The Pilgrim, having now floundered through the Slough of Despond, passed
through the Wicket Gate, climbed the Hill Difficulty, and got safe by the
Lions, entered the Palace Beautiful, and was "had in to the family." In
plain words, Bunyan united himself to the little Christian brotherhood at
Bedford, of which the former loose-living royalist major, Mr. Gifford,
was the pastor, and was formally admitted into their society. In Gifford
we recognize the prototype of the Evangelist of "The Pilgrim's Progress,"
while the Prudence, Piety, and Charity of Bunyan's immortal narrative had
their human representatives in devout female members of the congregation,
known in their little Bedford world as Sister Bosworth, Sister Munnes,
and Sister Fenne, three of the poor women whose pleasant words on the
things of God, as they sat at a doorway in the sun, "as if joy did make
them speak," had first opened Bunyan's eyes to his spiritual ignorance.
He was received into the church by baptism, which, according to his
earliest biographer, Charles Doe "the Struggler," was performed publicly
by Mr. Gifford, in the river Ouse, the "Bedford river" into which Bunyan
tells us he once fell out of a boat, and barely escaped drowning. This
was about the year 1653. The exact date is uncertain. Bunyan never
mentions his baptism himself, and the church books of Gifford's
congregation do not commence till May, 1656, the year after Gifford's
death. He was also admitted to the Holy Communion, which for want, as he
deemed, of due reverence in his first approach to it, became the occasion
of a temporary revival of his old temptations. While actually at the
Lord's Table he was "forced to bend himself to pray" to be kept from
uttering blasphemies against the ordinance itself, and cursing his fellow
communicants. For three-quarters of a year he could "never have rest or
ease" from this shocking perversity. The constant strain of beating off
this persistent temptation seriously affected his health. "Captain
Consumption," who carried off his own "Mr. Badman," threatened his life.
But his naturally robust constitution "routed his forces," and brought
him through what at one time he anticipated would prove a fatal illness.
Again and again, during his period of indisposition, the Tempter took
advantage of his bodily weakness to ply him with his former despairing
questionings as to his spiritual state. That seemed as bad as bad could
be. "Live he must not; die he dare not." He was repeatedly near giving
up all for lost. But a few words of Scripture brought to his mind would
revive his drooping spirits, with a natural reaction on his physical
health, and he became "well both in body and mind at once." "My sickness
did presently vanish, and I walked comfortably in my work for God again."
At another time, after three or four days of deep dejection, some words
from the Epistle to the Hebrews "came bolting in upon him," and sealed
his sense of acceptance with an assurance he never afterwards entirely
lost. "Then with joy I told my wife, 'Now I know, I know.' That night
was a good night to me; I never had but few better. I could scarce lie
in my bed for joy and peace and triumph through Christ."
During this time Bunyan, though a member of the Bedford congregation,
continued to reside at Elstow, in the little thatched wayside tenement,
with its lean-to forge at one end, already mentioned, which is still
pointed out as "Bunyan's Cottage." There his two children, Mary, his
passionately loved blind daughter, and Elizabeth were born; the one in
1650, and the other in 1654. It was probably in the next year, 1655,
that he finally quitted his native village and took up his residence in
Bedford, and became a deacon of the congregation. About this time also
he must have lost the wife to whom he owed so much. Bunyan does not
mention the event, and our only knowledge of it is from the conversation
of his second wife, Elizabeth, with Sir Matthew Hale. He sustained also
an even greater loss in the death of his friend and comrade, Mr. Gifford,
who died in September, 1655. The latter was succeeded by a young man
named John Burton, of very delicate health, who was taken by death from
his congregation, by whom he was much beloved, in September, 1660, four
months after the restoration of the Monarchy and the Church. Burton
thoroughly appreciated Bunyan's gifts, and stood sponsor for him on the
publication of his first printed work. This was a momentous year for
Bunyan, for in it Dr. Brown has shown, by a "comparison of dates," that
we may probably place the beginning of Bunyan's ministerial life. Bunyan
was now in his twenty-seventh year, in the prime of his manly vigour,
with a vivid imagination, ready speech, minute textual knowledge of the
Bible, and an experience of temptation and the wiles of the evil one,
such as few Christians of double his years have ever reached. "His gifts
could not long be hid." The beginnings of that which was to prove the
great work of his life were slender enough. As Mr. Froude says, "he was
modest, humble, shrinking." The members of his congregation, recognizing
that he had "the gift of utterance" asked him to speak "a word of
exhortation" to them. The request scared him. The most truly gifted are
usually the least conscious of their gifts. At first it did much "dash
and abash his spirit." But after earnest entreaty he gave way, and made
one or two trials of his gift in private meetings, "though with much
weakness and infirmity." The result proved the correctness of his
brethren's estimate. The young tinker showed himself no common preacher.
His words came home with power to the souls of his hearers, who
"protested solemnly, as in the sight of God, that they were both affected
and comforted by them, and gave thanks to the Father of mercies for the
grace bestowed on him." After this, as the brethren went out on their
itinerating rounds to the villages about, they began to ask Bunyan to
accompany them, and though he "durst not make use of his gift in an open
way," he would sometimes, "yet more privately still, speak a word of
admonition, with which his hearers professed their souls edified." That
he had a real Divine call to the ministry became increasingly evident,
both to himself and to others. His engagements of this kind multiplied.
An entry in the Church book records "that Brother Bunyan being taken off
by the preaching of the gospel" from his duties as deacon, another member
was appointed in his room. His appointment to the ministry was not long
delayed. After "some solemn prayer with fasting," he was "called forth
and appointed a preacher of the word," not, however, so much for the
Bedford congregation as for the neighbouring villages. He did not
however, like some, neglect his business, or forget to "show piety at
home." He still continued his craft as a tinker, and that with industry
and success. "God," writes an early biographer, "had increased his
stores so that he lived in great credit among his neighbours." He
speedily became famous as a preacher. People "came in by hundreds to
hear the word, and that from all parts, though upon sundry and divers
accounts,"--"some," as Southey writes, "to marvel, and some perhaps to
mock." Curiosity to hear the once profane tinker preach was not one of
the least prevalent motives. But his word proved a word of power to
many. Those "who came to scoff remained to pray." "I had not preached
long," he says, "before some began to be touched and to be greatly
afflicted in their minds." His success humbled and amazed him, as it
must every true man who compares the work with the worker. "At first,"
he says, "I could not believe that God should speak by me to the heart of
any man, still counting myself unworthy; 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." He preached wherever he found
opportunity, in woods, in barns, on village greens, or even in churches.
But he liked best to preach "in the darkest places of the country, where
people were the furthest off from profession," where he could give the
fullest scope to "the awakening and converting power" he possessed. His
success as a preacher might have tempted him to vanity. But the
conviction that he was but an instrument in the hand of a higher power
kept it down. He saw that if he had gifts and wanted grace he was but as
a "tinkling cymbal." "What, thought I, shall I be proud because I am a
sounding brass? Is it so much to be a fiddle?" This thought was, "as it
were, a maul on the head of the pride and vainglory" which he found
"easily blown up at the applause and commendation of every unadvised
christian." His experiences, like those of every public speaker,
especially the most eloquent, were very varied, even in the course of the
same sermon. Sometimes, he tells us, he would begin "with much
clearness, evidence, and liberty of speech," but, before he had done, he
found himself "so straitened in his speech before the people," that he
"scarce knew or remembered what he had been about," and felt "as if his
head had been in a bag all the time of the exercise." He feared that he
would not be able to "speak sense to the hearers," or he would be "seized
with such faintness and strengthlessness that his legs were hardly able
to carry him to his place of preaching." Old temptations too came back.
Blasphemous thoughts formed themselves into words, which he had hard work
to keep himself from uttering from the pulpit. Or the tempter tried to
silence him by telling him that what he was going to say would condemn
himself, and he would go "full of guilt and terror even to the pulpit
door." "'What,' the devil would say, 'will you preach this? Of this
your own soul is guilty. Preach not of it at all, or if you do, yet so
mince it as to make way for your own escape.'" All, however, was in
vain. Necessity was laid upon him. "Woe," he cried, "is me, if I preach
not the gospel." His heart was "so wrapped up in the glory of this
excellent work, that he counted himself more blessed and honoured of God
than if he had made him emperor of the Christian world." Bunyan was no
preacher of vague generalities. He knew that sermons miss their mark if
they hit no one. Self-application is their object. "Wherefore," he
says, "I laboured so to speak the word, as that the sin and person guilty
might be particularized by it." And what he preached he knew and felt to
be true. It was not what he read in books, but what he had himself
experienced. Like Dante he had been in hell himself, and could speak as
one who knew its terrors, and could tell also of the blessedness of
deliverance by the person and work of Christ. And this consciousness
gave him confidence and courage in declaring his message. It was "as if
an angel of God had stood at my back." "Oh it hath been with such power
and heavenly evidence upon my own soul while I have been labouring to
fasten it upon the conscience of others, that I could not be contented
with saying, 'I believe and am sure.' Methought I was more than sure, if
it be lawful so to express myself, that the things I asserted were true."
Bunyan, like all earnest workers for God, had his disappointments which
wrung his heart. He could be satisfied with nothing less than the
conversion and sanctification of his hearers. "If I were fruitless, it
mattered not who commanded me; but if I were fruitful, I cared not who
did condemn." And the result of a sermon was often very different from
what he anticipated: "When I thought I had done no good, then I did the
most; and when I thought I should catch them, I fished for nothing." "A
word cast in by-the-bye sometimes did more execution than all the Sermon
besides." The tie between him and his spiritual children was very close.
The backsliding of any of his converts caused him the most extreme grief;
"it was more to me than if one of my own children were going to the
grave. Nothing hath gone so near me as that, unless it was the fear of
the loss of the salvation of my own soul."
A story, often repeated, but too characteristic to be omitted,
illustrates the power of his preaching even in the early days of his
ministry. "Being to preach in a church in a country village in
Cambridgeshire"--it was before the Restoration--"and the public being
gathered together in the churchyard, a Cambridge scholar, and none of the
soberest neither, inquired what the meaning of that concourse of people
was (it being a week-day); and being told that one Bunyan, a tinker, was
to preach there, he gave a lad twopence to hold his horse, saying he was
resolved to hear the tinker prate; and so he went into the church to hear
him. But God met him there by His ministry, so that he came out much
changed; and would by his good will hear none but the tinker for a long
time after, he himself becoming a very eminent preacher in that country
afterwards." "This story," continues the anonymous biographer, "I know
to be true, having many times discoursed with the man." To the same ante-
Restoration period, Dr. Brown also assigns the anecdote of Bunyan's
encounter, on the road near Cambridge, with the university man who asked
him how he dared to preach not having the original Scriptures. With
ready wit, Bunyan turned the tables on the scholar by asking whether he
had the actual originals, the copies written by the apostles and
prophets. The scholar replied, "No," but they had what they believed to
be a true copy of the original. "And I," said Bunyan, "believe the
English Bible to be a true copy, too." "Then away rid the scholar."
The fame of such a preacher, naturally, soon spread far and wide; all the
countryside flocked eagerly to hear him. In some places, as at Meldreth
in Cambridgeshire, and Yelden in his own county of Bedfordshire, the
pulpits of the parish churches were opened to him. At Yelden, the
Rector, Dr. William Dell, the Puritan Master of Caius College, Cambridge,
formerly Chaplain to the army under Fairfax, roused the indignation of
his orthodox parishioners by allowing him--"one Bunyon of Bedford, a
tinker," as he is ignominiously styled in the petition sent up to the
House of Lords in 1660--to preach in his parish church on Christmas Day.
But, generally, the parochial clergy were his bitterest enemies. "When I
first went to preach the word abroad," he writes, "the Doctors and
priests of the country did open wide against me." Many were envious of
his success where they had so signally failed. In the words of Mr. Henry
Deane, when defending Bunyan against the attacks of Dr. T. Smith,
Professor of Arabic and Keeper of the University Library at Cambridge,
who had come upon Bunyan preaching in a barn at Toft, they were "angry
with the tinker because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and
pans," and proved himself more skilful in his craft than those who had
graduated at a university. Envy is ever the mother of detraction.
Slanders of the blackest dye against his moral character were freely
circulated, and as readily believed. It was the common talk that he was
a thorough reprobate. Nothing was too bad for him. He was "a witch, a
Jesuit, a highwayman, and the like." It was reported that he had "his
misses and his bastards; that he had two wives at once," &c. Such
charges roused all the man in Bunyan. Few passages in his writings show
more passion than that in "Grace Abounding," in which he defends himself
from the "fools or knaves" who were their authors. He "begs belief of no
man, and if they believe him or disbelieve him it is all one to him. But
he would have them know how utterly baseless their accusations are." "My
foes," he writes, "have missed their mark in their open shooting at me. I
am not the man. If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were
hanged by the neck till they be dead, John Bunyan would be still alive. I
know not whether there is such a thing as a woman breathing under the
copes of the whole heaven but by their apparel, their children, or by
common fame, except my wife." He calls not only men, but angels, nay,
even God Himself, to bear testimony to his innocence in this respect. But
though they were so absolutely baseless, nay, the rather because they
were so baseless, the grossness of these charges evidently stung Bunyan
very deeply.
So bitter was the feeling aroused against him by the marvellous success
of his irregular ministry, that his enemies, even before the restoration
of the Church and Crown, endeavoured to put the arm of the law in motion
to restrain him. We learn from the church books that in March, 1658, the
little Bedford church was in trouble for "Brother Bunyan," against whom
an indictment had been laid at the Assizes for "preaching at Eaton
Socon." Of this indictment we hear no more; so it was probably dropped.
But it is an instructive fact that, even during the boasted religious
liberty of the Protectorate, irregular preaching, especially that of the
much dreaded Anabaptists, was an indictable offence. But, as Dr. Brown
observes, "religious liberty had not yet come to mean liberty all round,
but only liberty for a certain recognized section of Christians." That
there was no lack of persecution during the Commonwealth is clear from
the cruel treatment to which Quakers were subjected, to say nothing of
the intolerance shown to Episcopalians and Roman Catholics. In Bunyan's
own county of Bedford, Quakeresses were sentenced to be whipped and sent
to Bridewell for reproving a parish priest, perhaps well deserving of it,
and exhorting the folks on a market day to repentance and amendment of
life. "The simple truth is," writes Robert Southey, "all parties were
agreed on the one catholic opinion that certain doctrines were not to be
tolerated:" the only points of difference between them were "what those
doctrines were," and how far intolerance might be carried. The withering
lines are familiar to us, in which Milton denounces the "New Forcers of
Conscience," who by their intolerance and "super-metropolitan and
hyperarchiepiscopal tyranny," proved that in his proverbial words, "New
Presbyter is but old Priest writ large"--
"Because you have thrown off your prelate lord,
And with stiff vows renounce his liturgy
Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free!"
How Bunyan came to escape we know not. But the danger he was in was
imminent enough for the church at Bedford to meet to pray "for counsail
what to doe" in respect of it.
It was in these closing years of the Protectorate that Bunyan made his
first essay at authorship. He was led to it by a long and tiresome
controversy with the Quakers, who had recently found their way to
Bedford. The foundations of the faith, he thought, were being
undermined. The Quakers' teaching as to the inward light seemed to him a
serious disparagement of the Holy Scriptures, while their mystical view
of the spiritual Christ revealed to the soul and dwelling in the heart,
came perilously near to a denial of the historic reality of the personal
Christ. He had had public disputations with male and female Quakers from
time to time, at the Market Cross at Bedford, at "Paul's Steeple-house in
Bedford town," and other places. One of them, Anne Blackley by name,
openly bade him throw away the Scriptures, to which Bunyan replied, "No;
for then the devil would be too hard for me." The same enthusiast
charged him with "preaching up an idol, and using conjuration and
witchcraft," because of his assertion of the bodily presence of Christ in
heaven.
The first work of one who was to prove himself so voluminous an author,
cannot but be viewed with much interest. It was a little volume in
duodecimo, of about two hundred pages, entitled "Some Gospel Truths
Opened, by that unworthy servant of Christ, John Bunyan, of Bedford, by
the Grace of God, preacher of the Gospel of His dear Son," published in
1656. The little book, which, as Dr. Brown says, was "evidently thrown
off at a heat," was printed in London and published at Newport Pagnel.
Bunyan being entirely unknown to the world, his first literary venture
was introduced by a commendatory "Epistle" written by Gifford's
successor, John Burton. In this Burton speaks of the young author--Bunyan
was only in his twenty-ninth year--as one who had "neither the greatness
nor the wisdom of the world to commend him," "not being chosen out of an
earthly but out of a heavenly university, the Church of Christ," where
"through grace he had taken three heavenly degrees, to wit, union with
Christ, the anointing of the Spirit, and experience of the temptations of
Satan," and as one of whose "soundness in the faith, godly conversation,
and his ability to preach the Gospel, not by human aid, but by the Spirit
of the Lord," he "with many other saints had had experience." This book
must be pronounced a very remarkable production for a young travelling
tinker, under thirty, and without any literary or theological training
but such as he had gained for himself after attaining to manhood. Its
arrangement is excellent, the arguments are ably marshalled, the style is
clear, the language pure and well chosen. It is, in the main, a well-
reasoned defence of the historical truth of the Articles of the Creed
relating to the Second Person of the Trinity, against the mystical
teaching of the followers of George Fox, who, by a false spiritualism,
sublimated the whole Gospel narrative into a vehicle for the
representation of truths relating to the inner life of the believer. No
one ever had a firmer grasp than Bunyan of the spiritual bearing of the
facts of the recorded life of Christ on the souls of men. But he would
not suffer their "subjectivity"--to adopt modern terms--to destroy their
"objectivity." If the Son of God was not actually born of the Virgin
Mary, if He did not live in a real human body, and in that body die, lie
in the grave, rise again, and ascend up into heaven, whence He would
return--and that Bunyan believed shortly--in the same Body He took of His
mortal mother, His preaching was vain; their faith was vain; they were
yet in their sins. Those who "cried up a Christ within, _in opposition_
to a Christ without," who asserted that Christ had no other Body but the
Church, that the only Crucifixion, rising again, and ascension of Christ
was that _within_ the believer, and that every man had, as an inner
light, a measure of Christ's Spirit within him sufficient to guide him to
salvation, he asserted were "possessed with a spirit of delusion;"
deceived themselves, they were deceiving others to their eternal ruin. To
the refutation of such fundamental errors, substituting a mystical for an
historical faith, Bunyan's little treatise is addressed; and it may be
truly said the work is done effectually. To adopt Coleridge's expression
concerning Bunyan's greater and world-famous work, it is an admirable
"_Summa Theologiae Evangelicae_," which, notwithstanding its obsolete
style and old-fashioned arrangement, may be read even now with advantage.
Bunyan's denunciation of the tenets of the Quakers speedily elicited a
reply. This was written by a certain Edward Burrough, a young man of
three and twenty, fearless, devoted, and ardent in the propagation of the
tenets of his sect. Being subsequently thrown into Newgate with hundreds
of his co-religionists, at the same time that his former antagonist was
imprisoned in Bedford Gaol, Burrough met the fate Bunyan's stronger
constitution enabled him to escape; and in the language of the times,
"rotted in prison," a victim to the loathsome foulness of his place of
incarceration, in the year of the "Bartholomew Act," 1662.
Burrough entitled his reply, "The Gospel of Peace, contended for in the
Spirit of Meekness and Love against the secret opposition of John Bunyan,
a professed minister in Bedfordshire." His opening words, too
characteristic of the entire treatise, display but little of the meekness
professed. "How long, ye crafty fowlers, will ye prey upon the innocent?
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?" Of John Burton and the others who recommended
Bunyan's treatise, he says, "They have joined themselves with the broken
army of Magog, and have showed themselves in the defence of the dragon
against the Lamb in the day of war betwixt them." We may well echo Dr.
Brown's wish that "these two good men could have had a little free and
friendly talk face to face. There would probably have been better
understanding, and fewer hard words, for they were really not so far
apart as they thought. Bunyan believed in the inward light, and Burrough
surely accepted an objective Christ. But failing to see each other's
exact point of view, Burrough thunders at Bunyan, and Bunyan swiftly
returns the shot."
The rapidity of Bunyan's literary work is amazing, especially when we
take his antecedents into account. Within a few weeks he published his
rejoinder to Friend Burrough, under the title of "A Vindication of Gospel
Truths Opened." In this work, which appeared in 1667, Bunyan repays
Burrough in his own coin, styling him "a proved enemy to the truth," a
"grossly railing Rabshakeh, who breaks out with a taunt and a jeer," is
very "censorious and utters many words without knowledge." In vigorous,
nervous language, which does not spare his opponent, he defends himself
from Burrough's charges, and proves that the Quakers are "deceivers." "As
for you thinking that to drink water, and wear no hatbands is not walking
after your own lusts, I say that whatsoever man do make a religion out
of, having no warrant for it in Scripture, is but walking after their own
lusts, and not after the Spirit of God." Burrough had most unwarrantably
stigmatized Bunyan as one of "the false prophets, who love the wages of
unrighteousness, and through covetousness make merchandise of souls."
Bunyan calmly replies, "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's sake." The fruitfulness of his ministry which
Burrough had called in question, charging him with having "run before he
was sent," he refuses to discuss. Bunyan says, "I shall leave it to be
taken notice of by the people of God and the country where I dwell, who
will testify the contrary for me, setting aside the carnal ministry with
their retinue who are so mad against me as thyself."
In his third book, published in 1658, at "the King's Head, in the Old
Bailey," a few days before Oliver Cromwell's death, Bunyan left the
thorny domain of polemics, for that of Christian exhortation, in which
his chief work was to be done. This work was an exposition of the
parable of "the Rich Man and Lazarus," bearing the horror-striking title,
"A Few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul." In this work,
as its title would suggest, Bunyan, accepting the literal accuracy of the
parable as a description of the realities of the world beyond the grave,
gives full scope to his vivid imagination in portraying the condition of
the lost. It contains some touches of racy humour, especially in the
similes, and is written in the nervous homespun English of which he was
master. Its popularity is shown by its having gone through nine editions
in the author's lifetime. To take an example or two of its style:
dealing with the excuses people make for not hearing the Gospel, "O,
saith one, I dare not for my master, my brother, my landlord; I shall
lose his favour, his house of work, and so decay my calling. O, saith
another, I would willingly go in this way but for my father; he chides me
and tells me he will not stand my friend when I come to want; I shall
never enjoy a pennyworth of his goods; he will disinherit me--And I dare
not, saith another, for my husband, for he will be a-railing, and tells
me he will turn me out of doors, he will beat me and cut off my legs;"
and then turning from the hindered to the hinderers: "Oh, what red lines
will there be against all those rich ungodly landlords that so keep under
their poor tenants that they dare not go out to hear the word for fear
that their rent should be raised or they turned out of their houses.
Think on this, you drunken proud rich, and scornful landlords; think on
this, you madbrained blasphemous husbands, that are against the godly and
chaste conversation of your wives; also you that hold your servants so
hard to it that you will not spare them time to hear the Word, unless it
will be where and when your lusts will let you." He bids the ungodly
consider that "the profits, pleasures, and vanities of the world" will
one day "give thee the slip, and leave thee in the sands and the brambles
of all that thou hast done." The careless man lies "like the smith's dog
at the foot of the anvil, though the fire sparks flee in his face." The
rich man remembers how he once despised Lazarus, "scrubbed beggarly
Lazarus. What, shall I dishonour my fair sumptuous and gay house with
such a scabbed creephedge as he? The Lazaruses are not allowed to warn
them of the wrath to come, because they are not gentlemen, because they
cannot with Pontius Pilate speak Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Nay, they
must not, shall not, speak to them, and all because of this."
The fourth production of Bunyan's pen, his last book before his twelve
years of prison life began, is entitled, "The Doctrine of Law and Grace
Unfolded." With a somewhat overstrained humility which is hardly worthy
of him, he describes himself in the title-page as "that poor contemptible
creature John Bunyan, of Bedford." It was given to the world in May,
1659, and issued from the same press in the Old Bailey as his last work.
It cannot be said that this is one of Bunyan's most attractive writings.
It is as he describes it, "a parcel of plain yet sound, true, and home
sayings," in which with that clearness of thought and accuracy of
arrangement which belongs to him, and that marvellous acquaintance with
Scripture language which he had gained by his constant study of the
Bible, he sets forth the two covenants--the covenant of works, and the
covenant of Grace--"in their natures, ends, bounds, together with the
state and condition of them that are under the one, and of them that are
under the other." Dr. Brown describes the book as "marked by a firm
grasp of faith and a strong view of the reality of Christ's person and
work as the one Priest and Mediator for a sinful world." To quote a
passage, "Is there righteousness in Christ? that is mine. Is there
perfection in that righteousness? that is mine. Did He bleed for sin? It
was for mine. Hath He overcome the law, the devil, and hell? The
victory is mine, and I am come forth conqueror, nay, more than a
conqueror through Him that hath loved me. . . Lord, show me continually
in the light of Thy Spirit, through Thy word, that Jesus that was born in
the days of Caesar Augustus, when Mary, a daughter of Judah, went with
Joseph to be taxed in Bethlehem, that He is the very Christ. Let me not
rest contented without such a faith that is so wrought even by the
discovery of His Birth, Crucifying Death, Blood, Resurrection, Ascension,
and Second--which is His Personal--Coming again, that the very faith of
it may fill my soul with comfort and holiness." Up and down its pages we
meet with vivid reminiscences of his own career, of which he can only
speak with wonder and thankfulness. In the "Epistle to the Reader,"
which introduces it, occurs the passage already referred to describing
his education. "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." Of his own religious state before his conversion he
thus speaks: "When it pleased the Lord to begin to instruct my soul, He
found me one of the black sinners of the world. He found me making a
sport of oaths, and also of lies; and many a soul-poisoning meal did I
make out of divers lusts, such as drinking, dancing, playing, pleasure
with the wicked ones of the world; and so wedded was I to my sins, that
thought I to myself, 'I will have them though I lose my soul.'" And
then, after narrating the struggles he had had with his conscience, the
alternations of hope and fear which he passed through, which are more
fully described in his "Grace Abounding," he thus vividly depicts the
full assurance of faith he had attained to: "I saw through grace that it
was the Blood shed on Mount Calvary that did save and redeem sinners, as
clearly and as really with the eyes of my soul as ever, methought, I had
seen a penny loaf bought with a penny. . . O let the saints know that
unless the devil can pluck Christ out of heaven he cannot pull a true
believer out of Christ." In a striking passage he shows how, by turning
Satan's temptations against himself, Christians may "Get the art as to
outrun him in his own shoes, and make his own darts pierce himself."
"What! didst thou never learn to outshoot the devil in his own bow, and
cut off his head with his own sword as David served Goliath?" The whole
treatise is somewhat wearisome, but the pious reader will find much in it
for spiritual edification.