these he had indulged, so far as his worldly calling allowed. Charles
I, whether to promote Popery—to divert his subjects from political
grievances—or to punish the Puritans, had endeavoured to drown their
serious thoughts in a vortex of dissipation, by re-publishing the Book
of Sports, to be used on Sundays. That ‘after Divine service our good
people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged from dancing, either
men or women; archery, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless
recreations; May games, Whitsun-ales, Morris dances, May poles, and
other sports.’ But this was not all, for every ‘Puritan and Precisian
was to be constrained to conformity with these sports, or to leave
their country.’ The same severe penalty was enforced upon every
clergyman who refused to read from his pulpit the Book of Sports, and
to persuade the people thus to desecrate the Lord’s-day. ‘Many hundred
godly ministers were suspended from their ministry, sequestered, driven
from their livings, excommunicated, prosecuted in the high commission
court, and forced to leave the kingdom for not publishing this
declaration.’[54] A little gleam of heavenly light falls upon those
dark and gloomy times, from the melancholy fact that nearly eight
hundred conscientious clergymen were thus wickedly persecuted. This was
one of the works of Laud, who out-bonnered Bonner himself in his
dreadful career of cruelty, while making havoc of the church of Christ.
Even transportation for refusing obedience to such diabolical laws was
not the greatest penalty; in some cases it was followed by the death of
the offender. The punishments inflicted for nonconformity were
accompanied by the most refined and barbarous cruelties. Still many of
the learned bowed their necks to this yoke with abject servility: thus,
Robert Powell, speaking of the Book of Sports, says, ‘Needless is it to
argue or dispute for that which authority hath commanded, and most
insufferable insolence to speak or write against it.’[55] These Sunday
sports, published by Charles I, in 1633, had doubtless aided in
fostering Bunyan’s bad conduct in his youthful days. In 1644, when The
Book of Common Prayer was abolished, an Act was passed for the better
observance of the Lord’s-day; all persons were prohibited on that day
to use any wrestlings, shooting, bowing, ringing of bells for pastime,
masques, wakes, church-ales, dancing, game, sports or pastime whatever;
and that ‘the Book of Sports shall be seized, and publicly burnt.’
During the civil war this Act does not appear to have been strictly
enforced; for, four years after it was passed, we find Bunyan and his
dissolute companions worshipping the priest, clerk, and vestments on
the Sunday morning, and assembling for their Sabbath-breaking sports in
the afternoon. It was upon one of these occasions that a most
extraordinary impression was fixed upon the spirit of Bunyan. A
remarkable scene took place, worthy the pencil of the most eminent
artist. This event cannot be better described than in his own words:—
‘One day, amongst all the sermons our parson made, his subject was, to
treat of the Sabbath-day, and of the evil of breaking that, either with
labour, sports, or otherwise; now I was, notwithstanding my religion,
one that took much delight in all manner of vice, and especially that
was the day that I did solace myself therewith; wherefore I fell in my
conscience under his sermons, thinking and believing that he made that
sermon on purpose to show me my evil doing. And at that time I felt
what guilt was, though never before, that I can remember; but then I
was, for the present, greatly loaden therewith, and so went home, when
the sermon was ended, with a great burthen upon my spirit.
‘This, for that instant, did benumb the sinews of my best delights, and
did imbitter my former pleasures to me; but behold it lasted not for
before I had well dined, the trouble began to go off my mind, and my
heart returned to its old course. But O! how glad was I, that this
trouble was gone from me, and that the fire was put out, that I might
sin again without control! Wherefore, when I had satisfied nature with
my food, I shook the sermon out of my mind, and to my old custom of
sports and gaming I returned with great delight.
‘But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game at cat, and having
struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the
second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which
said, “Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and
go to hell?” At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore leaving
my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had,
with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down
upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if he did
severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for these and other
my ungodly practices.
‘I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, but, suddenly, this
conclusion was fastened on my spirit, for the former hint did set my
sins again before my face, that I had been a great and grievous sinner,
and that it was now too late for me to look after heaven; for Christ
would not forgive me, nor pardon my transgressions. Then I fell to
musing upon this also; and while I was thinking on it, and fearing lest
it should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding it was too
late; and therefore I resolved in my mind I would go on in sin: for,
thought I, if the case be thus, my state is surely miserable; miserable
if I leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them; I can but be
damned, and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins, as
be damned for few.
‘Thus I stood in the midst of my play, before all that then were
present: but yet I told them nothing. But I say, I having made this
conclusion, I returned desperately to my sport again; and I well
remember, that presently this kind of despair did so possess my soul,
that I was persuaded I could never attain to other comfort than what I
should get in sin; for heaven was gone already; so that on that I must
not think.’[56]
How difficult is it, when immorality has been encouraged by royal
authority, to turn the tide or to stem the torrent. For at least four
years, an Act of Parliament had prohibited these Sunday sports. Still
the supineness of the justices, and the connivance of the clergy,
allowed the rabble youth to congregate on the Green at Elstow, summoned
by the church bells to celebrate their sports and pastimes, as they had
been in the habit of doing on the Lord’s day.[57]
This solemn warning, received in the midst of his sport, was one of a
series of convictions, by which the hardened sinner was to be fitted to
receive the messages of mercy and love. In the midst of his companions
and of the spectators, Bunyan was struck with a sense of guilt. How
rapid were his thoughts—‘Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or
have thy sins and go to hell?’ With the eye of his understanding he saw
the Lord Jesus as ‘hotly displeased.’ The tempter suggests it is ‘too,
too late’ to seek for pardon, and with a desperate resolution which
must have cost his heart the severest pangs, he continued his game.
Still the impression remained indelibly fixed upon his mind.
The next blow which fell upon his hardened spirit was still more deeply
felt, because it was given by one from whom he could the least have
expected it. He was standing at a neighbour’s shop-window, ‘belching
out oaths like the madman that Solomon speaks of, who scatters abroad
firebrands, arrows, and death’[58] ‘after his wonted manner.’ He
exemplified the character drawn by the Psalmist. ‘As he clothed himself
with cursing like as with his garment: so let it come into his bowels
like water, and like oil into his bones.’ Here was a disease that set
all human skill at defiance, but the great, the Almighty Physician,
cured it with strange physic. Had any professor reproved him, it might
have been passed by as a matter of course; but it was so ordered that a
woman who was notoriously ‘a very loose and ungodly wretch,’ protested
that she trembled to hear him swear and curse at that most fearful
rate; that he was the ungodliest fellow she had ever heard, and that he
was able to spoil all the youth in a whole town.[59] Public reproof
from the lips of such a woman was an arrow that pierced his inmost
soul; it effected a reformation marvelous to all his companions, and
bordering upon the miraculous. The walls of a fortified city were once
thrown down by a shout and the tiny blast of rams’-horns (Josh 6:20);
and in this instance, the foundations of Heart Castle, fortified by
Satan, are shaken by the voice of one of his own emissaries. Mortified
and convicted, the foul-mouthed blasphemer swore no more; an outward
reformation in words and conduct took place, but without inward
spiritual life. Thus was he making vows to God and breaking them,
repenting and promising to do better next time; so, to use his own
homely phrase, he was ‘feeding God with chapters, and prayers, and
promises, and vows, and a great many more such dainty dishes, and
thinks that he serveth God as well as any man in England can, while he
has only got into a cleaner way to hell than the rest of his neighbours
are in.’[60]
Such a conversion, as he himself calls it, was ‘from prodigious
profaneness to something like moral life.’[61] ‘Now I was, as they
said, become godly, and their words pleased me well, though as yet I
was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite.’ These are hard words, but,
in the most important sense, they were true. He was pointed out as a
miracle of mercy—the great convert—a wonder to the world. He could now
suffer opprobrium and cavils—play with errors—entangle himself and
drink in flattery. No one can suppose that this outward reform was put
on hypocritically, as a disguise to attain some sinister object; it was
real, but it arose from a desire to shine before his neighbours, from
shame and from the fear of future punishment, and not from that love to
God which leads the Christian to the fear of offending him. It did not
arise from a change of heart; the secret springs of action remained
polluted; it was outside show, and therefore he called himself a
painted hypocrite. He became less a despiser of religion, but more
awfully a destroyer of his own soul.
A new source of uneasiness now presented itself in his practice of
bell-ringing, an occupation requiring severe labour, usually performed
on the Lord’s-day; and, judging from the general character of
bell-ringers, it has a most injurious effect, both with regard to
morals and religion. A circumstance had recently taken place which was
doubtless interpreted as an instance of Divine judgment upon
Sabbath-breaking. Clark, in his Looking-Glass for Saints and Sinners,
1657, published the narrative:—‘Not long since, in Bedfordshire, a
match at football being appointed on the Sabbath, in the afternoon
whilst two were in the belfry, tolling of a bell to call the company
together, there was suddenly heard a clap of thunder, and a flash of
lightning was seen by some that sat in the church-porch coming through
a dark lane, and flashing in their faces, which must terrified them,
and, passing through the porch into the belfry, it tripped up his heels
that was tolling the bell, and struck him stark dead; and the other
that was with him was so sorely blasted therewith, that shortly after
he died also.’[62] Thus we find that the church bells ministered to the
Book of Sports, to call the company to Sabbath-breaking. The
bell-ringers might come within the same class as those upon whom the
tower at Siloam fell, still it was a most solemn warning, and accounts
for the timidity of so resolute a man as Bunyan. Although he thought it
did not become his newly-assumed religious character, yet his old
propensity drew him to the church tower. At first he ventured in, but
took care to stand under a main beam, lest the bell should fall and
crush him; afterwards he would stand in the door; then he feared the
steeple might fall; and the terrors of an untimely death, and his
newly-acquired garb of religion, eventually deterred him from this mode
of Sabbath-breaking. His next sacrifice made at the shrine of
self-righteousness was dancing: this took him one whole year to
accomplish, and then he bade farewell to these sports for the rest of
his life.[63] We are not to conclude from the example of a man who in
after-life proved so great and excellent a character, that, under all
circumstances, bell-ringing and dancing are immoral. In those days,
such sports and pastimes usually took place on the Lord’s-day; and
however the Church of England might then sanction it, and proclaim by
royal authority, in all her churches, the lawfulness of sports on that
sacred day, yet it is now universally admitted that it was commanding a
desecration of the Sabbath, and letting loose a flood of vice and
profaneness. In themselves, on days proper for recreation, such sports
may be innocent; but if they engender an unholy thought, or occupy time
needed for self-examination and devotion, they ought to be avoided as
sinful hindrances to a spiritual life.
Bunyan was now dressed in the garb of a religious professor, and had
become a brisk talker in the matters of religion, when, by Divine
mercy, he was stripped of all his good opinion of himself; his want of
holiness, and his unchanged heart, were revealed to his surprise and
wonder, by means simple and efficacious, but which no human forethought
could have devised. Being engaged in his trade at Bedford, he overheard
the conversation of some poor pious women, and it humbled and alarmed
him. ‘I heard, but I understood not; for they were far above, out of my
reach. Their talk was about a new birth, the work of God on their
hearts, also how they were convinced of their miserable state by
nature; how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord
Jesus, and with what words and promises they had been refreshed,
comforted, and supported against the temptations of the devil.
Moreover, they reasoned of the suggestions and temptations of Satan in
particular; and told to each other by which they had been afflicted,
and how they were borne up under his assaults. They also discoursed of
their own wretchedness of heart, of their unbelief; and did contemn,
slight, and abhor their own righteousness, as filthy and insufficient
to do them any good. And methought they spake as if joy did make them
speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and
with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as
if they had found a new world; as if they were people that dwelt alone,
and were not to be reckoned among their neighbours (Num 23:9).
‘At this I felt my own heart began to shake, as mistrusting my
condition to be nought; for I saw that in all my thoughts about
religion and salvation, the new birth did never enter into my mind;
neither knew I the comfort of the Word and promise, nor the
deceitfulness and treachery of my own wicked heart. As for secret
thoughts, I took no notice of them; neither did I understand what
Satan’s temptations were, nor how they were to be withstood, and
resisted.
‘Thus, therefore, when I heard and considered what they said, I left
them, and went about my employment again, but their talk and discourse
went with me; also my heart would tarry with them, for I was greatly
affected with their words, both because by them I was convinced that I
wanted the true tokens of a truly godly man, and also because by them I
was convinced of the happy and blessed condition of him that was such a
one.’[64]
The brisk talker of ‘talkative,’ was confounded—he heard pious godly
women mourning over their worthlessness instead of vaunting of their
attainments. They exhibited, doubtless to his great surprise, that
self-distrust and humility are the beginnings of wisdom.
These humble disciples could have had no conception that the Holy
Spirit was blessing their Christian communion to the mind of the
tinker, standing near them, pursuing his occupation. The recollection
of the converse of these poor women led to solemn heart-searching and
the most painful anxiety; again and again he sought their company, and
his convictions became more deep, his solicitude more intense. This was
the commencement of an internal struggle, the most remarkable of any
upon record, excepting that of the psalmist David.
It was the work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating and preparing an
ignorant and rebellious man for extraordinary submission to the sacred
Scriptures, and for most extensive usefulness. To those who never
experienced in any degree such feelings, they appear to indicate
religious insanity. It was so marvelous and so mysterious, as to be
mistaken by a poet laureate, who profanely calls it a being ‘shaken
continually by the hot and cold fits of a spiritual ague’: ‘reveries’:
or one of the ‘frequent and contagious disorders of the human
mind,’[65] instead of considering it as wholesome but bitter medicine
for the soul, administered by the heavenly Physician. At times he felt,
like David, ‘a sword in his bones,’ ‘tears his meat.’ God’s waves and
billows overwhelmed him (Psa 43). Then came glimmerings of
hope—precious promises saving him from despair—followed by the shadow
of death overspreading his soul, and involving him in midnight
darkness. He could complain in the bitterness of his anguish, ‘Thy
fierce wrath goeth over me.’ Bound in affliction and iron, his ‘soul
was melted because of trouble.’ ‘Now Satan assaults the soul with
darkness, fears, frightful thoughts of apparitions; now they sweat,
pant, and struggle for life. The angels now come (Psa 107) down to
behold the sight, and rejoice to see a bit of dust and ashes to
overcome principalities, and powers, and might, and dominion.’[66] His
mind was fixed on eternity, and out of the abundance of his heart he
spoke to one of his former companions; his language was that of
reproof—‘Harry, why do you swear and curse thus? what will become of
you if you die in this condition?’[67] His sermon, probably the first
he had preached, was like throwing pearls before swine—‘He answered in
a great chafe, what would the devil do for company, if it were not for
such as I am.’[68]
By this time he had recovered the art of reading, and its use a little
perplexed him, for he became much puzzled with the opinions of the
Ranters, as set forth in their books. It is extremely difficult to
delineate their sentiments; they were despised by all the sects which
had been connected with the government, because, with the Quakers and
Baptists, they denied any magisterial or state authority over
conscience, and refused maintenance to ministers; but from the
testimony of Bunyan, and that of the early Quakers, they appear to have
been practical Antinomians, or at least very nearly allied to the new
sect called Mormonites. Ross, who copied from Pagitt, describes them
with much bitterness—‘The Ranters are unclean beasts—their maxim is
that there is nothing sin but what a man thinks to be so—they reject
the Bible—they are the merriest of all devils—they deny all obedience
to magistrates.’[69]
This temptation must have been severe. The Ranters were like the black
man with the white robe, named Flatterer, who led the pilgrims into a
net,[70] under the pretence of showing them the way to the celestial
city; or like Adam the first, who offered Faithful his three daughters
to wife[71]—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride
of life—if he would dwell with him in the town of Deceit. ‘These
temptations,’ he says, ‘were suitable to my flesh,’[72] I being but a
young man, and my nature in its prime; and, with his characteristic
humility, he adds, ‘God, who had, as I hope, designed me for better
things, kept me in the fear of his name, and did not suffer me to
accept such cursed principles.’ Prayer opened the door of escape; it
led him to the fountain of truth. ‘I began to look into the Bible with
new eyes. Prayer preserved me from Ranting errors. The Bible was
precious to me in those days.’[73] His study of the Holy Oracles now
became a daily habit, and that with intense earnestness and prayer. In
the mist of the multitude of sects with which he was on all sides
surrounded, he felt the need of a standard for the opinions which were
each of them eagerly followed by votaries, who proclaimed them to be
THE TRUTH, the way, and the life. He was like a man, feeling that if he
erred in the way, it would be attended with misery, and, but for Divine
interference, with unutterable ruin—possessed of a correct map, but
surrounded with those who, by flattery, or threats, or deceit, and
armed with all human eloquence, strove to mislead him. With an enemy
within to urge him to accept their wily guidance, that they might lead
him to perdition—inspired by Divine grace, like Christian in his
Pilgrim, he ‘put his fingers in his ears, and ran on, crying Life,
life, eternal life.’ He felt utter dependence upon Divine guidance,
leading him to most earnest prayer, and an implicit obedience to Holy
Writ, which followed him all through the remainder of his pilgrimage.
‘The Bible’ he calls ‘the scaffold, or stage, that God has builded for
hope to play his part upon in this world.’[74] Hence the Word was
precious in his eyes; and with so immense a loss, or so magnificent a
gain, the throne of grace was all his hope, that he might be guided by
that counsel that cannot err, and that should eventually insure his
reception to eternal glory.
While in this inquiring state, he experienced much doubt and
uncertainty arising from the apparent confidence of many professors. In
his own esteem he appeared to be thoroughly humbled; and when he
lighted on that passage—‘To one is given by the spirit the word of
wisdom, to another, knowledge, and to another, faith’ (1 Cor 12:8,9),
his solemn inquiry was, how it happened that he possessed so little of
any of these gifts of wisdom, knowledge, or faith—more especially of
faith, that being essential to the pleasing of God. He had read (Matt
21:21), ‘If ye have faith and doubt not, ye shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be
done’; and (Luke 17:6), ‘If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye
might say to this sycamore tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be
thou planted in the sea, and it shall obey you’; and (1 Cor 13:2),
‘Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains.’ The poor
tinker, considering these passages in their literal import, imagined
they were meant as tests to try whether the believer possessed faith or
not. He was a stranger to the rules of Hebrew rhetoric; nor did he
consider that they were addressed to the apostles, who had the power to
work miracles. He had no idea that the removing a mountain, or planting
a sycamore tree in the sea, were figures of speech conveying to us the
fact that, aided by faith, mountainous difficulties might and would be
overcome. Anxious for some ocular demonstration that he had faith, he
almost determined to attempt to work a miracle—not to convert or
confirm the faith of others, but to satisfy his own mind as to his
possessing faith. He had no such magnificent idea as the removal of a
mountain, for there were none in his neighbourhood, nor to plant a tree
in the sea, for Bedfordshire is an inland county; but it was of the
humblest kind—that some puddles on the road between Elstow and Bedford
should change places with the dry ground. When he had thought of
praying for ability, his natural good sense led him to abandon the
experiment.[75] This he calls ‘being in my plunge about faith, tossed
betwixt the devil and my own ignorance.’[76] All this shows the
intensity of his feelings and his earnest inquiries.
It may occasion surprise to some, that a young man of such
extraordinary powers of mind, should have indulged the thought of
working a miracle to settle or confirm his doubts; but we must take
into account, that when a boy he had no opportunity of acquiring
scriptural knowledge; no Sunday schools, no Bible class excited his
inquiries as to the meaning of the sacred language. The Bible had been
to him a sealed book until, in a state of mental agony, he cried, What
must I do to be saved? The plain text was all his guide; and it would
not have been surprising, had he been called to bottle a cask of new
wine, if he had refused to use old wine bottles; or had he cast a loaf
into the neighbouring river Ouse, expecting to find it after many days.
The astonishing fact is, that one so unlettered should, by intense
thought, by earnest prayer, and by comparing one passage with another,
arrive eventually at so clear a view both of the external and internal
meaning of the whole Bible. The results of his researches were more
deeply impressed upon his mind by the mistakes which he had made; and
his intense study, both of the Old and New Testaments, furnished him
with an inexhaustible store of things new and old—those vivid images
and burning thoughts, those bright and striking illustrations of Divine
truth, which so shine and sparkle in all his works. What can be more
clear than his illustration of saving faith which worketh by love, when
in after-life he wrote the Pilgrim’s Progress. Hopeful was in a similar
state of inquiry whether he had faith. ‘Then I said, But, Lord, what is
believing?’ And then I saw from that saying, He that cometh to me shall
never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst, that
believing and coming was all one, and that he that came, that is, ran
out in his heart and affections after salvation by Christ, he indeed
believed in Christ (John 6:25).[77]