According to the
Scriptures; and, as we shall presently find, it met with a rough
reception, plunging him into controversy, which in those days was
conducted with bitter acrimony.

Before it was published, he sought the approbation and protection of
Mr. John Burton, who had been united with Mr. Gifford in the pastoral
charge of the church to which Bunyan belonged. The testimony that he
gives is very interesting:—

‘Here thou hast things certain and necessary to be believed, which thou
canst not too much study. Therefore pray that thou mayest receive it,
so it is according to the Scriptures, in faith and love, not as the
word of man but as the word of God, and be not offended, because Christ
holds forth the glorious treasure of the gospel to thee in a poor
earthen vessel, by one who hath neither the greatness nor the wisdom of
this world to commend him to thee; for as the Scriptures saith, Christ,
who was low and contemptible in the world himself, ordinarily chooseth
such for himself and for the doing of his work. “Not many wise men
after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called: but God
hath chosen the foolish things of the world.” This man [Bunyan] is not
chosen out of an earthly, but out of the heavenly university, the
church of Christ, furnished with the Spirit, gifts, and graces of
Christ—out of which, to the end of the world, the word of the Lord and
all true gospel ministers must proceed. And, though this man hath not
the learning or wisdom of man; yet, through grace, he hath received the
teaching of God, and the learning of the Spirit of Christ. He hath
taken these three heavenly degrees—union with Christ, the anointing of
the Spirit, and experience of the temptations of Satan—which do more
fit a man for the mighty work of preaching the gospel, than all the
university learning and degrees that can be had. I have had experience
with many other saints of this man’s [Bunyan’s] soundness in the faith,
his godly conversation, and his ability to preach the gospel, not by
human art, but by the Spirit of Christ, and that with much success in
the conversion of sinners. I thought it my duty to bear witness with my
brother to these glorious truths of the Lord Jesus Christ.’[185]

Bunyan was twenty-eight years of age when he published this work, and
as he attacked the follies of his times, and what he deemed to be
heresies, were exposed to Scripture light and condemned without mercy,
it very naturally involved him in controversy. This brought forth the
remarkable resources of his mind, which was stored with the
Scriptures—his fearlessness—ready wit and keen retort, much sanctified
by an earnest desire for the salvation of his opponents. An
extraordinary man, younger than himself, full of energy and enthusiasm,
entered the lists with him; and in Edward Burrough, very properly
called a son of thunder and of consolation, Bunyan found an able
disputant. He was talented, pious, and fearless in his Master’s work,
and became eminently useful in laying the foundation of the Society of
Friends. Soon after this he was numbered with the noble army of martyrs
at the age of twenty-eight, being sacrificed in Newgate, at the shrine
of religious intolerance.

At this time the Quakers were not united as a body, and consequently
there was no test of character nor rules of discipline for those who
assumed that name. They were very dissimilar men to their quiet and
unobtrusive descendants. The markets, fairs, and every public concourse
were attended by them, denouncing false weights and measures,
drunkenness and villany, with the curses of the Almighty, calling upon
the people, frequently with furious and fearful energy and powerful
eloquence, to repent, and cry unto God, that his mercy might be
extended to the salvation of their immortal souls. their zeal led them
to many breaches of good manners. They would enter churches, and after
the service, when the quiet folks were thinking of gratifying their
bodies with a substantial dinner, they were arrested by the violent
declamation of a man or woman, frequently denouncing the priest as
being the blind leading the blind. This naturally led to a scene of
riot and confusion, in which the Quakers were in many cases handled
with great barbarity. among these disturbers were mingled persons of
bad character. The violence of sectarian feeling in the churches thus
disturbed, made no discrimination between bad and good; they were
equally subjected to the roughest treatment. Bunyan attacked those who
denied that Christ had appeared in the world as Emmanuel, God with us
‘in fashion as a man,’ that by the infinite merits of his life and
death imputed to believers, they might be made holy. His attack was
also directed against those who refused obedience to the written Word,
or who relied upon inward light in contradistinction and preference to
the Bible. The title to Burrough’s answer is a strange contrast to the
violence of his language—The Gospel of Peace Contended for in the
Spirit of Meekness and Love. In this spirit of meekness he calls his
opponents ‘crafty fowlers preying upon the innocent’; and lovingly
exclaims, ‘How long shall the righteous be a prey to your teeth, ye
subtle foxes; your dens are in darkness, and your mischief is hatched
upon your beds of secret whoredoms.’ The unhallowed spirit of the age
mistook abuse for argument, and harsh epithets for faithful
dealing.[186]

Bunyan replied in _A Vindication of Gospel Truths_, to the great
satisfaction of all his friends; and although Burrough answered this
tract also, Bunyan very wisely allowed his railing opponent to have the
last word, and applied his great powers to more important labours than
caviling with one who in reality did not differ with him. The Quaker
had been seriously misled by supposing that the Baptist was a hireling
preacher; and we must be pleased that he was so falsely charged,
because it elicited a crushing reply. Burrough, in reply to an
imputation made by Bunyan, that the Quakers were the false prophets
alluded to in Scripture, observed that ‘in those days there was not a
Quaker heard of.’ ‘Friend,’ replied Bunyan, ‘thou hast rightly said,
there was not a Quaker heard of indeed, though there were many
Christians heard of then. Again, to defend thyself thou throwest the
dirt in my face, saying, If we should diligently trace thee, we should
find thee in the steps of the false prophets, through fancied words,
through covetousness, making merchandise of souls, loving the wages of
unrighteousness.’ To which Bunyan replied; ‘Friend, dost thou speak
this as from thy own knowledge, or did any other tell thee so? However,
that spirit that led thee out this way, is a lying spirit; for though I
be poor, and of no repute in the world as to outward things, yet
through grace I have learned, by the example of the apostle, to preach
the truth, and also to work with my hands, both for mine own living,
and for those that are with me, when I have opportunity. And I trust
that the Lord Jesus, who hath helped me to reject the wages of
unrighteousness hitherto, will also help me still, so that I shall
distribute that which God hath given me freely, and not for filthy
lucre sake.’[187] Thus had he learned of the apostle to ‘make the
gospel of Christ without charge’ (1 Cor 9:18); and upon this subject
they strangely agreed. The same agreement existed between them upon the
necessity of inward light from the Holy Spirit; without which they both
considered the Bible to be a dead letter. The peculiar principle which
separates the Quaker from every other Christian community, has nothing
to do with the light within. Upon that subject all evangelical sects
are agreed. The substantial difference is whether our Lord intended the
work of the ministry to be exclusively a work of benevolence, charity,
and love, binding all who are capable of using the talent intrusted to
them, to do it without worldly reward. Surely every man may be
satisfied in his own mind upon such a subject, without quarrelling
with, or anathematizing each other. Bunyan and Burrough agreed, without
knowing it, in the sentiments of their illustrious and learned
cotemporary, John Milton, as to the ministry being without charge; and
had they, when offended, followed their Master’s rule, ‘If thy brother
trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him
alone’ (Matt 18:15), had they met, and on their knees before the throne
of grace, sought from heaven wisdom and charity in defending Divine
truth, we can easily imagine that the approbation of God w

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