young convert, lead him in his first choice of Christian associates;
but here we have no ordinary man. Bunyan, in all things pertaining to
religion, followed no human authority, but submitted himself to the
guidance of the inspired volume. Possessing a humble hope of salvation,
he would read with deep interest that ‘the Lord added to the church
such as should be saved.’ The question which has so much puzzled the
learned, as to a church or the church, would be solved without
difficulty by one who was as learned in the Scriptures as he was
ignorant of the subtle distinctions and niceties of the schools. He
found that there was one church at Jerusalem (Acts 8:1), another at
Corinth (1 Cor 1:2), seven in Asia (Rev 1:4), and others distributed
over the world; that ‘the visible church of Christ is a (or every)
congregation of faithful men.’[132] He well knew that uniformity is a
fool’s paradise; that though man was made in the image of God; it
derogates not from the beauty of that image that no two men are alike.
The stars show forth God’s handy work, yet ‘one star different from
another star in glory’ (1 Cor 15:41). Uniformity is opposed to every
law of nature, for no two leaves upon a majestic tree are alike. Who
but an idiot or a maniac would attempt to reduce the mental powers of
all men to uniformity? Every church may have its own order of public
worship while the Scriptures form the standard of truth and morals.
Where differences of opinion occur, as they most certainly will, as to
the observance of days or abstinence from meats—whether to stand, or
sit, or kneel, in prayer—whether to stand while listening to some pages
of the inspired volume, and to sit while others are publicly
read—whether to call Jude a saint, and refuse the title to Isaiah—are
questions which should bring into active exercise all the graces of
Christian charity; and, in obedience to the apostolic injunction, they
must agree to differ. ‘Let every man be fully persuaded in his own
mind’ (Rom 14:5). Human arts have been exhausted to prevent that mental
exercise or self-persuasion which is essential to a Christian
profession. The great object of Satan has ever been to foster
indifference, that deadly lethargy, by leading man to any source of
information rather than prayerful researches into the Bible. Bunyan’s
severe discipline in Christ’s school would lead him to form a judgment
for himself; he was surrounded by a host of sects, and, with such a
Bible-loving man, it is an interesting inquiry what party he would
join.
He lived in times of extraordinary excitement. England was in a
transition state. A long chain of events brought on a crisis which
involved the kingdom in tribulation. It was the struggle between the
unbridled despotism of Epsicopacy, and the sturdy liberty of
Puritanism. For although the immediate cause of the civil wars was
gross misgovernment—arbitrary taxation without the intervention of
Parliament, monopolies and patents, to the ruin of trade; in fact,
every abuse of the royal power—still, without the additional spur of
religious persecution, the spirit of the people would never have proved
invincible and overpowering. The efforts of Archbishop Laud, aided by
the queen and her popish confessor, Panzani, to subjugate Britain to
the galling yoke of Rome, signally failed, involving in the ruin the
life of the king and his archbishop, and all the desolating calamities
of intestine wars, strangely called ‘civil.’ In this strife many of the
clergy and most of the bishops took a very active part, aiding and
abetting the king’s party in their war against the parliament—and they
thus brought upon themselves great pains and penalties. The people
became suddenly released from mental bondage; and if the man who had
been born blind, when he first received the blessing of sight, ‘saw men
as trees walking,’ we cannot be surprised that religious speculations
were indulged in, some of which proved to be crude and wild, requiring
much vigorous persuasive pruning before they produced good fruit.
Bunyan was surrounded by all these parties; for although the rights of
conscience were not recognized—the Papists and Episcopalians, the
Baptists and Unitarians, with the Jews, being proscribed—yet the hand
of persecution was comparatively light. Had Bunyan chosen to associate
with the Episcopalians, he would not have passed through those severe
sufferings on which are founded his lasting honours. The Presbyterians
and Independents received the patronage of the state under the
Commonwealth, and the great mass of the clergy conformed to the
directory, many of them reciting the prayers they had formerly read;
while a considerable number, whose conscience could not submit to the
system then enforced by law, did, to their honour, resign their
livings, and suffer the privations and odium of being Dissenters. Among
these were necessarily included the bishops.[133]
Of all sects that of the Baptists had been the most bitterly written
against and persecuted. Even their first cousins, the Quakers, attacked
them in language that would, in our peaceful days, be considered
outrageous. ‘The Baptists used to meet in garrets, cheese-lofts,
coal-holes, and such like mice walks,’—‘theses tumultuous,
blood-thirsty, covenant-breaking, government-destroying
Anabaptists.’[134] The offence that called forth these epithets was,
that in addressing Charles II on his restoration, they stated that
“they were no abettors of the Quakers.” Had royal authority possessed
the slightest influence over Bunyan’s religious opinions, the question
as to his joining the Baptists would have been settled without
investigation. Among other infatuations of Charles I, had been his
hatred of any sect that professed the right and duty of man to think
for himself in choosing his way to heaven. In 1639 he published his
‘Declaration concerning the tumults in Scotland,’ when violence was
resorted to against the introduction of the Common Prayer in which he
denounced voluntary obedience because it was not of constraint, and
called it ‘damnable’; he calls the principles of the Anabaptists, in
not submitting their consciences to human laws, ‘furious frenzies,’ and
‘madness’; all Protestants are ‘to detest and persecute them’; ‘these
Anabaptists raged most in their madness’; ‘the scandal of their
frenzies’; ‘we are amazed at, and aggrieved at their horrible
impudence’; ‘we do abhor and detest them all as rebellious and
treasonable.’[135] This whole volume is amusingly assuming. The king
claims his subjects as personal chattels, with whose bodies and minds
he had a right to do as he pleased. Bunyan owed no spiritual submission
to man, ‘whose breath is in his nostrils’; and risking all hazards, he
became one of the denounced and despised sect of Baptists. To use the
language of his pilgrim, he passed the lions, braving all the dangers
of an open profession of faith in Christ, and entered the house called
Beautiful, which ‘was built by the Lord of the hill, on purpose to
entertain such pilgrims in.’[136] He first gains permission of the
watchman, or minister, and then of the inmates, or church members. This
interesting event is said to have taken place about the year 1653.[137]
Mr. Doe, in The Struggler, thus refers to it, Bunyan ‘took all
advantages to ripen his understanding in religion, and so he lit on the
dissenting congregation of Christians at Bedford, and was, upon
confession of faith, baptized about the year 1653,’[138] when he was in
the twenty-fifth year of his age. No minutes of the proceedings of this
church, prior to the death of Mr. Gifford in 1656,[139] are extant, or
they would identify the exact period when Bunyan’s baptism and
admission to the church took place. The spot where he was baptized is a
creek by the river Ouse, at the end of Duck Mill Lane. It is a natural
baptistery, a proper width and depth of water constantly fresh;
pleasantly situated; sheltered from the public highway near the High
Street. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated in a large room in which the
disciples met, the worship consecrating the place.[140]
Religious feelings and conduct have at all times a tendency to promote
the comfort, and elevate the character of the poor. How often have we
seen them thus blessed; the ragged family comfortably clothed, the
hungry fed, and the inmates of a dirty miserable cottage or hovel
become a pattern of cleanly happiness. One of Bunyan’s biographers, who
was an eye-witness, bears this testimony. ‘By this time his family was
increased, and as that increased God increased his stores, so that he
lived now in great credit among his neighbours.’ He soon became a
respectable member of civil as well as religious society; for, by the
time that he joined the church, his Christian character was so fully
established, that, notwithstanding the meanness of his origin and
employment, he was considered worthy of uniting in a memorial to the
Lord Protector. It was to recommend two gentlemen to form part of the
council, after Cromwell had dissolved the Long Parliament. It is a
curious document, very little known, and illustrative of the peculiar
style of these eventful times.
Letter from the people of Bedfordshire to the Lord Generall Cromwell,
and the Councell of the army.
May 13th, 1653.
May it please your Lordship, and the rest of the council of the army.
We (we trust) servants of Jesus Christ, inhabitants in the county of
Bedford, haveing fresh upon our hearts the sadde oppressions we have (a
long while) groan’d under from the late parlayment, and now eyeing and
owning (through grace) the good hand of God in this great turne of
providence, being persuaded that it is from the Lord that you should be
instrument in his hand at such a time as this, for the electing of such
persons whoe may goe in and out before his people in righteousnesse,
and governe these nations in judgment, we having sought the Lord for
yow, and hopeing that God will still doe greate things by yow,
understanding that it is in your hearte through the Lord’s assistance,
to establish an authority consisting of men able, loveing truth,
feareing God, and hateing covetouseness; and we having had some
experience of men with us, we have judged it our duty to God, to yow,
and to the rest of his people, humbly to present two men, viz.,
Nathaniell Taylor, and John Croke, now Justices of Peace in our County,
whom we judge in the Lord qualified to manage a trust in the ensuing
government. All which we humbly referre to your serious considerations,
and subscribe our names this 13th day of May, 1653—
John Eston, Clement Berridge, Isaac Freeman, John Grewe, John Bunyan,
William Dell, John Gifford, William Baker, junr., William Wheelar, Ja.
Rush, Anth. Harrington, John Gibbs, Tho. Varrse, Richard Spensley, John
Donne, Michael Cooke, Edward Covinson, Tho. Gibbs, John Ramsay, John
Hogge, Edward White, Robert English, John Jeffard, John Browne, John
Edridge, John Ivory, John White, George Gee, Daniell Groome, Charles
Peirse, Ambrose Gregory, Luke Parratt, Thomas Cooke, William Page,
Thomas Knott, Thomas Honnor. These to the Lord Generall Cromwell, and
the rest of the councell of the army, present.[141]
Bunyan’s daughter Elizabeth was born at Elstow, April 14, 1654, and a
singular proof of his having changed his principles on baptism appears
in the church register. His daughter Mary was baptized in 1650, but his
Elizabeth in 1654 is registered as born, but no mention is made of
baptism.
The poor harassed pilgrim having been admitted into communion with a
Christian church, enjoyed fully, for a short season, his new
privileges. He thus expresses his feelings:—‘After I had propounded to
the church that my desire was to walk in the order and ordinances of
Christ with them, and was also admitted by them: while I thought of
that blessed ordinance of Christ, which was his last supper with his
disciples before his death, that scriptures, “this do in remembrance of
me,” was made a very precious word unto me; for by it the Lord came
down upon my conscience with the discovery of his death for my sins:
and as I then felt, did as if he plunged me in the virtue of the
same.’[142]
In this language we have an expression which furnishes a good sample of
his energetic feelings. He had been immersed in water at his baptism,
and doubtless believed it to be a figure of his death to sin and
resurrection to holiness; and when he sat at the Lord’s table he felt
that he was baptized into the virtue of his Lord’s death; he is plunged
into it, and feels the holy influence covering his soul with all its
powers.
His pastor, John Gifford, was a remarkably pious and sensible man,
exactly fitted to assist in maturing the mind of his young member.
Bunyan had, for a considerable time, sat under his ministry, and had
cultivated acquaintance with the members of his church; and so
prayerfully had he made up his mind as to this important choice of a
church, with which he might enter into fellowship, that, although
tempted by the most alluring prospects of greater usefulness,
popularity, and emolument, he continued his church fellowship with
these poor people through persecution and distress, imprisonment and
the threats of transportation, or an ignominious death, until he
crossed the river ‘which has no bridge,’ and ascended to the celestial
city, a period of nearly forty years. Of the labours of his first
pastor, John Gifford, but little is known, except that he founded the
church of Christ at Bedford, probably the first, in modern times, which
allowed to every individual freedom of judgment as to water baptism;
receiving all those who decidedly appeared to have put on Christ, and
had been received by him; but avoiding, with godly jealousy, any
mixture of the world with the church. Mr. Gifford’s race was short,
consistent, and successful. Bunyan calls him by an appellation, very
probably common in his neighbourhood and among his flock, ‘holy Mr.
Gifford’;[143] a title infinitely superior to all the honours of
nobility, or of royalty. He was a miracle of mercy and grace, for a
very few years before he had borne the character of an impure and
licentious man—an open enemy to the saints of God. His pastoral letter,
left upon record in the church-book, written when drawing near the end
of his pilgrimage, is most admirable; it contains an allusion to his
successors, Burton or Bunyan, and must have had a tendency in forming
their views of a gospel church. Even Mr. Southey praises this puritanic
epistle as exemplifying ‘a wise and tolerant and truly Christian
spirit’: and as it has not been published in any life of Bunyan, I
venture to introduce it without abridgement:—
To the Church over which God made me an overseer when I was in the
world.
I beseech you, brethren beloved, let these following words (wrote in my
love to you, and care over you, when our heavenly Father was removing
me to the kingdom of his dear Son), be read in your church-gatherings
together. I shall not now, dearly beloved, write unto you about that
which is the first, and without which all other things are as nothing
in the sight of God, viz., the keeping the mystery of the faith in a
pure conscience; I shall not, I say, write of these things, though the
greatest, having spent my labours among you, to root you and build you
up in Christ through the grace you have received; and to press you to
all manner of holiness in your conversations, that you may be found of
the Lord, without spot, and blameless, at His coming. But the things I
shall speak to you of, are about your CHURCH AFFAIRS, which I fear have
been little considered by most of you; which things, if not mended
aright, and submitted unto, according to the will of God, will by
degrees bring you under divisions, distractions, and at last, to
confusion of that gospel order and fellowship which now, through grace,
you enjoy. Therefore, my brethren, in the first place, I would not have
any of you ignorant of this, that every one of you are as much bound
now to walk with the church in all love; and in the ordinances of Jesus
Christ our Lord, as when I was present among you: neither have any of
you liberty to join yourselves to any other society, because your
pastor is removed from you; for you were not joined to the ministry,
but to Christ, and the church; and this is and was the will of God in
Christ to all the churches of the saints, read Acts 2:42; and compare
it with Acts 1:14, 15. And I charge you before the Lord, as you will
answer it at the coming of our Lord Jesus, that none of you be found
guilty herein.
Secondly. Be constant in your church assemblies. Let all the work which
concerns the church be done faithfully among you; as admission of
members, exercising of gifts, election of officers, as need requires,
and all other things as if named, which the Scriptures being searched,
will lead you into, through the Spirit; which things, if you do, the
Lord will be with you, and you will convince others that Christ is your
head, and your dependency is not upon man; but if you do the work of
the Lord negligently, if you mind your own things and not the things of
Christ, if you grow of indifferent spirits, whether you mind the work
of the Lord in his church or no, I fear the Lord by degrees will suffer
the comfort of your communion to be dried up, and the candlestick which
is yet standing to be broken in pieces; which God forbid.
Now, concerning your admission of members, I shall leave you to the
Lord for counsel, who hath hitherto been with you; only thus much I
think expedient to stir up your remembrance in; that after you are
satisfied in the work of grace in the party you are to join with, the
said party do solemnly declare (before some of the church at least),
That Union with Christ is the foundation of all saints’ communion; and
not any ordinances of Christ, or any judgment or opinion about
externals; and the said party ought to declare, whether a brother or
sister, that through grace they will walk in love with the church,
though there should happen any difference in judgment about other
things. Concerning separation from the church about baptism, laying on
of hands, anointing with oil, psalms, or any externals, I charge every
one of you respectively, as you will give an account for it to our Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall judge both quick and dead at his coming, that
none of you be found guilty of this great evil; which, while some have
committed, and that through a zeal for God, yet not according to
knowledge, they have erred from the law of the love of Christ, and have
made a rent from the true church, which is but one. I exhort you,
brethren, in your comings together, Let all things be done decently,
and in order, according to the Scriptures. Let all things be done among
you without strife and envy, without self-seeking and vain-glory. Be
clothed with humility, and submit to one another in love. Let the gifts
of the church be exercised according to order. Let no gift be concealed
which is for edification; yet let those gifts be chiefly exercised
which are most for the perfecting of the saints. Let your discourses be
to build up one another in your most holy faith, and to provoke one
another to love and good works: if this be not well-minded, much time
may be spent and the church reap little or no advantage. Let there be
strong meat for the strong, and milk for babes. In your assemblies
avoid all disputes which gender to strife, as questions about
externals, and all doubtful disputations. If any come among you who
will be contentious in these things, let it be declared that you have
no such order, nor any of the churches of God. If any come among you
with any doctrine contrary to the doctrine of Christ, you must not
treat with such an one as with a brother, or enter into dispute of the
things of faith with reasonings (for this is contrary to the
Scriptures); but let such of the brethren who are the fullest of the
Spirit, and the word of Christ, oppose such an one steadfastly face to
face, and lay open his folly to the church, from the Scriptures. If a
brother through weakness speak anything contrary to any known truth of
God (though not intended by him), some other brother of the church must
in love clear up the truth, lest many of the church be laid under
temptation. Let no respect of persons be in your comings-together; when
you are met as a church there’s neither rich nor poor, bond nor free in
Christ Jesus. ’Tis not a good practice to be offering places or seats
when those who are rich come in; especially it is a great evil to take
notice of such in time of prayer, or the word; then are bowings and
civil observances at such times not of God. Private wrongs are not
presently to be brought unto the church. If any of the brethren are
troubled about externals, let some of the church (let it not be a
church business) pray for and with such parties.
None ought to withdraw from the church if any brother should walk
disorderly, but he that walketh disorderly must bear his own burden,
according to the Scriptures. If any brother should walk disorderly, he
cannot be shut out from any ordinance before church censure. Study
among yourselves what is the nature of fellowship, as the word,[144]
prayer, and breaking of bread; which, whilst few, I judge, seriously
consider, there is much falling short of duty in the churches of
Christ. You that are most eminent in profession, set a pattern to all
the rest of the church. Let your faith, love, and zeal, be very
eminent; if any of you cast a dim light, you will do much hurt in the
church. Let there be kept up among you solemn days of prayer and
thanksgiving; and let some time be set apart, to seek God for your
seeds, which thing hath hitherto been omitted. Let your deacons have a
constant stock by them, to supply the necessity of those who are in
want. Truly, brethren, there is utterly a fault among you that are
rich, especially in this thing, ’tis not that little which comes from
you on the first day of the week that will excuse you. I beseech you,
be not found guilty of this sin any longer. He that sows sparingly will
reap sparingly. Be not backward in your gatherings-together; let none
of you willingly stay till part of the meeting be come,[145] especially
such who should be examples to the flock. One or two things are omitted
about your comings-together, which I shall here add. I beseech you,
forbear sitting in prayer, except parties be any way disabled; ’tis not
a posture which suits with the majesty of such an ordinance. Would you
serve your prince so? In prayer, let all self-affected expressions be
avoided, and all vain repetitions. God hath not gifted, I judge, every
brother to be a mouth to the church. Let such as have most of the
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, shut up all your
comings-together, that ye may go away with your hearts comforted and
quickened.
Come together in time, and leave off orderly; for God is a God of order
among his saints. Let none of you give offence to his brethren in
indifferent things, but be subject to one another in love. Be very
careful what gifts you approve of by consent for public service.
Spend much time before the Lord, about choosing a pastor, for though I
suppose he is before you,[146] whom the Lord hath appointed, yet it
will be no disadvantage to you, I hope, if you walk a year or two as
you are before election; and then, if you be all agreed, let him be set
apart, according to the Scriptures. Salute the brethren who walk not in
fellowship with you, with the same love and name of brother or sister
as those who do.