GRACE ABOUNDING.
The women in Bedford, to whom Bunyan had opened his mind, had been
naturally interested in him. Young and rough as he was, he could not
have failed to impress anyone who conversed with him with a sense that
he was a remarkable person. They mentioned him to Mr. Gifford, the
minister of the Baptist Church at Bedford. John Gifford had, at the
beginning of the Civil War, been a loose young officer in the king's
army. He had been taken prisoner when engaged in some exploit which
was contrary to the usages of war. A court-martial had sentenced him
to death, and he was to have been shot in a few hours, when he broke
out of his prison with his sister's help, and, after various
adventures, settled at Bedford as a doctor. The near escape had not
sobered him. He led a disorderly life, drinking and gambling, till the
loss of a large sum of money startled him into seriousness. In the
language of the time he became convinced of sin, and joined the
Baptists, the most thorough-going and consistent of all the Protestant
sects. If the Sacrament of Baptism is not a magical form, but is a
personal act, in which the baptised person devotes himself to Christ's
service, to baptise children at an age when they cannot understand
what they are doing may well seem irrational and even impious.
Gifford, who was now the head of the Baptist community in the town,
invited Bunyan to his house, and explained the causes of his distress
to him. He was a lost sinner. It was true that he had parted with his
old faults, and was leading a new life. But his heart was unchanged;
his past offences stood in record against him. He was still under the
wrath of God, miserable in his position, and therefore miserable in
mind. He must become sensible of his lost state, and lay hold of the
only remedy, or there was no hope for him.
There was no difficulty in convincing Bunyan that he was in a bad way.
He was too well aware of it already. In a work of fiction, the
conviction would be followed immediately by consoling grace. In the
actual experience of a living human soul, the medicine operates less
pleasantly.
'I began,' he says, 'to see something of the vanity and inward
wretchedness of my wicked heart, for as yet I knew no great matter
therein. But now it began to be discovered unto me, and to work for
wickedness as it never did before. Lusts and corruptions would
strongly put themselves forth within me in wicked thoughts and desires
which I did not regard before. Whereas, before, my soul was full of
longing after God; now my heart began to hanker after every foolish
vanity.'
Constitutions differ. Mr. Gifford's treatment, if it was ever good for
any man, was too sharp for Bunyan. The fierce acid which had been
poured into his wounds set them all festering again. He frankly admits
that he was now farther from conversion than before. His heart, do
what he would, refused to leave off desiring forbidden pleasures, and
while this continued, he supposed that he was still under the law, and
must perish by it. He compared himself to the child who, as he was
being brought to Christ, was thrown down by the devil and wallowed
foaming. A less healthy nature might have been destroyed by these
artificially created and exaggerated miseries. He supposed he was
given over to unbelief and wickedness, and yet he relates with
touching simplicity:--
'As to the act of sinning I was never more tender than now. I durst
not take up a pin or a stick, though but so big as a straw, for my
conscience now was sore and would smart at every touch. I could not
tell how to speak my words for fear I should misplace them.'
But the care with which he watched his conduct availed him nothing. He
was on a morass 'that shook if he did but stir,' and he was 'there
left both of God and Christ and the Spirit, and of all good things.'
'Behind him lay the faults of his childhood and youth, every one of
which he believed to be recorded against him. Within were his
disobedient inclinations, which he conceived to be the presence of the
Devil in his heart. If he was to be presented clean of stain before
God he must have a perfect righteousness which was to be found only in
Christ, and Christ had rejected him. 'My original and inward
pollution,' he writes, 'was my plague and my affliction. I was more
loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad, and I thought I was so in
God's eyes too. I thought every one had a better heart than I had. I
could have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but the Devil
himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution. Sure,
thought I, I am given up to the Devil and to a reprobate mind; and
thus I continued for a long while, even for some years together.'
And all the while the world went on so quietly; these things over
which Bunyan was so miserable not seeming to trouble anyone except
himself; and, as if they had no existence except on Sundays and in
pious talk. Old people were hunting after the treasures of this life,
as if they were never to leave the earth. Professors of religion
complained when they lost fortune or health; what were fortune and
health to the awful possibilities which lay beyond the grave? To
Bunyan the future life of Christianity was a reality as certain as the
next day's sunrise; and he could have been happy on bread and water if
he could have felt himself prepared to enter it. Every created being
seemed better off than he was. He was sorry that God had made him a
man. He 'blessed the condition of the birds, beasts, and fishes, for
they had not a sinful nature. They were not obnoxious to the wrath of
God. They were not to go to hell-fire after death.' He recalled the
texts which spoke of Christ and forgiveness. He tried to persuade
himself that Christ cared for him. He could have talked of Christ's
love and mercy 'even to the very crows which sate on the ploughed land
before him.' But he was too sincere to satisfy himself with formulas
and phrases. He could not, he would not, profess to be convinced that
things would go well with him when he was not convinced. Cold spasms
of doubt laid hold of him--doubts, not so much of his own salvation,
as of the truth of all that he had been taught to believe; and the
problem had to be fought and grappled with, which lies in the
intellectual nature of every genuine man, whether he be an Aeschylus or
a Shakespeare, or a poor working Bedfordshire mechanic. No honest soul
can look out upon the world and see it as it really is, without the
question rising in him whether there be any God that governs it at
all. No one can accept the popular notion of heaven and hell as
actually true, without being as terrified as Bunyan was. We go on as
we do, and attend to our business and enjoy ourselves, because the
words have no real meaning to us. Providence in its kindness leaves
most of us unblessed or uncursed with natures of too fine a fibre.
Bunyan was hardly dealt with. 'Whole floods of blasphemies,' he says,
'against God, Christ, and the Scriptures were poured upon my spirit;
questions against the very being of God and of his only beloved Son,
as whether there was in truth a God or Christ, or no, and whether the
Holy Scriptures were not rather a fable and cunning story than the
holy and pure Word of God.'
'How can you tell,' the tempter whispered, 'but that the Turks have as
good a Scripture to prove their Mahomet the Saviour, as we have to
prove our Jesus is? Could I think that so many tens of thousands in so
many countries and kingdoms should be without the knowledge of the
right way to heaven, if there were indeed a heaven, and that we who
lie in a corner of the earth, should alone be blessed therewith. Every
one doth think his own religion the rightest, both Jews, Moors, and
Pagans; and how if all our faith, and Christ, and Scripture should be
but "a think so" too.' St. Paul spoke positively. Bunyan saw shrewdly
that on St. Paul the weight of the whole Christian theory really
rested. But 'how could he tell but that St. Paul, being a subtle and
cunning man, might give himself up to deceive with strong delusions?'
'He was carried away by such thoughts as by a whirlwind.'
His belief in the active agency of the Devil in human affairs, of
which he supposed that he had witnessed instances, was no doubt a
great help to him. If he could have imagined that his doubts or
misgivings had been suggested by a desire for truth, they would have
been harder to bear. More than ever he was convinced that he was
possessed by the devil. He 'compared himself to a child carried off by
a gipsy.' 'Kick sometimes I did,' he says, 'and scream, and cry, but
yet I was as bound in the wings of temptation, and the wind would bear
me away.' 'I blessed the dog and toad, and counted the condition of
everything that God had made far better than this dreadful state of
mine. The dog or horse had no soul to perish under the everlasting
weight of hell for sin, as mine was like to do.'
Doubts about revelation and the truth of Scripture were more easy to
encounter then than they are at present. Bunyan was protected by want
of learning, and by a powerful predisposition to find the objections
against the credibility of the Gospel history to be groundless.
Critical investigation had not as yet analysed the historical
construction of the sacred books, and scepticism, as he saw it in
people round him, did actually come from the devil, that is from a
desire to escape the moral restraints of religion. The wisest,
noblest, best instructed men in England, at that time regarded the
Bible as an authentic communication from God, and as the only
foundation for law and civil society. The masculine sense and strong
modest intellect of Bunyan ensured his acquiescence in an opinion so
powerfully supported. Fits of uncertainty recurred even to the end of
his life; it must be so with men who are honestly in earnest; but his
doubts were of course only intermittent, and his judgment was in the
main satisfied that the Bible was, as he had been taught, the Word of
God. This, however, helped him little; for in the Bible he read his
own condemnation. The weight which pressed him down was the sense of
his unworthiness. What was he that God should care for him? He fancied
that he heard God saying to the angels, 'This poor, simple wretch doth
hanker after me, as if I had nothing to do with my mercy but to bestow
it on such as he. Poor fool, how art thou deceived! It is not for such
as thee to have favour with the Highest.'
Miserable as he was, he clung to his misery as the one link which
connected him with the object of his longings. If he had no hope of
heaven, he was at least distracted that he must lose it. He was afraid
of dying, yet he was still more afraid of continuing to live; lest the
impression should wear away through time, and occupation and other
interests should turn his heart away to the world, and thus his wounds
might cease to pain him.
Readers of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' sometimes ask with wonder, why,
after Christian had been received into the narrow gate, and had been
set forward upon his way, so many trials and dangers still lay before
him. The answer is simply that Christian was a pilgrim, that the
journey of life still lay before him, and at every step temptations
would meet him in new, unexpected shapes. St. Anthony in his hermitage
was beset by as many fiends as had ever troubled him when in the
world. Man's spiritual existence is like the flight of a bird in the
air; he is sustained only by effort, and when he ceases to exert
himself he falls. There are intervals, however, of comparative calm,
and to one of these the storm-tossed Bunyan was now approaching. He
had passed through the Slough of Despond. He had gone astray after Mr.
Legality, and the rocks had almost overwhelmed him. Evangelist now
found him and put him right again, and he was to be allowed a
breathing space at the Interpreter's house. As he was at his ordinary
daily work his mind was restlessly busy. Verses of Scripture came into
his head, sweet while present, but like Peter's sheet caught up again
into heaven. We may have heard all our lives of Christ. Words and
ideas with which we have been familiar from childhood are trodden into
paths as barren as sand. Suddenly, we know not how, the meaning
flashes upon us. The seed has found its way into some corner of our
minds where it can germinate. The shell breaks, the cotyledons open,
and the plant of faith is alive. So it was now to be with Bunyan.
'One day,' he says, 'as I was travelling into the country, musing on
the wickedness of my heart, and considering the enmity that was in me
to God, the Scripture came into my mind, "He hath made peace through
the blood of His cross." I saw that the justice of God and my sinful
soul could embrace and kiss each other. I was ready to swoon, not with
grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace.' Everything became
clear: the Gospel history, the birth, the life, the death of the
Saviour; how gently he gave himself to be nailed on the cross for his
(Bunyan's) sins. 'I saw Him in the spirit,' he goes on, 'a Man on the
right hand of the Father, pleading for me, and have seen the manner of
His coming from Heaven to judge the world with glory.'
The sense of guilt which had so oppressed him was now a key to the
mystery. 'God,' he says, 'suffered me to be afflicted with temptations
concerning these things, and then revealed them to me.' He was crushed
to the ground by the thought of his wickedness; 'the Lord showed him
the death of Christ, and lifted the weight away.'
Now he thought he had a personal evidence from Heaven that he was
really saved. Before this, he had lain trembling at the mouth of hell;
now he was so far away from it that he could scarce tell where it was.
He fell in at this time with a copy of Luther's commentary on the
Epistle to the Galatians, 'so old that it was like to fall to pieces.'
Bunyan found in it the exact counterpart of his own experience: 'of
all the books that he had ever met with, it seemed to him the most fit
for a wounded conscience.'
Everything was supernatural with him: when a bad thought came into his
mind, it was the devil that put it there. These breathings of peace he
regarded as the immediate voice of his Saviour. Alas! the respite was
but short. He had hoped that his troubles were over, when the tempter
came back upon him in the most extraordinary form which he had yet
assumed, Bunyan had himself left the door open; the evil spirits could
only enter 'Mansoul' through the owner's negligence, but once in, they
could work their own wicked will. How it happened will be told
afterwards. The temptation itself must be described first. Never was a
nature more perversely ingenious in torturing itself.
He had gained Christ, as he called it. He was now tempted 'to sell and
part with this most blessed Christ, to exchange Him for the things of
this life--for anything.' If there had been any real prospect of
worldly advantage before Bunyan, which he could have gained by
abandoning his religious profession, the words would have had a
meaning; but there is no hint or trace of any prospect of the kind;
nor in Bunyan's position could there have been. The temptation, as he
called it, was a freak of fancy: fancy resenting the minuteness with
which he watched his own emotions. And yet he says, 'It lay upon me
for a year, and did follow me so continually that I was not rid of it
one day in a month, sometimes not an hour in many days together,
unless when I was asleep. I could neither eat my food, stoop for a
pin, chop a stick, or cast my eye to look on this or that, but still
the temptation would come, "Sell Christ for this, sell Him for that!
Sell Him! Sell Him!"'
He had been haunted before with a notion that he was under a spell;
that he had been fated to commit the unpardonable sin; and he was now
thinking of Judas, who had been admitted to Christ's intimacy, and had
then betrayed him. Here it was before him--the very thing which he had
so long dreaded. If his heart did but consent for a moment, the deed
was done. His doom had overtaken him. He wrestled with the thought as
it rose, thrust it from him 'with his hands and elbows,' body and mind
convulsed together in a common agony. As fast as the destroyer said,
'Sell Him,' Bunyan said, 'I will not; I will not; I will not, not for
thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds!' One morning as he lay in
his bed, the voice came again, and would not be driven away. Bunyan
fought against it, till he was out of breath. He fell back exhausted,
and without conscious action of his will, the fatal sentence passed
through his brain, 'Let Him go if He will.'
That the 'selling Christ' was a bargain in which he was to lose all
and receive nothing is evident from the form in which he was overcome.
Yet if he had gained a fortune by fraud or forgery, he could not have
been more certain that he had destroyed himself.
Satan had won the battle, and he, 'as a bird shot from a tree, had
fallen into guilt and despair.' He got out of bed, 'and went moping
into the fields,' where he wandered for two hours, 'as a man bereft of
life, and now past recovering,' 'bound over to eternal punishment.' He
shrank under the hedges, 'in guilt and sorrow, bemoaning the hardness
of his fate.' In vain the words now came back that had so comforted
him, 'The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin.' They had no
application to him. He had acquired his birthright, but, like Esau, he
had sold it, and could not any more find place for repentance. True it
was said that 'all manner of sins and blasphemies should be forgiven
unto men,' but only such sins and blasphemies as had been committed in
the natural state. Bunyan had received grace, and after receiving it,
had sinned against the Holy Ghost.
It was done, and nothing could undo it. David had received grace, and
had committed murder and adultery after it. But murder and adultery,
bad as they might be, were only transgressions of the law of Moses.
Bunyan had sinned against the Mediator himself, 'he had sold his
Saviour.' One sin, and only one there was which could not be pardoned,
and he had been guilty of it. Peter had sinned against grace, and even
after he had been warned. Peter, however, had but denied his Master.
Bunyan had sold him. He was no David or Peter, he was Judas. It was,
very hard. Others naturally as bad as he had been saved. Why had he
been picked out to be made a Son of Perdition? A Judas! Was there any
point in which he was better than Judas? Judas had sinned with
deliberate purpose: he 'in a fearful hurry,' and 'against prayer and
striving.' But there might be more ways than one of committing the
unpardonable sin, and there might be degrees of it. It was a dreadful
condition. The old doubts came back.
'I was now ashamed,' he says, 'that I should be like such an ugly man
as Judas. I thought how loathsome I should be to all the saints at the
Day of Judgment. I was tempted to content myself by receiving some
false opinion, as that there should be no such thing as the Day of
Judgment, that we should not rise again, that sin was no such grievous
thing, the tempter suggesting that if these things should be indeed
true, yet to believe otherwise would yield me ease for the present. If
I must perish, I need not torment myself beforehand.'
Judas! Judas! was now for ever before his eyes. So identified he was
with Judas that he felt at times as if his breastbone was bursting. A
mark like Cain's was on him. In vain he searched again through the
catalogue of pardoned sinners. Manasseh had consulted wizards and
familiar spirits. Manasseh had burnt his children in the fire to
devils. He had found mercy; but, alas! Manasseh's sins had nothing of
the nature of selling the Saviour. To have sold the Saviour 'was a sin
bigger than the sins of a country, of a kingdom, or of the whole
world--not all of them together could equal it.'
His brain was overstrained, it will be said. Very likely. It is to be
remembered, however, who and what he was, and that he had overstrained
it in his eagerness to learn what he conceived his Maker to wish him
to be--a form of anxiety not common in this world. The cure was as
remarkable as the disorder. One day he was 'in a good man's shop,'
still 'afflicting himself with self-abhorrence,' when something seemed
to rush in through an open window, and he heard a voice saying, 'Didst
ever refuse to be justified by the blood of Christ?' Bunyan shared the
belief of his time. He took the system of things as the Bible
represented it; but his strong common sense put him on his guard
against being easily credulous. He thought at the time that the voice
was supernatural. After twenty years he said modestly that he 'could
not make a judgment of it.' The effect, any way, was as if an angel
had come to him and had told him that there was still hope. Hapless as
his condition was, he might still pray for mercy, and might possibly
find it. He tried to pray, and found it very hard. The devil whispered
again that God was tired of him; God wanted to be rid of him and his
importunities, and had, therefore, allowed him to commit this
particular sin that he might hear no more of him. He remembered Esau,
and thought that this might be too true: 'the saying about Esau was a
flaming sword barring the way of the tree of life to him.' Still he
would not give in. 'I can but die,' he said to himself, 'and if it
must be so, it shall be said that such an one died at the feet of
Christ in prayer.'
He was torturing himself with illusions. Most of the saints in the
Catholic Calendar have done the same. The most remorseless philosopher
can hardly refuse a certain admiration for this poor uneducated
village lad struggling so bravely in the theological spider's web. The
'Professors' could not comfort him, having never experienced similar
distresses in their own persons. He consulted 'an Antient Christian,'
telling him that he feared that he had sinned against the Holy Ghost,
The Antient Christian answered gravely that he thought so too. The
devil having him at advantage, began to be witty with him. The devil
suggested that as he had offended the second or third Person of the
Trinity, he had better pray the Father to mediate for him with Christ
and the Holy Spirit. Then the devil took another turn. Christ, he
said, was really sorry for Bunyan, but his case was beyond remedy.
Bunyan's sin was so peculiar, that it was not of the nature of those
for which He had bled and died, and had not, therefore, been laid to
His charge. To justify Bunyan he must come down and die again, and
that was not to be thought of. 'Oh!' exclaimed the unfortunate victim,
'the unthought-of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that are
effected by a thorough application of guilt (to a spirit) that is
yielded to desperation. This is the man that hath his dwelling among
the tombs.'
Sitting in this humour on a settle in the street at Bedford, he was
pondering over his fearful state. The sun in heaven seemed to grudge
its light to him. 'The stones in the street and the tiles on the
houses did bend themselves against him.' Each crisis in Bunyan's mind
is always framed in the picture of some spot where it occurred. He was
crying 'in the bitterness of his soul, How can God comfort such a
wretch as I am?' As before, in the shop, a voice came in answer, 'This
sin is not unto death.' The first voice had brought him hope which was
almost extinguished; the second was a message of life. The night was
gone, and it was daylight. He had come to the end of the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, and the spectres and the hobgoblins which had
jibbered at him suddenly all vanished. A moment before he had supposed
that he was out of reach of pardon, that he had no right to pray, no
right to repent, or, at least, that neither prayer nor repentance
could profit him. If his sin was not to death, then he was on the same
ground as other sinners. If they might pray, he might pray, and might
look to be forgiven on the same terms. He still saw that his 'selling
Christ' had been 'most barbarous,' but despair was followed by an
extravagance, no less unbounded, of gratitude, when he felt that
Christ would pardon even this.
'Love and affection for Christ,' he says, 'did work at this time such
a strong and hot desire of revengement upon myself for the abuse I had
done to Him, that, to speak as then I thought, had I had a thousand
gallons of blood in my veins, I could freely have spilt it all at the
command of my Lord and Saviour. The tempter told me it was vain to
pray. Yet, thought I, I will pray. But, said the tempter, your sin is
unpardonable. Well, said I, I will pray. It is no boot, said he. Yet,
said I, I will pray: so I went to prayer, and I uttered words to this
effect: Lord, Satan tells me that neither Thy mercy nor Christ's blood
is sufficient to save my soul. Lord, shall I honour Thee most by
believing that Thou wilt and canst, or him, by believing that Thou
neither wilt nor canst? Lord, I would fain honour Thee by believing
that Thou wilt and canst. As I was there before the Lord, the
Scripture came, Oh! man, great is thy faith, even as if one had
clapped me on the back.'
The waves had not wholly subsided; but we need not follow the
undulations any farther. It is enough that after a 'conviction of
sin,' considerably deeper than most people find necessary for
themselves, Bunyan had come to realise what was meant by salvation in
Christ, according to the received creed of the contemporary Protestant
world. The intensity of his emotions arose only from the completeness
with which he believed it. Man had sinned, and by sin was made a
servant of the devil. His redemption was a personal act of the Saviour
towards each individual sinner. In the Atonement Christ had before him
each separate person whom he designed to save, blotting out his
offences, however heinous they might be, and recording in place of
them his own perfect obedience. Each reconciled sinner in return
regarded Christ's sufferings as undergone immediately for himself, and
gratitude for that great deliverance enabled and obliged him to devote
his strength and soul thenceforward to God's service. In the
seventeenth century, all earnest English Protestants held this belief.
In the nineteenth century, most of us repeat the phrases of this
belief, and pretend to hold it. We think we hold it. We are growing
more cautious, perhaps, with our definitions. We suspect that there
may be mysteries in God's nature and methods which we cannot fully
explain. The outlines of 'the scheme of salvation' are growing
indistinct; and we see it through a gathering mist. Yet the essence of
it will remain true whether we recognise it or not. While man remains
man he will do things which he ought not to do. He will leave undone
things which he ought to do. To will, may be present with him; but how
to perform what he wills, he will never fully know, and he will still
hate 'the body of death' which he feels clinging to him. He will try
to do better. When he falls he will struggle to his feet again. He
will climb and climb on the hill side, though he never reaches the
top, and knows that he can never reach it. His life will be a failure,
which he will not dare to offer as a fit account of himself, or as
worth a serious regard. Yet he will still hope that he will not be
wholly cast away, when after his sleep in death he wakes again.
Now, says Bunyan, there remained only the hinder part of the tempest.
Heavenly voices continued to encourage him. 'As I was passing in the
field,' he goes on, 'I heard the sentence, thy righteousness is in
heaven; and methought I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ
at God's right hand, there I say, as my righteousness, so that
wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me He
wants my righteousness, for that was just before Him. Now did my
chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my affliction and
irons; my temptations also fled away, so that from that time those
dreadful Scriptures of God left off to trouble me. Now went I home
rejoicing for the grace and love of God. Christ of God is made unto us
wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. I now
lived very sweetly at peace with God through Christ. Oh! methought,
Christ, Christ! There was nothing but Christ before my eyes. I was not
now only looking upon this and the other benefits of Christ apart, as
of His blood, burial, and resurrection, but considered Him as a whole
Christ. All those graces that were now green in me were yet but like
those cracked groats and fourpence half-pennies which 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. The
Lord led me into the mystery of union with the Son of God, that I was
joined to Him, that I was flesh of His flesh. If He and I were one,
His righteousness was mine, His merits mine, His victory mine. Now I
could see myself in heaven and earth at once; in heaven by my Christ,
though on earth by my body and person. Christ was that common and
public person in whom the whole body of His elect are always to be
considered and reckoned. We fulfilled the law by Him, died by Him,
rose from the dead by Him, got the victory over sin and death, the
devil and hell by Him. I had cause to say, Praise ye the Lord. Praise
God in His sanctuary.'