Satan, with subtle art, tips them with sentences of Scripture. ‘No
place for repentance’; ‘rejected’; ‘hath never forgiveness,’ and other
passages which, by the malignant ingenuity of the fiend, are formed by
his skill as the cutting and barbed points of his shafts. At one time
Bunyan concluded that he was possessed of the devil; then he was
tempted to speak and sin against the Holy Ghost. He thought himself
alone in such a tempest, and that no one had ever felt such misery as
he did. When in prayer, his mind was distracted with the thought that
Satan was pulling his clothes; he was even tempted to fall down and
worship him. Then he would cry after God, in awful fear that eventually
Satan would overcome him. During all this time he was struggling
against the tempter; and, at length, the dayspring visited him in these
words, ‘I am persuaded that nothing shall separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus.’ Again he was cast down with a recollection of his
former blasphemies. What reason can I have to hope for an inheritance
in eternal life? The questions was answered with that portion of
Scripture, ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’ These were visits
which, like Peter’s sheet, of a sudden were caught up to heaven
again.[101] At length the Sun of Righteousness arose, and shone upon
him with healing influence. ‘He hath made peace through the blood of
his cross,’ came with power to his mind, followed by the consoling
words of the apostle, ‘Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers
of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same;
that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death,
that is, the devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all
their lifetime subject to bondage’ (Heb 2:14,15). This was the key that
opened every lock in Doubting Castle. The prisoner escaped to breathe
the air of hope, and joy, and peace. ‘This,’ said he, ‘was a good day
to me, I hope I shall not forget it.’ ‘I thought that the glory of
those words was then so weighty on me, that I was, both once and twice,
ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy
and peace.’
His mind was now in a fit state to seek for church fellowship, as a
further means of advance in his knowledge of Divine love. To effect
this object, he was naturally led to the Baptist church at Bedford, to
which those pious women belonged whose Christian communion had been
blessed to him. I sat under the ministry of holy Mr. Gifford, whose
doctrine, by God’s grace, was much for my stability.[102] Although his
soul was led from truth to truth, his trials were not over—he passed
through many severe exercises before he was received into communion
with the church.[103]
At length he determined to become identified with a body of professed
Christians, who were treated with great scorn by other sects because
they denied infant baptism, and he became engaged in the religious
controversies which were fashionable in those days. We have noticed his
encounter with the Ranters, and he soon had to give battle to persons
called Quakers. Before the Society of Friends was formed, and their
rules of discipline were published, many Ranters and others, some of
whom were bad characters and held the wildest opinions, passed under
the name of Quakers. Some of these denied that the Bible was the Word
of God; and asserted that the death of Christ was not a full atonement
for sin—that there is no future resurrection, and other gross errors.
The Quakers, who were afterwards united to form the Society of Friends,
from the first denied all those errors. Their earliest apologist,
Barclay, in his theses on the Scriptures, says, ‘They are the doctrines
of Christ, held forth in precious declarations, spoken and written by
the movings of God’s Spirit.’ Whoever it was that asserted the
heresies, to Bunyan the investigation of them, in the light of Divine
truth, was attended with great advantages. It was through ‘this narrow
search of the Scriptures that he was not only enlightened, but greatly
confirmed and comforted in the truth.’[104]
He longed to compare his experience with that of some old and eminent
convert, and ‘God did cast into his hand’ Luther On the Galatians, ‘so
old that it was ready to fall piece from piece, if I did but turn it
over.’[105] The commentary of this enlightened man was a counterpart to
his own feelings. ‘I found,’ says Bunyan, ‘my condition, in his
experience so largely and profoundly handled, as if his book had been
written out of my own heart. I prefer the book before all others as
most fit for a wounded conscience.’ This was the ‘voice of a man’ that
Christian ‘heard as going before him in the Valley of the Shadow of
Death,’ and was glad that some who feared God were in this valley as
well as himself, who could say, ‘I will fear no evil for thou art with
me.’[106] In many things Luther and Bunyan were men of similar
temperament. Like Emmanuel’s captains, in the Holy War, they were ‘very
stout rough-hewn men; men that were fit to break the ice, and to make
their way by dint of sword.’[107] They were animated by the same
principles, and fought with the same weapons; and although Luther
resided in a castle protected by princes, was furnished with profound
scholastic learning, and became a terror to Popery; yet the voice of
the unlettered tinker, issuing from a dreary prison, bids fair to be
far more extensively heard and blessed than that of this most
illustrious reformer.[108]
Bunyan’s happiness was now very great; his soul, with all its
affections, clave unto Christ: but lest spiritual pride should exalt
him beyond measure, and lest he should be scared to renounce his
Saviour, by the threat of transportation and death, his heart was again
wounded, and quickly after this his ‘love was tried to purpose.’
The tempter came in upon him with a most grievous and dreadful
temptation; it was to part with Christ, to exchange him for the things
of this life; he was perpetually tormented with the words ‘sell
Christ.’ At length, he thought that his spirit gave way to the
temptation, and a dreadful and profound state of despair overpowered
him for the dreary space of more than two years.[109] This is the most
extraordinary part of this wonderful narrative, that he, without
apparent cause, should thus be tempted, and feel the bitterness of a
supposed parting with Christ. There was, doubtless, a cause for every
pang; his heavenly Father afflicted him for his profit. We shall soon
have to follow him through fiery trials. Before the justices, allured
by their arguments, and particularly by the sophistry of their clerk,
Mr. Cobb, and then dragged from a beloved wife and from children to
whom he was most fondly attached—all these fiery trials might be
avoided, if he would but ‘sell Christ.’ A cold damp dungeon was to
incarcerate his body for twelve tedious years of the prime of his life,
unless he would ‘sell Christ.’ His ministering brother and friend, John
Child, a Bedford man, who had joined in recommending Bunyan’s
Vindication of Gospel Truths,[110] fell under this temptation, and
fearing temporal ruin and imprisonment for life, conformed, and then
fell into the most awful state of despair, suffering such agonies of
conscience, that, to get rid of present trouble, he hurried himself
into eternity. Probably Bunyan alludes to this awful instance of fell
despair in his Publican and Pharisee: ‘Sin, when appearing in its
monstrous shape and hue, frighteth all mortals out of their wits, away
from God; and if he stops them not, also out of the world.’[111] To arm
Bunyan against being overcome by a fear of the lions in the way to the
house Beautiful—against giving way, under persecution—he was visited
with terrors lest he should sell or part with Christ. During these sad
years he was not wholly sunk in despair, but had at times some
glimmerings of mercy. In comparing his supposed sin with that of Judas,
he was constrained to find a difference between a deliberate intention
to sell Christ and a sudden temptation.[112] Through all these
searchings of heart and inquiries at the Word, he became fixed in the
doctrine of the final perseverance of God’s saints. ‘O what love, what
care, what kindness and mercy did I now see mixing itself with the most
severe and dreadful of all God’s ways to his people; he never let them
fall into sin unpardonable.’ ‘But these thoughts added grief and horror
to me; I thought that all things wrought for my eternal overthrow.’ So
ready is the tender heart to write bitter things against itself, and as
ready is the tempter to whisper despairing thoughts. In the midst of
this distress he ‘saw a glory in walking with God,’ although a dismal
cloud enveloped him.
This misery was aggravated by reading the fearful estate of Francis
Spira, who had been persuaded to return to a profession of Popery, and
died in a state of awful despair.[113] ‘This book’ was to his troubled
spirit like salt rubbed into a fresh wound.
Bunyan now felt his body and mind shaking and tottering under the sense
of the dreadful judgment of God; and he thought his sin—of a momentary
and unwilling consent to give up Christ—was a greater sin than all the
sins of David, Solomon, Manasseh, and even than all the sins that had
been committed by all God’s redeemed ones. Was there ever a man in the
world so capable of describing the miseries of Doubting Castle, or of
the Slough of Despond, as poor John Bunyan?
He would have run from God in utter desperation; ‘but, blessed be his
grace, that Scripture, in these flying sins, would call, as running
after me, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions,
and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me, for I have redeemed thee”
(Isa 44:22).Still he was haunted by that scripture, ‘You know how that
afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he found no
place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.’ Thus
was he tossed and buffeted, involved in cloudy darkness, with now and
then a faint gleam of hope to save him from despair. ‘In all these,’ he
says, ‘I was but as those that justle against the rocks; more broken,
scattered, and rent. Oh! the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears,
and terrors, that are effected by a thorough application of
guilt.’[114] ‘Methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens
did grudge to give light, and as if the very stones in the street, and
tiles upon the houses, did bend themselves against me.’[115] Here we
find him in that doleful valley, where Christian was surrounded by
enemies that ‘cared not for his sword,’ he put it up, and places his
dependence upon the more penetrating weapon, ‘All Prayer.’ Depending
upon this last resource, he prayed, even when in this great darkness
and distress. To whom could he go? his case was beyond the power of men
or angels. His refuge, from a fear of having committed the unpardonable
sin, was that he had never refused to be justified by the blood of
Christ, but ardently wished it; this, in the midst of the storm, caused
a temporary clam. At length, he was led to look prayerfully upon those
scriptures that had tormented him, and to examine their scope and
tendency, and then he ‘found their visage changed, for they looked not
so grimly on him as before he thought they did.’[116] Still, after such
a tempest, the sea did not at once become a calm. Like one that had
been scared with fire, every voice was fire, fire; every little touch
hurt his tender conscience.[117]
All this instructive history is pictured by a few words in the
Pilgrim’s Progress. At the Interpreter’s house the pilgrim is shown ‘a
fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting
much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn higher and
hotter.’[118] As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him again. The
threatening and the promise were like glittering swords clashing
together, but the promise must prevail.
His entire relief at last was sudden, while meditating in the field
upon the words, ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ Hence he drew the
conclusion, that his righteousness was in Christ, at God’s right hand,
ever before him, secure from all the powers of sin and Satan. Now his
chains fell off; he was loosed from his affliction and irons; his
temptation fled away. His present supply of grace he compared to the
cracked groats and fourpence half-pennies,[119] which rich men carry in
their pockets, while their treasure is safe in their trunks at home, as
his was in the store-house of heaven.
This dreary night of awful conflict lasted more than two years; but
when the day-spring from on high visited him, the promises spangled in
his eyes, and he broke out into a song, ‘Praise ye the Lord. Praise God
in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him
for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent
greatness.’[120]
Bunyan’s opinion as to the cause of this bitter suffering, was his want
of watchfulness, his not coming boldly to the throne of grace, and that
he had tempted God. The advantages he considered that he had gained by
it were, that it confirmed his knowledge of the existence of God, so
that he lost all his temptations to unbelief, blasphemy, and hardness
of heart, Doubts as to the truth of the Word, and certainty of the
world to come, were gone for ever.
He found no difficulty as to the keys of the kingdom of heaven. ‘Now I
saw the apostles to be the elders of the city of refuge, those that
they were to receive in, were received to life, but those that they
were to shut out, were to be slain by the avenger of blood.’ Those were
to enter who, with Peter, confessed to Jesus, ‘Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God’ (Matt 16:16). This is simply an authority to
proclaim salvation or condemnation to those who receive or reject the
Saviour. It is upon his shoulder the key of the house is laid (Isa
22:22). Christ only has the key, no MAN openeth or shutteth (Rev 1:18,
3:7). All that man can do, as to binding or loosening, is to warn the
hardened and to invite the contrite.
By these trials, the promises, became more clear and invaluable than
ever. He never saw those heights and depths in grace, and love, and
mercy, as he saw them after this severe trial—‘great sins drew out
great grace’; and the more terrible and fierce guilt was, the more high
and mighty did the mercy of God in Christ appear. These are Bunyan’s
own reflections; but may we not add to them, that while he was in God’s
school of trial, every groan, every bitter pang of anguish, and every
gleam of hope, were intended to fit him for his future work as a
preacher and writer? Weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, there
was not a jot too little, or an iota too much. Every important subject
which embarrasses the convert, was most minutely investigated,
especially faith, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the divinity of
Christ, and such essential truths. He well knew every dirty lane, and
nook, and corner of Mansoul, in which the Diabolonians found shelter,
and well he knew the frightful sound of Diabolus’ drum.[121] Well did
his pastor, John Burton, say of him, ‘He hath through grace taken these
three heavenly degrees, to wit, union with Christ, the anointing of the
Spirit, and experience of the temptations of Satan, which do more fit a
man for that mighty work of preaching the gospel, than all the
university learning and degrees that can be had.’[122]
Preserved in Christ Jesus, and called—selected from his associates in
sin, he was taken into this school, and underwent the strictest
religious education. It was here alone that his rare talent could be
cultivated, to enable him, in two immortal allegories, to narrate the
internal discipline he underwent. It was here he attained that habitual
access to the throne of grace, and that insight into the inspired
volume, which filled his writings with those solemn realities of the
world to come; while it enabled him to reveal the mysteries of
communion with the Father of spirits, as he so wondrously does in his
treatise on prayer. To use the language of Milton—‘These are works that
could not be composed by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren
daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich
with all utterance and knowledge, and send out his seraphim, with the
hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he
pleases, without reference to station, birth, or education.’ The
tent-maker and tinker, the fisherman and publican, and even a friar or
monk,[123] became the honoured instruments of his choice.
Throughout all Bunyan’s writings, he never murmurs at his want of
education, although it is often a source of humble apology. He honoured
the learned godly as Christians, but preferred the Bible before the
library of the two universities.[124] He saw, what every pious man must
see and lament, that there is much idolatry in human learning, and that
it was frequently applied to confuse and impede the gospel. Thus he
addresses the reader of his treatise on The Law and Grace—‘If thou find
this book empty of fantastical expressions, and without light, vain,
whimsical, scholar-like terms, it is because 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. But if thou do find
a parcel of plain, yet sound, true, and home sayings, attribute that to
the Lord Jesus his gifts and abilities, which he hath bestowed upon
such a poor creature as I am and have been.’[125] His maxim was—‘Words
easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones
do only pierce the air. He also that speaks to the weakest may make the
learned understand him; when he that striveth to be high, is not only
of the most part understood but of a sort, but also many times is
neither understood by them nor by himself!’[126] This is one of
Bunyan’s maxims, well worthy the consideration of the most profoundly
learned writers, and also of the most eloquent preachers and public
speakers.
Bunyan was one of those pioneers who are far in advance of the age in
which they live, and the narrative of his birth and education adds to
the innumerable contradictions which the history of man opposes to the
system of Mr. Owen and the Socialists, and to every scheme for making
the offspring of the poor follow in leading-strings the course of their
parents, or for rendering them blindly submissive to the dictates of
the rich, the learned, or the influential. It incontestably proves the
gospel doctrine of individuality, and, that native talent will rise
superior to all impediments. Our forefathers struggled for the right of
private judgment in matters of faith and worship—their descendants will
insist upon it, as essential to salvation, personally to examine every
doctrine relative to the sacred objects of religion, limited only by
Holy Writ. This must be done with rigorous impartiality, throwing aside
all the prejudices of education, and be followed by prompt obedience to
Divine truth, at any risk of offending parents, or laws, or resisting
institutions, or ceremonies which he discovers to be of human
invention. All this, as we have seen in Bunyan, was attended with great
mental sufferings, with painstaking labour, with a simple reliance upon
the Word of God, and with earnest prayer. If man impiously dares to
submit his conscience to his fellow-man, or to any body of men called a
church, what perplexity must he experience ere he can make up his mind
which to choose! Instead of relying upon the ONE standard which God has
given him in his Word; should he build his hope upon a human system he
could be certain only that man is fallible and subject to err. How
striking an instance have we, in our day, of the result of education,
when the mind does not implicitly follow the guidance of the revealed
Word of God. Two brothers, named Newman, educated at the same school,
trained in the same university, brought up under the same religious
system—all human arts exhausted to mould their minds into strict
uniformity, yet gradually receding from the same point in opposite
directions, but in equally downward roads; one to embrace the most
puerile legends of the middle ages, the other to open infidelity. Not
so with those who follow the teachings of the Word of God, by which,
and not by any church, they are to be individually judged at the great
day: no pontiff, no priest, no minister, can intervene or mediate for
them at the bar of God. There it will be said, ‘I know you, by your
prayers for Divine guidance and your submission to my revealed will’;
or, ‘I know you not,’ for you preferred the guidance of frail, fallible
men, to me, and to my Word—a solemn consideration, which, as it proved
a source of solid happiness and extensive usefulness to Bunyan in his
pilgrimage, so it insured to him, as it will to all who follow his
course, a solid foundation on which to stand at the great and terrible
day, and thus enable them to live as well as die in the sure and
certain hope of a triumphant entry into the celestial city.
THE THIRD PERIOD.
BUNYAN IS BAPTIZED, AND ENTERS INTO COMMUNION WITH A CHRISTIAN CHURCH
AT BEDFORD—IS SET APART TO FILL THE DEACON’S OFFICE, AND SENT OUT AS AN
ITINERANT PREACHER IN THE NEIGHBOURING VILLAGES.
Man is naturally led to seek the society of his fellow-men. His
personal progress, and the great interests of civilization, depend upon
the nature of his friendly intercourse and his proper associations. So
is it with the Christian, but in a much higher degree. Not only does he
require companions with whom he can enjoy Christian communion—of
sufferings and of pleasures—in seasons of depressing trials, and in
holy elevations—but with whom he may also form plans to spread the
genial influence of Christianity, which has blessed and so boundlessly
enriched his own soul. Christian fellowship and communion has received
the broad seal of heaven. ‘The Lord hearkened,’ when they that feared
him spake often to one another, ‘and a book of remembrance was written
before him for them that feared the Lord’ (Mal 3:16).
Bunyan possessed a soul with faculties capable of the highest enjoyment
of the communion of saints in church order. His ideas of mutual
forbearance—that ‘in lowliness of mind should each esteem others better
than themselves’—he enforces with very peculiar power, and, at the same
time, with delicate sensibility. After the pilgrims had been washed by
Innocence in the Interpreter’s bath, he sealed them, which ‘greatly
added to their beauty,’ and then arrayed them in white raiment of fine
linen; and ‘when the women were thus adorned, they seemed to be a
terror one to the other, for that they could not see that glory each
one on herself which they could see in each other. Now, therefore, they
began to esteem each other better than themselves.’[127] ‘The
Interpreter led them into his garden, where was great variety of
flowers. Then said he, Behold, the flowers are diverse in stature, in
quality and colour, and smell and virtue, and some are better than
some; also, where the gardener hath set them, there they stand, and
quarrel not with one another.’[128] ‘When Christians stand every one in
their places, and do their relative work, then they are like the
flowers in the garden that grow where the gardener hath planted them,
and both honour the gardener and the garden in which they are
planted.’[129] In the same treatise on Christian Behaviour, similar
sentiments are expressed in language extremely striking and beautiful.
‘The doctrine of the gospel is like the dew and the small rain that
distilleth upon the tender grass, wherewith it doth flourish and is
kept green (Deut 32:2).Christians are like the several flowers in a
garden that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which, being
shaken with the wind, they let fall their dew at each other’s roots,
whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of one
another. For Christians to commune savourly of God’s matters one with
another, it is as if they opened to each other’s nostrils boxes of
perfume.’[130] Similar peaceful, heavenly principles, flow through
Bunyan’s Discourse of the Building, &c., of the House of God and its
inmates;[131] and blessed would it be if in all our churches every
believer was baptized into such motives of forbearance and brotherly
love. These sentiments do honour to the head and heart of the prince of
allegorists, and should be presented in letters of gold to every
candidate for church fellowship. A young man entertaining such opinions
as these, however rude his former conduct, being born again to
spiritual enjoyments, would become a treasure to the Christian society
with which he might be connected.