Mr. Green has observed that Bunyan "found compensation for the narrow
bounds of his prison in the wonderful activity of his pen. Tracts,
controversial treatises, poems, meditations, his 'Grace Abounding,' and
his 'Holy War,' followed each other in quick succession." Bunyan's
literary fertility in the earlier half of his imprisonment was indeed
amazing. Even if, as seems almost certain, we have been hitherto in
error in assigning the First Part of "The Pilgrim's Progress" to this
period, while the "Holy War" certainly belongs to a later, the works
which had their birth in Bedford Gaol during the first six years of his
confinement, are of themselves sufficient to make the reputation of any
ordinary writer. As has been already remarked, for some unexplained
cause, Bunyan's gifts as an author were much more sparingly called into
exercise during the second half of his captivity. Only two works appear
to have been written between 1666 and his release in 1672.
Mr. Green has spoken of "poems" as among the products of Bunyan's pen
during this period. The compositions in verse belonging to this epoch,
of which there are several, hardly deserve to be dignified with so high a
title. At no part of his life had Bunyan much title to be called a poet.
He did not aspire beyond the rank of a versifier, who clothed his
thoughts in rhyme or metre instead of the more congenial prose, partly
for the pleasure of the exercise, partly because he knew by experience
that the lessons he wished to inculcate were more likely to be remembered
in that form. Mr. Froude, who takes a higher estimate of Bunyan's verse
than is commonly held, remarks that though it is the fashion to apply the
epithet of "doggerel" to it, the "sincere and rational meaning" which
pervades his compositions renders such an epithet improper. "His ear for
rhythm," he continues, "though less true than in his prose, is seldom
wholly at fault, and whether in prose or verse, he had the superlative
merit that he could never write nonsense." Bunyan's earliest prison
work, entitled "Profitable Meditations," was in verse, and neither this
nor his later metrical ventures before his release--his "Four Last
Things," his "Ebal and Gerizim," and his "Prison Meditations"--can be
said to show much poetical power. At best he is a mere rhymester, to
whom rhyme and metre, even when self-chosen, were as uncongenial
accoutrements "as Saul's armour was to David." The first-named book,
which is entitled a "Conference between Christ and a Sinner," in the form
of a poetical dialogue, according to Dr. Brown has "small literary merit
of any sort." The others do not deserve much higher commendation. There
is an individuality about the "Prison Meditations" which imparts to it a
personal interest, which is entirely wanting in the other two works,
which may be characterized as metrical sermons, couched in verse of the
Sternhold and Hopkins type. A specimen or two will suffice. The "Four
Last Things" thus opens:--
"These lines I at this time present
To all that will them heed,
Wherein I show to what intent
God saith, 'Convert with speed.'
For these four things come on apace,
Which we should know full well,
Both death and judgment, and, in place
Next to them, heaven and hell."
The following lines are from "Ebal and Gerizim":--
"Thou art like one that hangeth by a thread
Over the mouth of hell, as one half dead;
And oh, how soon this thread may broken be,
Or cut by death, is yet unknown to thee.
But sure it is if all the weight of sin,
And all that Satan too hath doing been
Or yet can do, can break this crazy thread,
'Twill not be long before among the dead
Thou tumble do, as linked fast in chains,
With them to wait in fear for future pains."
The poetical effusion entitled "Prison Meditations" does not in any way
rise above the prosaic level of its predecessors. But it can be read
with less weariness from the picture it presents of Bunyan's prison life,
and of the courageous faith which sustained him. Some unnamed friend, it
would appear, fearing he might flinch, had written him a letter
counselling him to keep "his head above the flood." Bunyan replied in
seventy stanzas in ballad measure, thanking his correspondent for his
good advice, of which he confesses he stood in need, and which he takes
it kindly of him to send, even though his feet stand upon Mount Zion, and
the gaol is to him like a hill from which he could see beyond this world,
and take his fill of the blessedness of that which remains for the
Christian. Though in bonds his mind is free, and can wander where it
will.
"For though men keep my outward man
Within their locks and bars,
Yet by the faith of Christ, I can
Mount higher than the stars."
Meanwhile his captivity is sweetened by the thought of what it was that
brought him there:--
"I here am very much refreshed
To think, when I was out,
I preached life, and peace, and rest,
To sinners round about.
My business then was souls to save
By preaching grace and faith,
Of which the comfort now I have
And have it shall till death.
That was the work I was about
When hands on me they laid.
'Twas this for which they plucked me out
And vilely to me said,
'You heretic, deceiver, come,
To prison you must go,
You preach abroad, and keep not home,
You are the Church's foe.'
Wherefore to prison they me sent,
Where to this day I lie,
And can with very much content
For my profession die.
The prison very sweet to me
Hath been since I came here,
And so would also hanging be
If God would there appear.
To them that here for evil lie
The place is comfortless;
But not to me, because that I
Lie here for righteousness.
The truth and I were both here cast
Together, and we do
Lie arm in arm, and so hold fast
Each other, this is true.
Who now dare say we throw away
Our goods or liberty,
When God's most holy Word doth say
We gain thus much thereby?"
It will be seen that though Bunyan's verses are certainly not high-class
poetry, they are very far removed from doggerel. Nothing indeed that
Bunyan ever wrote, however rugged the rhymes and limping the metre, can
be so stigmatized. The rude scribblings on the margins of the copy of
the "Book of Martyrs," which bears Bunyan's signature on the title-pages,
though regarded by Southey as "undoubtedly" his, certainly came from a
later and must less instructed pen. And as he advanced in his literary
career, his claim to the title of a poet, though never of the highest,
was much strengthened. The verses which diversify the narrative in the
Second Part of "The Pilgrim's Progress" are decidedly superior to those
in the First Part, and some are of high excellence. Who is ignorant of
the charming little song of the Shepherd Boy in the Valley of
Humiliation, "in very mean clothes, but with a very fresh and
well-favoured countenance, and wearing more of the herb called Heartsease
in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet?"--
"He that is down need fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble, ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much,
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because Thou savest such.
Fulness to such a burden is
That go on Pilgrimage,
Here little, and hereafter Bliss
Is best from age to age."
Bunyan reaches a still higher flight in Valiant-for-Truth's song, later
on, the Shakesperian ring of which recalls Amiens' in "As You Like It,"
"Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me. . .
Come hither, come hither,"
and has led some to question whether it can be Bunyan's own. The
resemblance, as Mr. Froude remarks, is "too near to be accidental."
"Perhaps he may have heard the lines, and the rhymes may have clung to
him without his knowing whence they came."
"Who would true Valour see,
Let him come hither,
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a Pilgrim.
Who so beset him round
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right
To be a Pilgrim.
Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Can daunt his spirit,
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labour night and day
To be a Pilgrim."
All readers of "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "The Holy War" are familiar
with the long metrical compositions giving the history of these works by
which they are prefaced and the latter work is closed. No more
characteristic examples of Bunyan's muse can be found. They show his
excellent command of his native tongue in racy vernacular, homely but
never vulgar, and his power of expressing his meaning "with sharp defined
outlines and without the waste of a word."
Take this account of his perplexity, when the First Part of his
"Pilgrim's Progress" was finished, whether it should be given to the
world or no, and the characteristic decision with which he settled the
question for himself:--
"Well, when I had then put mine ends together,
I show'd them others that I might see whether
They would condemn them, or them justify;
And some said Let them live; some, Let them die.
Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so;
Some said it might do good; others said No.
Now was I in a strait, and did not see
Which was the best thing to be done by me;
At last I thought since you are thus divided
I print it will; and so the case decided;"
or the lines in which he introduces the Second Part of the Pilgrim to the
readers of the former part:--
"Go now, my little Book, to every place
Where my first Pilgrim hath but shown his face:
Call at their door: If any say, 'Who's there?'
Then answer that Christiana is here.
If they bid thee come in, then enter thou
With all thy boys. And then, as thou knowest how,
Tell who they are, also from whence they came;
Perhaps they'll know them by their looks or name.
But if they should not, ask them yet again
If formerly they did not entertain
One Christian, a pilgrim. If they say
They did, and were delighted in his way:
Then let them know that these related are
Unto him, yea, his wife and children are.
Tell them that they have left their house and home,
Are turned Pilgrims, seek a world to come;
That they have met with hardships on the way,
That they do meet with troubles night and day."
How racy, even if the lines are a little halting, is the defence of the
genuineness of his Pilgrim in "The Advertisement to the Reader" at the
end of "The Holy War."
"Some say the Pilgrim's Progress is not mine,
Insinuating as if I would shine
In name or fame by the worth of another,
Like some made rich by robbing of their brother;
Or that so fond I am of being sire
I'll father bastards; or if need require,
I'll tell a lie or print to get applause.
I scorn it. John such dirt-heap never was
Since God converted him. . .
Witness my name, if anagram'd to thee
The letters make _Nu hony in a B_.
IOHN BUNYAN."
How full of life and vigour his sketch of the beleaguerment and
deliverance of "Mansoul," as a picture of his own spiritual experience,
in the introductory verses to "The Holy War"!--
"For my part I, myself, was in the town,
Both when 'twas set up, and when pulling down;
I saw Diabolus in possession,
And Mansoul also under his oppression.
Yes, I was there when she crowned him for lord,
And to him did submit with one accord.
When Mansoul trampled upon things divine,
And wallowed in filth as doth a swine,
When she betook herself unto her arms,
Fought her Emmanuel, despised his charms:
Then I was there, and did rejoice to see
Diabolus and Mansoul so agree.
I saw the prince's armed men come down
By troops, by thousands, to besiege the town,
I saw the captains, heard the trumpets sound,
And how his forces covered all the ground,
Yea, how they set themselves in battle array,
I shall remember to my dying day."
Bunyan's other essays in the domain of poetry need not detain us long.
The most considerable of these--at least in bulk--if it be really his, is
a version of some portions of the Old and New Testaments: the life of
Joseph, the Book of Ruth, the history of Samson, the Book of Jonah, the
Sermon on the Mount, and the General Epistle of St. James. The attempt
to do the English Bible into verse has been often made and never
successfully: in the nature of things success in such a task is
impossible, nor can this attempt be regarded as happier than that of
others. Mr. Froude indeed, who undoubtingly accepts their genuineness,
is of a different opinion. He styles the "Book of Ruth" and the "History
of Joseph" "beautiful idylls," of such high excellence that, "if we found
them in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should consider that a
difficult task had been accomplished successfully." It would seem almost
doubtful whether Mr. Froude can have read the compositions that he
commends so largely, and so much beyond their merit. The following
specimen, taken haphazard, will show how thoroughly Bunyan or the
rhymester, whoever he may be, has overcome what Mr. Froude regards as an
almost insuperable difficulty, and has managed to "spoil completely the
faultless prose of the English translation":--
"Ruth replied,
Intreat me not to leave thee or return;
For where thou goest I'll go, where thou sojourn
I'll sojourn also--and what people's thine,
And who thy God, the same shall both be mine.
Where thou shalt die, there will I die likewise,
And I'll be buried where thy body lies.
The Lord do so to me and more if I
Do leave thee or forsake thee till I die."
The more we read of these poems, not given to the world till twelve years
after Bunyan's death, and that by a publisher who was "a repeated
offender against the laws of honest dealing," the more we are inclined to
agree with Dr. Brown, that the internal evidence of their style renders
their genuineness at the least questionable. In the dull prosaic level
of these compositions there is certainly no trace of the "force and
power" always present in Bunyan's rudest rhymes, still less of the "dash
of genius" and the "sparkle of soul" which occasionally discover the hand
of a master.
Of the authenticity of Bunyan's "Divine Emblems," originally published
three years after his death under the title of "Country Rhymes for
Children," there is no question. The internal evidence confirms the
external. The book is thoroughly in Bunyan's vein, and in its homely
naturalness of imagery recalls the similitudes of the "Interpreter's
House," especially those expounded to Christiana and her boys. As in
that "house of imagery" things of the most common sort, the sweeping of a
room, the burning of a fire, the drinking of a chicken, a robin with a
spider in his mouth, are made the vehicle of religious teaching; so in
this "Book for Boys and Girls," a mole burrowing in the ground, a swallow
soaring in the air, the cuckoo which can do nothing but utter two notes,
a flaming and a blinking candle, or a pound of candles falling to the
ground, a boy chasing a butterfly, the cackling of a hen when she has
laid her egg, all, to his imaginative mind, set forth some spiritual
truth or enforce some wholesome moral lesson. How racy, though homely,
are these lines on a Frog!--
"The Frog by nature is but damp and cold,
Her mouth is large, her belly much will hold,
She sits somewhat ascending, loves to be
Croaking in gardens, though unpleasantly.
The hypocrite is like unto this Frog,
As like as is the puppy to the dog.
He is of nature cold, his mouth is wide
To prate, and at true goodness to deride.
And though this world is that which he doth love,
He mounts his head as if he lived above.
And though he seeks in churches for to croak,
He neither seeketh Jesus nor His yoke."
There is some real poetry in those on the Cuckoo, though we may be
inclined to resent his harsh treatment of our universal favourite:--
"Thou booby says't thou nothing but Cuckoo?
The robin and the wren can that outdo.
They to us play thorough their little throats
Not one, but sundry pretty tuneful notes.
But thou hast fellows, some like thee can do
Little but suck our eggs, and sing Cuckoo.
Thy notes do not first welcome in our spring,
Nor dost thou its first tokens to us bring.
Birds less than thee by far like prophets do
Tell us 'tis coming, though not by Cuckoo,
Nor dost thou summer bear away with thee
Though thou a yawling bawling Cuckoo be.
When thou dost cease among us to appear,
Then doth our harvest bravely crown our year.
But thou hast fellows, some like thee can do
Little but suck our eggs, and sing Cuckoo.
Since Cuckoos forward not our early spring
Nor help with notes to bring our harvest in,
And since while here, she only makes a noise
So pleasing unto none as girls and boys,
The Formalist we may compare her to,
For he doth suck our eggs and sing Cuckoo."
A perusal of this little volume with its roughness and quaintness,
sometimes grating on the ear but full of strong thought and picturesque
images, cannot fail to raise Bunyan's pretensions as a poet. His muse,
it is true, as Alexander Smith has said, is a homely one. She is "clad
in russet, wears shoes and stockings, has a country accent, and walks
along the level Bedfordshire roads." But if the lines are unpolished,
"they have pith and sinew, like the talk of a shrewd peasant," with the
"strong thought and the knack of the skilled workman who can drive by a
single blow the nail home to the head."
During his imprisonment Bunyan's pen was much more fertile in prose than
in poetry. Besides his world-famous "Grace Abounding," he produced
during the first six years of his gaol life a treatise on prayer,
entitled "Praying in the Spirit;" a book on "Christian Behaviour,"
setting forth with uncompromising plainness the relative duties of
husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, by which
those who profess a true faith are bound to show forth its reality and
power; the "Holy City," an exposition of the vision in the closing
chapters of the Book of Revelation, brilliant with picturesque
description and rich in suggestive thought, which, he tells us, had its
origin in a sermon preached by him to his brethren in bonds in their
prison chamber; and a work on the "Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal
Judgment." On these works we may not linger. There is not one of them
which is not marked by vigour of thought, clearness of language, accuracy
of arrangement, and deep spiritual experience. Nor is there one which
does not here and there exhibit specimens of Bunyan's picturesque
imaginative power, and his command of forcible and racy language. Each
will reward perusal. His work on "Prayer" is couched in the most exalted
strain, and is evidently the production of one who by long and agonizing
experience had learnt the true nature of prayer, as a pouring out of the
soul to God, and a wrestling with Him until the blessing, delayed not
denied, is granted. It is, however, unhappily deformed by much ignorant
reviling of the Book of Common Prayer. He denounces it as "taken out of
the papistical mass-book, the scraps and fragments of some popes, some
friars, and I know not what;" and ridicules the order of service it
propounds to the worshippers. "They have the matter and the manner of
their prayer at their fingers' ends; they set such a prayer for such a
day, and that twenty years before it comes: one for Christmas, another
for Easter, and six days after that. They have also bounded how many
syllables must be said in every one of them at their public exercises.
For each saint's day also they have them ready for the generations yet
unborn to say. They can tell you also when you shall kneel, when you
shall stand, when you should abide in your seats, when you should go up
into the chancel, and what you should do when you come there. All which
the apostles came short of, as not being able to compose so profound a
manner." This bitter satirical vein in treating of sacred things is
unworthy of its author, and degrading to his sense of reverence. It has
its excuse in the hard measure he had received from those who were so
unwisely endeavouring to force the Prayer Book on a generation which had
largely forgotten it. In his mind, the men and the book were identified,
and the unchristian behaviour of its advocates blinded his eyes to its
merits as a guide to devotion. Bunyan, when denouncing forms in worship,
forgot that the same apostle who directs that in our public assemblies
everything should be done "to edification," directs also that everything
should be done "decently and in order."
By far the most important of these prison works--"The Pilgrim's
Progress," belonging, as will be seen, to a later period--is the "Grace
Abounding," in which with inimitable earnestness and simplicity Bunyan
gives the story of his early life and his religious history. This book,
if he had written no other, would stamp Bunyan as one of the greatest
masters of the English language of his own or any other age. In graphic
delineation of the struggles of a conscience convicted of sin towards a
hardly won freedom and peace, the alternations of light and darkness, of
hope and despair, which chequered its course, its morbid self-torturing
questionings of motive and action, this work of the travelling tinker, as
a spiritual history, has never been surpassed. Its equal can hardly be
found, save perhaps in the "Confessions of St. Augustine." These,
however, though describing a like spiritual conflict, are couched in a
more cultured style, and rise to a higher metaphysical region than Bunyan
was capable of attaining to. His level is a lower one, but on that level
Bunyan is without a rival. Never has the history of a soul convinced of
the reality of eternal perdition in its most terrible form as the most
certain of all possible facts, and of its own imminent danger of
hopeless, irreversible doom--seeing itself, to employ his own image,
hanging, as it were, over the pit of hell by a thin line, which might
snap any moment--been portrayed in more nervous and awe-inspiring
language. And its awfulness is enhanced by its self-evident truth.
Bunyan was drawing no imaginary picture of what others might feel, but
simply telling in plain unadorned language what he had felt. The
experience was a very tremendous reality to him. Like Dante, if he had
not actually been in hell, he had been on the very threshold of it; he
had in very deed traversed "the Valley of the Shadow of Death," had heard
its "hideous noises," and seen "the Hobgoblins of the Pit." He "spake
what he knew and testified what he had seen." Every sentence breathes
the most tremendous earnestness. His words are the plainest, drawn from
his own homely vernacular. He says in his preface, which will amply
repay reading, as one of the most characteristic specimens of his style,
that he could have stepped into a higher style, and adorned his narrative
more plentifully. But he dared not. "God did not play in convincing
him. The devil did not play in tempting him. He himself did not play
when he sunk as into a bottomless pit, and the pangs of hell caught hold
on him. Nor could he play in relating them. He must be plain and simple
and lay down the thing as it was. He that liked it might receive it. He
that did not might produce a better." The remembrance of "his great
sins, his great temptations, his great fears of perishing for ever,
recalled the remembrance of his great help, his great support from
heaven, the great grace God extended to such a wretch as he was." Having
thus enlarged on his own experience, he calls on his spiritual children,
for whose use the work was originally composed and to whom it is
dedicated,--"those whom God had counted him worthy to beget to Faith by
his ministry in the Word"--to survey their own religious history, to
"work diligently and leave no corner unsearched." He would have them
"remember their tears and prayers to God; how they sighed under every
hedge for mercy. Had they never a hill Mizar (Psa. xlii. 6) to remember?
Had they forgotten the close, the milkhouse, the stable, the barn, where
God visited their souls? Let them remember the Word on which the Lord
had caused them to hope. If they had sinned against light, if they were
tempted to blaspheme, if they were down in despair, let them remember
that it had been so with him, their spiritual father, and that out of
them all the Lord had delivered him." This dedication ends thus: "My
dear children, the milk and honey is beyond this wilderness. God be
merciful to you, and grant you be not slothful to go in to possess the
land."
This remarkable book, as we learn from the title-page, was "written by
his own hand in prison." It was first published by George Larkin in
London, in 1666, the sixth year of his imprisonment, the year of the Fire
of London, about the time that he experienced his first brief release. As
with "The Pilgrim's Progress," the work grew in picturesque detail and
graphic power in the author's hand after its first appearance. The later
editions supply some of the most interesting personal facts contained in
the narrative, which were wanting when it first issued from the press.
His two escapes from drowning, and from the supposed sting of an adder;
his being drawn as a soldier, and his providential deliverance from
death; the graphic account of his difficulty in giving up bell-ringing at
Elstow Church, and dancing on Sundays on Elstow Green--these and other
minor touches which give a life and colour to the story, which we should
be very sorry to lose, are later additions. It is impossible to over-
estimate the value of the "Grace Abounding," both for the facts of
Bunyan's earlier life and for the spiritual experience of which these
facts were, in his eyes only the outward framework. Beginning with his
parentage and boyhood, it carries us down to his marriage and life in the
wayside-cottage at Elstow, his introduction to Mr. Gifford's congregation
at Bedford, his joining that holy brotherhood, and his subsequent call to
the work of the ministry among them, and winds up with an account of his
apprehension, examinations, and imprisonment in Bedford gaol. The work
concludes with a report of the conversation between his noble-hearted
wife and Sir Matthew Hale and the other judges at the Midsummer assizes,
narrated in a former chapter, "taken down," he says, "from her own
mouth." The whole story is of such sustained interest that our chief
regret on finishing it is that it stops where it does, and does not go on
much further. Its importance for our knowledge of Bunyan as a man, as
distinguished from an author, and of the circumstances of his life, is
seen by a comparison of our acquaintance with his earlier and with his
later years. When he laid down his pen no one took it up, and beyond two
or three facts, and a few hazy anecdotes we know little or nothing of all
that happened between his final release and his death.
The value of the "Grace Abounding," however, as a work of experimental
religion may be easily over-estimated. It is not many who can study
Bunyan's minute history of the various stages of his spiritual life with
real profit. To some temperaments, especially among the young, the book
is more likely to prove injurious than beneficial; it is calculated
rather to nourish morbid imaginations, and a dangerous habit of
introspection, than to foster the quiet growth of the inner life.
Bunyan's unhappy mode of dealing with the Bible as a collection of texts,
each of Divine authority and declaring a definite meaning entirely
irrespective of its context, by which the words hide the Word, is also
utterly destructive of the true purpose of the Holy Scriptures as a
revelation of God's loving and holy mind and will. Few things are more
touching than the eagerness with which, in his intense self-torture,
Bunyan tried to evade the force of those "fearful and terrible
Scriptures" which appeared to seal his condemnation, and to lay hold of
the promises to the penitent sinner. His tempest-tossed spirit could
only find rest by doing violence to the dogma, then universally accepted
and not quite extinct even in our own days, that the authority of the
Bible--that "Divine Library"--collectively taken, belongs to each and
every sentence of the Bible taken for and by itself, and that, in
Coleridge's words, "detached sentences from books composed at the
distance of centuries, nay, sometimes at a millenium from each other,
under different dispensations and for different objects," are to be
brought together "into logical dependency." But "where the Spirit of the
Lord is there is liberty." The divinely given life in the soul of man
snaps the bonds of humanly-constructed logical systems. Only those,
however, who have known by experience the force of Bunyan's spiritual
combat, can fully appreciate and profit by Bunyan's narrative. He tells
us on the title-page that it was written "for the support of the weak and
tempted people of God." For such the "Grace Abounding to the chief of
sinners" will ever prove most valuable. Those for whom it was intended
will find in it a message--of comfort and strength.
As has been said, Bunyan's pen was almost idle during the last six years
of his imprisonment. Only two of his works were produced in this period:
his "Confession of Faith," and his "Defence of the Doctrine of
Justification by Faith." Both were written very near the end of his
prison life, and published in the same year, 1672, only a week or two
before his release. The object of the former work was, as Dr. Brown
tells us, "to vindicate his teaching, and if possible, to secure his
liberty." Writing as one "in bonds for the Gospel," his professed
principles, he asserts, are "faith, and holiness springing therefrom,
with an endeavour so far as in him lies to be at peace with all men." He
is ready to hold communion with all whose principles are the same; with
all whom he can reckon as children of God. With these he will not
quarrel about "things that are circumstantial," such as water baptism,
which he regards as something quite indifferent, men being "neither the
better for having it, nor the worse for having it not." "He will receive
them in the Lord as becometh saints. If they will not have communion
with him, the neglect is theirs not his. But with the openly profane and
ungodly, though, poor people! they have been christened and take the
communion, he will have no communion. It would be a strange community,
he says, that consisted of men and beasts. Men do not receive their
horse or their dog to their table; they put them in a room by
themselves." As regards forms and ceremonies, he "cannot allow his soul
to be governed in its approach to God by the superstitious inventions of
this world. He is content to stay in prison even till the moss grows on
his eyelids rather than thus make of his conscience a continual butchery
and slaughter-shop by putting out his eyes and committing himself to the
blind to lead him. Eleven years' imprisonment was a weighty argument to
pause and pause again over the foundation of the principles for which he
had thus suffered. Those principles he had asserted at his trial, and in
the tedious tract of time since then he had in cold blood examined them
by the Word of God and found them good; nor could he dare to revolt from
or deny them on pain of eternal damnation."
The second-named work, the "Defence of the Doctrine of Justification by
Faith," is entirely controversial. The Rev. Edward Fowler, afterwards
Bishop of Gloucester, then Rector of Northill, had published in the early
part of 1671, a book entitled "The Design of Christianity." A copy
having found its way into Bunyan's hands, he was so deeply stirred by
what he deemed its subversion of the true foundation of Evangelical
religion that he took up his pen and in the space of six weeks composed a
long and elaborate examination of the book, chapter by chapter, and a
confutation of its teaching. Fowler's doctrines as Bunyan understood
them--or rather misunderstood them--awoke the worst side of his impetuous
nature. His vituperation of the author and his book is coarse and
unmeasured. He roundly charges Fowler with having "closely, privily, and
devilishly turned the grace of God into a licentious doctrine,
bespattering it with giving liberty to lasciviousness;" and he calls him
"a pretended minister of the Word," who, in "his cursed blasphemous book
vilely exposes to public view the rottenness of his heart, in principle
diametrically opposite to the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ, a
glorious latitudinarian that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an
eel on the angle, or rather like the weathercock that stands on the
steeple;" and describes him as "contradicting the wholesome doctrine of
the Church of England." He "knows him not by face much less his personal
practise." He may have "kept himself clear of the ignorant Sir Johns who
had for a long time, as a judgment of God, been made the mouth to the
people--men of debauched lives who for the love of filthy lucre and the
pampering of their idle carcases had made shipwreck of their former
faith;" but he does know that having been ejected as a Nonconformist in
1662, he had afterwards gone over to the winning side, and he fears that
"such an unstable weathercock spirit as he had manifested would stumble
the work and give advantage to the adversary to speak vilifyingly of
religion." No excuse can be offered for the coarse violence of Bunyan's
language in this book; but it was too much the habit of the time to load
a theological opponent with vituperation, to push his assertions to the
furthest extreme, and make the most unwarrantable deductions from them.
It must be acknowledged that Bunyan does not treat Fowler and his
doctrines with fairness, and that, if the latter may be thought to
depreciate unduly the sacrifice of the Death of Christ as an expiation
for man's guilt, and to lay too great a stress on the moral faculties
remaining in the soul after the Fall, Bunyan errs still more widely on
the other side in asserting the absolute, irredeemable corruption of
human nature, leaving nothing for grace to work upon, but demanding an
absolutely fresh creation, not a revivification of the Divine nature
grievously marred but not annihilated by Adam's sin.
A reply to Bunyan's severe strictures was not slow to appear. The book
bears the title, characteristic of the tone and language of its contents,
of "_Dirt wip't off_; or, a manifest discovery of the Gross Ignorance,
Erroneousness, and most Unchristian and Wicked Spirit of one John Bunyan,
Lay-preacher in Bedford." It professes to be written by a friend of
Fowler's, but Fowler was generally accredited with it. Its violent
tirades against one who, he says, had been "near these twenty years or
longer very infamous in the Town and County of Bedford as a very
Pestilent Schismatick," and whom he suggests the authorities have done
wrong in letting out of prison, and had better clap in gaol again as "an
impudent and malicious Firebrand," have long since been consigned to a
merciful oblivion, where we may safely leave them.