It cannot have been more than two or three years after Bunyan's return
home from his short experience of a soldier's life, that he took the step
which, more than any other, influences a man's future career for good or
for evil. The young tinker married. With his characteristic disregard
of all facts or dates but such as concern his spiritual history, Bunyan
tells us nothing about the orphan girl he made his wife. Where he found
her, who her parents were, where they were married, even her christian
name, were all deemed so many irrelevant details. Indeed the fact of his
marriage would probably have been passed over altogether but for the
important bearing it hid on his inner life. His "mercy," as he calls it,
"was to light upon a wife whose father was counted godly," and who,
though she brought him no marriage portion, so that they "came together
as poor as poor might be," as "poor as howlets," to adopt his own simile,
"without so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt" them, yet
brought with her to the Elstow cottage two religious books, which had
belonged to her father, and which he "had left her when he died." These
books were "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," the work of Arthur Dent,
the puritan incumbent of Shoebury, in Essex--"wearisomely heavy and
theologically narrow," writes Dr. Brown--and "The Practise of Piety," by
Dr. Lewis Bayley, Bishop of Bangor, and previously chaplain to Prince
Henry, which enjoyed a wide reputation with puritans as well as with
churchmen. Together with these books, the young wife brought the still
more powerful influence of a religious training, and the memory of a holy
example, often telling her young graceless husband "what a godly man her
father was, and how he would reprove and correct vice both in his house
and amongst his neighbours, and what a strict and holy life he lived in
his days both in word and deed." Much as Bunyan tells us he had lost of
the "little he had learnt" at school, he had not lost it "utterly." He
was still able to read intelligently. His wife's gentle influence
prevailed on him to begin "sometimes to read" her father's legacy "with
her." This must have been entirely new reading for Bunyan, and certainly
at first not much to his taste. What his favourite reading had been up
to this time, his own nervous words tell us, "Give me a ballad, a news-
book, George on Horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book
that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables." But as he and his
young wife read these books together at their fireside, a higher taste
was gradually awakened in Bunyan's mind; "some things" in them he "found
somewhat pleasing" to him, and they "begot" within him "some desires to
religion," producing a degree of outward reformation. The spiritual
instinct was aroused. He would be a godly man like his wife's father. He
began to "go to church twice a day, and that too with the foremost." Nor
was it a mere formal attendance, for when there he tells us he took his
part with all outward devotion in the service, "both singing and saying
as others did; yet," as he penitently confesses, "retaining his wicked
life," the wickedness of which, however, did not amount to more than a
liking for the sports and games of the lads of the village, bell-ringing,
dancing, and the like. The prohibition of all liturgical forms issued in
1645, the observance of which varied with the strictness or laxity of the
local authorities, would not seem to have been put in force very rigidly
at Elstow. The vicar, Christopher Hall, was an Episcopalian, who, like
Bishop Sanderson, retained his benefice unchallenged all through the
Protectorate, and held it some years after the Restoration and the
passing of the Act of Uniformity. He seems, like Sanderson, to have kept
himself within the letter of the law by making trifling variations in the
Prayer Book formularies, consistent with a general conformity to the old
order of the Church, "without persisting to his own destruction in the
usage of the entire liturgy." The decent dignity of the ceremonial of
his parish church had a powerful effect on Bunyan's freshly awakened
religious susceptibility--a "spirit of superstition" he called it
afterwards--and helped to its fuller development. "I adored," he says,
"with great devotion, even all things, both the High Place"--altars then
had not been entirely broken down and levelled in Bedfordshire--"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 of God and were principal in the Holy Temple, to do His work
therein, . . . their name, their garb, and work, did so intoxicate and
bewitch me." If it is questionable whether the Act forbidding the use of
the Book of Common Prayer was strictly observed at Elstow, it is certain
that the prohibition of Sunday sports was not. Bunyan's narrative shows
that the aspect of a village green in Bedfordshire during the
Protectorate did not differ much from what Baxter tells us it had been in
Shropshire before the civil troubles began, where, "after the Common
Prayer had been read briefly, the rest of the day even till dark night
almost, except eating time, was spent in dancing under a maypole and a
great tree, when all the town did meet together." These Sunday sports
proved the battle-ground of Bunyan's spiritual experience, the scene of
the fierce inward struggles which he has described so vividly, through
which he ultimately reached the firm ground of solid peace and hope. As
a high-spirited healthy athletic young fellow, all kinds of manly sports
were Bunyan's delight. On week days his tinker's business, which he
evidently pursued industriously, left him small leisure for such
amusements. Sunday therefore was the day on which he "did especially
solace himself" with them. He had yet to learn the identification of
diversions with "all manner of vice." The teaching came in this way. One
Sunday, Vicar Hall preached a sermon on the sin of Sabbath-breaking, and
like many hearers before and since, he imagined that it was aimed
expressly at him. Sermon ended, he went home "with a great burden upon
his spirit," "sermon-stricken" and "sermon sick" as he expresses it
elsewhere. But his Sunday's dinner speedily drove away his
self-condemning thoughts. He "shook the sermon out of his mind," and
went out to his sports with the Elstow lads on the village green, with as
"great delight" as ever. But in the midst of his game of tip-cat or
"sly," just as he had struck the "cat" from its hole, and was going to
give it a second blow--the minuteness of the detail shows the
unforgetable reality of the crisis--he seemed to hear a voice from heaven
asking him whether "he would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his
sins and go to hell." He thought also that he saw Jesus Christ looking
down on him with threatening countenance. But like his own Hopeful he
"shut his eyes against the light," and silenced the condemning voice with
the feeling that repentance was hopeless. "It was too late for him to
look after heaven; he was past pardon." If his condemnation was already
sealed and he was eternally lost, it would not matter whether he was
condemned for many sins or for few. Heaven was gone already. The only
happiness he could look for was what he could get out of his sins--his
morbidly sensitive conscience perversely identifying sports with sin--so
he returned desperately to his games, resolved, he says, to "take my fill
of sin, still studying what sin was yet to be committed that I might
taste the sweetness of it."
This desperate recklessness lasted with him "about a month or more," till
"one day as he was standing at a neighbour's shop-window, cursing and
swearing and playing the madman after his wonted manner, the woman of the
house, though a very loose and ungodly wretch," rebuked him so severely
as "the ungodliest fellow for swearing that ever she heard, able to spoil
all the youth in a whole town," that, self-convicted, he hung down his
head in silent shame, wishing himself a little child again that he might
unlearn the wicked habit of which he thought it impossible to break
himself. Hopeless as the effort seemed to him, it proved effectual. He
did "leave off his swearing" to his own "great wonder," and found that he
"could speak better and with more pleasantness" than when he "put an oath
before and another behind, to give his words authority." Thus was one
step in his reformation taken, and never retraced; but, he adds
sorrowfully, "all this while I knew not Jesus Christ, neither did I leave
my sports and plays." We might be inclined to ask, why should he leave
them? But indifferent and innocent in themselves, an overstrained
spirituality had taught him to regard them as sinful. To indulge in them
wounded his morbidly sensitive conscience, and so they were sin to him.
The next step onward in this religious progress was the study of the
Bible, to which he was led by the conversation of a poor godly neighbour.
Naturally he first betook himself to the historical books, which, he
tells us, he read "with great pleasure;" but, like Baxter who, beginning
his Bible reading in the same course, writes, "I neither understood nor
relished much the doctrinal part," he frankly confesses, "Paul's Epistles
and such like Scriptures I could not away with." His Bible reading
helped forward the outward reformation he had begun. He set the keeping
the Ten Commandments before him as his "way to Heaven"; much comforted
"sometimes" when, as he thought, "he kept them pretty well," but humbled
in conscience when "now and then he broke one." "But then," he says, "I
should repent and say I was sorry for it, and promise God to do better
next time, and then get help again; for then I thought I pleased God as
well as any man in England." His progress was slow, for each step
involved a battle, but it was steadily onwards. He had a very hard
struggle in relinquishing his favourite amusements. But though he had
much yet to learn, his feet were set on the upward way, and he had no
mind to go back, great as the temptation often was. He had once
delighted in bell-ringing, but "his conscience beginning to be
tender"--morbid we should rather say--"he thought such practise to be
vain, and therefore forced himself to leave it." But "hankering after it
still," he continued to go while his old companions rang, and look on at
what he "durst not" join in, until the fear that if he thus winked at
what his conscience condemned, a bell, or even the tower itself, might
fall and kill him, put a stop even to that compromise. Dancing, which
from his boyhood he had practised on the village green, or in the old
Moot Hall, was still harder to give up. "It was a full year before I
could quite leave that." But this too was at last renounced, and
finally. The power of Bunyan's indomitable will was bracing itself for
severe trials yet to come.
Meanwhile Bunyan's neighbours regarded with amazement the changed life of
the profane young tinker. "And truly," he honestly confesses, "so they
well might for this my conversion was as great as for Tom of Bedlam to
become a sober man." Bunyan's reformation was soon the town's talk; he
had "become godly," "become a right honest man." These commendations
flattered is vanity, and he laid himself out for them. He was then but a
"poor painted hypocrite," he says, "proud of his godliness, and doing all
he did either to be seen of, or well spoken of by man." This state of
self-satisfaction, he tells us, lasted "for about a twelvemonth or more."
During this deceitful calm he says, "I had great peace of conscience, and
should think with myself, 'God cannot choose but now be pleased with me,'
yea, to relate it in mine own way, I thought no man in England could
please God better than I." But no outward reformation can bring lasting
inward peace. When a man is honest with himself, the more earnestly he
struggles after complete obedience, the more faulty does his obedience
appear. The good opinion of others will not silence his own inward
condemnation. He needs a higher righteousness than his own; a firmer
standing-ground than the shifting quicksand of his own good deeds. "All
this while," he writes, "poor wretch as I was, I was ignorant of Jesus
Christ, and going about to establish my own righteousness, and had
perished therein had not God in mercy showed me more of my state by
nature."
This revolution was nearer than he imagined. Bunyan's self-satisfaction
was rudely shaken, and his need of something deeper in the way of
religion than he had yet experienced was shown him by the conversation of
three or four poor women whom, one day, when pursuing his tinker's
calling at Bedford, he came upon "sitting at a door in the sun, and
talking of the things of God." These women were members of the
congregation of "the holy Mr. John Gifford," who, at that time of
ecclesiastical confusion, subsequently became rector of St. John's
Church, in Bedford, and master of the hospital attached to it. Gifford's
career had been a strange one. We hear of him first as a young major in
the king's army at the outset of the Civil War, notorious for his loose
and debauched life, taken by Fairfax at Maidstone in 1648, and condemned
to the gallows. By his sister's help he eluded his keepers' vigilance,
escaped from prison, and ultimately found his way to Bedford, where for a
time he practised as a physician, though without any change of his loose
habits. The loss of a large sum of money at gaming awoke a disgust at
his dissolute life. A few sentences of a pious book deepened the
impression. He became a converted man, and joined himself to a handful
of earnest Christians in Bedford, who becoming, in the language of the
day, "a church," he was appointed its first minister. Gifford exercised
a deep and vital though narrow influence, leaving behind him at his
death, in 1655, the character of a "wise, tolerant, and truly Christian
man." The conversation of the poor women who were destined to exercise
so momentous an influence on Bunyan's spiritual life, evidenced how
thoroughly they had drunk in their pastor's teaching. Bunyan himself was
at this time a "brisk talker in the matters of religion," such as he drew
from the life in his own Talkative. But the words of these poor women
were entirely beyond him. They opened a new and blessed land to which he
was a complete stranger. "They spoke of their own wretchedness of heart,
of their unbelief, of their miserable state by nature, of the new birth,
and the work of God in their souls, and how the Lord refreshed them, and
supported them against the temptations of the Devil by His words and
promises." But what seems to have struck Bunyan the most forcibly was
the happiness which their religion shed in the hearts of these poor
women. Religion up to this time had been to him a system of rules and
restrictions. Heaven was to be won by doing certain things and not doing
certain other things. Of religion as a Divine life kindled in the soul,
and flooding it with a joy which creates a heaven on earth, he had no
conception. Joy in believing was a new thing to him. "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," a veritable "El Dorado,"
stored with the true riches. Bunyan, as he says, after he had listened
awhile and wondered at their words, left them and went about his work
again. But their words went with him. He could not get rid of them. He
saw that though he thought himself a godly man, and his neighbours
thought so too, he wanted the true tokens of godliness. He was convinced
that godliness was the only true happiness, and he could not rest till he
had attained it. So he made it his business to be going again and again
into the company of these good women. He could not stay away, and the
more he talked with them the more uneasy he became--"the more I
questioned my own condition." The salvation of his soul became all in
all to him. His mind "lay fixed on eternity like a horse-leech at the
vein." The Bible became precious to him. He read it with new eyes, "as
I never did before." "I was indeed then never out of the Bible, either
by reading or meditation." The Epistles of St. Paul, which before he
"could not away with," were now "sweet and pleasant" to him. He was
still "crying out to God that he might know the truth and the way to
Heaven and glory." Having no one to guide him in his study of the most
difficult of all books, it is no wonder that he misinterpreted and
misapplied its words in a manner which went far to unsettle his brain. He
read that without faith he could not be saved, and though he did not
clearly know what faith was, it became a question of supreme anxiety to
him to determine whether he had it or not. If not, he was a castaway
indeed, doomed to perish for ever. So he determined to put it to the
test. The Bible told him that faith, "even as a grain of mustard seed,"
would enable its possessor to work miracles. So, as Mr. Froude says,
"not understanding Oriental metaphors," he thought he had here a simple
test which would at once solve the question. One day as he was walking
along the miry road between Elstow and Bedford, which he had so often
paced as a schoolboy, "the temptation came hot upon him" to put the
matter to the proof, by saying to the puddles that were in the horse-pads
"be dry," and to the dry places, "be ye puddles." He was just about to
utter the words when a sudden thought stopped him. Would it not be
better just to go under the hedge and pray that God would enable him?
This pause saved him from a rash venture, which might have landed him in
despair. For he concluded that if he tried after praying and nothing
came of it, it would prove that he had no faith, but was a castaway.
"Nay, thought I, if it be so, I will never try yet, but will stay a
little longer." "Then," he continues, "I was so tossed betwixt the Devil
and my own ignorance, and so perplexed, especially at sometimes, that I
could not tell what to do." At another time his mind, as the minds of
thousands have been and will be to the end, was greatly harassed by the
insoluble problems of predestination and election. The question was not
now whether he had faith, but "whether he was one of the elect or not,
and if not, what then?" "He might as well leave off and strive no
further." And then the strange fancy occurred to him, that the good
people at Bedford whose acquaintance he had recently made, were all that
God meant to save in that part of the country, and that the day of grace
was past and gone for him; that he had overstood the time of mercy. "Oh
that he had turned sooner!" was then his cry. "Oh that he had turned
seven years before! What a fool he had been to trifle away his time till
his soul and heaven were lost!" The text, "compel them to come in, and
yet there is room," came to his rescue when he was so harassed and faint
that he was "scarce able to take one step more." He found them "sweet
words," for they showed him that there was "place enough in heaven for
him," and he verily believed that when Christ spoke them He was thinking
of him, and had them recorded to help him to overcome the vile fear that
there was no place left for him in His bosom. But soon another fear
succeeded the former. Was he truly called of Christ? "He called to them
when He would, and they came to Him." But they could not come unless He
called them. Had He called him? Would He call him? If He did how
gladly would he run after Him. But oh, he feared that He had no liking
to him; that He would not call him. True conversion was what he longed
for. "Could it have been gotten for gold," he said, "what could I have
given for it! Had I a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times
over for this, that my soul might have been in a converted state." All
those whom he thought to be truly converted were now lovely in his eyes.
"They shone, they walked like people that carried the broad seal of
heaven about them. Oh that he were like them, and shared in their goodly
heritage!"
About this time Bunyan was greatly troubled, though at the same time
encouraged in his endeavours after the blessedness he longed for so
earnestly but could not yet attain to, by "a dream or vision" which
presented itself to him, whether in his waking or sleeping hours he does
not tell us. He fancied he saw his four Bedford friends refreshing
themselves on the sunny side of a high mountain while he was shivering
with dark and cold on the other side, parted from them by a high wall
with only one small gap in it, and that not found but after long
searching, and so strait and narrow withal that it needed long and
desperate efforts to force his way through. At last he succeeded.
"Then," he says, "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."
But this sunshine shone but in illusion, and soon gave place to the old
sad questioning, which filled his soul with darkness. Was he already
called, or should he be called some day? He would give worlds to know.
Who could assure him? At last some words of the prophet Joel (chap. iii,
21) encouraged him to hope that if not converted already, the time might
come when he should be converted to Christ. Despair began to give way to
hopefulness.
At this crisis Bunyan took the step which he would have been wise if he
had taken long before. He sought the sympathy and counsel of others. He
began to speak his mind to the poor people in Bedford whose words of
religious experiences had first revealed to him his true condition. By
them he was introduced to their pastor, "the godly Mr. Gifford," who
invited him to his house and gave him spiritual counsel. He began to
attend the meetings of his disciples.
The teaching he received here was but ill-suited for one of Bunyan's
morbid sensitiveness. For it was based upon a constant introspection and
a scrupulous weighing of each word and action, with a torturing suspicion
of its motive, which made a man's ever-varying spiritual feelings the
standard of his state before God, instead of leading him off from self to
the Saviour. It is not, therefore, at all surprising that a considerable
period intervened before, in the language of his school, "he found
peace." This period, which seems to have embraced two or three years,
was marked by that tremendous inward struggle which he has described, "as
with a pen of fire," in that marvellous piece of religious autobiography,
without a counterpart except in "The Confessions of St. Augustine," his
"Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." Bunyan's first experiences
after his introduction to Mr. Gifford and the inner circle of his
disciples were most discouraging. What he heard of God's dealings with
their souls showed him something of "the vanity and inward wretchedness
of his wicked heart," and at the same time roused all its hostility to
God's will. "It did work at that rate for wickedness as it never did
before." "The Canaanites _would_ dwell in the land." "His heart
hankered after every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every
duty, as a clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying." He
thought that he was growing "worse and worse," and was "further from
conversion than ever before." Though he longed to let Christ into his
heart, "his unbelief would, as it were, set its shoulder to the door to
keep Him out."
Yet all the while he was tormented with the most perverse scrupulosity of
conscience. "As to the act of sinning, I never was more tender than now;
I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but so big as a straw, for my
conscience now was sore, and would smart at every twist. I could not now
tell how to speak my words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh! how
gingerly did I then go in all I did or said: I found myself in a miry
bog, that shook if I did but stir, and was as those left both of God, and
Christ, and the Spirit, and all good things." All the misdoings of his
earlier years rose up against him. There they were, and he could not rid
himself of them. He thought that no one could be so bad as he was; "not
even the Devil could be his equal: he was more loathsome in his own eyes
than a toad." What then must God think of him? Despair seized fast hold
of him. He thought he was "forsaken of God and given up to the Devil,
and to a reprobate mind." Nor was this a transient fit of despondency.
"Thus," he writes, "I continued a long while, even for some years
together."
This is not the place minutely to pursue Bunyan's religious history
through the sudden alternations of hopes and fears, the fierce
temptations, the torturing illusions, the strange perversions of isolated
scraps of Bible language--texts torn from their context--the harassing
doubts as to the truth of Christianity, the depths of despair and the
elevations of joy, which he has portrayed with his own inimitable graphic
power. It is a picture of fearful fascination that he draws. "A great
storm" at one time comes down upon him, "piece by piece," which "handled
him twenty times worse than all he had met with before," while "floods of
blasphemies were poured upon his spirit," and would "bolt out of his
heart." He felt himself driven to commit the unpardonable sin and
blaspheme the Holy Ghost, "whether he would or no." "No sin would serve
but that." He was ready to "clap his hand under his chin," to keep his
mouth shut, or to leap head-foremost "into some muckhill-hole," to
prevent his uttering the fatal words. At last he persuaded himself that
he had committed the sin, and a good but not overwise man, "an ancient
Christian," whom he consulted on his sad case, told him he thought so
too, "which was but cold comfort." He thought himself possessed by the
devil, and compared himself to a child "carried off under her apron by a
gipsy." "Kick sometimes I did, and also shriek and cry, but yet I was as
bound in the wings of the temptation, and the wind would carry me away."
He wished himself "a dog or a toad," for they "had no soul to be lost as
his was like to be;" and again a hopeless callousness seemed to settle
upon him. "If I would have given a thousand pounds for a tear I could
not shed one; no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one." And yet he
was all the while bewailing this hardness of heart, in which he thought
himself singular. "This much sunk me. I thought my condition was alone;
but how to get out of, or get rid of, these things I could not." Again
the very ground of his faith was shaken. "Was the Bible true, or was it
not rather a fable and cunning story?" All thought "their own religion
true. Might not the Turks have as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet
Saviour as Christians had for Christ? What if all we believed in should
be but 'a think-so' too?" So powerful and so real were his illusions
that he had hard work to keep himself from praying to things about him,
to "a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like," or even to Satan himself. He
heard voices behind him crying out that Satan desired to have him, and
that "so loud and plain that he would turn his head to see who was
calling him;" when on his knees in prayer he fancied he felt the foul
fiend pull his clothes from behind, bidding him "break off, make haste;
you have prayed enough."
This "horror of great darkness" was not always upon him. Bunyan had his
intervals of "sunshine-weather" when Giant Despair's fits came on him,
and the giant "lost the use of his hand." Texts of Scripture would give
him a "sweet glance," and flood his soul with comfort. But these
intervals of happiness were but short-lived. They were but "hints,
touches, and short visits," sweet when present, but "like Peter's sheet,
suddenly caught up again into heaven." But, though transient, they
helped the burdened Pilgrim onward. So vivid was the impression
sometimes made, that years after he could specify the place where these
beams of sunlight fell on him--"sitting in a neighbour's
house,"--"travelling into the country,"--as he was "going home from
sermon." And the joy was real while it lasted. The words of the
preacher's text, "Behold, thou art fair, my love," kindling his spirit,
he felt his "heart filled with comfort and hope." "Now I could believe
that my sins would be forgiven." He was almost beside himself with
ecstasy. "I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I
thought I could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon
the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood
me." "Surely," he cried with gladness, "I will not forget this forty
years hence." "But, alas! within less than forty days I began to
question all again." It was the Valley of the Shadow of Death which
Bunyan, like his own Pilgrim, was travelling through. But, as in his
allegory, "by and by the day broke," and "the Lord did more fully and
graciously discover Himself unto him." "One day," he writes, "as I was
musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart, that scripture came
into my mind, 'He hath made peace by the Blood of His Cross.' By which I
was made to see, both again and again and again that day, that God and my
soul were friends by this blood: Yea, I saw the justice of God and my
sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other. This was a good day to
me. I hope I shall not forget it." At another time the "glory and joy"
of a passage in the Hebrews (ii. 14-15) were "so weighty" that "I was
once or twice ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble, but
with solid joy and peace." "But, oh! now how was my soul led on from
truth to truth by God; now had I evidence of my salvation from heaven,
with many golden seals thereon all banging in my sight, and I would long
that the last day were come, or that I were fourscore years old, that I
might die quickly that my soul might be at rest."
At this time he fell in with an old tattered copy of Luther's "Commentary
on the Galatians," "so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece if
I did but turn it over." As he read, to his amazement and thankfulness,
he found his own spiritual experience described. "It was as if his book
had been written out of my heart." It greatly comforted him to find that
his condition was not, as he had thought, solitary, but that others had
known the same inward struggles. "Of all the books that ever he had
seen," he deemed it "most fit for a wounded conscience." This book was
also the means of awakening an intense love for the Saviour. "Now I
found, as I thought, that I loved Christ dearly. Oh, methought my soul
cleaved unto Him, my affections cleaved unto Him; I felt love to Him as
hot as fire."
And very quickly, as he tells us, his "love was tried to some purpose."
He became the victim of an extraordinary temptation--"a freak of fancy,"
Mr. Froude terms it--"fancy resenting the minuteness with which he
watched his own emotions." He had "found Christ" and felt Him "most
precious to his soul." He was now tempted to give Him up, "to sell and
part with this most blessed Christ, to exchange Him for the things of
this life; for anything." Nor was this a mere passing, intermittent
delusion. "It lay upon me for the space of a year, and did follow me so
continually that I was not rid of it one day in a month, no, not
sometimes one hour in many days together, except when I was asleep."
Wherever he was, whatever he was doing day and night, in bed, at table,
at work, a voice kept sounding in his ears, bidding him "sell Christ" for
this or that. He could neither "eat his food, stoop for a pin, chop a
stick, or cast his eyes on anything" but the hateful words were heard,
"not once only, but a hundred times over, as fast as a man could speak,
'sell Him, sell Him, sell Him,'" and, like his own Christian in the dark
valley, he could not determine whether they were suggestions of the
Wicked One, or came from his own heart. The agony was so intense, while,
for hours together, he struggled with the temptation, that his whole body
was convulsed by it. It was no metaphorical, but an actual, wrestling
with a tangible enemy. He "pushed and thrust with his hands and elbows,"
and kept still answering, as fast as the destroyer said "sell Him," "No,
I will not, I will not, I will not! not for thousands, thousands,
thousands of worlds!" at least twenty times together. But the fatal
moment at last came, and the weakened will yielded, against itself. One
morning as he lay in his bed, the voice came again with redoubled force,
and would not be silenced. He fought against it as long as he could,
"even until I was almost out of breath," when "without any conscious
action of his will" the suicidal words shaped themselves in his heart,
"Let Him go if He will."
Now all was over. He had spoken the words and they could not be
recalled. Satan had "won the battle," and "as a bird that is shot from
the top of a tree, down fell he into great guilt and fearful despair." He
left his bed, dressed, and went "moping into the field," where for the
next two hours he was "like a man bereft of life, and as one past all
recovery and bound to eternal punishment." The most terrible examples in
the Bible came trooping before him. He had sold his birthright like
Esau. He a betrayed his Master like Judas--"I was ashamed that I should
be like such an ugly man as Judas." There was no longer any place for
repentance. He was past all recovery; shut up unto the judgment to come.
He dared hardly pray. When he tried to do so, he was "as with a tempest
driven away from God," while something within said, "'Tis too late; I am
lost; God hath let me fall." The texts which once had comforted him gave
him no comfort now; or, if they did, it was but for a brief space. "About
ten or eleven o'clock one day, as I was walking under a hedge and
bemoaning myself for this hard hap that such a thought should arise
within me, suddenly this sentence bolted upon me, 'The blood of Christ
cleanseth from all sin,'" and gave me "good encouragement." But in two
or three hours all was gone. The terrible words concerning Esau's
selling his birthright took possession of his mind, and "held him down."
This "stuck with him." Though he "sought it carefully with tears," there
was no restoration for him. His agony received a terrible aggravation
from a highly coloured narrative of the terrible death of Francis Spira,
an Italian lawyer of the middle of the sixteenth century, who, having
embraced the Protestant religion, was induced by worldly motives to
return to the Roman Catholic Church, and died full of remorse and
despair, from which Bunyan afterwards drew the awful picture of "the man
in the Iron Cage" at "the Interpreter's house." The reading of this book
was to his "troubled spirit" as "salt when rubbed into a fresh wound,"
"as knives and daggers in his soul." We cannot wonder that his health
began to give way under so protracted a struggle. His naturally sturdy
frame was "shaken by a continual trembling." He would "wind and twine
and shrink under his burden," the weight of which so crushed him that he
"could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet." His
digestion became disordered, and a pain, "as if his breastbone would have
split asunder," made him fear that as he had been guilty of Judas' sin,
so he was to perish by Judas' end, and "burst asunder in the midst." In
the trembling of his limbs he saw Cain's mark set upon him; God had
marked him out for his curse. No one was ever so bad as he. No one had
ever sinned so flagrantly. When he compared his sins with those of David
and Solomon and Manasseh and others which had been pardoned, he found his
sin so much exceeded theirs that he could have no hope of pardon. Theirs,
"it was true, were great sins; sins of a bloody colour. But none of them
were of the nature of his. He had sold his Saviour. His sin was point
blank against Christ." "Oh, methought this sin was bigger than the sins
of a country, of a kingdom, or of the whole world; not all of them
together was able to equal mine; mine outwent them every one."
It would be wearisome to follow Bunyan through all the mazes of his self-
torturing illusions. Fierce as the storm was, and long in its
duration--for it was more than two years before the storm became a
calm--the waves, though he knew it not, in their fierce tossings which
threatened to drive his soul like a broken vessel headlong on the rocks
of despair, were bearing him nearer and nearer to the "haven where he
would be." His vivid imagination, as we have seen, surrounded him with
audible voices. He had heard, as he thought, the tempter bidding him
"Sell Christ;" now he thought he heard God "with a great voice, as it
were, over his shoulder behind him," saying, "Return unto Me, for I have
redeemed thee;" and though he felt that the voice mocked him, for he
could not return, there was "no place of repentance" for him, and fled
from it, it still pursued him, "holloaing after him, 'Return, return!'"
And return he did, but not all at once, or without many a fresh struggle.
With his usual graphic power he describes the zigzag path by which he
made his way. His hot and cold fits alternated with fearful suddenness.
"As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him up." "His life hung in doubt,
not knowing which way he should tip." More sensible evidence came. "One
day," he tells us, "as I walked to and fro in a good man's shop"--we can
hardly be wrong in placing it in Bedford--"bemoaning myself for this hard
hap of mine, for that I should commit so great a sin, greatly fearing
that I should not be pardoned, and ready to sink with fear, suddenly
there was as if there had rushed in at the window the noise of wind upon
me, but very pleasant, and I heard a voice speaking, 'Did'st ever refuse
to be justified by the Blood of Christ?'" Whether the voice were
supernatural or not, he was not, "in twenty years' time," able to
determine. At the time he thought it was. It was "as if an angel had
come upon me." "It commanded a great calm upon me. It persuaded me
there might be hope." But this persuasion soon vanished. "In three or
four days I began to despair again." He found it harder than ever to
pray. The devil urged that God was weary of him; had been weary for
years past; that he wanted to get rid of him and his "bawlings in his
ears," and therefore He had let him commit this particular sin that he
might be cut off altogether. For such an one to pray was but to add sin
to sin. There was no hope for him. Christ might indeed pity him and
wish to help him; but He could not, for this sin was unpardonable. He
had said "let Him go if He will," and He had taken him at his word.
"Then," he says, "I was always sinking whatever I did think or do." Years
afterwards he remembered how, in this time of hopelessness, having walked
one day, to a neighbouring town, wearied out with his misery, he sat down
on a settle in the street to ponder over his fearful state. As he looked
up, everything he saw seemed banded together for the destruction of so
vile a sinner. The "sun grudged him its light, the very stones in the
streets and the tiles on the house-roofs seemed to bend themselves
against him." He burst forth with a grievous sigh, "How can God comfort
such a wretch as I?" Comfort was nearer than he imagined. "No sooner
had I said it, but this returned to me, as an echo doth answer a voice,
'This sin is not unto death.'" This breathed fresh life into his soul.
He was "as if he had been raised out of a grave." "It was a release to
me from my former bonds, a shelter from my former storm." But though the
storm was allayed it was by no means over. He had to struggle hard to
maintain his ground. "Oh, how did Satan now lay about him for to bring
me down again. But he could by no means do it, for this sentence stood
like a millpost at my back." But after two days the old despairing
thoughts returned, "nor could his faith retain the word." A few hours,
however, saw the return of his hopes. As he was on his knees before
going to bed, "seeking the Lord with strong cries," a voice echoed his
prayer, "I have loved Thee with an everlasting love." "Now I went to bed
at quiet, and when I awaked the next morning it was fresh upon my soul
and I believed it."
These voices from heaven--whether real or not he could not tell, nor did
he much care, for they were real to him--were continually sounding in his
ears to help him out of the fresh crises of his spiritual disorder. At
one time "O man, great is thy faith," "fastened on his heart as if one
had clapped him on the back." At another, "He is able," spoke suddenly
and loudly within his heart; at another, that "piece of a sentence," "My
grace is sufficient," darted in upon him "three times together," and he
was "as though he had seen the Lord Jesus look down through the tiles
upon him," and was sent mourning but rejoicing home. But it was still
with him like an April sky. At one time bright sunshine, at another
lowering clouds. The terrible words about Esau "returned on him as
before," and plunged him in darkness, and then again some good words, "as
it seemed writ in great letters," brought back the light of day. But the
sunshine began to last longer than before, and the clouds were less
heavy. The "visage" of the threatening texts was changed; "they looked
not on him so grimly as before;" "that about Esau's birthright began to
wax weak and withdraw and vanish." "Now remained only the hinder part of
the tempest. The thunder was gone; only a few drops fell on him now and
then."
The long-expected deliverance was at hand. As he was walking in the
fields, still with some fears in his heart, the sentence fell upon his
soul, "Thy righteousness is in heaven." He looked up and "saw with the
eyes of his soul our Saviour at God's right hand." "There, I say, was my
righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God
could not say of me, 'He wants my righteousness,' for that was just
before Him. Now did the chains fall off from my legs. I was loosed from
my affliction and irons. My temptations also fled away, so that from
that time those dreadful Scriptures left off to trouble me. Oh methought
Christ, Christ, there was nothing but Christ that was before mine eyes. I
could look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those graces of
God that now were green upon me, were yet but like those crack-groats,
and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, while
their gold is in their trunks at home. Oh, I saw my gold was in my trunk
at home. In Christ my Lord and Saviour. Further the Lord did lead me
into the mystery of union with the Son of God. His righteousness was
mine, His merits mine, His victory also mine. Now I could see myself in
heaven and earth at once; in heaven by my Christ, by my Head, by my
Righteousness and Life, though on earth by my body or person. These
blessed considerations were made to spangle in mine eyes. Christ was my
all; all my Wisdom, all my Righteousness, all my Sanctification, and all
my Redemption."